John Riley's Girl (16 page)

Imprints

O
LIVIA PARKED
outside the barn and went inside where the smell of alfalfa hay perfumed the air with its warm, earthy smell. Soft light shone from beneath a stall door halfway down the center aisle. She walked toward it, heart pounding.

John was inside the stall, his back to her. “Hi,” she said, keeping her voice low.

He turned around. “You came,” he said, genuine pleasure in his eyes. The recognition of it lit something inside Olivia, something warm and tender and good.

He beckoned her forward. “Not all mares are as nice as this one about sharing their babies, but she’s enjoying showing the little guy off, I think.”

Olivia stepped inside the stall. The floor was deeply bedded with straw. Curled up in front of them lay a newborn foal, chestnut with a white blaze down the center of its face. The mare stood above, licking her baby’s soft coat clean.

“Oh, John,” Olivia said, one hand to her chest. “Are they all right?”

“Pretty much perfect as far as I can tell. The mare’s name is Celia. Her son doesn’t have a name yet.”

Celia gave the foal a tender nudge with her nose as if to say, “Get up now. Try out your new legs.” But the baby wasn’t ready yet, from all appearances still exhausted from the effort of finding his way into the world. The bond between the two was already apparent, and the reality of it touched Olivia deeply.

“Stay right here,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

He was gone just seconds, and then he was back with a box containing a curious assortment of things: a plastic bag, brushes, clippers, a towel.

“What is all that for?” she asked.

“Imprinting. Something we started doing a few years ago. It was developed by an equine vet named Robert Miller. The theory is that newborn foals can be desensitized to noises and objects in the first hour or so of their lives. In other words, if you rub plastic all over their bodies now and get them to accept it, they’ll never be afraid of it.”

“And it really works?”

“We’ve had amazing results with it. The babies we’ve been able to imprint soon after they’re born are far easier to handle and just seem to be people-horses from the beginning.”

Olivia watched, mesmerized, as he began care
fully rubbing a towel over the baby’s ears, face, shoulders. The foal struggled at first, but John’s touch was gentle, persistent.

“The idea is to push past their resistance,” he said. “If I stopped rubbing while he was resisting, then that would tell him struggling made me stop doing what I’m doing. So I continue the action until he gives in to it, and then I stop.”

Celia whinnied, the first worry she had shown at their presence.

“It’s okay, girl,” John reassured her. “I’m not going to hurt him. He’s just getting a few early lessons, that’s all.”

With his words, or maybe just the sound of his voice, the mare seemed to relax.

John reached for a pair of clippers, turned them on and let them run for a few seconds, then touched them to the foal. The vibration startled him, and he tried to get up. But John continued to softly rub them against the baby until he stopped struggling and accepted their presence as something non-threatening. “Let’s see if he’ll try to stand now.”

John offered Olivia a hand and they got to their feet, backing up to give the foal room. They waited a few moments; he struggled to get up, almost made it, then fell back down.

Olivia glanced at John, concerned.

“He’s okay.” He reached out and touched her arm. His hand slid down to find hers, enclosing it in
his warm grip. Something inside Olivia took wing and flew. And they stood there together while the baby tried once more to get up, and this time stood before them on seriously quaking legs, but he was standing. Olivia and John couldn’t stop smiling, and the mare’s gentle nudge of her foal said, “There, you did it.”

It was a remarkable sight to witness, and Olivia’s eyes grew moist. “Did you know she was going to have the baby tonight?”

John shook his head. “She was already four days late. They do their best to foal when no one is looking.”

“I’ll never forget this,” she said.

He had finished putting away the items he’d brought into the stall. He looked at her now, eyes serious in the shadowed light. “I’m glad you came, Liv. To be honest, I wasn’t sure you would.”

The words were layered with meaning, and Olivia wanted to freeze frame them, take them apart, replay each one.

The foal had steadied on his feet, and he moved toward his mother now, his nose instinctively searching out sustenance. He found the mare’s milk easily enough, this particular obstacle far less difficult for him than getting to his feet.

John reached down and picked up the box. “Why don’t we let them have a little time to get to know one another?”

Olivia followed him out into the aisle. He put the box down and slid the door closed. The click of the latch was loud in the silence of the barn. Or maybe it was simply Olivia’s own alertness to the man beside her, attuned as she was to his every gesture, every move.

“John, I—” she began, with no idea where the words were going, knowing only that the awareness between them, both physical and emotional, was acute and demanded acknowledgment.

“Liv.”

She looked up at him there in the dusky light of the barn and found herself unable to say anything. Because how could words begin to express the feelings in her heart? He had once been a boy for whom her love had known no bounds. Now, here, tonight, he was a man for whom that old attraction had taken on new shape, new dimension. Now she was attracted to the man he had become. A caring father. A man with a heart for animals. A man to whom friendship was a garden worth tending.

She felt the melding of the two, old with new, forging together to become stronger than they might ever have been as one.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted anything more in my life than I want to kiss you right now,” John said.

She turned her face to his. “So what are you waiting for?”

He smiled, and it was a good moment during which a lot of things were said, none needing words for expression. He reached out and touched her cheek with the back of a work-roughened hand. Olivia closed her eyes and savored the feel of it, wanted to draw it out, draw upon it. When she looked up again and met his gaze, she saw a reflection of her own feelings there, need and wanting, the intensity of it more than a little terrifying.

His hand went to the back of her neck, his fingers slipping into her hair, then wrapping round it as if he needed some means of steadying himself, of holding on. And at the same time, he bent toward her, his mouth seeking and finding hers. It was a kiss worth waiting for. Magic. Warm, electric. It lit her up from somewhere deep inside, sent currents of feeling surging upward, outward. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Olivia thought, if a woman could only have one kiss in her lifetime, it should be a kiss like this, one that made her feel that for this man, she was the only woman in the world.

John pulled back and studied her face. Breathing had become something she had to think about; his carried the same uneven edge.

His hand followed the curve of her shoulder to her bare arm, lingering at her forearm before moving down and closing round her hand, his fingers entwining with hers, his eyes asking a silent question to which hers gave acquiescence.

He guided her into a room that looked like an office. There was a leather sofa here, a wooden chair and desk, some photos on the wall, John as a boy with show horses, John as a man, ribbons and trophies in a bookcase.

He closed the door, sealing them in. A narrow strip of moonlight shone through the window behind the desk and, for a moment, divided them.

Olivia looked up, found his gaze on her face, and knew the swell of power a woman feels when a man looks at her with absolute, undiluted longing, as if she is his other half, his reflection.

John stepped into the strip of moonlight then and kissed her, long and full. Their heads tilted, found the right angle, and the kiss deepened, slow, heavy, sweet. It would be forever imprinted upon her memory in the same way each of the things John had exposed the newborn foal to would be forever imprinted upon his. For the rest of her life, she’d be changed, never to be the same.

The room smelled of well-kept leather, and it was quiet except for the rustle of their clothing, his jeans against her cotton dress, and the soft sounds of a man and woman seeking closeness—needing it to breathe, to continue existing.

“You feel so good.”

“I’ve missed this.”

“I never thought—”

“Me, either.”

“Liv…”

“John…”

Their words hung there, needing no finish, their meaning and the feeling behind them clear. And they kissed—long, slow kisses filled with emotion: regret, joy, yearning and undiluted desire, simple in its honesty, in its inability to disguise itself as anything other than what it was. John fitted her closer to him, curved her into his arms. And all the years that had passed between now and the last time he’d held her like this melted away.

His mouth found the sensitive spot on her neck, and a shiver skittered up her back.

“It’s still there.” He leaned back to meet her eyes.

“What?”

“That place where it tickles when I kiss you.”

Olivia smiled because he had remembered and because there had never been another man who knew her better than this one. There’d never been a man she had ever
let
know her better than this one.

The next kiss, when it came, was softer, more gentle, and there was hesitancy attached. Her arms made brackets between John’s shoulder blades, and she let them slide down to his waist, pulling back far enough that she could see his face. “What is it?”

He laced his fingers through hers and placed their joined hands in the center of his chest. And she felt the pounding of both their hearts, eager and not a
little scared. He shook his head. “You’re just…beautiful. So beautiful, Liv.”

She kissed him then, emotion filling her heart to the brim, spilling over.

Here, now, Olivia understood that love was sunshine and rain, that it made things bloom. And she understood what it was to be made for someone. To have a heart that opens for one person only, bleeds for one person only. She knew what it was to have skin that burned beneath the touch of that one person, a body that yearned to be held by that one person.

For her, that had once been John. It was still John. And for as long as she lived would always be John.

There in the dark of the small barn office, with a puddle of moonlight at their feet, he made love to her with his mouth, his hands and his words, every gesture, every touch defining the very meaning of the phrase. They pulled clothes from one another, their motions urgent with need. She unbuttoned his cotton shirt, slid it from his shoulders with both hands, and warmth welled up while her eyes took pleasure in just looking at him. To her, he was perfection, from the work-sculpted muscles of his shoulders, arms, chest, to the point where the top of her head met the dip of his throat.

He unzipped her dress, dropped it to her waist and made a low sound of appreciation as his gaze took its fill of her.

He dropped an arm and swooped her up against him, carried her over to the leather sofa against the far wall of the room. He laid her down, and even the single moment of separation was more than Olivia could stand. She reached for him, pulled him down to her and was glad for the sudden weight of him. This too, was new, and yet, not. She had not forgotten the feel of him this way. The pleasurable heaviness of his body on hers.

And there, in those very basic surroundings with the very basic needs of a man and woman seeking to fill empty places, they gave to one another with the kind of selflessness that in its honesty is human nature at its best. It was as if this night might permanently heal the scars of the past with the sure and certain rhythm of love expressed in its simplest, most perfect form.

H
E COULD SPEND
the rest of his life just watching her sleep. Just holding her, his senses forever stamped with her sweet scent.

Liv had curled up against him on the too-short sofa, her expression soft and trusting. She slept deeply, peacefully.

She made a little snuffling noise, shifted, then angled closer against him, her naked body bringing his out of its drowsiness. He tightened his arms around her, tucked his chin into the curve of her neck.

Dear God, he’d never imagined feeling like this
again. Wanting like this. Needing so badly that a place way down inside him, a place that felt like his soul, actually ached with it.

As a boy, these were the feelings he had known with Liv. Despite his youth, he’d known the magnitude of them then. He’d realized that it must be rare to know such a connection with another human being. But now as a man, his appreciation for the rarity of it went beyond what he could even find words to describe.

Making love to Liv had been like going back, traveling a familiar road to a much-loved place and realizing once you got there that memory had failed in the recollection of detail. It had failed to recall the softness of her hair and the way he had once loved the feel of it brushing his chest when she bent to kiss him. It had failed to remember the soft sound that came from some equally soft spot inside her when he touched her.

But maybe that was all that had saved him in losing her fifteen years ago, the fading away of such details.

He had no illusions that anything about this night would ever fade from his mind. He was a man now, and she was a woman who unlocked all things for him. Love had trickled through from the past and roared through him now in a river at its banks.

Where do we go from here, Liv? Can there be
more than this? Will you want more? Will I lose you all over again? Could I survive that?

The questions did not come with answers. And their sharp edges kept him awake, afraid to sleep, afraid to miss even a moment of this unexpected gift.

S
UNLIGHT DUCKED
its head inside the room.