The consolation prize, she guessed, was one hell of a mother fixation.
To her, the pair seemed like expensive pieces of matching baggage but Garrett appeared content. His happiness was the reason she kept trying to make things work with her stepbrother and Regina. It wasn’t easy.
Coming to the auction office, A.J. opened a door, which creaked in the friendly way farm doors do, and stepped inside. Margaret Mead, an Irish widow of sixty, looked up from behind the counter and smiled. The two had known each other for years.
“Ah now, A.J., you should be lookin’ happier this day.”
“You must not have heard what I’ve volunteered for.”
“I’ve heard, all right.”
“So are you going to jump on the bandwagon and tell me I’m crazy, too?” A.J. put her knapsack on the counter and leaned across it.
“Is that what they been sayin’ to you?”
A.J.’s look was dry.
“Just ignore them,” Margaret said as she brought out a folder. “You followed your instincts on that horse. People only get into serious trouble when they think the pitch of other voices is more true than their own. The stallion is yours now and the slate is clean. You start fresh with him.”
Margaret passed some paperwork across the counter and retrieved a pen out of a coffee mug full of various and sundry writing utensils. A.J. reviewed the documents, picked up the Bic and was about to scrawl her name on the bottom when she looked at the top of the charge slip. It read Sutherland Stables, c/o Peter Conrad.
On impulse, she ripped it up.
“I’m going to write a personal check instead,” A.J. said, taking out her wallet.
She wasn’t sure what she was doing but the decision came out of the same place that made her bid on the stallion. Postdating the check, so she could get enough money in the account before it cleared, she choked as she filled in all the zeros. It was a monstrous stretch of her savings but instinct told her it was better to make the investment than have any chance of Peter refusing payment while they fought over her right to buy the horse.
As she ripped her check free and handed it to Margaret, she wondered if she’d lost her mind. Over the years, she’d managed to save up a nest egg from excess money her father had given her. It was a symbol of independence she’d never seen fit to use before, and now she was wiping it out.
Maybe Peter had a point about financial prudence, she thought, getting a sense for the first time of how finite money could be. She found it hard to believe that she’d just sunk all her net worth into a four-legged, maladjusted frat boy with hooves.
Margaret took the check. “Don’t look so worried. The pit you feel in your belly’s just buyer’s remorse. A couple of deep breaths will get you through it—they will.”
A.J. tried to swallow her shock. There’d always been money around and there’d be more of it, she told herself. And, if Sabbath turned out to be a champion, she could probably sell some of her interest in him to the stables and recoup the cash while still having him as her horse.
By the time she returned to Sabbath’s stall, she was feeling a little better. The fact that the stallion seemed happy to see her helped. As soon as he caught her scent, he nickered and reached forward, letting her stroke the velvet of his muzzle.
“Well, it’s legal now. We’re in this together,” she told him. “So whaddya say, you want to blow this Popsicle stand?”
It took her a half hour to get him ready to travel the hundred miles back to Sutherland Stables. She wrapped his legs, put a blanket across his sleek back and then went outside and brought around the eighteen-wheeler that was one of Sutherland’s fleet of horse trailers. When she led the stallion onto the ramp, she was vigilant in case he decided to bolt, but he didn’t seem interested in acting up.
When there’s no stage, there’s no performance, she thought, as she loaded him into one of the tight stalls. Satisfied the stallion was safe, she shut the rear doors and climbed into the cab, starting the mammoth diesel engine with the twist of a tiny key. As she left the grounds, she found herself thrilled by all the possibilities ahead of them.
While the highway miles passed and night started to fall, her mind drifted back to Devlin McCloud. She could recall the gravel sound of his voice, the way his handsome face had looked up close, every flash of those hazel eyes. Her body responded as if he were sitting beside her, the images making her feel like she’d been put under a heat lamp.
What was so intoxicating about him? There was something in his confidence and intelligence, in those hooded eyes, in that powerful way he carried himself, that body….
“You can stop now,” she said out loud. “He’s a man, not a fantasy.”
But A.J. let herself dream on. In the netherland between the auction house and the stables, she fantasized about ways to run into him again. They were hard to conjure up considering his reclusive nature but her favorite, and the only one that was a remote probability, was the daydream where she had a flat tire on the stretch of road, right in front of his driveway. He would come by with the truck; they would talk as he loosened lug nuts, maybe agree to have dinner. And a movie. Then he’d take her home and kiss her in the dark….
Of course, it was all a complete and utter fabrication. She wasn’t the kind of woman men asked out on dates, and she’d have found it hard to pull off the whole save-me-you-big-man thing. And anyway, Devlin McCloud didn’t strike her as the kind who’d waste time on movies.
So what would he do with a woman, she wondered. Was he a cook-in-and-stay-home type? She didn’t think he’d go for Monster Truck rallies. Formal dining at a five-star restaurant? Picnic on a mountain? Riding through wooded trails with lingering glances passing back and forth? It was the afterward she was especially interested in. How would he be as a lover? Soft and slow or with a raging lust? She thought it probably depended on whom he was with and how much he wanted her.
She frowned, disturbed by her train of thought. Her preoccupations typically ran toward the practical, not the romantic. And certainly not the erotic. She was more accustomed to getting lost in dreams of finding the perfect blacksmith or a vet that would come cheerfully to a cold stable at two a.m. Then again, she’d never met anyone like him before and she couldn’t decide whether she was dying to see him or grateful that she wasn’t likely to. He’d had a profound effect on her and, as thrilling as it had been to be in his orbit, she felt like she was on dangerous footing.