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“You can pay your dues to protocol later,” he suggested after a pause in which his damnable shirt slipped another mesmerizing inch. “But…” He stopped, then continued his lecture. “I assure you an apology is neither due nor expected.
“Had the circumstances been reversed, don’t fool yourself into thinking Coop would hesitate about leaving you. In the middle of a concert, in the middle of dinner, in the middle of…” His teeth clenched, briefly halting the outpouring. “Never mind about that one. What I’m saying is, that if a patient needs him, Coop’s like a horse with blinders. Because he’s so single-minded himself, he’ll understand about last night.”
Haley couldn’t be so certain. “Maybe. If he knew the whole story, and how grave Dancer’s situation had become.”
“He knows, Haley. Coop was here last night.” With a careful touch, Jackson leaned her back against a stack of pillows and adjusted the shirt. More for his own comfort than Haley’s. He was perturbed by what a glimpse of the curve of her bare shoulder had done to him. This was hardly the time or place for lust.
In any time or place, he reminded himself, the Duchess was all he’d schooled himself to dislike in a woman.
“Cooper’s here? Now?”
With the repetition of Cooper’s name, something altered in her face, even the shade of her eyes seemed to change. Jackson wasn’t sure what it meant, and he discovered he didn’t like it.
“It’s morning.” The paling sky had turned from red-gray to ever-changing blue. Light fell through ancient panes joining the dim glow of a single lamp. “Time all good little surgeons were at their operating tables.”
“Morning?” She had forgotten the striking clock.
“It was morning before you finished in the barn. It’s only a little later now.” There were no roses in her cheeks, but like her perception, her color improved by the minute.
Turning her head carefully, Haley realized she was in a very masculine bedroom. Obviously Jackson’s bedroom, not a guest bedroom. “That means I’ve been here for the remainder of the night?”
“What there was left after Cooper examined you.”
“Cooper examined me?” As her mind cleared, she realized she sounded like a broken record. She laughed, and rued the impulse.
“Maybe you think Coop is deserving of an apology, but he would disagree. The way he sees it, he was an unchivalrous idiot to let you drive to River Trace alone. He arrived less than a minute after Dancer did his number on you.”
“His number? On me?” Her back felt more as if a steam-roller had flattened her, not a horse.
“He bucked, flinging you like a ball.”
“You got me out.” She didn’t remember, but it wasn’t a question. Jackson might dislike her, he might regard her veterinary skills and professional dedication as suspect, but he wouldn’t stand idly by if she were in danger.
“With Jesse’s help.” Jackson spoke casually, leaving out every nuance of fear that had raced through him like cold fire.
He’d been wild when he’d thought she’d been crushed against the wall with all the brute’s weight. Wilder when hooves that would have cut her fragile flesh to ribbons stomped over and over, narrowly missing her as she lay unconscious on the floor. Fear and galvanizing panic had given him strength he hadn’t known he possessed. He didn’t tell her that if Jesse hadn’t kept a cooler head, calming Jackson as much as the horse, he would have killed Dancer with his bare hands. Nor that when she was safe, but he didn’t know the extent of her injuries, he was a madman.
“Then Cooper came?” Haley frowned and pressed a massaging finger against her temple as she tried to make sense of the chain of events by putting them in proper sequence.
Jackson’s head barely moved in a nod. “Cooper came.”
Like a gift of fate, Cooper had arrived in the midst of the worst of Jackson’s worry. And promptly threatened to eject him from his own barn, even forbidding him to watch, if he didn’t stop hovering and cool down. Throughout the cursory examination conducted outside the stall, Jackson had paced. Impotent, helpless, a banished animal. After Cooper’s determination that the bump on her head was simply a bump on the head, he continued with assurance that the breath had merely been knocked from her lungs when her back crashed into the wall.
Merely? Merely! Jackson had roared, adding angrily that he didn’t see much damned difference, since Haley, by damn, certainly appeared to be unconscious. Unconscious and still. Frighteningly, heart-stoppingly still.
“He examined me?” Her eyes widened. If any trace of lethargy remained, the idea of being unaware and at the mercy of three men—three disparate men—brought it to a screeching end.
“You weren’t exactly yourself.” He saw confusion and chagrin in her face. It pleased him to see this coolly controlled and professionally confident woman falter. The pleasure was short-lived as the militant conscience of a gentleman, however reluctant, kicked in. “I doubt even Superwoman would be herself after being body-slammed by the stallion from hell.”
“Body-slammed.” Haley sighed and ignored the penalty the stupidity levied. Jackson painted a good description of the little she remembered. “Knocked the breath out of me, did he?”
Though she’d paled with the sigh, she tried to hide it behind a wry smile. After hours of watching her, Jackson had grown familiar with every nuance of her mobile features. He saw the pain but respected her efforts by making no comment beyond addressing her supposition. “Among Dancer’s destructive behaviors, there was that. Along with a bump on the head.
“Which Coop assured me wasn’t as much the reason you were lying in a puddle like a discarded doll as the breath thing.” Anger kindled again as Jackson remembered how calm and controlled Cooper had been. As if a horse of River Trace causing injury to a beautiful woman were an everyday affair. “Which I told him was a damned fool thing to say. For, as far as I could see, unconscious was unconscious, no matter the cause.”
After that cynical remark from Jackson, Coop had given her something to ease her enough that she would sleep. Then he’d launched into a detailed explanation, comparing Haley’s condition with a child’s tantrum, held breath and all. Before he could stop himself, Jackson had snapped back that in case Coop was too blind to notice, Haley wasn’t exactly a child. And, in case Coop was too stupid to understand that tackling frenzied horses did not include holding one’s breath, he ought to try one or both someday.
Cooper laughed then, with Jesse’s guffaws joining in, while both watched him with smug, knowing looks. Which only made Jackson angrier, more frustrated. Which, he decided, excused him for being ornery. Explaining why Cooper’s offer to take her to Jackson’s bedroom—where, Coop pointedly reminded him, Jackson had insisted she rest and recover—was summarily dismissed. Which, to his mounting ire, produced another round of smiles.
It was the final straw when Cooper volunteered to stay. By then, finally convinced the Duchess was truly all right, and fed up with both Coop and Jesse, he nearly pushed each man out of the room. Then, gracelessly, he’d instructed Jesse to see to Dancer. With no more grace he suggested Cooper go home and wait for the next call, instead of dropping in.
Then he’d shut the door in their grinning faces.
“Why?” Jackson didn’t realize he’d spoken the word out loud. The word he’d asked himself more times than he could count as he’d sat by her bed through the few hours left of the night. Why had he been so cavalier with Haley when, after all, he had called her? When her only sin, beyond interrupting a special evening to rush to River Trace, was wanting to help? Why had he been irritable with Cooper, whose arrival had been a godsend?
And Jesse? The man worked tirelessly, asking no quarter, giving none, as he fought for Dancer and with Dancer. Jackson knew his treatment of the old hand was unforgivable.
“Ask for help, then spit in the eye of any who do,” he muttered, and turned from the bed and from Haley, to stare at the dawn that had become full-fledged morning.
“Is that what you call it?” Haley’s voice was strained as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and rested her bare feet on the floor. Bare feet. She didn’t want to think about that. Or that she was naked under the shirt she knew was Jackson’s. Except for her panties. He’d left her that small shred of pride.
“Is that what I call—” Jackson had spun away from the window. In long, hurried steps he returned to her bedside. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t think, Jackson. I know.” Hands clutching the mattress, she tilted her head to meet his blazing gaze. “I’m getting out of your bed. And, if you’ll bring my clothes, out of your shirt as well.”
“You can’t.”
“No?” The anger she’d conquered hours ago for the sake of a suffering animal flared now at the fierce arrogance. “Watch me.”
The minute the words left her mouth, she knew her boast was worse than his bark. But pride wouldn’t let her back down now. She knew something of her dilemma must have shown in her face when she felt his arms circling her, lifting her gingerly to her feet.
“Thank you,” she murmured when she felt steady enough to speak. Glancing down at his muscular arms dusted with a pale auburn down, and conscious of his hands pressed against her back, strong fingers supporting, caressing, she whispered almost breathlessly, “You can let me go now.”
“Of course.” Jackson stepped back. His hands moved from her back to her shoulders, trailed down her arms, then curled over her clammy fingers. “You’re sure you can do this?”
“I’m sure. So long as I don’t need to tackle another horse anytime soon, I’ll be fine.”
Jackson laughed then, and released her. “Yes, you will, won’t you? Be fine, I mean.”
“It wasn’t the first time…”
“I know,” he interrupted softly. “Nor the last.”
“I’m repeating myself.” This time she didn’t laugh.
“Doesn’t matter.” A gesture called her attention to a door opposite the hall. “The bath’s there. A nice hot soak should feel good about now. If you don’t find all you need, just yell.”
“So long as the water’s hot, I’ll be fine.”
“Somehow I thought you would be. Since that’s the case, I’ll leave you to your bath, Duchess. In the meantime, I should be able to find some fresh clothes for you among Merrie’s things.”
“Merrie?” Haley knew she shouldn’t be surprised there was a woman in Jackson’s life. But she was. A dozen, maybe. No, not maybe, definitely. But not just one.
“Merrie Alexandre,” Jackson explained. “A university student who lived for a while with Eden and Adams. Between classes, and on weekends when she needs to escape her apartment mates, she helps here with the horses. Because she stays over when she works late, she keeps several changes of clothing here.”
Jackson let his gaze trail over Haley, lingering, remembering. But with none of the disdain of before. There wasn’t much of her. but what there was, he’d discovered, was flawless.
Lastly, his gaze returned to her hair. The mane of pale gold Dancer knocked partially from the perfect coil, and he finished taking down, untangling it before putting her to bed. Even now he remembered the feel of strands like silk slipping through his fingers, the clean fragrance drifting from it. Enchanting. Enticing. Pale locks that would bind a man to her.
There were new tangles now, and his fingers curled as he thought of smoothing them again. Jackson rebuffed the thought and the path it was taking. Instead he moved to the bedroom door, opened it and stood with escape from his own awakening desire looming a step away. “You’re smaller, but I think I can find something that will serve. But don’t worry, Merrie won’t mind.”
Before she could even think to worry, Jackson stepped into the hall and shut the door. Haley was alone. “Alone in the bedroom of Jackson Cade,” she reminded herself as she wandered to the bathroom. “It’s just as well, considering that this show of kindness is contrition of the moment.
“Next week, this will be forgotten,” Haley predicted as she turned on the taps, discarded Jackson’s shirt and stepped into steaming water. “Next week he’ll hate me again.”
“‘My apologies. Called away, but not for long. Dancer’s fine, you needn’t check him. Wait. Rest. I’ll see you home.’”
Haley read out loud the note she’d found on the bed along with a selection of Merrie Alexandre’s clothing. Crumpling the hastily scrawled missive, she let it fall to the floor along with the towel covering her from breasts to hips. Then she proceeded to dress, admiring the younger woman’s taste, and disconcerted by Jackson’s evident skill in making choices in women’s clothing.
When she’d finished, she wondered briefly where her own clothes might be. Then, with a dismissive shrug, she counted them lost. Once the towel had been dropped in the clothes chute, her hair twisted into a helter-skelter knot and secured with what pins she could find, then the bed put in order, she was ready to go.
“Not one trace,” she murmured. “He won’t even remember I was here.” Spying the note lying on the floor, she scooped it up and stuffed it into the pocket of the borrowed jeans. Making one last survey, pleased by the utter perfection she was leaving behind, she left it behind.
As she hurried to the barn, anxious to check on Dancer before the master of the house returned, Haley reflected that it felt good to be back in jeans and boots. And even the soft but sturdy blouse that tugged a bit too snugly across her breasts. Merrie was obviously slender, with a more adolescent figure. And, either she wore no bras, she’d taken all of that particular sort of garment back to her apartment, or Jackson had forgotten.
A breeze was just kicking up, in it lay the promise of rain. Nothing was prettier than a lowcountry rain falling like streaks of silver and gold as the sun would alternately hide or shine. Haley loved the autumn showers, and in anticipation she crossed the cobblestone path to the barn with a less guarded step. Her back still ached, but the soak and simply moving had eased it into a manageable state.
A draft skittered around the side of the barn, rattled the metal rings of rigging, and set a gate banging. The fabric of her shirt was supple enough to cling, sturdy enough to not be indecently revealing, and rough enough that with the movement of her body coupled with the efforts of the breeze, it brushed over the tips of her breasts, teasing her nipples to a pleasant tingle.
Haley’s soft laugh at this secret pleasure was cut short by a low, deep bellow.
“What the hell are you doing here, and why the devil are you dressed like that?”
Spinning, she nearly collided with Jackson. As he glared down at her, she smiled with a calculated pleasantness, then sobered, assuming her most professional demeanor. “I’m here to check my patient. I’m dressed as I am because these are the clothes you chose for me.”
“Then I made a mistake.”
“Evidently you did. And, given your attitude, it’s just as evident that before we’re done with each other, it won’t be your last mistake.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Duchess?”
“You figure it out, Mr. Cade.” Smiling another, equally calculated smile, she sauntered away.
“Who’s Todd?” he called, expecting a reaction. Wanting one. Needing one.
His probing salvo produced nothing, not so much as a stumble in her step. With a dismissive waggle of her fingers, and maddeningly calm, she called back, “Todd’s no one you need be concerned with. He’s no one. No one at all, anymore.”
Three
Five days. Five long, long days.
Frowning as he put the thought and its unacceptable implication out of his mind, Jackson flicked a glance at Jesse Lee. Beyond the usual half-mumbled good morning, each wrapped up in their own thoughts, their own chores, they’d spent most of the day barely speaking until they walked together to the west pasture. The pasture most visible from the entrance of the faded and tattered manor, where Dancer had been allowed his first day of true freedom. But only under the watchful eyes of guards strategically posted by Jericho Rivers, sheriff of Belle Terre and the surrounding county bearing the same name as the city.
It rankled, having armed men roaming the farm. The idea of strangers, regardless of how unobtrusive they were, tramping the land, disturbed and disrupted what had been a gratifying routine. But Jericho insisted. As a friend, as well as the local legal authority, he feared the crisis with Dancer was more than an isolated incident, and perhaps a resurgence of the vandalism that had burned Jackson’s first new barn at River Trace to the ground. An unsolved crime that troubled Jericho. Now, as much as years ago.
Though he agreed with the need for the precautions, though he was more than grateful for Jericho’s men, Jackson hated the atmosphere of an armed camp. He mourned the loss of the peaceful innocence that had settled over his land since the fire.
Peaceful or dangerously complacent? he wondered now, and was surprised. Complacency wasn’t his nature. In fact, it was the last emotion he would ever be accused of harboring. Whatever he felt, right or wrong, he felt strongly. Obstinately.
“Yeah,” he admitted under his breath. “Obstinate. Right, and especially wrong.”
“You talkin’ to yourself, boy?”
Jackson looked down at Jesse and shrugged. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“Well, I hope you’re a mite friendlier to yourself than you’ve been to some other folks I could name.”
“That bad, huh?”
“I’d say so.”
“But you’re still here. Why, Jesse?”
“Two reasons. First, you need me. Second, I figger your mad will pass, at least where I’m concerned.”
“Have I thanked you? For what you did? For staying now?”
“No. But I ’spect you will. In time.”
Jackson nodded silently and turned away. He owed Jesse far more than his thanks. The man was a walking encyclopedia on commonsense horse training and treatment. It was Jesse he’d called first. In the time following the stallion’s strange malady, the cowhand had spent most of his waking hours at River Trace, calling on Jefferson for help, then leaving the stock at Belle Reve in his capable hands. Lounging now at Jackson’s side, face shadowed by the hat brim tipped down against the late-afternoon glare, with his arms folded over the top rail of the fence, his keen regard never turned from the pasture.
“He looks good,” Jackson ventured after a while.
“Yep.” Jesse tracked the horse cantering across the pasture. “Friskier than a new colt.” Slanting a sly assessing look at Jackson, he muttered half under his breath, “Which is more than I can say for you. Along with being grumpier than a junkyard dog looking for a leg to bite, you look like hell.”
Warming to the subject, the older man studied Jackson’s haggard features. “You know, for a man who just had his dream handed back to him by the prettiest little gal to come along in quite a spell, you don’t look half as happy as I’d expect. Fact is, instead of being all smiles like any sensible human being should, lately you got more creases across your forehead left from frowning than this fence post has ridges.”
Jackson bristled, proving Jesse’s comment. “Let’s see if I get your point, Jesse. Which am I, mean as a junkyard dog? Dumb as a post? A little of both? Or can’t you decide?”
“Oh, I decided,” Jesse responded mildly, refusing to be riled or distracted. “You helped me decide that sometime past. And by the way, you left out mule-headed.” Before Jackson could bristle again, he patted a hard, broad shoulder. “What’s the matter, boy? Not sleepin’ so good these days?”
“I’m sleeping all I need to sleep.” A mild exaggeration, but the sharpness eased out of Jackson’s tone. Jesse was nosy, he pried, he meddled, he gossiped, but from the day he’d come to the lowcountry in answer to Jefferson’s appeal for help, the best interests and well-being of the Cade family had become his first priority. Jefferson’s younger years spent in Arizona working on the Rafter B for Jake Benedict had proven to be a godsend in many ways, Jesse Lee’s loyalty not the least of them. In the balance, a little prying and meddling was a small cost to pay.
“All you need? Humph!” Jesse plucked a splinter from the rail, studied it closely, then flicked it away. “Don’t appear so to me. In another week, what with the shadows lying under your eyes like blue hammocks and gettin’ darker by the day, you’re gonna look like the losing end of a bar hopper’s brawl.”
An innocent look wiped the worry from the cowhand’s face. Too innocent, as he shrugged. “Considering the extra security set in all the barns and around the pastures, by doggies, I can’t rightly see what’s keeping you awake.”
“We had security before. Not so tight, of course, but security. If I’m short of any sleep, I suppose it’s because I keep remembering Dancer as he was then.” Mild exaggeration had grown into bald lies. Or almost, by omission. For what Jackson couldn’t get out of his mind was not just Dancer’s screams, or even his critical condition.
No. What had him jerking from his dreams in a cold sweat was Haley Garrett. Like a tableau forever imprinted in both his waking and sleeping memory, the vision of that small, beautiful woman clinging to a frenzied brute of a horse played like a movie without end over and over in his mind.
He could still hear the sickening sound of her body striking wood. He saw flashing hooves flailing out in madness, falling ever nearer the unconscious woman. He still struggled to open a gate with fingers made clumsy with fear. And always there was the specter of being too late.
It was a nightmare that first sent him fleeing his bed, then left him sleepless, pacing and wrestling with yet another memory. The memory of undressing her, made too vivid by the night, a waking dream emblazoned forever on his mind by day.
Even now as his hands flexed within his gloves, the brush of soft leather became the brush of Haley’s softer, naked flesh. He had only to close his eyes to remember her tawny skin burnished by the fall of lamplight, the fullness of her breasts with nipples dusky and barely furled like newly bloomed rosebuds.
In his more lucid times, he wondered why his memories confused him. From his first glimpse of her on the day she arrived in Belle Terre, a glimpse that sent every male hormone into feverish response and set every mental warning bell jangling, he knew she was trouble. Trouble with a capital T. Right then, right there, in the middle of Lincoln’s office, he’d turned tail and bolted like a scared yearling. Then, as if escaping that first introduction wasn’t enough, he held himself aloof, rebuffing every near meeting or close social encounter with a grim determination bordering on surly.
Surly, boorish, tactless, cruel. Hell, given his performance in the barn, he wasn’t sure his vocabulary held enough words to describe his behavior.
And from the first, his efforts had been for naught. No matter how he avoided the woman of flesh and blood, in spirit Haley Garrett haunted him. No matter where he might go, or didn’t go, at some time Lincoln’s new partner would be mentioned.
At the local stockmen’s meetings, at the inn, with his brothers, in his own blasted barns—at the feed-and-seed supply store, even the damned grocer’s—as sure as breathing, her name tripped off someone’s tongue. Then she would become the topic of conversation. And though he tried to not listen, he did. Like a man too long without water discovering a sweet, cool well, he drank in every word.
Each time he kicked himself afterward. Each time he denied he felt anything more than the fascination that goes hand in hand with aversion. Oh, he fought and struggled, he resisted and denied, and still the next time would be the same.
Haley wasn’t a fool. She wasn’t obtuse. Even the rare times he was subtle, she got the message. She knew how little he thought of her and her sort. If by some far-fetched chance she should misread him, he never let her forget. Even though he’d never been rude, crude, or anything less than a gentleman to any woman before. Ever. Lady Mary, his elderly, impoverished, and genteel instructor in deportment, had drummed Southern gentlemanly honor into each of Gus Cade’s rowdy sons with astonishing success.