Christmas Countdown

“Where’d you learn about this anyway?”

“My dad. When you can’t afford to call in a veterinarian every time something goes wrong, you learn to improvise.”

“Sounds like he was old-school.”

“Yeah.” Turning his back to her, he ripped another section off the bolt of cheesecloth and fed it into the kettle. With any luck the treatment would do the trick, but they wouldn’t know for sure until they worked him.

Mac looked up and watched Sheriff Wilkes stroll into the barn, remove his sunglasses and push his hat back.

“Afternoon.”

“Sheriff.” Mac reached out and shook his hand.

He nodded in Emma’s direction. “You were right. The drug in that syringe matched the one the vet found in McCluskie’s filly. It was a synthetic hallucinogen. Made the horse go plumb nuts in her stall. She’s too banged up to race and won’t make the Holiday Classic.”

Emma came out of the stall and flopped the cold poultice on the board. “That’s awful. I know Chester put a lot of hope in her. She has some great track times.”

Mac dragged up the piece of cloth from the kettle sitting on the gas camp stove and spooned it onto the board.

“What about prints?”

“None that my technician could find. I wish I had better news, but I don’t. My best advice is to stay vigilant. I’m going to send a patrol car by a couple times a night, starting tonight. Maybe they’ll get lucky and catch the culprit.”

Mac pulled on his rubber gloves and spread out the cloth with his hands.

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“No problem.” He slipped on his shades and left the barn.

“Maybe we should get a truckload of motion-sensor lights. Blaze the place out like a Christmas tree if anyone comes near the barn.” She arched her eyebrows a couple of times and grinned.

“That’s not a bad idea.” Mac poured a cup of the poultice on the steaming cheesecloth and smeared it around. “One at the outside front entrance and one at the back would do the trick. I’d also like to put an electronic lock on the stall gate.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah.” He stared at her, hoping some of the concern he felt rubbed off on her. This was war, and it could get more intense as the key races got closer. “This person is going to get desperate. The more times we turn back their attacks, the more intense those attacks could become.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“You should be scared, that’s what’s going to keep you and your horse safe.”

He folded the cloth over and she picked it up, moving back into the stall where she applied it to her horse.

“I’ll call the hardware store and have them send over the lights tomorrow. And a locksmith to install a lock on the stall door. You can put the lights up, can’t you?”

“Yeah.” Mac let out a breath and pulled off the gloves.

Any deterrent would help. In fact maybe they should consider rigging the whole damn stable.

“It’s cooled off. Let’s see if it worked.” Excitement stirred in Emma’s veins, encouraged by the fact that the swelling was completely gone from Navigator’s shoulder. Her racing dreams were alive, well and pinned on the next few moments.

Mac snagged the lead rope and held it out to her.

“You do it,” she said. “You’re the one keeping my hopes off of life support.”

His expression was serious as he clipped the shank on the halter ring and led Navigator out of his stall.

Emma stood next to the gate and held her breath, watching the Thoroughbred move around in a circle beside Mac. His stride was smooth, easy and uninhibited by pain or stiffness.

Relief washed over her. “He’s going to be okay! You did it.” She rushed Mac and threw her arms around his neck before she’d even thought out the target of her elation.

His chest was a collection of rock-hard muscles, his arms gentle as he encircled her, lifted her up off the floor and put her back down.

Their gazes locked and his slipped to her lips.

She wet them with her tongue and knew she was in trouble.

Navigator shuffled backward, his ears pitched forward.

Lowering his mouth to hers, Mac hesitated six inches from her lips.

Frustrated, Emma made up the distance and pushed up onto her tiptoes.

Contact. Searing, mind-blowing contact fused them together for an instant before Emma pushed back and struggled to catch her breath. She tried to make sense of her body’s overwhelming response to kissing Mac Titus, but she couldn’t.

Mac stepped away, pulling Navigator with him as he headed for the barn door. What the hell had just happened? More to the point, why had he let it happen? With every passing minute at Firehill he was being sucked in. And kissing Emma … well, that had been a mistake, he decided, realizing his entire body wanted in on the action and ached for more.

He led Navigator to the hot-walker and clipped him on, then went back to the gate post where he switched the contraption on and climbed up on the fence to watch—get his lust under control, was more like it. He wasn’t surprised when she leaned on the top rail of the fence next to him a moment later.

“He looks great, Mac. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. We need to rub liniment into his shoulder every half hour and again tonight before it cools down outside. He’s going to need a blanket, too. We’ve gotta keep the muscle warm and loose.”

“Hey, why don’t you head to the bunkhouse and wash up? I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Are you saying I stink?”

Emma stared up at him, seeing a shallow grin arch his lips, lips she’d like to feel on hers again. “Hardly.” In fact she could easily bury her face against his chest and breathe him in for hours on end. “But mustard and yarrow have a way of sticking to you. Better to wash it off while it’s fresh. As it is I’ll have that smell stuck in my nose for a month.”

“Yeah, me too.” He climbed down off the fence next to her. There it was again, that rush of desire washing over her mind and body, drowning her resistance in its wake.

“We pulled him back today, Emma. He’ll get his shot.”

“Yes, he will. Go.” She flicked her hand toward the bunkhouse fifty feet to the left of the barn’s entrance and let out a sigh when he moved behind her and walked away.

She stared at his retreating backside, at his broad shoulders and the defined muscles beneath his snug white T-shirt. If the air got any more emotionally heated, she swore she’d pass out.

“Breathe, Emma … just breathe.” She turned back to keep an eye on Navigator and let her gaze follow him around the endless circle until she felt almost normal again.

Almost.

MAC LAY ON THE COT in the stable staring up at the beams long after midnight.

Emma had made him supper and delivered it to a patch of grass where they ate and tended Navigator’s shoulder every half hour. He should have resisted her invitation and indulged in physical activity—pull-ups in the hayloft until his body screamed, or mucking stalls—to break the hold he felt growing between them, but he’d let her get under his skin.

Hell, he was in too deep already and he knew it. Felt it in his bones. Twenty-five years of carrying his father’s animosity toward Thadeous Clareborn and the horse-racing business was crumbling like chalk in the rain. But that aversion had shaped his life, shaped who he was and what he needed.

Get in, get out … no emotional attachments.

There was no warning.

No whisper of movement, just the icy pressure of a knife blade at his throat, and the man wielding it standing over him.

Mac’s training kicked in, hard, fast, deadly.

He latched on to the attacker’s wrist and jerked it up and away.

The blade gleamed sharp in his left peripheral.

Balling his right fist he slammed it back, catching the man in the forehead.

The intruder staggered back and hit the floor.

Mac rolled off the cot onto his belly and snagged the man’s ankles just as he tried to stagger to his feet.

Jerking hard, he pulled the thug’s legs out from underneath him. He hit the ground again. A grunt hissed from between the other man’s lips.

Mac scrambled to his feet and reached for his weapon, determined to detain the invader until Sheriff Wilkes could get there.

Over his right shoulder he heard the slightest sound, the shuffle of footsteps, then the electrical hiss of a Taser gun being fired.

Muscle-paralyzing probes drilled into his back, jolting him into oblivion.

Chapter Four

Emma rolled over in bed, struggling to hold on to the edge of sleep that was slowly being pulled away from her. She shifted again and rolled back toward the nightstand positioned under the window.

Opening one eye, she stared at the numbers on the digital alarm clock: 3:00 a.m.

A hint of cool air breezed in through the tiny crack she’d left at the bottom of her bedroom window. A window that faced the main stable. It was a trick she’d employed as a child and still practiced. Listening to the night, or, to be more precise, to her horse.

The high-pitched shrill of a whinny, followed by a deep rumbling nicker, made contact with her eardrums and shocked her awake.

She pushed up in bed, fully aware now as she focused her attention on the sounds creeping in through the open window.

Again the high-pitched call reverberated on the cold air outside, but this time it raised the hairs at her nape and spurred her to action.

Something was wrong. Something was desperately wrong.

Emma threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, her bare feet hitting the chilly hardwood floor. She stood up, grabbed her robe off the end of the bed, pulled it on and headed out into the hallway. She stopped at the back door long enough to put on her rubber muck boots and flip on the porch light.

Halfway to the barn the sound of Navigator’s whinny forced her into a run.

Grabbing a shovel propped next to the barn door, she held it like a weapon and stepped inside. Flipping on both light switches on the wall next to the door, she prepared for battle. The interior of the stable flooded with light.

Navigator spotted her and answered with a grumbling nicker, arching his head over the stall gate.

Her attention fell on the empty cot and the undulating sleeping bag on the ground next to it. Mac?

“Mac!” She dropped the shovel and hurried to his side. Going to her knees, she brushed away the wood shavings as she searched for the zipper. Finding it, she slid in down the entire length of the bag then peeled back the heavy covering.

Air.

Life-sustaining air caught up in Mac’s lungs and he pulled it in through his nose, taking deep breaths as he stared up at Emma.

Reaching down she fingered the edge of the duct tape that covered his mouth and ripped it off.

His skin stung like fire where it tore, but he sucked it up.

“What happened?” She rocked back and began to untie the baling twine fusing his wrists so tightly together; he wondered if they’d work again.

“The colt. Is he okay?”

“Who do you think woke me up?” She continued working the knots until she freed his hands. “He’s got talent, Mac, but I know he didn’t do this. Who did?”

Mac bent and fiddled with the rope binding his ankles. “I was jumped by a thug dressed in black and his buddy used the Taser on me from behind.” He loosened the last knot, shucked the twine off his boots and stood up, then pulled Emma to her feet.

“We need to check him over, make sure he’s okay.” Striding to the stall gate, he brushed his hand down the horse’s face and leaned down, eyeing all four of Navigator’s legs.

“We can lead him around just to make sure.”

“Yeah. Let’s do that. I’ve been stuck suffocating in that sleeping bag for the last hour. Whoever they were, they had plenty of time to injure him.”

Worry laced around his nerves and attached itself to his thoughts. For all his training, he’d been no match for a man with a Taser gun and the element of surprise afforded the intruders by the diminished hearing in his left ear.

He snagged the halter and lead rope off the peg next to the gate and undid the latch. Stepping inside the stall, he caught Navigator, put on his halter and led him out into the center of the barn, moving him in a circle while Emma watched.

“He looks great, Mac. We got lucky.”

Frustration clouded his outlook on the situation. “If we got lucky, then what were they doing here?” He turned toward Emma and stopped in front of her. “Take him. I’m going to check out his stall before you put him back in.”

She took hold of the lead rope. “It does seem strange if the horse was the target that they’d tie you up like a Christmas package and simply walk away, leaving him unharmed.”

Her observation aligned with his thinking as he stepped into Navigator’s stall and moved around the perimeter, looking for anything that had the potential to harm him. Nothing.

“It’s clear, there’s nothing here.”

“Good.” She led the colt back into his stall and removed his halter. “Your description of the men sounds a lot like the one my friend Janet saw at Loomis Farm. The type that seem to follow Victor Dago around.”

He trailed her out of the colt’s stall and latched the gate. “Does Dago have a Derby prospect?”

“Not that he’s touting, but he does have a nice three-year-old stud colt named Dragon’s Soul. He’s put down some fast times on the track and he won his maiden race.”

Caution worked over him and he considered the idea that maybe the intruders were closer than they’d ever imagined. “I’ve got a contact in Lexington. I’ll give him a call, see if anything comes up on Victor Dago.”

“Great. So you were some sort of a cop before you took this job?”

“I worked for the Secret Service guarding dignitaries.”

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes narrowed in contemplation. “And that’s how you were injured?”

He watched her as she continued to gaze up at him, knowing full well she wanted details. Details he had no intention of giving her.

“Yes.” Stepping away, he picked up the sleeping bag and shook off the shavings, then tossed it onto the cot. “I need to get some sleep.”

“I’ll leave you to it then.”

Mac gave her a quick once-over. His gaze focused on the oversize rubber muck boots sticking out from under the hem of her silky robe before trailing back up to the mass of dark hair hanging loose in long waves that fell to her waist. “Thanks for letting this cat out of the bag.”

A slow smile pulled at her sweet mouth. “I heard Navigator calling. You have him to thank.” She motioned to the horse and turned for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night.” He watched her walk out the barn door and followed ten steps behind.

Pausing next to the entrance, he leaned against the jamb and looked after her until she was safely inside the main house via the back door.

The porch light went out and he turned back into the stable, studying the interior. The place was as exposed as a secret with a gossip columnist chatting up the blue bloods. The intruders had simply come in one of the doors. He’d have to limit the access points immediately and consider sleeping in the hayloft over the tack room, which looked directly down into Navigator’s stall.

One of the only access points was a permanent ladder rung up the sidewall. The other was a massive loading door in the front of the barn thirty feet above the ground, used to fill the loft with hay. It offered an ideal vantage point.

Mac advanced deeper into the stable, trying to pick up on the thug’s path through the wood shavings on the floor. It was a nearly impossible task, but he spotted a faint trail leading to the rear entrance of the barn.

But something bothered him. The men had bought themselves time by using a nonlethal method to subdue him.

Time for what?

He glanced in each stall as he made his way to the back of the stable and stopped just short of the exit. Looking to the left, his stare fell on the ladder leading up into the rear loft. Traces of sawdust were deposited on the first five wooden rungs.

It was possible someone had climbed into the back loft for a bale of alfalfa, but he knew for a fact the grass hay in the front loft was being used to feed Navigator right now. Still, he couldn’t rule out the chance that Emma had used the ladder.

Mac grabbed the handle on the massive rear door, slid it shut and put the pin in the latch. For now he was content that his Navigator was safe and asleep in his stall.

EMMA WATCHED MAC TIGHTEN the last bracket on the series of motion-activated lights they had installed at the front and back entry points to the barn. If so much as a stray cat roamed near the entrance, it would be put in the spotlight where Mac could take action.

She let out a long sigh as she stepped back from the base of the ladder he stood on and watched him descend. She liked having him at Firehill. Liked the way he made her feel. The way he deflated the bubble of uncertainty that floated worry in her mind. “The locksmith will be here tomorrow to put a keypad on the stall door.”

“Good.” He held the screwdriver out to her and she took it, their fingertips brushing in the handoff.

Heat pulsed up her arm and she pulled back before staring up into his face at the knowing smile on his lips.

“Last night, after you left, I searched the stable and found sawdust on the rungs leading up to the rear loft. Any chance you climbed up there yesterday?”

“No. I haven’t been up there since they delivered the alfalfa in October. I don’t even plan on feeding it until January.”

“I’ve got a sneaking hunch the thugs who jumped me last night may have been hiding up there.”

Emma shuddered, unable to fight the uneasiness the creepy revelation generated in her body. There were too many places to hide at Firehill, and they could spend an aeon trying to search every one of them.

“Relax. I’ll keep the back door locked up from now on.” He grinned at her from under the brim of the brown felt fedora he’d found in the tack room. In fact, it had been hanging in there for as long as she could remember.

“Any more chores?” he asked.

She wanted to roll her eyes and play coy, but it wasn’t in her DNA. “As a matter of fact, it’s time to put up the Christmas lights around the eaves of the main house. I could really use your help.”

His smile faded and hesitation hardened his features. “That’s not in my job description.”

“Have you got something against Christmas?”

He looked away, focusing on something just over her head before he again met her gaze. “It wasn’t the happiest time of the year for me growing up.”

“I’m sorry.” A mixture of sadness and curiosity congealed in her veins.

“Okay. Well, just think of it as adding colored security lighting.”

He lifted his eyebrows in amusement. “You don’t like scrambling up tall ladders, do you?”

“Not so much. Come on. I have the light strands untangled and laid out on the back step.” She headed for the main house, hearing the aluminum rails of the ladder clank together behind her. “We can have it done before dark.”

Just because she loved Christmas and the sweet memories it evoked for her didn’t mean that everyone did. She could respect that. Still, she wondered what event in the young life of the battle-scarred bodyguard had given birth to his hostility.

Mac felled the closed ladder, hooked it with his arm and followed her. He remembered the Christmas lights being on at the Clareborn house that December evening when he and his father had driven down the lane to Firehill with their beat-up horse trailer hitched to his dad’s Ford pickup, and their last best hope of a horse, Smooth Sailing, in the back. Of unloading the colt in front of the Clareborn barn.

His life had gone downhill from there.

Tension knotted the muscles between his shoulder blades as he willed the memory to expire and leaned the ladder up against the back of the house.

Emma put several coils of lights on her arm. “The hooks are still in place, and the extension cord plug-in is right there.” She pointed to the receptacle and unwound a section of the colored lights, then handed him the plug.

Mac took it and climbed up the ladder, dragging the strand with him as Emma uncoiled it from her arm.

By the time they reached the midsection of the house, they had their tandem working system in sync, and he was beginning to get in the mood that went with the physical labor of decorating. It helped, too, that Emma smiled up at him every time she started another row of lights.

Putting another plug into the end of a strand, she reeled off a length of the brightly colored lights, and handed them to him.

Mac took them and started back up the ladder, one hand on the rung, the other grasping the strand.

The initial sound of a single bulb popping just above his head was inconsequential.

Pop! The spray of shattering glass riveted his attention on the bullet hole drilled into the siding on the house.

The next shot splintered the wood a foot above Emma’s head.

“Get down!” He lunged for her, kicking away from the ladder and forcing it in the opposite direction.

It scraped down the side of the house and clanked onto the grass.

Snagging her with his left arm, he pulled her to the ground in a tangle of Christmas lights and cord.

Covering her body with his own, he scanned the dense bank of trees and brush a hundred yards from the side of the house, spotting the shape of someone buried deep in the protective foliage.

He drew his weapon, but he didn’t have a clear shot. “Do you have your cell?”

“No.” His was sitting on the counter in the tack room. Another bullet drilled into the siding halfway between the ground and the overhead eave.

They were pinned down.

Emma struggled to make sense of the situation as she sucked a couple of breaths into her lungs, feeling the weight of Mac’s body pressing her into the grass.

Someone was taking shots at them? Someone wanted them dead? Fear pushed chills through her body. She closed her eyes, listening to the whisper of Mac’s breath against her hair. Honing in on the sound to prevent herself from being caught up in the wave of panic swelling inside of her.

Mac would keep her safe, he would protect her, with his life if necessary.

“I’m going to return fire as a diversion. When I do, I want you to stay low and head for the back door. Get inside and call 911.”

“Okay.” She felt his weight shift off her. She scrambled out from underneath him, hearing the decisive crack of gunfire behind her as she half crawled, half ran and ducked around the corner of the house, up the steps and safely through the back door.

She charged the length of the hallway and burst out into the living room, almost colliding with her dad in his wheelchair.

“I called … the sheriff. Who’s outside?”

“I don’t know who’s shooting, but Mac’s still out there.”

Worry locked her in place as she knelt next to her father, straining to hear what was going on.

No more shots. Silence. Blessed silence. Worry ground over her nerves as she considered the implications.

Either the shooter had been hit, or—

Emma crawled into the dining room, where a window faced the west side of the house.

Her hand shook as she pulled open the drape an inch and stared out on the side yard.

Dusk was settling over Firehill, but in the fading light she saw Mac dart across the driveway leading back to the barn and take cover next to the trunk of an oak tree on the edge of the brushy thicket.

A measure of relief flooded her insides. He hadn’t been shot tonight. But he had been shot at some point. Realization surrounded her thoughts as she pulled back from the window and crumpled on the floor to wait for help to arrive.

The horrible scar on Mac’s beautiful face was a gunshot wound. He said he’d worked for the Secret Service. The scenario fit. He’d dived to protect another human being with his own body and had taken a bullet for that person, just like he would have taken a bullet for her ten minutes ago.