Jaguar Night (16 page)

Hands low but a little open, obvious enough so they wouldn’t startle him if she reached out, she stepped off the porch.

“What’re you—” But Dolan watched the horse, too, and stopped himself—both his words and his attempt to stop her—as Luka’s head raised even higher, his front feet coming off the ground in warning. He hovered there a moment, instinctively imitating the levade he’d never been taught—until Dolan stepped back. “I damned well hope you know what you’re doing.” Hard words…but there was worry behind them.

“I damned well do,” Meghan said between her teeth, a soothing singsong tone. “Luka,” she said, crooning the name and ignoring the concern that beat against her back. “Brave boy. You’re safe now.”

Convince me,
he seemed to say—to plead for it, in fact. Meghan made it okay in the only way she knew how…by making it perfectly normal. By walking right up to him and putting her hand on his shoulder—stroking it until he suddenly bobbed his head down, until his ears flicked at her once before pricking forward toward Dolan. For Luka, there was only one thing that truly made things right…and she gave him that, too, grabbing his mane and swinging up to his back—a little bit of jump, a little bit of twist, a lot of trusting that her legs would wrap around more than air.

He lifted up to meet her, another half rear, and came down poised to run.

“God, Meghan, what if he—”

“Then I’m gonna get dumped on my ass,” she said, stroking Luka’s neck. “Won’t be the first time, will it, Luka? And then you’ll come back and ask me what the
hell I’m doing on the ground when I so clearly belong on your back.”

“He killed a man,” Dolan repeated, lifting a brow at her, waiting for confirmation.

She nodded, keeping her eye on the board-stiff muscles of Luka’s neck beneath the veil of his mane. They were the key, those muscles; they told her Luka’s mood exactly. “The man deserved it, of course. But that still makes Luka a killer…it took a lot to earn his trust. Or did you think our work here was all fluff and light? In come the cute animals, and Anica fixes them. Not like me, big clumsy wannabe with herbs, but subtly.”

Dolan snorted—though he kept it low for Luka’s sake. “There’s nothing subtle about that woman.”

“And there’s Jenny—always knows just what’s behind their behaviors. Half the time their history’s wrong, so she never pays attention to it. Never needs to. By the time the public sees our rehabs, between the two of them, no one ever knows how bad it ever was. They never really understand what we start with.”

“That’s their mistake.” Dolan had taken on the cadence of her words—the calm, for Luka. “As it happens, I think your work here might be more important than even you know.” And though his concern lingered, it came with something else—something new. Pride. Right there between them, a warm breeze across the yard, caressing her. Lifting her, and somehow filling her.

And Luka’s neck abruptly relaxed, his ears pricking into that emotional breeze. He lowered his head, arching his neck coyly as he stretched toward Dolan, lips twitching in invitation. He couldn’t quite reach, so he took a step, and then another, and stuck his head in over the
porch rail so Dolan couldn’t help but lift a hand to rest just behind Luka’s ears, gently massaging his poll.

“Well, huh,” Meghan said. “That’s one miracle down. Should we go work on the wards?”

Chapter 14

B
efore they tackled the wounded wards, Meghan hesitated by the barn to speak with her friends. An awkward moment, and one that clearly made her miserable. They weren’t ready, yet, to let go of their hurt and confusion.

“Give them time,” Dolan told her, as hypocritical as he could possibly be…If anyone knew that time didn’t always heal, he did. But he kept such feelings away from her, pressed his hand to the small of her back in a consoling gesture and took them out to walk the ward lines.

She turned out to be her mother’s daughter, oh, hell, yes. Once he took her to ward view again, her sure touch made quick work of things. She had little finesse—how could she?—but it was there. It was waiting. And meanwhile he showed her how to smooth the damaged spots,
and how to weave the wards anew as they walked the ranch in two different worlds.

“It’s much easier this way,” she admitted to him once, although she still struggled with knowing when to reach for outside power—still had a tendency to use herself up. “Looking at it all from here.”

He couldn’t hide his surprise. “No one does this work
outside
of ward view.”

Her expression closed, both inwardly and outwardly. “Only those of us who were deemed too insignificant to teach.”

“Their mistake.”
But
—

She dropped out of ward view to put her hands on her hips and stare at him in demand. “This is all hard enough without knowing you’re
not saying
things.”

Yeah. So much for his ability to keep things from her. “They might try to rectify that situation.”

Her laugh was bitter. “Screw them. I have a life, and I made it without their help. They aren’t getting a piece of me.”

“Later. Don’t let it distract you.”

She gave him an annoyed glance, but returned to the matter at hand—the worst of the damage from the night before, where a gaping, wounded hole tore through all the layers of the old wards Margery Lawrence had once laid around this ranch. From the outside, it was invisible—just another spot along the hillside, very near to the trail where Luka had not so long ago brought Dolan home. On the inside…

Meghan eyed it with trepidation. “I don’t think I can…Look, I know I have to learn this stuff, but maybe you should start this one. Let me follow your lead.”

He wanted to urge her to try…but he saw, then, that she was tired. And he brought to mind her headlong rush into the darkness to reach him at the old homestead, and her willingness to find him again in the woods below the house, and her courage in the face of Luka’s wild ire.

This was not a woman who backed lightly away from challenges.

So he stepped in. He drew from the earth and he started the tracing, easily visualizing the pattern in his mind, the perfect tangle of symmetrical lines, the particular reflection of the earth’s needs in this particular spot—

And suddenly he was on his back, coughing in big whooping gasps with darkness sparkling in every layer of vision he had, and Meghan kneeling by his side. Not that he could see her, but her hands were demanding on his shoulders, on his chest, cupping the sides of his face. Small but sturdy, completely capable hands.
“Dolan,”
she said, pushing his hair out of his eyes, touching his neck. “Dolan,
dammit
—”

“I’m here,” he said, a strangled-sounding response; he coughed on it. “Hell, there goes my air of mysterious infallibility.”

She released a gust of air and sat back on her heels. “Dammit,” she said again, but without much in the way of vehemence. In fact, she sounded tired and small.

He struggled up to his elbows. “Your land isn’t interested in my attention,” he said, still coughing on words. “It’s woken up right along with you…and it’s damned opinionated at that.”

He expected her to make a face, or turn away from him, or create a derisive noise. Instead—

“Okay,” she said, and damned if he didn’t think she was on the edge of tears.

“Hey—” Alarm drove him fully upright, fast enough so he almost knocked heads with her. “You weren’t—”

“Hurt?” She shook her head—but her eyes were suspiciously bright. “I just…this is all happening so fast. All these things, suddenly in my life.
You.
How can I feel this way about you after a week? What just happened to me inside when the land knocked you down…how does anyone deal with that?” She gestured helplessly between them, and let her words trail away.

He didn’t need them. He knew exactly what she meant. He leaned in toward her—that sharp chin, hair kept in check only by the cap she wore, the scent of sunblock tickling his nose. It was a moment before the words came. “Just let it happen,” he said. “Don’t worry about what it might be. Live in the now.”

Her eyes narrowed in challenge. “Is that what you do?”

Yes.
He didn’t say it out loud; he didn’t need to. She would have read it in his face if she hadn’t felt it.

“Convenient,” she said. “No real commitment to anything, just follow your nose.”

The words brought a crush of pain at the base of his throat—pain he hadn’t expected. “You’ve seen enough of my life to know better,” he growled. He had commitment above and beyond…had given his life to his work.

Playing nice along the way wasn’t necessary.

Meghan rubbed her closed eyes, focusing on the gritty feel of the painted porch post between her shoulder blades—quite possibly the only thing holding her up at all.
But the wards are set.
Her people were pro
tected…as protected as anything in this world today. Dolan, looking as wiped as Meghan felt, had wolfed down a sandwich for dinner and gone to walk the land one more time, staying out of Anica’s way.

No. Out of my way.

Didn’t matter. She could still feel him. She knew exactly where he was, stalking the land black and sleek, indulging in the jaguar. Too damned fast, she’d gotten used to that feeling.

Odd, though, that it didn’t quite coincide with the tingling sensation that now constantly nudged for her attention.

She heard footsteps—knew it was Anica simply because there was no accompanying patter of dog feet. “Hey,” she said wearily.

“You’ve been busy,” Anica observed. “I’m not sure doing what. But then again, I’m not sure I want to know.”

“I’m not sure you want to know, either.” Meghan opened her eyes as Anica sat on the porch step.

“I’m not even sure
you
know.” Words that could have been hurtful, but for Anica’s carefully neutral tone. Unusual, for her.

Meghan laughed…no humor at all. “Yeah,” she said. “There’s that. Just doing my best.”

Anica propped her chin in her hand. “Never was much of one for woo-woo stuff.”

“Oh,
right.”
Meghan snorted. “So tell me, how’s it look in the barn? How are they?”

Anica’s brows drew together—not quite following that train of thought, but going along with it. “Three of them are emotional train wrecks, the rest are dealing. Sophie’s the worst, but I think we all expected that. Old
Joe’s hock is completely blown up, but I think hosing and light walking will deal with it. Young Joe probably should have had stitches last night, but it’s too late at this point. We’ll just see how it goes. The new horse added some abrasions, but took the chaos remarkably well—Jenny thinks he was still shut down from what he’s been through. Buttercup’s off in the trot. Hard to pin down, the way shoulder and front foot mimic each other, but I’m pretty sure it’s shoulder.”

“Uh-huh,” Meghan said. She looked longingly at the steps beside Anica, but knew if she sat, she’d never get up again. “No X-rays, no vet and between the two of you, you’ve assessed a barn full of horses in a single day.”

Anica stiffened. “Hey, if you want to get a vet out here to double-check—”

Meghan couldn’t keep the
weary
out of her laugh. “No, of course I don’t. That’s the point. Dolan made it earlier today, too. None of us were ever quite
the usual,
were we? And now he’s here, and it’s in our faces. We can’t pretend anymore.”

Anica’s offense turned to annoyance; she pursed full lips.
“You
can’t,” she said. “I happen to know that Jenny and I base our conclusions on observation. Observation of minutia based on experience, but observation all the same.”

“Encontrados,” Meghan murmured.
Found.
She’d chosen that name; her mother and the family before her hadn’t bothered to baptize the place at all. The Lawrence ranch, that’s what it had been. She thought she’d named it for the animals here…now she wondered if something deep inside her hadn’t actually named it for the people.

“So let me get this straight.” Anica abruptly stood, facing her. “We’re a happy little functioning rescue or
ganization. Normal as normal comes. Then your friend Dolan arrives, and you go racing off into the night—”

“I heard him call for help,” Meghan interrupted. “He was dying.”

“But you saved him with the same herbs you used on Jenny last night.”

“Not the same…”

Anica might know vet care, but she had no interest in herbs, and shrugged off the distinction. “And now suddenly you two are joined at the hip—and it’s obvious that’s not even a metaphor, just in case you were wondering—and we’ve got wards and magical woo-woo and treasure quests.”

Meghan shrugged. She wasn’t going to play word games with Anica. “Close enough. Call it my inheritance.” Not one she had any choice about taking, either. Not anymore. Not since she’d made that first decision to find Dolan in the dark.

“So this is the way it’s going to be now? We never get our
normal
back? Or are you going to wrap this problem up and then Dolan goes away? Because I can tell you that for certain—we won’t ever have
normal
as long as that man is around.”

Meghan sucked in a deep breath, making a tiny, hurt little noise.

Of course Anica was right.
Dolan
and
normal everyday life
were polar opposites. After years of assiduously building her own family, she’d suddenly put them in a situation where they couldn’t continue. Not as they had been.

“I don’t know,” she told Anica, which was only as honest as she could be. She couldn’t stand the thought
of losing her made family—of the realization that she might create circumstances under which they couldn’t continue. And yet Dolan had become crucial to her on a whole different level. Even as she continued to discover him, she already knew the heart of him. The rebel not for rebellion’s sake, but because he, too, had devoted himself to a cause.

She wondered again about the fine scarring on his flanks. But not for long, because Anica straightened her back, looked Meghan straight in the eye and said, “That’s what I thought.”