Echoes From The Past (Women of Character) (21 page)

She lay perfectly still, drinking
in the absolute quiet, hoping to drift back to sleep. The sun had not even come
up yet.

Bang.
Bang
.

Christie sat up in bed, her heart
pounding in fright. The banging noise came again, as if it came from the barn
below. The horses. She switched on the bedside lamp, pulled on jeans over her
nightshirt and hurriedly stepped into her boots. Christie descended the narrow
stairs into the barn as quickly as she dared in the semi-dark. Once in the barn
she flicked on several overhead lights. Out of the corner of her eye she
thought she saw movement, but when she turned on another light, there was
nothing there. Methodically, she checked each of the stalls.

When she looked inside the last
stall she quickly assessed the situation. It appeared the young horse had laid
down too close to the wall and rolled over. He couldn't maneuver to get his
legs under him. Each time he tried to rise, his hooves banged against the wall
and he fell back down.

Christie opened the sliding door
and knelt at the horse's head. As she spoke soothingly to him, the stall door
slid closed.

The young horse seemed to watch
her warily, the whites of his eyes distended. She wondered how long he’d been
down. Studying his position carefully, she decided the best thing to do was
grab his front legs and pull him away from the wall. No mean feat, considering
he probably weighed about three hundred pounds.

Christie wondered if she'd be able
to pull him far enough away without getting kicked. If she went for help it
could waste precious minutes and he might injure himself. Christie knelt down
and grasped each front fetlock above the hooves. She pulled. His weight was
distributed just enough toward her that with her pulling he rolled over away
from the wall. She jumped back quickly as he gained his feet and shook himself
head-to-toe.

"Are you okay?" she
asked tenderly, running her hand down his soft muzzle. "Now I can go get
someone to check you out."

Christie backed toward the door
and pulled the handle but the door did not move. She pulled harder, refusing to
believe she was locked in the stall.

Was it stuck? Christie gripped the
metal bars on the upper portion of the door and angled her head so she could
see the latch on the outside of the door. It looked like it was partially
caught. She tried jiggling the door but it held fast.

Christie told herself to remain
calm but an old familiar heaviness settled in her chest. As she paced, she
reminded herself not to scare the colt. She chewed her lips, standing near the
door and peering out into the aisle. Someone would come very soon. She thought
of the sing-song verse she and Ellen had recited as children when hiding from
their father.
You can’t come in and I won’t go out.
You can’t come in because I locked you out
.

"Hello, anybody out there!
Garrett, Ally, anybody." Christie put her back against the stall wall.
Being slightly claustrophobic didn’t help but she could handle this. Christie
ran her hand soothingly down the colt’s neck. "Now I feel like a real
dolt, locking myself in here with you." She thought she heard someone and
moved once more over to the chest high metal grill. "Garrett?"

Footsteps. "Christie? Are you
down here already?" Garrett’s voice.

Christie took a deep breath.
"Yes, it’s me. I’m stuck in this stall."

Garrett stopped outside the stall,
then reached forward to lift the latch. "How the hell did you manage to
lock yourself in there?"

She stepped out of the stall and
smiled shakily. "I feel kind of foolish saying I don’t really know."
She must have looked a bit shaken, because Garrett’s warm hands touched her
shoulders.

"It’s okay," he said. Christie
noticed now that his hair was disheveled and his shirt hung open, liked he’d
jumped quickly out of bed. Following her relief, Christie became aware of new
senses kicking in. She felt the heat of his body so close to her own, his warm
musky scent in her nostrils. "I have a slight case of
claustrophobia," she confessed, staring over his shoulder.

"It’s a good thing I saw the
lights on. Why were you in there?"

Christie tried to focus, but she
couldn’t help but think how rough and sexy he looked, a dark shadow along his
unshaven jaw. "The door closed and somehow the latch fell into
place."

He rubbed her arms. "The
stalls are on rollers and will glide closed, but the latches don’t lock by
themselves."

"I couldn’t get out."

He looked at her with concern. "Your
face is white. I thought I heard something outside this morning, that’s why I
came out so early."

Christie looked at the door latch.
"I heard a banging noise and came downstairs. The colt was laying half on
his back with his feet against the wall. He couldn’t get up. I was afraid he’d
hurt himself so I pulled him over. I didn’t realize until too late what had
happened with the door."

"He was cast," Garrett
muttered, his eyes never leaving her face.

"Cast?"

"When a horse gets down too
close to a wall and can't get up." She saw his glance slip over her,
stopping at her untied boots. Self-conscious now, she pulled up her
nightshirt’s sagging neckline, stuffed the tails into her jeans and pushed the
tangle of hair away from her face.

"I rushed down here when I
heard the noise," she mumbled.

Garrett looked at the horse in the
stall. "Do you know who this little guy is?" he asked.

"Ally calls him Houdini. She
said when he was a weanling he managed to get out of any fence you put him
in."

Garrett's mouth curved upwards.
"That's his nickname. His registered name is Aspiration. He's one of my
most promising colts for next year’s season. Who knows, maybe even the
Derby."

Christie looked at the horse, the
sturdy legs, muscled chest and wide, intelligent forehead. "He's a
beauty." She rubbed her palms over her face. "The Derby, huh? That
must be why you have sign-in sheets and I’ve even seen surveillance cameras
outside."

"You have to be careful in
this business."

Christie looked down at her boots
uncertainly then hooked her arm around a saddletree built into the wall.
"With all this security, I’m kind of surprised that you hired me."

"Gut instinct," Garrett
said with a lopsided grin. "I wouldn't let you in here if I thought you
were a threat. I appreciate what you did for Houdini, but next time come and
get me or Sam."

Christie lifted her shoulders in a
careless shrug. "I was afraid he’d be hurt worse if I left him."

"You might have been kicked
or he could have fallen on you. Don’t take a chance like that again." His voice
bordered on a reprimand.

Christie bent to tie her
shoelaces. "It seemed the right thing to do," she said defensively,
tying her other bootlace. She felt a draft of air across her chest. Looking
down, she realized her nightshirt had gaped forward, exposing her breasts.

She looked up. Garrett’s glance
lifted from her chest and the impact of those light colored eyes made Christie
feel incredibly warm. How easy, she thought, to claim this was love. Love
didn’t make your heart pound and your lungs hurt for lack of air. It was merely
infatuation.

His hands, hard on her arms,
pulled her up. The heat of his mouth seared her, engulfing her, his tongue
slipping inside as long arms pulled her into him. Infatuation or not Christie
admitted she wanted this, to be close to Garrett. She went without a thought
for the consequences. Some moments were not meant to be questioned, they were
just to be lived.

Christie burned where Garrett
touched her. She was hot inside and out, her stomach muscles contracting. She
craved this closeness and wound her arms around his neck, enjoying the strength
of his body pressed to hers. Each time they kissed felt more shattering.
Thoughts jumped crazily in her head. She did not want to stop Garrett. Her
emotions were riding high, making the secrets of her past seem surmountable.

Garrett's big hands framed her
face, held her as he pressed against her. There was no doubt in Christie’s mind
as to the extent of his desire, not with the evidence between them.

"This is crazy," he
muttered, burying his face against her neck and holding her to him.

She pressed her lips to his skin
with greedy insistence, inhaling the earthy essence of the man. The tendrils of
hair at the back of his head were damp under her fingers and he smelled fresh
as if he had come from a shower. Again and again Christie wound her fingers
through those light colored strands, his murmur of appreciation making the
wanting inside curl tighter with tension.

She moved her fingers over his
back, aware of the strength and bulk of him, yet the gentleness with which he
held her. She placed her mouth against his, taking his lips as if it was her
right. She didn't want to think. She needed to feel, experience and lose
herself in the moment and the man. She didn’t mind burning, if it was with
Garrett. "I’ve never known anyone like you, Garrett." She heard her
own words, and she was reminded of her past, the memories that were never far
away. She had been engaged, but her feelings back then were nothing compared to
this.

Garrett eased away from her and
her body felt cold where moments before his heat had burned it. She ached with
the withdrawal and tried to hold her body stiffly but in truth she felt shaky.

Curiously, she looked at her hand
as it lay against his chest, the matt of hair visible beneath the open buttons.
She flattened her palm against the bulge of muscle there. It felt like an
experiment, touching him, watching his reaction, the contracting of his muscles
beneath her fingers. Christie noted the faint flush on his cheeks, his eyes
hard and searching, telling her without words he was not a man to be trifled
with.

She stroked his chest with a
fingertip. Garrett gave an audible groan. To Christie, it was a beautiful sound
but she knew she was dancing closer to that emotional quagmire.

"Christie, stop."

She pressed two fingers against
his beautiful mouth. "I know you’re going to say this isn’t right but
please don't. I can't deny the way I feel. I know you were my sister’s husband but
at moments like this, it doesn’t seem to matter."

She stepped back, knowing she
probably looked a mess. She gathered her hair into her hands and pushed it off
her shoulders.

"Neither one of us is
thinking straight about this," he said in a clipped voice. "Soon,
you’ll go back to your own life. From what you’ve told me, Christie, you’re
used to more than this two-bit town. Like Judith, you wouldn’t be satisfied
staying in a place like this."

He sounded like he knew what she
wanted and her own uncertainty made her feel shortchanged. "And what is it
that you want Garrett?" she cried softly, unable to keep the words from
spilling out.

The intensity of his focus speared
through her. "What any man wants. To be successful."

"You are," she
whispered.

"To share my life with
someone special. I used to think that wasn’t a big order. The older you get,
the more you realize everything you don’t know."

Christie bowed her head and knew
deep inside she wanted to be that someone special. She wanted to believe in
forever and ever, but it wasn’t something she had ever seen. She and Judith
shared the same background, and Judith had bailed out in the end.

"I wish I knew if a forever
kind of happiness really exists. I do have faith you’ll find who you’re looking
for, Garrett. This thing between us is easily explained away as mutual
attraction." She smiled sadly. "Maybe even in some small way I remind
you of Judith. Maybe you’re trying to finish where you and she left off."

Garrett watched her grimly.
"That’s ludicrous. Judith and I finished anything that was between us.
Believe me, by the time she left, there was only Hannah between us."

His words disturbed her greatly.
Even though she had never really known her sister, she still felt hurt by the
words.

"How sad and confused Judith
must have felt." She turned and walked quickly down the barn aisle, her
chest heaving, her hair in a wild tumble down her back.

"Dammit, Christie!" He
sounded angry, but he didn’t follow her.

She was crazy to think about
wanting this man. Crazy to hope she could have him and be happy. She cared
about him as a man; as Hannah’s father, the caring adult he'd shown himself to
be.

She had never felt more gloriously
alive, yet the feeling was tempered with sadness. How could she think of being
involved with anyone? Her life was in a state of upheaval. She had virtually
abandoned her life to take on a mission that Darrell had called crazy. She
clenched her fists. It was terrible what guilt could drive a person to do.

Christie gulped, a cold wave
engulfing her. Each time she got close to Garrett she was blindsided, letting
herself lose sight of why she was really here. Did this man have the power to
make her forget everything, including the pain of the past?

Christie shook her head. She was
living in a fool’s paradise if she thought there was a man alive who could do
that. It was something she had to overcome on her own.

###

Garrett watched Christie walk
away, admiring the swing of slim hips, recalling the angry flash of her eyes.
Ruefully, he acknowledged she made him want to go up in a blaze. She'd saved
one of his most valuable horses from harm, and he'd just about given her hell.
Didn't she understand he didn't want her to get hurt? Dammit, he cared about
her! Whatever was there between them felt too damned strong to ignore.

He stared at Christie's slim back,
the long legs. With sudden decision, he took a step after her. Hadn't her
actions indicated she wanted him as much as he wanted her? Maybe he should say
the hell with it and follow her up to her apartment. They could spend all day
together in bed and then maybe the night as well ...