Rescued by a Stranger Read online

  Jill requested no more of her than bare-bones beginner work—basic walking and trotting to assess her experience. Yet Rebecca’s looks were insolent, and her answer to nearly every question an indolent shrug. Her black riding breeches looked new, but her knit T-shirt was faded and skintight, and the worn, blunt toes of her ankle-high Doc Martens barely fit in the stirrup irons.

  “Stretch your leg long, Rebecca, and lift your toe. Don’t hang on the reins for balance.”

  Neither Rebecca’s seat nor her hands changed that Chase could tell. When Roy and his passenger trotted past the gallery of padded folding chairs at the end of the arena, Chase finally caught an exasperated eye roll from Jill.

  The only other spectators, Rebecca’s mother and sister, had paid Chase little mind during the lesson, but Jamie divided her time between studying her sister and staring around the arena as if memorizing every detail. Occasionally her eyes met Chase’s, and then she would offer a shy smile or rub her palms self-consciously on the plastic arms of her wheelchair.

  He’d been curious from the moment he’d seen Jamie the day before, even though he’d vowed to leave professional curiosity behind. But kids and families were his specialty. They were the reason he’d gone to medical school. And they were his Achilles’ heel. When Jamie’s halting glance got to him at last and he stood to go greet her, his heart skittered around his chest like a nervous rabbit’s. He didn’t have to tell them who he was, yet it seemed as if the pair could see through him right into the darkness he carried.

  “Good afternoon, ladies.” He directed a smile first at Anita and then Jamie. “We didn’t get to meet properly yesterday afternoon. I’m Chase Preston, a friend of Jill’s. I didn’t want you to think I’m just lurking.”

  Even though he was.

  “I’m Rebecca’s mother, Anita. This is her sister, Jamie.”

  “Very nice to meet you both. It’s good you all are here to cheerlead.”

  “Becky was pretty excited about the first lesson,” her mother said. “We had to watch.”

  Chase looked away to hide astonishment. If this was Rebecca showing excitement, he couldn’t imagine what her lack of interest would look like. Anita Barnes, however, didn’t seem to think she’d said anything strange.

  “Okay, Rebecca. Walk him now.” Jill’s voice echoed slightly in the spacious metal building.

  Rebecca’s immediate response might have been relief, but her features flicked so quickly back to boredom that Chase doubted his eyes. Jill, on the other hand, gave him a smile that sent his stomach into lazy, cheerful rolls of pleasure. He’d studied her during the lesson, an exercise that hadn’t dimmed his budding crush in the least. She’d exchanged jeans for a pair of cocoa-colored riding breeches and removed a blue sweatshirt, leaving a yellow tank top. Slender legs and flared hips had emerged, just as they had yesterday, from the baggy denim of her jeans. Along with shapely arms and full, rounded breasts, the body her riding clothes revealed definitely did not belong to a tomboy.

  She was more than a pretty woman, however. What compelled him was her mastery over contrast. Although her legs and arms were toned and muscular, they were feminine. Although she moved with decisiveness, her tread barely left prints. And she stepped out with the bravado of a platoon, her soft commands echoing with authority.

  “Bring him into the center now.”

  Rebecca continued walking. Jill’s patience didn’t waver, but a hard, calculating eye followed the teenager’s progress.

  “She’s trying on purpose to make her mad,” Jamie whispered to Chase, her face grave, almost sad.

  Chase tried to find the resemblance to Rebecca, but although they shared the same cute-pretty features there was little else. Jamie wore a red Aéropostale T-shirt, faded jeans, and shiny white Nikes, and her brown hair tumbled in waves past her shoulders. She looked as scrubbed and fresh as spring.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  Rebecca’s dramatically eye-linered eyes and the green-swashed hair spiking from beneath her helmet commanded everyone’s attention as she passed by again. For the first time, Jill raised her voice a notch.

  “Bring him now, Rebecca.”

  Rebecca obeyed at last, albeit as slowly as if she needed ten yards to stop a train.

  “She wants to see if she can blow the lessons. She always tries to see how much she can get away with. I wish she wouldn’t do it here.”

  “Jamie,” her mother warned.

  “Are you an older sister?” Chase asked diplomatically.

  “We’re twins—fraternal.”

  “Ah.”

  Becky swung her leg over Roy’s croup and dangled above the ground on the left side of the saddle. Jill supported her to the ground, gave her some quiet instructions, and stood back. Rebecca mounted and dismounted four times before Jill made a cursory nod of her head.

  “Enough for this time,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Walk him now, three times each direction of the arena.”

  With that Jill approached the audience of three. If she was fed up it still didn’t show.

  “So how did she do?” Anita Barnes’s confident voice said she already knew the answer.

  “Oh? We’ll make a horsewoman of her in the end. Jamie, what did you think?”

  “It’s so great. I wish my sister appreciated it.”

  Jill cocked an eyebrow but said nothing and rubbed unconsciously at her injured arm. Chase fought a rush of warmth and the urge to massage away the soreness.

  “I’m sorry.” She looked into his eyes “This isn’t very exciting for you.”

  “Hey, I could have left any time. I enjoyed it.” When Anita looked away and waved for Rebecca’s attention, he leaned forward. “Six times around the ring?” he whispered. “The horse isn’t even sweating.”

  Jill’s smirk told him all he needed to know about her understanding of passive revenge. She took a chair next to Chase, and sullen Rebecca began the punitive trudge.

  “I would never have guessed you to be a petty woman.” He chuckled.

  “Proves how much you have to learn.” She folded her arms and stretched her legs.

  But by round three, Rebecca dragged, and Jill clearly lost the heart for carrying out the full sentence. She stopped the teen, and after showing her how to check the gelding between his forelegs for temperature, declared Roy sufficiently cooled.

  “You can unsaddle him and brush him down,” Jill told her. “Tired?”

  A shrug.

  “What did you think?”

  “Pretty boring. Am I done now?”

  Jill’s back stiffened, but once again, she betrayed nothing in her voice. “You know what? I think we’re all done.”

  Chapter Nine

  JILL STOPPED AT the door with the others, allowing Rebecca to lead Roy into the barn alone. Part of her feared that if she had to spend another minute in Becky Barnes’s presence she’d throw her over a knee. The girl was a pint-sized pain in the world’s ass. The only things that had kept Jill composed were Chase, sitting attentively at the end of the arena, and Jamie, hanging on every word like she was studying the law.

  She set a hand on Jamie’s shoulder and handed her a horse treat. “I want to make sure you aren’t worried about being in the barn after yesterday. Roy is a far different horse than Dragon is, but even so, let’s teach you and Becky how to introduce him to your chair. Whatcha think?”

  “I’m not sure about this.” Anita clamped her fingers over one handle of the wheelchair.

  “Mom, jeez, I’ll be fine.”

  “I understand,” Jill said, and she honestly did. “But I promise, I won’t let Jamie get hurt.”

  Anita slowly let go of the chair, and Jill walked beside Jamie as she rolled through the doorway. Roy and Rebecca were the barn’s only occupants, both standing semi-slumped in the aisle.

  “Hey, Becky,” Jill called. “Would you lead Roy slowly back down here? I want you to help him meet Jamie before she moves toward him.”

  For once, although
she scowled, Rebecca did as she’d been instructed. She stopped a foot in front of her sister, and Roy barely blinked an eye. He sniffed a chair wheel, snorted once, and nosed Jamie’s lap. She stretched a hand to the big gray’s pink muzzle, and he lipped the treat from her palm. “What a good boy,” she murmured. The simple act clearly put her in ecstasy.

  From behind her, Chase found his voice again. “How long has she been in a wheelchair, Mrs. Barnes?”

  “A year and a half. She’s adjusted well.”

  “She seems like a good kid.”

  “They both are.” Anita’s reply was slightly sharp, slightly defensive. Chase dropped the line of questioning.

  Becky made the job of unsaddling and grooming far more time-consuming and complicated than it needed to be, but it was worth the annoyance to watch the pure pleasure in Jamie’s face when Roy allowed her to roll right up and brush his sides and legs. Becky resolutely ignored her sister, keeping to her own side, huffing with rolled eyes when Jamie exclaimed over anything. Jill let the little tableau unfold without interference, only giving instructions on where to put equipment and tack. Nonetheless, she kept an eagle eye on the dynamics between the Barnes twins and their eerily familiar animosity.

  Half an hour later, Roy rolled in his pasture and the family rolled out of the stable yard in their blue van. Jill leaned against a gatepost, exhausted. Her shoulder throbbed. Her neck had a permanent tension kink. “That,” she said, to Chase, who leaned backward against the fence, “was a little bit of awful.”

  He hooked his boot heel on the lowest board and looped his arms over the top one. “You have the patience of a sitting mule. That child, in my humble opinion, needs a hard look at my mama’s switch.”

  “Hah, I was thinking the same thing. Wait. A sitting mule?”

  “When a mule decides to sit she can stay there a long time, no matter how people harass her.”

  “Thank you so much—I think.”

  “Definitely a compliment. Are you going to survive Becky Barnes?”

  “Disagreeable as she is, yes. But, truth to tell, I doubt these lessons will last long enough to matter. I predict Becky quits within the month.”

  “Maybe so. Nonetheless, I was impressed. You talked to that child as if she wasn’t spoiled even a little bit.”

  “Yeah.” She snorted with only a tinge of derision. “The dumb thing is, the child has enough natural instinct to follow the fewest instructions possible and still keep from killing herself. It’s not all that easy to do—like purposely singing badly. She could be a nice little rider if she chose to be. I don’t think she will.”

  “If not, it won’t be because of you.”

  “Wow, aren’t you the sweet one? Say? How’d the interview go?”

  For the first time he shifted uncomfortably. He swung around to face her and hooked the fence rail with one arm. “Truth? Looks like they’ll be puttin’ me right here in your hair, working on David’s new arena.”

  He could have broken out in a song and dance and she wouldn’t have been more surprised. Here? Working for Connery right in front of her? It shouldn’t matter in the least. She barely knew this guy. In fact, she’d barely forgiven him for almost being a jerk.

  “Oh? How’d that happen?” she asked, more acerbically than she’d intended.

  “Tell you what. You let me take you to dinner, because it’s my turn to thank you, and I’ll give you the whole story.”

  How had this man turned suddenly from stranger-passing-through to a fixture in her life at the one place that was her haven?

  “Go on a date, Mr. Triumph? Really?”

  “Sure, what the heck, let’s call it a date. What do you say?”

  “I have four more lessons to teach,” she warned. “I won’t be done until seven-thirty or eight.”

  “It’ll be true dinner then. I can pick you up in your truck when you’re ready.”

  He made her laugh so easily. “That’s just weird enough I have to accept. Pick me up right here. Do you care if I smell like a barn?”

  “Honey, if I get close enough to tell that, it’ll make up for the entire rest of this day.”

  The accented innuendo rolled over her, numbing the last of her misgivings like ten massaging fingers of Kentucky bourbon. She swallowed. “Yeah. What you said.”

  FIVE HOURS LATER, more than a little bemused, Chase stood beside Jill in front of a gleaming cage inside the Loon Feather Café. She crooned to a small white cockatiel that fluffed its feathers and scrabbled along its perch in excitement.

  “How … howdee,” the bird squeaked. “Howdee stray-jer.”

  Behind the white bird, a slightly larger, pearl-gray cage mate let out a long, happy wolf whistle. Propped against the outside of the cage was a hand-lettered sign: “Cotton’s new phrase—‘Welcome, come in.’ ”

  “Oh, good girl, Cotton,” Jill cooed. “Welcome, come in.”

  Cotton, evidently the white bird’s name, cocked her head. Jill glanced at Chase.

  “These little ones are the Loon’s official greeters, almost more iconic than the restaurant itself.” She bent to the cage again. “Welcome. Come in.”

  “Wekkum-ku-im.” The bird’s chirping words were close.

  “Try it,” Jill urged. “Everyone is required to help teach Cotton her phrases. She learned ‘howdy stranger’ last year. Now it’s a Loon Feather tradition.”

  “Oh, I think you’re doin’ a fine job without me.” He scratched the back of his head self-consciously. “Does the other one talk?”

  Jill laughed. “Lester? He has his own way of communicating. You’ll see.”

  Lester, at the sound of his name it seemed, warbled a second wolf whistle and launched into a hearty rendition of “The Colonel Bogey March.”

  “He’s like the Hogwarts sorting hat,” Jill laughed. “You’re either Colonel Bogey or Andy Griffith. Welcome to the Bogeys.”

  Chase shook his head and allowed a breathy laugh. “I don’t understand a thing you’re talking about.”

  “You will. Come on. Talk to Cotton and let’s go get some pizza. Told you, the owner’s husband makes a mean pepperoni.”

  With a skeptical look around the large waiting area in the café’s new entryway, Chase bent a little closer to the cage.

  “Welcome. Come in,” he said quietly.

  Cotton gave him a confused stare.

  “It takes her a little time to get to know you,” Jill said.

  Twenty minutes later, Effie Jorgenson, the Loon’s proprietress, set a sizzling pizza between them on a calico tablecloth at the Loon Feather Café.

  “Sure you don’t want a nice cold beer with this?” She cocked a brow at Chase, who only shook his head. “The Coke is fine, Miz Jorgenson. I’m the designated driver.”

  “Told you I’d be happy to drive.” Jill hefted her own glass of Diet Coke.

  “It’s all right,” he replied. “Nothin’ better than soda—ah, pop—and pizza.”

  Jill took a small edge piece of the pizza and fixed him with quizzical eyes, obviously knowing most red-blooded men figured it was beer that went with pizza like chocolate went with milk. He avoided her implied question and moved a large center piece of pizza onto his plate.

  “So,” she said, dropping the beer topic and returning to what he’d told her on the drive to the café, “the coil is shot. But it’s fixable, you say?”

  He nodded, blowing on his pizza. “The good news is, an engine as old as the Bonne’s isn’t complicated. I can fix it. Bad news is, the coil is a little tough to find. Most vintage parts are in use, and there aren’t many lying on stock shelves.”

  “So what’s the plan? Buy a nice, safe car?”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  “Sorry.”

  She nibbled carefully at her hot crust and tested the temperature of the sauce with the tip of her tongue. The sight of it slipping delicately between her impishly upturned lips sent a little depth charge to his lower belly, where it exploded into warmth and heaviness.
/>   “Dewey will search his contacts.” He forced away the unwanted physical reaction. “I’ll go online. Maybe someone on eBay or a bike site will have a lead. I’ll find one; it might take a little time.” He picked up his fork. “I’ll find a rental car temporarily, book a room, and go from there.”

  “You know the guesthouse is available,” she said with an easy, welcoming shrug. “Why not stay with us? We’ll keep Dee out of your way.”

  At that he allowed a rueful chuckle. He hadn’t meant to piss Dee off. “She sure was spittin’ mad this morning. I reckon I took care of keeping her away all by myself.”

  “Not many people turn her down.”

  “Aw, c’mon, you make her sound like a successful streetwalker.”

  “No. She’s actually pretty choosy. But when she chooses, most guys jump.”

  “Maybe if I’d met her first …” He pointed his fork at her with a wink. “You’re a tough act to follow.”

  “Better watch that slick tongue. You’re on my hit list, you know. Working for the bad guys the way you do now.”

  “Does it really bother you?”

  “Probably more than it should, because it sounds like it’s his father’s fault. It’s the principle.”

  Chase remembered his brief encounter with the owner of the stable. He remembered his endless, not-so-brief encounters with his own father over the years. “Sometimes it’s easier to face the wrath of an angry mob than fight your parents one more time.”

  She cocked her head. “Is that what you’re doing by taking the job? Appeasing your grandfather?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay then. Not much to say to that, is there?”

  “Look. Poppa’s a good guy. A good man. He’s strong in his faith, strong in his principles. I grew up closer to him than to my own father. So, yeah, I disappoint him as little as possible.”

  “How long have you lived in Memphis, away from your family?” she asked, and finally popped her small piece of pizza fully into her mouth.

  “Ten years.”

  She reached for a larger piece and did a poor job of hiding her surprise. He knew she was trying to do some kind of math. In Memphis, when dealing with street kids, looking younger than his true age was a plus. Here, probably not so much.