Country Roads(31)

The stallion hesitated another moment before he reached toward her, his breath hot on her bare forearm. His nose traveled right past her hand, to the corner of her sketchbook. She forced herself not to flinch backward. He huffed out a breath and drew his lips back from his teeth to nibble at the paper.

Julia had to bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud in hysterical relief. She let him taste the paper and moved her left hand up to stroke his neck. His ears twitched back and forth, but he continued to snuffle at her pad.

Touching his flexed neck was like smoothing her palm over living marble. His coat was as fine as satin, the muscle beneath stone-solid but warm and vital. “You are a beauty,” she breathed.

With a sudden jerk, he ripped off a corner of paper and ground it between his teeth. “Fine, you earned your carrot.”

She unfolded the fingers of her right hand by his nose, and he spit out the soggy paper, crunching on the carrot instead. Encouraged, she dared to run her fingers down the long stretch of skull between his eyes and his velvety nose. He nickered as she fluttered her fingers against the soft skin between his nostrils. Then his ears went back and he wheeled on his hind feet to race away.

Julia decided not to push her luck. She clambered down from the rail and shoved the sketchpad and pencil back into her bag. Swinging it onto her shoulder, she turned toward the barn.

Ten feet in front of her, half a dozen stable hands were standing in a semicircle with Sharon right in the center. “Well, that’s the damnedest thing I ever did see,” Sharon said.

“Plumb crazy is what I’d call it,” one groom said, shaking his head as he walked away. “That stud has a mean streak a mile wide. It’s a miracle he didn’t yank you right off that fence and pound your face into the ground.”

Julia noticed a couple of her audience members had pitchforks in their hands. Her eyes widened and went to Sharon’s face. “Yeah, they were ready to use ’em to make Darkside back off, if necessary,” Sharon said.

“You called it, though, boss lady,” another groom said, letting the tines of her pitchfork rest on the ground. “You said old Darth Darkside was her whisper horse.”

“Okay, show’s over,” Sharon said. “Everyone back to work.” She waited for her staff to disperse before she strolled over to Julia. “I know everyone finds their whisper horse, but not in a million years did I think Darkside would be yours. Or anyone else’s.”

“He’s my whisper horse?” Julia was incredulous. She turned to see Darkside slam a back hoof into the fence as a groom walked by, leading another horse. “He’s not what I’d call a sympathetic listener.”

“Everyone needs their own kind of whisper horse. Your spirit matches his in some way only the two of you know.”

Julia understood why Sharon’s friends didn’t talk much about her theory. However, she couldn’t deny the sense she understood Darkside, and he might have something to offer her in return.

“Oh, Lynnie found this in his stall.” Sharon pulled something out of her pocket. It was the swatch of material the stallion had ripped out of Julia’s sleeve. “You might be able to get it sewn back together somehow.”

Julia took the scrap of silk. It hit her that, despite the danger, she hadn’t once thought about having a seizure while she was with Darkside. She tucked the fabric into her tote. “Maybe I’ll keep it as a souvenir of meeting my whisper horse.”





Chapter 10




PAUL PUSHED OPEN the outer door to his office on the first floor of a 1850s-era Victorian house. His suit jacket was slung over his shoulder on the hook of his index finger, and he had a brown bag holding a deli sandwich in the other hand. As he walked in, his administrative assistant stopped her high-speed keyboarding to look up at him.

“You’ll never guess who called,” she said, waggling her penciled-in eyebrows.

“Judging by your expression, Verna, someone I wish hadn’t.”

“Belle Messer.”

He groaned.

“The good news is she’s given up on auctioning you off as a dinner date at the charity gala next Saturday.”

“Then what’s the bad news?”

“She pestered me until I said you would donate two hours of legal consultation to the silent auction. And I told her she couldn’t buy it for herself this time.”

“Did she agree?” The last time he’d spent the two hours fending off the theater fund-raiser’s amorous advances.

“Yessir. I think she’s given up on you.”

“I can only hope. This isn’t one of those costume things, is it?”