The Horse Trainer's Secret Read online

  “J.D., I think what you’re doing is amazing.” One glance told her that none of these horses were even remotely fit to be ridden. Yet. “I don’t mind grooming or whatever if that’s what you need me to do. God knows I know how to muck stalls, too.”

  She did it regularly at Angel River. As well as tossing straw and hay bales, walking miles every day and overseeing the guest activities. All for the privilege of tending their string of horses.

  It’d been the perfect life.

  Until her best friend and her godson had moved away.

  J.D. smiled. “Someone willing to shovel horse poop. I knew there was a reason why I liked you. When do you want to start?”

  Megan spread her hands and looked down at herself. She was wearing her usual Western-cut shirt and worn blue jeans. The only thing that differed from her daily attire were the tennis shoes she’d purchased at Shop-World. “I’m good to go right now if that works for you.”

  J.D. squeezed her arm and waved down Johnnie again. “I’ll leave you with Johnnie, then. She runs the show in the med wing. When you’re finished, stop off at the house. I’ll introduce you to Lat’s friends in the front field. They’re the ones needing saddle time to keep them from getting too big for their britches.”

  She turned and left, and after having Megan fill out a brief volunteer form, Johnnie continued the tour, this time stopping to go over even more details. Like which horses got which feed. Which ones needed this nutrient. Which ones needed that medication. All the details were posted neatly on a schedule, and as soon as Johnnie realized that Megan was already familiar with the task, she left her to it.

  Once Megan was finished, Johnnie gave her a box of first-aid supplies and wraps, and together they tended two horses who’d been tangled in barbed wire before arriving at the rescue only a few days earlier.

  After that, Megan walked several horses—some more willing than others—and cleaned hooves and brushed coats. She was patiently working burrs from an antsy pony’s mane when her neck prickled and she glanced up.

  Nick was standing on the other side of the pen, hands resting on the top rail. His dark hair gleamed in the slanting sunlight.

  How long he’d been standing there was anyone’s guess.

  Heat filled her and she quickly sidestepped when the young pony jerked and kicked out a foot. The hoof glanced painfully against her leg, but she ignored it.

  She’d had worse treatment.

  Instead, she ran her hand soothingly over the pony’s shoulder. “You’re all right,” she said softly.

  The flesh under Megan’s palm rippled and the pony yanked her head, but after a tense moment she lowered her hind leg once more.

  Megan looked over at Nick again. She kept her voice pleasantly calm. Low. “What do you want?” If he said the dinner she owed him, she was going to throw the metal bucket that she’d been using to catch the burrs at his head.

  She decided to blame her hostility on pregnancy hormones.

  It certainly couldn’t be him specifically causing it.

  “Too hard to believe I don’t want anything?”

  She contained a snort only because she didn’t want to startle the pony again.

  “Does she have a name?” he asked.

  “Not officially. Personally, I’m voting for Burrito.”

  “How’d she get all the stickers in her mane?”

  “Dunno. Curiosity? I’ve already gotten them out of her forelock and her ears. She didn’t have any in her tail.” It was a tedious task, alternating between her fingers and a burr brush to separate the strands and work the prickly bits free. “Some animals have a special skill for finding the damn things. She seems to be one of them.”

  The entire process was a nuisance. Combine it with a skittish young pony who’d been half-starved and didn’t trust anyone? Nuisance became a royal pain in the butt.

  But the poor animal didn’t know that.

  “J.D. says you’ve been here nearly all day.”

  Better here doing something productive than sleeping the day away like a slug in her motel room. “So?”

  “So don’t you think it might be time to take a break?”

  She lifted her head again to give him a good glare, only to realize that she was the only person left out in the pens.

  All of the other volunteers had departed.

  She didn’t think that J.D. would have called Nick for the purpose of telling him that Megan had been there all day. “Why are you here again?”

  “Checking on a delivery.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “Delivery of what?”

  “Building trusses, actually.” A smile played across his lips. “For my grandfather and Susan. They’ve been living with J.D. and Jake up to now, but are ready for a cottage of their own. Going to be starting construction soon.” He pointed his thumb. “Right over there in the other corner of the pasture.”

  Now she felt supremely foolish for thinking his presence had anything to do with her.

  She poked her finger on a lurking burr she hadn’t noticed and swore under her breath when it pricked her skin. Her hands were riddled with similar jabs, but wearing the gloves she’d started out with had only made the task more difficult.

  There was absolutely no reason why her eyes should sting with tears now, but they did.

  She sucked the bead of blood from her knuckle and blinked, staring harder at the work still remaining. Despite the concoction of oil and hair conditioner that she’d been using along with the specially designed burr brush, she still had several inches to go and a mess of burrs and matted horsehair that was bigger than her fist.

  She heard a rustle and then Nick was standing next to her. “Come on.” He slipped the brush from her grip. “You can take a break.”

  Megan sniffled and calmed the animal again when she shifted nervously away from Nick. “If I leave her like this, her mane is only going to get tangled up all over again.” Burrs were nature’s Velcro. “And she doesn’t like men, so don’t get so close.”

  He obediently backed away. “Is that why she tolerates you? Because you’re like-minded females?”

  Megan turned away from him, swiping her nose and blinking furiously. “I don’t dislike men.”

  “But you don’t have a lot of uses for us. Except maybe one.”

  “Yeah, well, in my experience that’s all most guys are good for.” Her voice sounded thick.

  “Are you crying?”

  “No!” She had to quickly sidestep another kick from the pony.

  He swore. “Can’t you put more than one tie on her?”

  “One is plenty. She’s already traumatized. That’s why I haven’t closed the gate. Just go.” She waved her arm, refusing to look at him.

  God help her if she wiped her cheek.

  “Leave us alone so I can finish what I started. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time than hang around annoying me. No doubt Delia Templeton could help you with ideas.” She went hot, then cold, when she heard the words come out.

  And when the silence stretched out afterward, she was even more mortified.

  She peered harder at Burrito’s burr-ridden mane and carefully worked a lock of hair free only to feel yet another prick, this one on the inside of her wrist. She gritted her teeth and dared one more tear to slide down her cheek.

  “Delia is only a friend,” Nick finally said. His voice was quiet. Steady.

  The kind of quiet and steady that seduced a person into believing him.

  “Doesn’t matter to me what she is.” She knelt down long enough to grab the bottle of oily goop meant to soften the burrs and lubricate the hair. “I don’t care how many girlfriends you have.”

  “Liar.”

  Despite herself, she slid a look his way, then jerked her attention back to the pony. She worked several drops of oil into
the last matted knot. “If she’s not your girlfriend, she obviously wants to be.”

  Dear god, Megan. Shut your trap!

  “I’ve known Delia a long time. She’ll lose interest before long.”

  Burrito jerked against her tie and lifted her back leg again. “Shhh.” Megan stroked her again. “Relax. Nobody’s trying to hurt you. Not here.”

  “I could say the same thing to you.” Then he sighed when she remained stoically silent. She heard a rustle again. “Don’t stay out here all night, Megan.”

  She angled her head slightly, watching from the corner of her eye as he walked away.

  The tear finally dared to fall.

  It slid, hot and fat, right past her lashes.

  Chapter Seven

  Megan didn’t stop at the house to say goodbye to J.D. after finally removing the last burr from the pony’s mane and tucking her into her stall in the med wing.

  For one thing, it was nearly dark.

  For another, Megan could see through one of the windows at the back of the house that J.D. and her family—including Nick—were sitting around a big table having dinner.

  She drove back into town, stopping at Shop-World yet again to pick up a small first aid kit. Between blisters on her feet and burr bites on her hands, she needed it. She also bought a quart of milk, a box of saltine crackers and a little tub of ridiculously priced facial moisturizer that was “guaranteed to reduce fine lines and wrinkles in just fourteen days!”

  On the way back to the motel, she picked up a hamburger at a drive-thru. But once she drove away from the restaurant, the smell of the charbroiled beef prompted her to pull over to the side of the road and toss the burger out the window.

  It was either that or pull over and toss the contents of her stomach.

  At the motel, she had her pick of parking spaces. She parked directly in front of her door and carried her Shop-World purchases inside.

  The room was, once again, neat as a pin.

  Megan’s clothes were getting more jumbled by the day inside her unpacked suitcases, however, and she promised herself that she’d hang up her stuff in the closet and put the rest away in the dresser before she went to bed.

  Neat though the room was, it felt stuffy after having been closed up all day, so she propped open the door with the patio chair to get some air.

  She filled the motel-supplied coffee cup with milk and drank it, then had a suspenseful several minutes before she determined it was going to stay down. After that, she rinsed out the cup and refilled it with instant lemonade.

  Lemon flavor was one of the few things that seemed to unfailingly agree with her in her pregnant state.

  She flipped on the television. She had no interest in watching any particular show, but it provided some welcome noise. At least enough to drown out the noise inside her head.

  She grabbed the television remote and turned up the volume on Maureen O’Hara trying to slap John Wayne when he snuck a kiss.

  She toed off her tennis shoes and stacked all the pillows against the cheap, fake-wood headboard. Then, with a sleeve of saltines in hand, she sat on the mattress, propped herself against the pillows and set her lemonade on the nightstand.

  After sticking a cracker in her mouth, she grabbed her cell phone to check her voice mail.

  “Hi, Megan,” the familiar chirpy voice greeted. “Kimmie, here, from the women’s clin—”

  Megan deleted it.

  “Hey, there, stranger. It’s Rory. Gage and I are finally heading home from Maine. Give me a call. I miss you! Can’t wait to hear how things are going with the Rambling Mountain deal.”

  Her thumb hovered over the screen to delete the message. But she didn’t. She just set her phone back on her nightstand. Then she washed down the dry cracker with lemonade and leaned back against the pillows once more.

  From outside, she heard the distant gunning of a car engine.

  Maureen and John were still at it on the TV.

  Cradling the sleeve of saltines against her belly, she closed her eyes. Just for a few minutes. Then she’d get to her suitcases...

  “Holy Mother of—”

  She jerked awake at the furious voice and blinked confusedly.

  On the TV, John and Maureen were running into their white Irish cottage and the credits were rolling.

  In the doorway of Megan’s motel room, Nick was glowering.

  “Anybody could have walked in here!” He kicked aside the salmon-colored chair and stepped into the room. The door shut behind him.

  She swung her feet off the bed and stood up, swaying just a little from grogginess. “Anybody did!” She realized she was still clutching the sleeve of saltine crackers and tossed it onto the nightstand. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to check on you.” His gray gaze slid over the suitcases on her bed. “Damn good thing. Snoring away. Door wide-open. Don’t you have any sense at all?”

  She gaped at him. “I do not snore.”

  He tossed a small plastic container onto the dresser. “Well, having witnessed more than one instance of it, I’d have to argue with you there. But the point is that you’re snoozing away like the dead with the freaking door open!”

  Her temper bubbled. “The point is that you’ve got no business being here at all!”

  His jaw looked tight. “I brought you leftovers from J.D.’s.”

  “Go take care packages to your cute brunette. I don’t need or want them.”

  “Delia Templeton is not my anything. She never has been. She never will be. I told you. She’s just a friend.”

  “Yeah, well, if she really were just your friend, you’d be honest with her and tell her that, because she obviously hasn’t gotten the memo!”

  He pointed at her. “And if you were the least bit honest with yourself, you’d get over this stupid pretense that there’s nothing between us.”

  She snatched up a tennis shoe and threw it at him.

  He ducked and it hit the door behind him.

  When he straightened, he no longer looked angry.

  He was actually grinning.

  She set her teeth, wanting in the worst way to see if her aim was any better with her second shoe. “Get. Out.”

  He tossed the tennis shoe back and it landed on the bed beside her. “Lock it this time.” With a smirk, he went out the door and pulled it shut after him.

  Megan snatched up the shoe and threw it again.

  It banged loudly against the closed door and didn’t provide anywhere near the satisfaction that it could have.

  She stormed over and flipped the lock, then latched the door chain for good measure.

  “Neanderthal!” She picked up the container of leftovers, tossed it into the empty trash can and began pacing around the room.

  But the hollowness in her stomach drove her to pick the container right back out.

  She sat on the foot of the bed and peeled back the lid.

  A golden-brown chicken breast nestled in a bed of rice. A slice of lemon hinted at the flavor of the light sauce drizzled over it.

  She put it in the microwave and set the timer for two minutes, but took it out after one because she couldn’t wait.

  Then she sat down on her bed and ate every bite.

  After showering and slathering her face with lotion, and tending to the cuts on her hands, her bruise and her blisters, she finally, finally, turned off the television and the light.

  She punched the pillow under her cheek.

  “And I do not snore,” she muttered.

  * * *

  Nick received the engineering report late the next afternoon.

  He hadn’t seen Megan since the night before, though he half expected her to show up at his office and give him more hell.

  He was almost disappointed that she didn’t.

  It wa
s much easier to deal with her ire than it was to deal with her tears.

  Because whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had been crying out at J.D.’s over that skinny brown pony with the matted mane.

  The easiest solution would be simply to call her.

  Of course, she’d need to be in her motel room to actually answer either the motel phone or her cell phone.

  “What’re you looking so annoyed about?” Gina set a stack of mail on the corner of his desk.

  “Seriously. What’s the point of a cell phone if you never have it with you?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Okay. Well. On that note.” She turned and left his office.

  He rubbed his hand over his face and sighed. Then, with his briefcase and report in hand, he got up and left the office.

  The phone was ringing right next to her elbow, but Gina was ignoring it, evidently in favor of popping the top of a diet soda.

  “Are you going to answer that?”

  She smiled. “I’m on my break. Now, if you hired someone else to help me—”

  He snatched up the phone. “Ventura and Ventura.” It wasn’t quite a snarl.

  “Nick?”

  Megan’s voice was immediately recognizable. And it made something tighten in his gut.

  He turned his back on Gina. “Megan. Yeah. I was just heading out to—”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she interrupted. Hurriedly. As if she wouldn’t have been able to get the words out otherwise.

  He exhaled and tapped the stapled packet of papers he was holding against his thigh.

  “I didn’t intend to fall asleep with the door open. And the, uh, the chicken was delicious. Anyway, I don’t want to keep you. I just needed to get that out of the way.”

  “Okay.” He shifted restlessly. “I still think you could find someplace better than the Cozy Night for the duration of your stay.”

  Gina wasn’t making any attempt to offer him some privacy, choosing instead to make a production of unwrapping a straw and sliding it into her soda can.

  He turned his back on her again. “I received the engineer’s report,” he told Megan. “I was actually going to head over to the motel. See if I could catch you. Are you there now?”