Chance Meeting (17 page)

“You came.”

It irked her that she didn’t rate high enough on Steve’s list to warrant a hello, hi, or any other form of civilized greeting. Well, two could play that game.

“Of course. You did specify the end of the week, didn’t you?”

Steve ignored the sarcasm underlying her tone. “Bring your stuff on into the house. I’ll be over after I put Gordo away.”

So much for any offer of help, but then, what had she expected, the red carpet treatment she’d been shown all her life? She certainly wasn’t going to get that from this man, she thought with a flash of wry amusement.

Moreover, it was abundantly clear that Steve wasn’t going to spare her another word, another glance. Gathering his reins loosely, Steve now centered his brilliant gaze was on a distant spot between the gelding’s ears, over the top of Ty’s head. The bay’s ears swiveled, listening. Then, as Ty looked on, at first bewildered, then with growing awe, the gelding executed a pictureperfect turn on the haunches. The movement completed, Ty was treated to the view of Steve’s broad back, the bay’s gleaming hindquarters, and its long, silky black tail swishing back and forth as it confidently carried its rider in the direction of the brown weathered barn.

A heartfelt sigh escaped her lips as she stood, humbled by what she’d just witnessed. She remembered the weeks, the months she’d spent practicing that same basic dressage maneuver, the turn on the haunches, with her horse, Charisma. Of course, she reflected, most riders relied on their reins to hold the horse in check as the pressure from their legs asked it to move only its forelegs in a sideways arc, all the while the horse’s hindquarters remaining essentially in place, merely pivoting in a tiny circle until the turn was complete.

But Steve Sheppard wasn’t like most riders. She hadn’t seen a leg move or a hand squeeze as Steve communicated silently, invisibly, with his horse. And, boy, she’d been watching with eagle-eyed attention the second she realized just what it was he was doing. A magician’s touch. As Ty recalled, he’d always been an especially gifted athlete. Well, she could rest easy. He was still a phenomenal rider.

In the past, Steve had often pulled off the big, heartstopping movements during competition that left spectators trembling with excitement and awe. But that was only a fraction of what made Steve such a great rider. It was the subtle things, like the turn on the haunches he’d performed just now, with such uncanny ease, with a naturalness that distinguished his achievements on a horse from those of so many other riders.

Hours, months, years of hard training, combined with a talent blessed by the heavens, enabled him to move in total harmony with his horses. When Steve rode, one couldn’t help marveling, How did he do that? Other athletes in other disciplines inspired similar awe in their fans: Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretsky, Joe Montana. Watching them was a privilege one never forgot. Still, it would have been nice if he’d helped carry in her luggage.

Nothing about the neat exterior of the brownshingled, saltbox house with its French blue trim and matching wooden door, its mullioned windows and cheerful wooden flower boxes, could have prepared her for the condition of its interior. Stepping through the front door, Ty barely saved herself from falling over a small mountain of muddy paddock boots, field boots, Wellingtons, mismatched sneakers, boot hooks and jacks, and heaven knows what else. Still tottering, she managed to shove aside a dozen or so mismatched articles and deposit the two suitcases she’d brought with her in the small space she’d cleared.

Telling herself that it was the two-hour drive on the Long Island Expressway that had parched her throat rather than the sight of Steve Sheppard looking down at her, so cool and so distant, had Ty wandering toward the back of the house, bypassing the darkly shadowed living room on her right. One look at the kitchen, however, was all she needed to realize that getting a glass of water in this house would be no mean feat. The stench alone—of rotting garbage laced with the sweeter stink of spoiled milk— was enough to send anyone with half a nostril running. Dishes cluttered the counter like leaning towers of Pisa, needing only a slight shift in the air to topple over. The sink was overflowing, too, with more plates and glasses stacked up to the level of the faucet. It would be impossible to turn on the water without knocking glasses and china over. Ty doubted, too, from the number of filthy glasses littering the counter space, that there was a clean one to be found in any of the wooden cabinets. Perhaps a bottle of mineral water or a can of soda was hiding in the refrigerator. Trying not to inhale too deeply, Ty walked over and braved a look inside. A wedge of cheddar cheese sporting an impressively thick layer of green mold around its edges. A half-empty package of English muffins that looked as though it had been purchased years ago, the inside of the plastic wrapping moist with condensation. Nearby stood a quart of milk, the triangular spout left open, and four bottles of beer. They looked fine. Ty shook her head and turned on her heel.

He hated to admit it, but she was cooler than ice trickling down the back of your throat on a hot summer’s day. Untacking Gordo quickly, Steve had let the gelding out in the upper pasture so that he could roll to his heart’s content in his favorite mud spot; he planned to make Ty Stannard groom him later. After that, Steve had hurried over to the house, filled with a devilish curiosity to see her reaction. Another woman would have taken one look at the pit his house had become and either fainted dead away from shock or else pitched a hissy fit loud enough to be heard all the way to Portugal, then hightailed it from Southwind, never to return.

That’s actually what he’d been hoping for. But not her. She’d even made it up the stairs, where he’d found her in Jason’s room.

Standing immobile, perhaps petrified with shock.

Only those disturbing gray eyes of hers moving from object to object, cataloging the destruction all around her: the chair smashed in so many bits it could be used for kindling this winter, the coffee table flipped over on its side, magazines and books strewn across the floor, their pages torn and crushed, their spines broken. Not too far away from the wall against which Steve had hurled it was the bright yellow Discman, lying broken in half. Halfway across the room was the CD Jase had been rocking to as he cut his cocaine into five regimental lines, the mirror balanced between his knees. The CD had ricocheted out of the Discman upon impact. Broken candles were all over the place, pools of melted wax stuck to the wide oak planks.

She must have sensed his presence, for she took an involuntary step into the room, distancing herself. The sound of broken glass scraping the floor filled the silence.

“Careful where you step,” he said unnecessarily as she froze. “That’s seven years’ bad luck.”

“I doubt that the mirror can get much more broken than it already is.” Her voice was strained, raw, the only reaction to the unnerving sight of the destroyed room she wasn’t able to hide. “And I thought the kitchen was a nightmare.” The joke fell flat, as broken as the rest of the room. “Are you going to tell me what happened here, or shall I leave it to my imagination?”

Steve shrugged. “This was Jase’s room; the bed’s through those French doors. It’s in a bit better shape.”

Holly had been lying in it, sleeping, dead to the world after a couple hours spent in Jase’s arms. The violence of the storm that night hadn’t roused her, but the sound of Steve beating the living daylights out of Jase sure had. Poor Holly had cowered in the bed, too terrified to call the cops until the very end, when silence finally descended. Convinced that Jase was dead, Holly managed to overcome her frozen panic long enough for her trembling fingers to punch out 911. Steve supposed he should be glad she had. His horse’s death on his conscience was quite enough.

“I found Jase here, making his way through half a gram of coke, his Discman cranked to the max, while outside raged one of the worst electrical storms in decades. Instead of checking on how the horses were doing, he was blowing nose candy.”

Ty surveyed the destruction around her, a stark, silent testimony to the violence that had occurred. Although she dreaded asking, she forced the question out. “What really happened that night?”

Steve’s eyes became remote as a shadow crossed his face. Shards of glass crunched beneath the soles of his boots as he walked across the room and came to a standstill before the window. The clean, strong lines of his face were in profile to her, his voice low and rough. “It was Jase’s night for barn duty. We had a rotation going: Jase; Bubba, my stable manager; and me. It was Jase’s turn that night. Bubba was down south, visiting his son, and I, well, I was out . . . on a
date,
of all things.” His tone full of self-contempt. “Hadn’t been with a woman in months, what with the summer show season and all. When the storm came up, I was in a bar somewhere near Smithtown, sweet-talking a woman named Cynthia into taking me home to her condo. Hoping I might get laid. We only got as far as the parking lot. The rain was coming down in sheets, the sky white with lightning that just kept on and on. I left Cynthia standing in the mud beside her Chevy, knowing in my gut something had happened.” His eyes squeezed shut for a moment, as if to block a too vivid memory. “I couldn’t get through on my cell phone. Later I found out the electricity had been knocked out on the East End. The phone lines must have been overloaded with people calling. I drove like a maniac through the storm. And when I finally made it back home and opened the car door, I could already hear my horse’s screams. They were louder than the thunder and lightning crashing over me.” He glanced at her, his face etched in harsh lines. “I’ve lived around horses all my life, and never have I heard a sound like that before. I made my way to him in the dark. Fancy must have been rearing in fright from the storm. His stall had a haynet in it . . . he was kind of finicky that way,”

Ty’s heart tripped at the fleeting smile of infinite sadness that crossed his face. “He thought eating off the floor beneath his dignity. When I found Fancy, he’d foundered and was lying there on the straw, his coat lathered with sweat, still screaming. His right foreleg was sticking out at a fortyfive-degree angle from his shoulder, his hoof twisted around backward in that goddamn fucking haynet.”

Steve broke off. Then, drawing a deep, ragged breath, he turned and demanded roughly, “Can you understand the kind of agony Fancy was in? To be lying there with his leg broken that badly, in that many places?” Anguished eyes locked with Ty’s.

Ty only nodded, horrified, all too easily picturing the unnatural angle of the horse’s broken limb, the mindless struggle of a pain-crazed animal.

At the expression on Ty’s face, some of the unbeartension inside Steve eased. Since the night Fancy died, he’d done little but torture himself with memories. He wasn’t looking for sympathy, but knowing that Fancy Free’s death affected her so strongly, too, made him feel less intensely alone. He took a carefully measured breath and continued, his voice somewhat less strained. “The second I saw him there, I knew what I had to do. I ran and grabbed the rifle from the storeroom’s cabinet and put a bullet through the best horse I’ve ever known. I couldn’t let him suffer another minute longer; who knows how long he’d already been like that? I don’t care what the bloody insurance company says, waiting for a vet would only have prolonged Fancy’s agony. And the end, well, it would have been the same.”

Abruptly, Steve felt destroyed himself, unable to think of it anymore, the pain of remembering intolerable. He was unaccountably furious, too, for having dropped his guard long enough to allow Ty Stannard to slip past and take a good, long glimpse inside the wasteland of his soul. And what a wasteland it was: horrible, burning, acidic. Most of all, private.

She didn’t have the right to trespass on his pain, he thought, all his anger now channeled at his new partner. He didn’t need or want her around, prodding festering wounds with her presence, her questions. Best to focus on his righteous resentment, nurse it until it was strong enough to banish any other conflicting emotions—such as that sweet relief from loneliness he’d experienced when he’d seen Ty’s expression—and while he was doing that, he’d work on getting her to abandon this harebrained partnership idea.

“By the way, Junior, welcome to Southwind. This, of course, is your room.” Although she could probably bunk on the sofa in his office, he wasn’t going to let her take the easy route. No, sir. He watched her eyes dart around the shambles of her new room, their panicked path as eloquent as her shocked silence. It had been a really nice setup before, a sitting room and bedroom joined. Wasn’t too cozy now, though. Definitely a point scored in his favor, Steve calculated with satisfaction. “You’ll find a dustpan hanging in the pantry closet. Might come in handy. Before I forget, you’ve got kitchen duty tonight.” There, that was better. He was clearly on the offensive now. As offensive as could be. Important to keep going. “By the way, that gelding I was riding? He needs to be brushed off later. You do know how to groom a horse, don’t you?” She’d be gone in a few hours, Steve thought. His voice must have travelled light-years to reach her. At last, she gave a distracted nod. “Yes, I know how to groom a horse.”

“Good. Gordo’s stall door has ‘Vanguard,’ his show name, on it. Watch your back when you’re hooking him up to the cross ties,” he warned with a nasty grin. “He bites. If the phone happens to ring while I’m gone, let the machine pick up. These days, it’s either some journalist wanting to do an article about my fall from glory or someone I owe money to.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out.” To get down on his knees and beg Bubba, his former stable manager, to quit the job he’d found at a rival stable and come back to work at Southwind.

But there was no need to share
that
with his new partner.

An unanticipated expense but well worth every penny. Ty capped the pen she’d used to write out two hefty checks and waved a weary good-bye to the group of ladies stacking mops, buckets, dusters into the back of a rusted-out navy-blue station wagon. Last to go in an enormous vacuum cleaner, almost as big as the station wagon’s trunk. That was some machine, a vacuum cleaner to end all vacuum cleaners. A large cylindrical shape, faintly reminiscent of R2D2 in
Star Wars,
it required four of the ladies to hoist it off the ground.
Effective
barely described it. Remembering the racket the thing had made, Ty thought it more than capable of sucking up all the sand in the Sahara.