Dream Trilogy (79 page)

“She’s going to foal. There, sweetheart.” Instinctively, she went to the mare’s head. “It’s all right.”

“Always in the middle of the night.” Michael blew his hair out of his eyes. “I heard her upstairs. Guess I’ve been listening for her.”

“Have you called the vet?”

“Shouldn’t need him. Last time he checked her out, he said it should go smooth.” In an impatient move, he tugged a bandanna out of his back pocket. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the garden. It’s all right, baby,” she murmured, shifting the mare’s head onto her lap. “I saw your lights go on, and then you ran down here. I was afraid something was wrong.”

“She’ll be fine.” But it was Darling’s first, and he was as nervous as an expectant daddy pacing a waiting room. “Go on to bed. This sort of thing isn’t usually complicated, but it’s plenty messy.”

She lifted both brows, and the amusement in the eyes under them was clear and bright. “Really? I wouldn’t know anything about that, as I’ve only been through childbirth twice myself. And when the stork arrived, he was very neat and polite.”

Her attention shot back to the mare as a new contraction began. “All right now, all right. We’ll get through this, honey. He doesn’t know anything, does he?” she murmured, as the mare rolled pain-filled eyes toward Laura’s. “He’s just a man. Let him try it, yeah, let him try it once, then we’ll see what he has to say.”

“Guess I’ve been told.” Torn between worry and laughter, Michael rubbed his chin. “Should I go outside and pace? Boil water, buy cigars?”

“You could go make some coffee. This could take a while.”

“I can handle this, Laura. I’ve done it before. You don’t have to stay.”

“I’m staying,” she said simply. “And I’d like some coffee.”

“Okay.”

When he rose, she noted that he’d taken the time to zip his jeans, but not to button them. With twelve hundred pounds of horse in labor between them, it was no time to have her mouth watering. She looked back, a little blindly, at the mare.

“I take mine black. Please.”

“I’ll be right back.” He paused at the stall door. “Thanks. I can use the help, and the company. She’s . . . special.”

“I know.” Her lips softened into a smile as she looked up at him. “I can see that. Don’t worry, papa, you’ll be handing out cigars by morning. Oh, Michael, what’s her name?”

“Darling.” Embarrassment didn’t suit him, but he shrugged. “She’s Darling.”

“Yes, she is.” Laura continued to smile as his boot heels clicked on the bricks. “And so,” she murmured, “much to my surprise, are you.”

It wasn’t precisely the way he’d imagined spending the night with her. When he allowed himself to think of it, and he allowed himself often, the circumstances were quite different.

Yet here they were, sweaty, exhausted, and united.

She had more stamina than he’d given her credit for. They’d been at it nearly four hours, the mare rising to pace, lying down again, sweating as she moved from the first to the second stage of her labor.

Laura hadn’t wilted. And while the coffee was beginning to jangle his nerves, Laura was calm as a lake.

“Why don’t you take a walk?” she suggested. She sat comfortably on the hay, her arms circling her knees, her gaze on the mother-to-be.

“I’m fine.” His brow creased as he wiped down the mare. Since he’d tied his hair back, Laura could see his eyes perfectly.

“You’re a wreck, Fury.”

Okay, okay, he knew it. He didn’t care to have it pointed out to him though. His eyes darkened moodily when they shifted to Laura. “I’ve done this dozens of times.”

“Not with her you haven’t. She’s holding up better than you are.”

Hell with it, he decided, and eased back a moment to stretch his back. “I’ll never understand why something this basic takes so damn long. How do you stand it?”

“A woman in this position doesn’t have much choice,” Laura said dryly. “And you just focus everything on what’s happening to your body. Inside your body. Nothing else exists. Wars, famines, earthquakes. Hell, they’re nothing compared to this.”

“Guess not.” He struggled to relax, to remind himself that Nature generally knew what she was doing. “First time I went through a foaling, I thought of my mother. Figured I should have cut her more slack. I’d rather have my tongue pulled out than go through this.”

“Actually, it’s more like having your bottom lip pulled out and over your head until it reaches the nape of your neck.” She laughed as he went white.

“Thanks for the visual.”

It would do him good to talk, she decided. And until the mare’s water broke, they had time. “Your mother moved to Florida, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, her and Frank. That’s the guy she married about ten years ago.”

“You like him?”

“It’s hard not to like Frank. He just goes with the flow and manages to turn the current in his direction without making waves. They’re good for each other. Up to him her taste in men sucked.”

“The divorce was hard on you?”

“No, it was hard on her.” Idly, he picked up a shaft of hay, spun it through his fingers. Then, to Laura’s amusement, he handed it to her as he had the flowers.

“I don’t suppose it’s ever easy. Divorce.”

“I don’t see why. Something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. My father cheated on her from the get-go, never troubled to hide it. She just wouldn’t let go. Never could figure that either.”

“There’s nothing mysterious about wanting to hold a marriage together.”

“There is when it’s a sham. He wouldn’t come home a couple nights running, then he’d show up. She’d rant and throw things, and he’d just shrug and plop down in front of the TV. Then one day he didn’t come back at all.”

“Ever?”

“We never saw him again.”

“Michael, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.” Though her hands continued to soothe the mare, her attention was on him.

“Didn’t matter to me. Or not much.” He shrugged. “But she was miserable, and pissed, and that made it hard to be around her. I didn’t spend much time at home for a couple of years. Hung out with Josh, drove Mrs. Sullivan crazy thinking I was going to corrupt him.”

She remembered him. Remembered well, now that she allowed herself to, those brooding, dangerous eyes. And her reaction to them. “My parents always liked you.”

“They were cool. It was an eye-opener, watching them, you, what went on in Templeton House. Whole different world for a cliff rat like me.”

And the world he was describing was different for her. “Your mother married again.”

“She hooked up with Lado when I was about sixteen. I hated the son of a bitch. I always figured she picked him because he was the opposite of the old man. He was sloppy and mean and jealous. Gave her lots of attention,” Michael muttered, and his eyes were dark with memory. “Lots of it. He used to knock her around.”

“God! He hit her?”

“She always denied it. I’d come home and she’d have a black eye or a split lip and make up some lame excuse about tripping or walking into a door. I let it go.”

“You were just a child.”

“No, I wasn’t.” His eyes, stormy now, latched onto hers. “I was never a child. By the time I was sixteen, I’d already seen and done more than you will in your lifetime, sugar. It suited me fine.”

“Did it?” She kept her eyes level. “Or did it keep you from feeling helpless?”

He nodded. “Maybe both. But the fact is, Mrs. Sullivan always had the right idea. I was a bad companion, and if Josh hadn’t been who and what he was, we both would have ended up in juvie. Or worse. Fact is, he’s the reason I didn’t.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate the testimony, but I’d think you had something to do with that yourself.”

For the first time in months he had a strong, nagging urge for tobacco, even patted his pocket before remembering that that part of his life was over. “You know why I took the hitch with the merchant marine?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. One night I came home. Been drinking a little, me and Josh and a couple of others down at the cliffs. We were eighteen and stupid, and I’d copped a six-pack from Lado. So I walked into the house, feeling a nice comfy buzz, and there he was, that big fat bastard, using his fists on my mother because she hadn’t kept his supper warm or some such shit. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it, figured it was my job to look out for her. So I took him on.”

Absently, he brushed a finger over the scar above his eye. Laura’s glance flickered at the movement, then held steady.

“He outweighed me, but I was young and fast, and I’d already had my share of dirty fights. I beat the hell out of him. And I kept beating the hell out of him even when he was down and bleeding and unconscious and I couldn’t feel my own hands pounding into his face. I’d have killed him, Laura, that’s a fact. I’d have beat him until he was dead and I wouldn’t have looked back.”

She couldn’t envision it, wasn’t equipped to. But she thought she could understand it. “You were protecting your mother.”

“Started out that way, but then I just wanted him dead. I wanted to make him dead. That was inside me. I would have finished him if she hadn’t stopped me. And while I was kneeling over him, while she was holding a hand to her face where it was bleeding and bruised, she told me to get out.”

“Michael.”

“She told me I had no right to interfere. She said a lot of things along those lines, so I got out and left her with him.”

“She didn’t mean it.” How could a mother, any mother, turn on her own child? It was impossible to absorb. “She was upset and afraid and hurt.”

“She did mean it, Laura. At that moment she meant every word. Later, she changed her mind. She got rid of him and pulled herself together. She got together with Frank. But by then, I was gone, and I’ve never really been back. Do you know where I went that night I left home?”

“No.”

“I went to Templeton House. I don’t know why. It was just there. Mrs. Williamson was in the kitchen. She fussed over me, cleaned me up. She talked to me, and she listened to me. She fed me cookies.” On a long breath he rubbed his hands over his face. He hadn’t realized so much of that night was still inside him. “She probably saved my life. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been there. She told me I had to make something out of myself. Not that I had a choice, or that here were my options, just ‘Boy, you’ve got to make something out of yourself.’ ”

“She’s always had a soft spot for you, Michael.” And he deserved one, she thought now. He deserved comfort and care and understanding. Poor, lost boy.

“She was the first woman I ever loved.” He plucked up another shaft of hay, and to kill the urge for a cigarette, chewed the tip. If he’d had a glimmer of Laura’s description of him, he wouldn’t have been amused. He’d have been appalled.

“Maybe the last woman,” he added. “She told me to go over to the stables, and she went up and got Josh. He and I sat in this place and talked all night. All fucking night. Every time I talked about doing something crazy, he’d steer me back with that cool lawyer logic of his. The next day I signed up. I stayed here in the stables until I shipped out.”

“Here? You stayed here? Josh never said anything about it.”

“Maybe he understood client confidentiality even then. He always understood friendship. Mrs. Williamson brought me food. She and Josh were the only ones I ever wrote to while I was gone. She was the one who sent me word that my mother had kicked Lado out. I guess Mrs. Williamson went to see her. I never asked.”

He shook it off, grinned. “You know, her cookies were my claim to fame on ship. Once a month this box would come, full of them. Once I was losing my shirt in a poker game and anted up her—what do you call them—snickerdoodles. I walked away flush.”

“She’d like hearing that.” Taking the chance, she reached over the mare’s neck and touched his hand. “Anyone Mrs. Williamson takes under her wing deserves it. She recognizes fools, and she doesn’t suffer them. You’re a good man, Michael.”

He studied her, saw his advantage in her eyes. “I could let you think that and get you into bed quicker.” Then he smiled. “I’m not a good man, Laura, but I’m an honest one. I told you what I’ve only told two other people in my life because I figure you ought to know what you’re getting into.”

“I’ve already decided, for a variety of reasons, that I’m not getting into anything.”

“You’ll change your mind.” He shifted, winked cockily. “They all do.”

And the horse’s water broke in a gush that soaked the bedding. “Zero hour,” he snapped, nerves jangled. “Keep to her head.”

Laura jolted back. The fatigue, the almost dreamlike state she’d drifted into while he was talking now burst into an adrenaline rush.

The first flood of fluid didn’t alarm her. It was a natural process, just as the mare’s plaintive whinnies were part of the whole. A process she had shared in, and one, though the mare’s eyes rolled in fear and pain, that Laura knew she longed to experience again.

Laura buckled down to the task at hand, following Michael’s terse orders without question and issuing some of her own.

“Here it comes. Hold steady, Darling. Almost over.” He knelt in blood and birth fluid, laboring as hard as his mare, and those long, thin forelegs appeared. “I’ve got to give her a hand here, turn it some.” Where was the damn head? “You got her?”

“Yes, I’ve got her.” Sweat dripped into her eyes. “Do it. She’s exhausted.”

“It’s coming.” He got a grip on the slippery, gleaming limbs and reached inside the birth canal to rotate and ease. There, lying along the forelegs, was the head. “Come on, Darling, just a little more. Just a little more.”

“Oh, God.” Now there were tears mixed with the sweat on Laura’s face as the foal slid out. “There he is.”

Once the foal’s shoulders were clear, Michael cleaned the membrane away from the nose. The foal was wet, still attached by the umbilical cord. Though Michael wanted to pull it clear, see for himself, he waited with Laura as the foal struggled free of the birth sac, and the cord broke as nature intended.