1
A. J. SUTHERLAND was captivated by the stallion from the moment she saw him. And she wasn’t the only one. Like believers in front of a hypnotist, the whole audience was under a spell and had the dreamlike eyes of zombies. Called by the master to come forward, the crowd moved like a glacier, pushing its way toward the auctioneer’s stand and bulging out of the cordoned-off area where the horse was displayed.
A.J. did her best to get through the throng but others were doing the same. A bottleneck formed and elbows were used like hockey sticks as people fought to come forward. Being no slouch, especially when it came to getting things she wanted, she mounted pointy defenses of her own until she made it to the front. Wrapping her arms around herself, she released her breath in a rush as she got an unobstructed view of the black stallion.
She’d seen a lot of good Thoroughbreds in Virginia but nothing like him.
Head held high, the horse stared out at the crowd with hostile uninterest. He was the king; he ruled the world. Everyone else just took up space.
Under the lights, his coat glistened with flashes of black and navy and his tail whipped back and forth impatiently. Dark hooves stamped the dirt as he threw his head against the halter and lead line that tied him to his handlers. With his powerful body dwarfing the men around him, he was the one in control despite being outnumbered by the five grooms who’d been assigned to try to hold him. The men around him circled cautiously, tense.
Like the crowd, they knew his reputation. It wasn’t a good one.
A.J.’s eyes feasted on the stallion. In every move he made, there was a promise of strength and agility that was both athletic and poetic. And, behind his disdain, she sensed a fierce intelligence and an iron will.
At the head of the crush of people, she made up her mind. He was the most magnificent thing she’d ever seen. And she was going to have him.
“We’re opening the bidding at ten thousand dollars,” the auctioneer said.
Her hand flew up.
It was an outrageously low price considering the horse’s bloodlines, high if you thought about his penchant for trouble.
“That’s ten thousand dollars. Do I have eleven?”
Somewhere in the crowd another hand was raised. A ripple of speculation went through the arena. Many had come to get a look at him up close; few had come with the idea of buying. Everyone wanted to know who was going to take him.
“That’s eleven. Do I hear twelve?”
She nodded.
The other bidder countered at thirteen and she immediately raised the price to fourteen. There was a pause and then the price came back at $15,000.
“Do I have sixteen?” The auctioneer looked her way. She inclined her head without hesitation.
Just then, her arm was grabbed by her stepbrother.
“What are you doing?” Peter Conrad’s eyes were bulging.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Like you’re making another rash decision. Throwing yourself heedlessly into another mess that I’m going to have to pay for.” As the price continued to climb, he escalated the argument along with it. “Have you heard about that thing’s reputation?”
“Excuse me,” A.J. said, moving around him. The two did a cramped box step, trading places.
“We are at twenty-two thousand dollars,” the auctioneer said.
A.J. reestablished eye contact with the gavel man and nodded. The crowd’s murmuring elevated, surging in waves with the bidding.
“Stop this,” Peter hissed.
A.J. paid no attention to him. Her focus was on the other bidder. Like a train slowing down, her competition was losing steam but wasn’t out of the game yet. There was a long pause and then the price was raised again. Without blinking, she tacked on another thousand.
“Don’t you dare buy that animal!” Peter demanded. Turning toward the auctioneer, he started shaking his head and drawing his hand across his neck to dispute her authority.
When the bid came back, A.J. fixed her stepbrother with fierce blue eyes and spoke up loudly over the crowd. “I’ll pay thirty thousand for the stallion.”
The audience gasped in surprise and the auctioneer looked amazed at his good fortune. And her recklessness.
Peter began to sputter, overwhelmed by her audacity.
“Er, I have thirty thousand dollars,” the auctioneer said, looking into the crowd at the other bidder. “That’s thirty thousand going once.”
“You’re crazy!” her stepbrother said. He tried frantically to get the auctioneer to stop but the man shook his head at Peter’s theatrics. It was a valid bid and everyone knew it.
“Going twice.”
Rebuffed, Peter curled his fists in frustration and then tried a different tactic, assuming an air of haughty scorn.
“I won’t be responsible for the trouble you’re creating,” he told A.J. “I’ve cleaned up the results of your enthusiasm one too many times. If you do this, you’re on your own.”
He straightened his cashmere jacket with a curt tug at the cuffs. The tan color was played off by his silk pants and cream turtleneck but did little for his pale complexion. He was a study in bland tones. The only bright spike in the outfit was a jaunty red handkerchief in his breast pocket. It looked like a pimiento that had fallen into a bowl of oatmeal.
A.J. looked down at her own clothes. Scruffy but clean blue jeans, a polo shirt and barn jacket, leather boots. She had on a Sutherland Stables baseball cap, which was controlling the top half of her mane of auburn curls. The bottom half was reeled in by a tie at the base of her neck. Practical, comfortable. Unremarkable.
“Going three times.”
“You will regret this,” Peter announced.
It was a promise A.J. had heard before from him. What it meant was, if something bad didn’t flow naturally from her impulse, he’d make sure he took up the slack.
“I’d only regret it if I didn’t get him,” she murmured.
“Sold,” the auctioneer called out. “Lot number 421, a four-year-old Thoroughbred stallion, Sabbath, to Sutherland Stables.”
Peter’s frustration came back as the gavel hit wood. “When the hell is this going to stop! When are you going to grow up and stop behaving so rashly?”
A.J. watched his face grow tight with rage as he went into a full snit.
It went further than the partial snit, she reflected, which merely involved foot stamping and huffing, or the half snit, which was the partial with verbal backup. She saw that beads of sweat, highly characteristic of the full snit, had formed at his temples and across his forehead. With a detachment she found amusing, she noted that forehead seemed to be getting more pronounced every year, courtesy of his receding hairline.