Tempestuous/Restless Heart (15 page)

Alex had taken falls before—as a seasoned rider, she expected to take her share of spills. But this wasn’t just a tumble, it was a catastrophe. This was the kind of crash that ended careers, even lives.

Terminator galloped for the triple bar out of control, wild, running as if he were being chased by the devil himself. He cut the corner too sharply, saw the fence too late, tried to put on the brakes, and slipped in the mud, then took off in a last-ditch effort to save himself. He went up in the air, twisting as his hind legs slipped out from under him, and then went crashing down.

Alex saw it all happen in slow motion—the jerky takeoff, the sudden terrible change of angle, the red-and-white bars of the fence rushing up at her, then nothing.

When the blackness receded, she was looking up at half a dozen anxious faces. Her fuzzy gaze focused in on one.

“Christian?”

He was on his knees beside her, mud staining his immaculate white breeches, sweat running in rivers down his ashen face. His eyes were bright with an emotion like panic. “Lie still, darling,” he said, his voice choked and hoarse. He ran a trembling hand back through her hair. “Just lie still. There’s a doctor coming.”

“I’m all right,” she said, groaning as she struggled to sit up. “All right” was a gross exaggeration. She felt as if she’d been beaten with a club, but none of the pain was the kind associated with broken bones. She looked at him anxiously. “The horse?”

“Damn the horse!” Christian barked, his face flaming a furious shade of red.

The horse! If he’d had a gun, he would have shot the hateful creature there and then. Nothing,
nothing
in his life had ever terrified him the way seeing her fall had—watching Alex lose control, watching the horse go down in a tangle of legs and lumber. It had nearly killed him to see it happen, to fear the worst, to bend over Alex as she lay unconscious for those few terrible seconds. And she was asking about the bloody horse!

“The horse is fine, Ms. Gianni,” one of the ring stewards said from somewhere above her.

Alex nodded, wincing at the throbbing that set off in her head. Helmet or no, she’d taken quite a jolt. Still, she was in one piece and saw no reason not to demonstrate that fact to the five hundred people watching. Hanging on to Christian’s arm for support, she pushed herself to her feet and was rewarded with a round of applause for her efforts.

An hour later she’d been thoroughly checked over by the doctor on call and pronounced whole and healthy. Half her body was liable to turn black and blue, and she had a nasty cut on her right cheekbone, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t endured before.

She was sitting on a trunk in the stall where her tack was stored, holding a bag of ice to her cheek when Christian reappeared. After helping her from the ring to the ambulance and hovering like a mother hen while the doctor checked her for a concussion, he had been called back to the arena to ride in the jump-off.

“How’d it go?” she asked, trying to muster a smile that ended up looking more like a grimace.

“I blew the combination,” he said flatly. “We came third.”

“Oh.”

She watched him pace the small enclosure with his hands on his hips. His head was bent, his pale hair falling onto his forehead. Nervous tension surrounded him like an electrical field. It beamed out of his blue eyes like lasers when he stopped and looked at her from under lowered brows. He was angry, she realized. Furious. The storm was being controlled by his proper British manners, but the manners were clearly in danger of losing their grip.

“You could have been killed,” he said, breaking the silence that had become unbearable.

“But I wasn’t.”

The first explosion broke through his control like a thunderclap. “Dammit, Alex, that isn’t the point!”

“We ride, we take risks, Christian,” she said, maintaining her calm. “You know that. You take them too.”

“Acceptable risks,” he stipulated, jabbing the air between them with a slender forefinger. “There’s a line there, and you’ve gone way across it, Alex.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that this reckless disregard for your life has got to stop. You’re shipping that horse back to Haskell immediately.”

She bristled at his autocratic mind-your-betters tone of voice. “That’s not for you to decide, Christian. You don’t run my life.”

The second rumble of thunder shook the rafters above them. “Well, somebody’s got to, because you’re bloody well going to kill yourself!”

“I’m just doing my job,” Alex said tightly.

Christian shook his head. “This goes well beyond doing your job or hanging on to your damnable independence. You’re trying to punish yourself. You think you have to take on the likes of that rogue to make up for all the imagined sins you committed in California, for all the things you lost—”

“That’s absurd!” she exclaimed, vaulting off the tack trunk as if it had suddenly turned red-hot.

“It’s self-destructive, Alex, and it’s stupid—”

“It’s a damned lie!” she shouted, her heart pounding wildly.

“Is it?” Christian demanded softly. His fingers closed around her chin and tilted her bruised face upward. “Look me in the eye, Alex. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t blame yourself for what that bastard Reidell did to you.”

Tears and defiance rose in her eyes, but denial wouldn’t come. She could feel the words stick in her throat like a rock, but she couldn’t force them out. She glared at Christian, hating him for doing this to her, for making her feel things she didn’t want to feel and face things she didn’t want to face. Her own sense of fury built inside her, but all the words stayed bottled up, and the pressure built.

Christian sighed and slid his palm along her uninjured cheek.

“I love you, Alex,” he murmured. “But I can’t stand by and watch you break your neck in penance for something that wasn’t your fault.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that horse goes or I go,” Christian said, gritting his teeth. He’d never been one for ultimatums. He’d never been one for manipulating people. But then he’d never been in love. Nor had he ever stood helplessly by while someone he loved risked her life and came close to losing it. He had to do something to save her, to save himself, and this was the only thing he could think of.

“I can’t afford—”

“You can’t afford not to. Think of Isabella if you can’t think of yourself. What would have happened to her if you’d been killed or crippled out there today? And all for nothing, Alex!” he said plaintively. “I know money is a problem, but I can help you if you’ll let me. You don’t need Haskell.”
You need me. Please say you need me.

“I don’t need to be bullied either,” Alex said, striking out, old wounds stinging more sharply than the new. “And I don’t need you psychoanalyzing me. You’re blowing this all out of proportion because you’ve got some macho obsessive need to control my life. Well, I’ve got news for you, buster,” she said, flinging the ice bag at him. It hit his shoulder and fell to the wooden floor of the stall. She kicked it aside as she moved to stand toe to toe with him. “I’m in control,” she declared. “Nobody tells me what to do or who to be or how to dress,” she said, her voice rising with each word.
“I’m in control!”

The shout rang in her own ears, the volume and pitch making it painfully obvious that what she said was not true. She stared at Christian just the same, unwilling to back down. And he stared back, his handsome face carefully blank.

“You know where to find me,” he said quietly, using every ounce of strength he had to tamp down the pain ripping through his chest.

“Who says I’ll come looking?” Alex was certain her words hurt her more than they hurt Christian. Her heart wrenched as she said them and he walked away, out of her stall and out of her life.

eleven

IT HURT TO MOVE. THE SLIGHTEST SHIFT OF
weight set off small explosions of pain throughout the right side of her body. Her shoulder throbbed abominably. The muscles all down her side felt as though they’d been run through a meat grinder. Alex recognized the distinctive kinds of pain from each distinctive injury. She’d been hurt often enough to distinguish one from the next. There was the pain that came from torn muscle fibers. The pain that came from blood pooling beneath the surface of the skin. The pain that lingered from the jolt of a sudden, hard impact.

But the physical pain was a welcomed distraction from the emotional pain that permeated her entire being, so on Monday morning, at the crack of dawn, Alex inched her way out of bed and hobbled down the hall for a therapeutic soak in the tub. Rigid muscles let loose to some degree, at least until she was able to raise her right arm almost to shoulder height by the time she struggled out of the water twenty minutes later.

As she had expected, most of the right side of her body was purpling from the forceful landing on the thick wooden bars of the jump. Anything but the slightest brush of the towel made her wince, and every time she winced, the cut on her cheek tugged at the butterfly patch the doctor had applied. The pain in her cheek made her grit her teeth, and gritting her teeth amplified the pounding in her head.

“Face it, Gianni,” she muttered to her battered reflection in the mirror. “You just can’t win for losing.”

She would have made a good extra for a horror movie. Cheap, too. There would have been no need for a makeup artist to make her look ghastly. In addition to the welts and bruises her fall had raised, she was pasty pale. The dark crescents under her eyes were a testimony to a night spent doing something other than sleeping.

Hurting had taken up the entire night. Hurting from the fall. Hurting worse from Christian’s abdication. Hurting from loneliness. Hurting from self-doubt. Hurting from anger. There had seemed to be no escape from it as the night had stretched on, hot and relentless. And morning offered no respite. Every painful thought gave birth to another, creating a never-ending cycle of pain.

Struggling into her peach-colored robe and fumbling awkwardly with the belt, Alex hobbled out of the bathroom and down the hall to see the one person in her life who had yet to pass judgment on her.

Isabella sat in her crib carrying on a conversation with herself as she played with a yellow stuffed pony Christian had given her. Her attention snapped immediately to the door as Alex stepped in, and the baby grinned her father’s endearing, crooked grin.

“Mama!”

“Hi, button,” Alex whispered, managing to smile on only one side of her face as she crossed the room to lift her daughter out of the crib with her good arm. “Glad you recognized me. I don’t think I could have stood it if you’d have started crying at the sight of me.”

Isabella was more interested in the bandage on her mother’s cheek than on what her mother had to say. Dark eyes intense, she reached out to poke her index finger at it, making Alex suck her breath in through her teeth.

“No-no, sweetie. That hurts Mama.”

“No no no no no,” Isabella babbled, shaking her head emphatically, her dark curls bouncing.

Alex smiled and rubbed her daughter’s nose with the tip of her own. “Hey, you, keep the racket down. You’ll wake Pearl. She’ll go back to her niece and leave us to fend for ourselves if we don’t watch out.”

Isabella giggled, delighted by her mother’s expression if not her words.

They went through their regular morning routine at the changing table—a fresh diaper, a liberal dusting of powder to combat the sweltering heat, brushing the baby’s thick hair and pinning it off her neck and away from her face with half a dozen minuscule barrettes. Alex moved much more slowly and clumsily than usual, but she had no intention of giving up this time with her daughter. Isabella was the one constant thing in her life, the one person who loved her unconditionally. This morning in particular Alex felt the need to take comfort in those basic truths. This morning when she felt so alone.

What a difference a day could make, she thought. Yesterday she had awakened in Christian’s arms, the warm magic of his lips drawing her up out of the depths of sleep. They had made love as the sun rose, neither of them saying a word, just watching each other’s eyes as their bodies communicated the love that was in their hearts. This morning he was on the other side of the hill, going about his life, and she was there aching, feeling adrift and uncertain and alone, as if she’d been abandoned for a hundred years.

“I miss him,” she admitted in a tight whisper.

Her left hand fumbled with Isabella’s little duckie hairbrush, and the tears she had managed to hold at bay all night sprang up suddenly to fill her eyes. Saying the words aloud had opened the floodgates she had fought to keep bolted shut. Now the whole complement of marauding emotions rushed to assault her, all of them expressed in one torturous word that seemed to reverberate through her chest—
why.

Why did he have to be so demanding? Why did she have to be so stubborn? Why did life have to kick her every time she thought she finally had it by the tail? And why did it have to hurt so damn much?

“Alex! What are you doing out of bed?” Pearl demanded, bustling into the room. She was already dressed in spite of the fact that it was not yet seven o’clock. A sensible cotton shift flowed shapelessly over her pudgy frame. Her frizz of steel gray hair was combed. Pearl maintained that she had risen at six-thirty for sixty-some years, and retirement was no reason to break a perfectly good habit.

“I’m better off moving around,” Alex said, mentally wincing at the hoarseness in her voice. She kept her back to her housemate, trying to erase discreetly any remnants of the tears that had threatened. “Trust me. I’ve been through this before. It only hurts when I laugh.”

“Doesn’t look like you’ve been doing much of that,” the older woman observed sagely as she scooped up Isabella from the changing table and perched her on one plump hip.

Nor am I likely to
, Alex thought grimly.

“I’ve got two good ears,” Pearl said. “And there ain’t nothing they haven’t heard at least once already. So if you feel like talking, honey, you just go right on ahead.”

Once she would have accepted the offer eagerly, but Alex had since taught herself to keep her own counsel. Too many confidants had been disappointed and disapproving. Still, she appreciated Pearl’s offer and mustered a half-smile for it. “Thanks, Pearl, but I’ll be all right.”

The woman frowned. “Only the good Lord can handle everything by himself, girl, and you’re not the Almighty. You’d best remember that.” Clucking to herself, she bustled out of the room, bouncing Isabella in her arms as she went.

Alex hobbled to her room to dress. It was already sweltering in the little cubicle. The old fan in the window groaned and rattled, threatening death due to overwork. Alex stripped off her robe and caught what little breeze the thing made, thinking it might be her last chance to do so before it gave out altogether. She stared at the image of herself in the mirror above the dresser, taking in the cropped hair, the gaunt cheeks, the haunted eyes. And she remembered the girl with the long, wild mane and the flashing, tempestuous smile. The woman who stared back at her looked like a prisoner. A prisoner of the past. A prisoner of the ideas that had taken root in her mind during that horrible time after the rape.

You’re too forward, Alexa.

You’ve always been so flirtatious.

You were asking for it.

It was your own fault.

And joining in that chorus from the past came Christian’s voice.
You’re punishing yourself.

Was she?

Her good hand lifted to her boyish short hair and fingered the ends absently as a strange sense of panic slid through her.

Suddenly she jerked her hand away and put on the mental brakes. No, she wasn’t trying to punish herself. She wasn’t doing anything destructive. She was just trying to make a living. No one had ever said it should be easy or without risks. She had to pay her dues.

Pay your dues for what?

She pressed a hand to her belly as that chilling, sliding sensation dropped through her stomach again. Swearing in Italian, she turned from the mirror and limped to the closet. Refusing to sink any further into depression, she fumbled into a pair of jeans and a loose, sleeveless blue work shirt and made her way down to the barn, where Charlie had already begun morning chores.

“Blimey, miss! You hadn’t ought to be down here!” the girl protested as she scooped oats out of the feed cart and dumped them into the box of the roan anxiously awaiting his breakfast. A chorus of nickers sounded down the row from the still hungry. Charlie ignored their pleas and stared indignantly at Alex, as if her being there was somehow insulting.

Alex frowned. “Everyone seems to know what’s best for me.”

“Well, it’s a cinch you don’t,” Charlie said with typical bluntness. “You couldn’t ride a bicycle, the shape you’re in, let alone a horse!”

“I’ll agree with you there. No reason I can’t do the grooming, though, while you muck out the stalls.”

“Oh, right,” the groom said sarcastically. “No reason a’tall. It’s not like you just got yourself chucked off into a fence and half-fallen on by that ugly great moose of an animal.”

They both looked across the aisle at Terminator, who was weaving in his stall with his ears pinned, looking angry at the world.

“The work will do me good,” Alex said.

“I’m sure,” Charlie said with a rude snort. She shook her head in reproach, wiping the sweat from her forehead up into the hedge of burgundy hair that defied even the most wilting humidity. “A right flaming twit, you are.”

Alex watched the girl move off down the aisle muttering under her breath and shaking her head in utter disgust. She wondered briefly what she was going to do about Charlie, then wondered miserably what she was going to do without her. She had grown terribly fond of the sassy groom, but she couldn’t allow Christian to go on paying Charlie’s wages, and she couldn’t afford to pay them herself. The van needed repairs, and Terminator had managed to destroy her best saddle in the fall. Those two things were priorities. Hired help was a luxury.

Some people found solace in music, some in gardening, some in prayer. Alex had always found hers in the methodical work of brushing a horse. Her mind was free to contemplate as her hands stroked the various brushes over the coat of the animal, working out the dust and bringing a lustrous shine to the hair. Today she found no real peace. The task itself was painful and difficult, and her mind was bent on dredging up anger and excuses instead of sorting through all that for calmer emotions.

She was sick of people telling her what to do and how to do it. She was sick of people analyzing her at every turn. She had come there to rebuild her life, and that was what she was going to do. So she had gotten hurt in the process—it was a dangerous business. She’d known Terminator wasn’t ready for that course. The only mistake she’d made had been in not insisting they pull him from the competition. The horse just needed some time and understanding. He’d come around.

“Get away from me, you son of a dog!” Charlie’s voice rang out, fierce and panicked. It was followed by the snort of a horse, the sharp pounding sound of hooves striking wood, and then a cry.

Heart in her throat, Alex dropped her brush and hurried down the aisle, blocking her own injuries from her mind. The wheelbarrow stood by Terminator’s door, and she could see the big gelding whirling and lunging in the stall, his ears flat to his head. Her blood ran cold as she realized she couldn’t see the groom.

“Charlie!” she yelled, flinging the stall door back.

The girl lay in the straw, huddled into a fetal position with her hands over her head and her back against the wall. Blood ran freely from a cut on one forearm. The horse wheeled and lunged toward her again.

Pain exploding through her own body, Alex grabbed up the pitchfork and swung it like a baseball bat, catching Terminator hard across the chest and startling him into retreat. He stood at the back of the stall, snorting and rearing, his eyes rolling wildly in his head.

Straining to hold the pitchfork up with her right arm, Alex inched her way into the stall and squatted down next to the fallen groom. “Charlie, can you hear me? Are you conscious?”

“Bloody hell,” the girl said, sobbing. “I wish I weren’t. The bastard broke me arm.”

“Can you move? I don’t know if I can drag you.”

Crying and cursing, Charlie struggled to her knees and crawled out of the stall while Alex fended Terminator off with the fork.

They drove to the emergency room in Briarwood in grim silence, Charlie caught up in trying to ward off the pain, Alex plunged into a black depression that didn’t lessen even two hours later when the girl’s arm had been set and she had been given permission to leave the hospital.

“It weren’t your fault, miss,” Charlie mumbled as Alex piloted her old car back toward the farm. Painkillers had dulled her senses. She leaned back against the torn upholstery and gazed down at the pristine plaster cast on her arm. “It weren’t your fault a’tall.”