Summer Games (14 page)

No mahogany head poked over the stall door.

Alarm stabbed through Raine. She abandoned the wheelbarrow and rushed to look into the stall. The stallion was inside, moving easily, totally alert . . . and edgy as hell. He snorted at her as though he didn’t quite recognize his own rider.

“Hey, boy. It’s all right. Nobody here but me.”

The horse eyed her warily.

“What is it, Dev? Is the wind spooking you?”

Usually Dev came right to her and all but shoved her into the wheelbarrow in his eagerness to say hello. But today he was being coy, mincing around his stall and snorting at her as though she had a frog in her pocket and was waiting to spring it on him.

“Easy, boy,” she murmured.

She propped her elbows on the bottom half of the Dutch door and talked softly to the stallion. Behind her a desert wind stirred among the fragile leaves of pepper trees, making lacy shadows shiver and run over the ground. The early morning breeze lifted her unbound hair, blowing it over her face.

Ears pricked, Dev minced forward to investigate the flying strands. Nostrils quivering, breathing deeply and then snorting to clear his senses, the stallion drank in Raine’s scent as though uncertain of who she was.

“What is it, boy?” she asked softly, holding out her hand. “What’s wrong? You aren’t the type for nerves this early in the waiting game.”

With consuming interest, Dev sniffed her outstretched hand, then her arm, then her neck.

“Hey,” she said, backing away from the relentless inspection. “I know I didn’t shower this this morning—I’m mucking out your stall, not going to a cocktail party. I smell a lot worse after a workout and you don’t give me the vacuum treatment.”

Dev snorted a long comment, then resumed snuffling over every inch of Raine. He reserved his most intense interest for her hair, face, neck, and hands.

Baffled, she simply stood quietly and let the stallion get whatever it was out of his system. The last time Dev had showed such a persistent interest in her, she had been wearing a new cologne. But whatever artificial scent she had on now was left over from last night, and it was the same cologne she had worn for years. Nothing new. Nothing different. Nothing had changed.

Except that last night she had let a man’s hands and mouth move over her as though he owned her.

A flush of embarrassment heated her skin as she realized that Dev was fascinated by her scent because it was different. Cord Elliot lingered on her skin, in her hair, behind her ears, in the hollow of her throat, between her fingers where she had rubbed them through his hair. Invisible traces to her, but not to the stallion’s acute senses.

Cord’s male scent was all over her, blended with her own.

Gritting her teeth, she waited for Dev to get used to the new scent. The horse’s ability to find each place Cord had touched her was unnerving and more than a little embarrassing. She only tolerated the ruthless inspection because it was easier than driving back to the motel and taking a very thorough shower.

After a final long snort, Dev turned away and lipped casually at the straw on the stall floor.

“Finished?” she asked cuttingly. “You’re sure, now? I’d hate to have you mistake me for someone else.”

Except for the flick of a black-tipped ear, Dev ignored her.

She turned back to the wheelbarrow and pried off a few thick flakes of hay. The feed had been shipped in from Virginia so that Dev wouldn’t have his digestive system upset by new food. Later in the morning he would get a special round of corn and oats and vitamins. For now he would get the bulky food.

Tucking the hay under one arm, she went into the stall and closed the lower half of the door behind her. Suddenly there was no room for her to move. It was all taken up by the muscular expanse of Dev’s butt. She slapped a gleaming mahogany haunch.

“Move it, pal, or no breakfast.”

Good-naturedly, the stallion shifted aside while she dumped the hay in the manger. Even before the slab of hay hit the metal trough, Dev’s teeth were tearing apart the inches-thick hunk of fragrant, cured alfalfa.

While the stallion ate, she raked manure and old straw out his stall. There was no lack of stable help to muck out Dev’s quarters, including girls who would have little to fear from his heels. Despite that, Raine preferred to care for her horse herself. Watching how Dev ate, how he moved, even how he breathed, all added up to her own version of a daily checkup of the stallion’s health. If anything was wrong with Dev, no matter how subtle, she would notice.

Humming quietly, she went to work cleaning Dev’s hooves with a blunt steel pick. In order to do the job, she had to hold each hoof braced between her bent legs like a blacksmith. If the stallion hadn’t been cooperative, the job would have been impossible.

But for her, Dev was a gentleman down to his polished black hooves. All she had to do was touch a fetlock and that hoof was presented politely for her inspection.

When each hoof was clean, and she had satisfied herself that each shoe was on securely, she brought in fresh straw for the stall. She made several trips, scattering straw lavishly. Naturally, by the time she came back with a last armful, Dev had produced more for her to clean up.

“Never fails,” she muttered, grabbing the manure rake and taking care of the problem. “Feed one end and the other goes to work.”

Dev stuck his muzzle deeper into the manger and ignored her grumbling.

Still humming softly, letting the stallion know where she was at all times, she reached into the box that held Dev’s personal grooming tools. She went to work on him with a soft oval brush, bringing his already gleaming hide up to a high red gloss.

From the yard came the sound of voices. They were too distant for her to make out individual words, but the subtle shifts of tone told her that Captain Jon was one of the people talking. With half of her attention, she listened as his voice come closer.

“None of the animals I’ve pointed out so far would give your men any problem,” Captain Jon said in his clear tenor. “This next one, however, is different. Devlin’s Waterloo should never be handled by anyone but his owner, Miss Smith. In a pinch, the stallion will tolerate being handled by me, but I’m bloody careful about making sudden moves. Not that the horse is naturally vicious, mind you. Dev was badly abused by a man and has never forgotten it.”

There was silence broken by the subtle whisper of a soft brush over Dev’s softer hide. Finished with breakfast, the horse stood three-legged, his head hanging, his eyes closed, the picture of equine serenity. He groaned his pleasure each time Raine’s careful grooming scratched all the places he couldn’t scratch himself.

“Are you telling me that is the terror of stable twelve?” asked a deep, amused voice from just outside the stall door.

She almost dropped the brush when she recognized Cord’s voice. Ignoring the sudden wild beating of her heart, she finished a long stroke down Dev’s haunch. She hadn’t expected to see Cord again. Ever. She certainly wasn’t prepared for it so soon.

When Cord came and stood close to the stall door, the stallion turned, head up, ears pricked forward. Raine saw the flare of Dev’s nostrils when he scented Cord. As though comparing scents, Dev nosed his rider. Then the horse turned and began a thorough vacuuming of Cord Elliot.

Motionless, Cord watched the stallion’s ears while his black muzzle traveled from the man’s fingertips to his arm and then to his ear. The horse seemed particularly fond of his neck.

“Hello, Devlin’s Waterloo,” he said calmly, unafraid of the huge horse’s attention. “Are you trying to tell me I should have taken a shower before rather than after my rounds of the stable?”

Raine flushed and looked away, hoping no one had noticed. She also prayed that she would be the only one to figure out why Dev was so interested in Cord’s scent. And so unafraid of a man who was a stranger.

“Bloody fascinating,” Captain Jon muttered. Like Cord, he was watching Dev’s ears, the early-warning system of any horse’s temper. The stallion’s ears were up. He was interested but not nervous. “Dev isn’t afraid of you.” He gave Cord an appraising look. “And you aren’t afraid of him.”

“I was raised around horses,” Cord said quietly. Very slowly, watching the stallion’s ears, he lifted his hand.

Dev snorted, then sniffed the man’s fingers with renewed interest.

“I’d scratch your ears for you,” he murmured, “but I don’t think you’re ready for that, are you?”

The horse whuffled a soft answer, blowing warm air over the man’s neck.

“You’re a beauty,” Cord said, his voice velvet and deep, as mesmerizing as a moonlit river flowing through darkness. “You’re big as a mountain, but so well made that you seem more like fifteen than seventeen hands. Healthy, too. Look at those muscles slide when you move. Graceful as a woman and strong as a god. My great-granddaddy would have killed to get his hands on a stud like you. Red hide and black socks, mane and tail like slices of midnight. The devil’s own colors. But you aren’t a devil, are you? You’re an angel dressed to go sightseeing in hell.”

Dev stood and listened, bewitched by a shaman’s voice, forgetting even to sniff the oddly familiar scent of the man who stood so quietly before him.

“Raine,” he said, not shifting the tone of his voice at all, “come over and stand in front of me.”

It took her a moment to realize that the velvet words were directed at her. She moved slowly, pulled by an invisible leash.

Cord neither looked away from Dev nor moved as she came and stood in front of the stall door, facing him. His voice never paused, words and nonsense syllables blending into a soothing river that lapped dreamily at consciousness, draining tension into a boneless contentment.

“Turn around and face Dev,” he said.

Again, it took Raine a moment to respond to the warm velvet voice. Slowly she turned and faced her horse.

“Don’t be startled,” he murmured. “I’m going to put my arm next to yours.”

Cord followed his words with action, slowly bringing his arm forward until it lay along hers. His voice continued all the time, sound flowing soothingly.

“Raise your hand and pet Dev,” he murmured. “Slowly, love . . . slowly . . . that’s it . . . perfect . . .”

She obeyed, almost as mesmerized as her horse by the spoken music of a shaman’s voice. As she moved, so did Cord, their arms lifting as one.

Dev didn’t flinch when her hand, with the man’s covering it, scratched the sensitive areas behind the stallion’s ears. Cord continued speaking, a murmurous, hypnotic flow of sound, a voice that was also a soothing lullaby.

“Slowly, gently, ease your hand down to your side,” he said.

Moving with a dreamlike lack of urgency, Raine’s hand retreated to her side.

Dev didn’t seem to notice the instant when his rider’s familiar hand was gone and he was standing as placid as a cow while a strange man scratched itchy places with unerring skill.

“Move away from me in slow motion,” Cord murmured, “along the stall door. Very, very slowly. That’s the way. Good.”

She obeyed, fascinated by what was happening.

It took a few moments for Dev to realize that his mistress was gone and in her place was a man who was neither wholly familiar nor wholly strange. By the time Dev was aware of what had happened, it was too late for panic or anger. The contact had been made.

Dev’s ears wavered, then settled at a relaxed half-mast position. Sighing, the stallion nudged Cord’s skilled fingers, not only accepting his touch but asking for more.

For a time he stroked and praised Dev lavishly, using his voice and touch to reward the stallion’s acceptance. When he removed his hand and stopped talking, Dev looked vaguely surprised. He snorted once, resoundingly, gave Cord a bemused look, and turned his attention back to Raine.

“Bloody incredible,” Captain Jon said, looking from Dev to Cord. “I don’t care what your job is, Elliot. If you aren’t training horses, you’re wasting yourself.”

“I had an edge,” he said in his usual voice. Smiling thinly, he looked directly at Raine.

At that instant she knew he understood exactly why Dev had been so interested in his scent. Cord smelled of her, just as she smelled of him.

In his own way, Cord had knocked the stallion off-balance just as much as he had her.

“An edge!” Captain Jon snorted. “You had the whole bloody campaign in the palm of your hand and you knew it. That’s a rare gift, Elliot. Use it.” Then, as an afterthought, the captain said, “If the rest of your men are a tenth the horseman you are, they can be underfoot all you like. I’ll withdraw my complaints immediately.”

“Your men?” Raine asked, really looking at Cord for the first time.

He was dressed in blue jeans, work shirt, and a faded denim jacket. There was nothing to distinguish him from other stable hands except the aura of power that he wore as naturally as he wore the casual clothes and the gun that was no doubt concealed beneath his jacket.

“Sorry,” Captain Jon said to her. “I haven’t introduced you. Miss Raine Smith, Mr. Cord Elliot. Mr. Elliot is with Olympic security.”

Cord held out his hand. Years of ingrained politeness made her take it.

“Hello, Raine.” His voice was suddenly velvet and darkness again, beguiling.

“Don’t use that shaman’s voice on me,” she said coolly. But she couldn’t help the warmth that raced through her when his hand closed over hers. “I’m not as good-natured as my horse.”

“I know,” he said. His voice was flat now, emotionless. He turned back to Captain Jon, who was looking both puzzled and more than a little curious at the undercurrents flowing between the two of them. “I met Raine a few days ago, but we’ve never been properly introduced. In fact, she’s the reason I amended the security regulations to include taking a buddy along for any inspections of the endurance course.”

“Then you’re the chap who swept her off her feet,” Captain Jon said with a sly, sideways look at her.

“Is that what she said?” Cord’s voice was bland, but the center of his eyes expanded blackly against the pale blue irises.

“Not quite,” she retorted, looking at him. “Knocked me off my feet was how I put it. More accurate, don’t you think?”