Leaping Hearts (38 page)

“He’s lame. Right front. But it’ll heal.”

“Good, I’m glad I didn’t lie to her.”

When Devlin didn’t move, Chester gripped his shoulder. “Boy, look at me.”

Devlin tried to.

“She needs you.”

“I know.”

“So go on now.”

“How will you get back with the stallion?”

“I’ll give them a ride.” Devlin and Chester turned in surprise at Peter Conrad’s voice. “And you can use our facilities
to rehab the horse if you need to. Anything you want, we’ve got. It’s all yours.”

“That’s right kind,” Chester replied.

Devlin said, “The stallion should go there right after the vet looks at him. He’s going to need hydrotherapy first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll call ahead and have a stall waiting. You know they’ve taken her to County, right?” Peter asked him. “You get on the highway heading south—”

“I know how to get there,” Devlin said.

Peter flushed. “Of course you do.”

In a fog, Devlin went to the trailer and drove ten miles to the hospital where he’d been taken the year before. Coming back to the scene of his operations and difficult recovery was too surreal for him to comprehend. He decided it had to be a nightmare. Life’s parallels just couldn’t be so cruel.

By the time he located A.J. in the Emergency Department, an orthopedist had taken X-rays and was making his report to her and her father. When Devlin walked into the room, the white coat stopped talking.

“Devlin!” A.J. exclaimed, holding out her hand. She was propped up on a bed, one arm lying on a pillow in her lap. He went to her.

The doctor continued. “What you had was a fracture that hadn’t healed properly. The pulling motion reactivated the break, which caused the pain you felt before you fell. Then you compounded the injury by landing on it. We’re going to put you in a cast but you should be good as new in about six weeks.”

A.J. groaned.

“I see you’re one of those horse types,” the doctor said casually as he scribbled notes in her medical record. “Don’t know how you rode with that arm at all. You must have been in some kind of pain. When did you first break it?”

A.J. looked up at Devlin and watched his face tighten. “I fell a couple of weeks ago.”

The doctor looked up in surprise. “You’ve been using that arm for how long?”

A.J. mumbled something, hoping to get him off the subject.

“You’re one tough lady.” He flipped the metal cover of her chart closed. The clapping noise was loud in the tension of the room. “I’ll be back with the plaster.”

“Arlington,” her father started as soon as the curtain closed, “how could you be so reckless?”

One look from her and he stopped talking. He’d been dismissed and he knew it.

Clearing his throat, he said, “Devlin, will you be able to give her a ride home?”

“Of course.”

The good-bye with her father was awkward and rushed because A.J. was anxious to be alone with Devlin. When she finally was, she reached out to him. The arms he put around her were stiff and she felt afraid.

“Sabbath is going to be fine,” he told her with a detached voice. “Chester was going to wrap him well and your stepbrother offered the use of the Sutherland facilities to rehab him. I told them to take him there.”

“Devlin?”

He didn’t meet her eyes. Terror settled cold and hard in her chest.

“Devlin, about my arm—”

The doctor and a nurse came back into the room.

An hour later, she left the hospital with a cast and a broken heart.

During the trip home, Devlin didn’t say a word to her. When they pulled up to the farmhouse, he led the way inside. It was dark and he turned on the lights one by one, moving around the rooms of his home like a ghost. She waited for him to stop moving, her heart pounding like she’d run a marathon.

“Devlin, I know you’re angry,” she said when he came out of the dining room.

“I’m not angry,” he said.

She searched his face for any sign of warmth. There was none.

“Devlin, I’m sorry I kept the injury from you.”

“I believe that.”

“My arm’s going to be fine. I’m okay. Sabbath’s going to heal. We can resume training here—”

“Not here.”

With the bald words, A.J. felt like she’d hit the ground again.

“What are you saying?”

“I agreed to get you to the Qualifier. I did. Now you need to go.”

Through a dry throat, she said, “Is it just Sabbath who needs to leave?”

It was a lifetime before she heard his answer.

“No.”

Tears, hot and wet, started to fall from her eyes.

“You can’t mean this. You just can’t. This can’t be the end.”

She was waiting for a denial, for a sign of weakening from the hard line. She found none.

“You lied to me,” he said. “You lied to me deliberately about your physical condition and you did it again and again. Every time you went into the ring on that horse.”

“I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

“When we made love, and you were naked against me, I thought that there was nothing that could come between us. When I held you in my arms, and you told me you loved me, I believed you. When I asked how you were doing, I assumed you were being truthful.”

“Devlin, I—”

“I knew something was wrong but I was so in love with you…I wanted to believe your words more than I wanted to see the truth.”

With shock, she realized he’d spoken in the past tense.

“Don’t you love me anymore?”

“I don’t trust you. You can’t have love without trust. What’s worse, I don’t trust myself anymore. This is the second time I’ve ignored my instincts. You’d think after Mercy, I’d have learned the lesson.”

“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Don’t do this. There must be something I can do. Something I can say—”

“I’m going out,” he told her. “When I get back, I’ll help bring your things over to the mansion. I know that arm’s got to be hurting you.”

He stepped around her to get to the door. Didn’t look back as he left.

Great wrenching sobs of grief and self-blame racked A.J. and she fell to her knees in the foyer. As she gave herself up to the emotions, she knew a pain so deep, she felt as if she would come apart.

A
MONTH
later, Devlin walked out of the farmhouse to get the morning paper, which had landed on the frost-laden grass. It left a green imprint when he picked it up. As he turned to go back into the house, he looked up at the sky. Gray clouds shut out the sun and, against the stark sky, leafless trees moved stiffly in the cold wind.

He didn’t look up because he was interested in the heavens. He was studiously ignoring the stables. And the ring. And the paddocks and the trails.

But he felt trapped by their vicinity anyway.

All that was going to change, however, with the phone call he’d made the day before. He was putting the property on the market. The agent had been thrilled with the listing and he’d been assured it was going to go fast despite a hefty price tag. Quick was what he wanted, even though he wasn’t sure where he was going to move. He was contemplating somewhere far away, in distance and spirit. Like California. Or Hawaii. After all, he had plenty of money and no real roots. He was free to go wherever he chose.

Well, free to make the choice to leave.

He was far from unencumbered.

The ghosts of his love for A.J. haunted him, day and night, in the shadows and in the light. He thought of her all the time, almost to the point of obsession, trying to come to terms with what had separated them. He felt betrayed and sad. Beyond the pain he felt at her deception, he was still
angry that she hadn’t taken into account the risks she’d assumed. Competing with her arm in that kind of condition had been foolhardy. Dangerous. She could have been hurt even more seriously. She could have been—

Devlin shook his head. Enough, he told himself. He’d rehashed it all enough.

As he went back into the house, he shut the door behind him to keep the cold out. The fire he’d started at four a.m., when he’d been wandering around aimlessly, had died down though the embers were still throwing off heat. He sat down and watched their red glow, tossing the paper on the coffee table. After staring into space, he caught himself before his thoughts once more became too anguished. To distract himself, he cracked open the
Herald Globe
, trying to fill the empty daylight with something. Anything.

When he got to the sports pages, he sucked in a breath.

Staring up at him, out of a grainy photograph, was A.J.

He scanned the article with a hunger that pained him.

She’d decided not to sue the reporter whose flash had blinded the stallion. But that wasn’t the shocker. She was selling Sabbath. And retiring from competition.

Devlin reread the text over and over. Competing was the most important thing in her life. And now she was just walking out?

He called Chester, who had followed the stallion over to Sutherland’s. Apart from the fact he was the only groom Sabbath would let near him, there was, once again, no work at the McCloud Stables.

“Mornin’?”

“Ches, tell me she isn’t really quitting,” Devlin demanded. He just couldn’t believe it was true. After everything they’d done with the stallion, all her progress. Everything she’d sacrificed. Like their relationship.

“So ya’ read the article.”

“Why is she doing this?”

“She’s lost the drive.”

“But she’s good. I can’t believe she’s walking away. Is the arm not healing?”

“Arm’s fine. She just doesn’t have it in her anymore, so she says. She’s stayin’ on at Sutherland’s, though. Stepbrother’s
moved on an’ gone. She’s runnin’ the place but says she’s not gettin’ in a show ring ever again.”

“But she loves to compete.” Devlin was shaking his head, incredulous. “And the stallion. She loves Sabbath.”

“The animal’s heartbroken. He hasn’t been eatin’ well. It’s a mess.”

There was a long silence.

“Ches, if I went to her, do you think she’d talk to me?”

“Depends on whatcha got to say. Should I tell her you’re goin’ over?”

But Devlin had already hung up the phone.

A knock sounded at her office door and A.J. looked up from her desk.

Her office. Her desk.

The possessive pronoun still sounded foreign. It had been a couple of weeks but she was still getting used to her new job.

“Come on in,” she called out.

One of the grooms stuck his head in. “When’s the vet coming?”

“Tomorrow morning. What’s up?”

“Sleeping Beauty’s got colic again.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Didn’t touch her feed and is walkin’ in circles in the stall.”

“Hell. Better call her owner. Is Johnson around?”

“He’s in the ring on Juggernaut. He’ll be done in a few.”

“When he dismounts, tell him I need to talk with him. If Beauty’s down for the count, we’re going to have to change the hacking schedule this afternoon.”

“Will do, boss.”

“Thanks.”

When the door shut, A.J. swiveled around and looked out of a window, seeing bare trees. Winter had arrived. There was frost on the ground when she came into work in the morning and she’d started wearing her parka around the stables. They were also using the indoor ring for training all the time.

Deciding to go find Johnson herself, she got out of her
chair and pulled her coat on. With her cast, dressing was an awkward process and she didn’t seem to be getting any better at it. Over the past four weeks, she’d learned to hate the plaster deadweight and couldn’t wait to get rid of the thing. More than being a physical nuisance, it reminded her of things she couldn’t bear to think about.

Her hand was on the doorknob when another knock rang out.

“Johnson, Beauty’s off the hack schedule today….”

As she opened the door, her breath caught in her throat.

“Devlin.”

She thought he had to be a dream.

During the first weeks of their separation, she’d looked for him in every knock, every phone ring, every truck that pulled up to the stables. The letdowns had tortured her until finally, very recently, she’d given up. The loss of hope had been a terrible blow but at least she didn’t feel the agony of rejection every moment of every day.

When she blinked and he was still standing in front of her, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

Devlin didn’t answer her right away. Instead, she felt his eyes going over her as if he were memorizing her features.

“I hear you’re selling Sabbath.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“I don’t ride anymore and he deserves to keep jumping.”

“Why are you quitting?”

“Did you come over here just to interrogate me?”

She was praying the answer was no.

His response was a long time in coming.

“I came to change your mind because it’s a waste of talent for you not to be in the ring. Now that I’m here, though…there seems like so much more to say.”

A.J. motioned for him to enter. She shut the door.

“Nice office,” he said.

As Devlin looked around, she watched him with greed while she waited for him to speak. He carried himself in that way she found so attractive and she noticed he’d just had a haircut. Remembering what it felt like to run her
hands deep into those dark waves hurt so much, she had to close her eyes against the pain.

“How’s the arm?” he asked.

“Healing well.”

“Any reason you can’t ride when the cast comes off?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter.” She went around her desk. Sat in the chair. Fiddled with a pen to keep from telling him she loved him.

“How long until it’s off?”

Frustration got the better of her.

“Look, Devlin, I’m not sure why you came but if you don’t get to the point, I’m going to start screaming. It hurts too much to be in the same room with you and I’d just as soon get through this. Are you opening a door by showing up here or throwing more dirt on a grave?”

He turned slowly toward her.

“Competing was everything to you and now you’re quitting. Why?”

“You can’t compete without the burn.”