If Wishes Were Horses

Mike gaped after her.

“Terminal,” Mrs. Jamerson said softly. “I did warn you.” Smiling, she said, “We’ll give you our price on Friday.”

Mike turned to Liz. “What pony?” He realized he’d been smartly outmaneuvered, but at the moment he was too worried about Pat’s reaction to care.

“God only knows,” Liz said. “Hadn’t you better go see?”

CHAPTER TWO

“OH, DEAR,” Mrs. Jamerson whispered.

“Uh-oh,” Liz said. “She would pick that pony.”

Mike glanced at the women and then at his daughter, who danced first on one foot then on the other in the stable aisle, pointing at one of the stalls halfway down.

“Come see, Daddy,” Pat said. “Come see my very own pony.”

Mike walked slowly to her, Liz and Jamerson following. In the stall stood a sleek gray pony. Even to Mike’s untutored eye it was beautiful. Its coat glowed, its mane looked as though it had been beaten out of a single strip of silver.

“I’m going to name him Traveller, just like Robert E. Lee’s horse, and he’s meant for me. I know he is. I just know it.”

“Not a good idea,” Liz said quietly. “He’s going to be a great pony eventually, but at the moment he’s green as grass. Knows zilch.”

Pat stopped dancing and her face took on that closed, mulish expression that Mike had learned to dread. In the hospital it meant that the doctors and nurses had a fight on their hands to get her to take her medication. He’d never blamed her. No kid likes throwing up a dozen times a day or going bald. There had been times when he’d chickened out, left the medical staff to handle her because he couldn’t bear to watch her suffer another minute. They hadn’t wanted him there most of the time anyway. Neither had Pat. Sometimes he thought she felt guilty about her illness, as though it were something she had inflicted upon him.

Her nausea passed, and her hair grew back, but unfortunately by that time she’d perfected her technique to get precisely what she wanted from him.

The look Pat gave to Liz Matthews would have curdled milk. “He is too my pony,” Pat said. “I love him. We’ll learn together.” Then she took the next step in her prescribed ritual. Her eyes filled with tears, her lip began to quiver, her shoulders tightened. She grew visibly smaller right in front of Mike’s eyes, as though she had taken one of Alice in Wonderland’s shrinking potions. Mike closed his eyes and saw her on that bed again. He couldn’t fight her and she knew it. “Daddy, you promised. If you love me, you’ll buy him.”

Liz snorted. Mike saw Pat glance at her coldly from beneath wet lashes.

“Listen, kiddo,” Liz said matter-of-factly. “After he’s had some training and you’ve learned to ride, maybe you’ll be ready for a pony like this. But an inexperienced rider on an inexperienced horse is a recipe for disaster.”

“No, it’s not, it’s not.” Pat stamped her foot. “Daddy, buy him for me. Please,” she wheedled. “If we give these people enough money they have to sell him to us.”

Mike heard Liz Matthews’s quick intake of breath at the same instant he felt all his plans to get Pat away from this place disintegrate under the force of her hazel eyes—her mother’s hazel eyes—bright and earnest and intelligent and about as movable as Mount Kilimanjaro.

He actually looked forward to handling infuriated business rivals. He knew half the investment community called him a ruthless bastard. So how come he couldn’t handle one eleven-year-old girl?

“I think Traveller is a lovely name for him,” Mrs. Jamerson said. “Much better than Iggy Pop, which is the name he has now.” At the sound of his name, the pony raised his head and looked inquiringly at Mrs. Jamerson. She reached over and stroked his nose. “But you said your father promised you a pony for your twelfth birthday, and that’s not for a while, right?”

Suspiciously, Pat nodded.

“So, there’s plenty of time to find out whether you even like to ride, and meanwhile you can come over and pet him anytime you like. Who knows, you may fall madly in love with another pony.”

“I won’t.”

“Possibly not And he is a truly lovely pony. He’s a registered Connemara—that’s a rugged little breed from Ireland. You have good taste. Still, Liz is right. He doesn’t know much about his job yet. So we’ll take it slow and see what develops, all right?”

Pat took a deep breath, glanced from Mrs. Jamerson to Liz and back again. “Okay,” she said. and Mike heard her whisper, “But he’s mine.”

Mike’s relief that a full-blown tantrum had been avoided was tempered by the realization that now there was no way he could keep Pat out of the riding program. His only hope was that Liz and Mrs. Jamerson would be able to show Pat how little she knew. Surely she’d realize that she had a long way to go before buying even an experienced pony became an option. By then maybe she’d have discovered video games or tennis or shopping malls.

“Fine,” Mike said, wanting to get Pat out of there before this fragile truce disintegrated. He turned to Liz. “You’ll have that complete syllabus to me by Friday morning? I want it on my desk early.”

“We’ll do our best,” Mrs. Jamerson said when Liz didn’t answer immediately.

Mike turned on his heel and walked back to his car. Pat followed silently. He knew damned well she’d start her campaign for that blasted pony the minute they were on their way. This was one time he’d have to put his foot down.

He felt an unreasoning resentment toward both Liz and Mrs. Jamerson. They were only trying to make a living, he knew, but they were complicating his life. Not their fault that they’d played into Pat’s obsession or his worries as a parent. Still, he fervently wished they’d chosen some other day school to solicit for their stables.

As he drove away he watched Liz, standing beside one of the paddocks with all her weight on one hip. Damn! He certainly planned to come here for as many of Pat’s lessons as he could. He’d arrange his schedule to get into the office late so that he could drive Pat every morning. That meant he’d be spending too much time hanging around Liz Matthews. Why couldn’t she be as old and as wrinkled as her riding boot? And did her legs have to be that long? And that face. He tore his eyes away from his rearview mirror and concentrated on his driving.

He could find Liz Matthews sexier than Scheherezade for all the good it would do either of them. They were on completely different wavelengths. He glanced over at his daughter, who was completely preoccupied—no doubt planning her campaign for the gray pony.

At least Mrs. Jamerson seemed to understand children. He had a suspicion that Miss Matthews adhered to the drill-sergeant school of instruction. Pat didn’t like to be corrected.

He smiled grimly. Liz might turn out to be the best ally he could have. A couple of days of her bullying in the July heat might well convince Pat to take up knitting.

“I’LL STARVE FIRST,” Liz sputtered as she watched Mike and Pat drive away.

“The animals can’t starve,” her aunt said. “If a summer riding program for Edenvale is what it takes to pay the feed bill, we have to do it.”

Liz threw up her hands. “That is a dreadful child, and her father isn’t much better.” She snorted. “He may be a big muckety-muck in business, but he’s not doing that kid any favors by letting her get away with that kind of behavior in public.”

“Well, we’d better keep her safe,” Mrs. Jamerson said. “It’s clear that Daddy will crucify anybody who hurts his little darling. We only carry half a million dollars in liability insurance.”

“And you expect me to spend five mornings a week in ninety-five-degree heat with six or eight like her?” Liz said. “I cannot do it. I’ll sell my body first.”

Mrs. Jamerson looked her up and down. “It’s a nice body, but it is thirty-seven years old and extremely dirty. I doubt anybody would pay five dollars for it.”

“Oh, thank you so much for that vote of confidence.”

“You could always marry a rich husband.” She cocked her head in the direction of Mike’s retreating Volvo.

“Pul-lease. I’ll take the five dollars first,” Liz said with a grin.

“That’s your choice. But you’d better make believers out of Edenvale School and their little darlings, my dear niece, or we’ll both be clerking at some discount mall before Christmas.”

“If Trusty and I win the grand prix on Labor Day, we can add five thousand bucks prize money to the till. And maybe entice some of our old clients back. Besides, we haven’t lost all our adult clients.”

“Yet.”

“Think positive. A couple of shows where Valley-Crest brings in championships and we’ll be beating off new customers with a stick.”

“We need a full barn and a full slate of lessons now, darling Liz. You’ve looked at the figures.”

“I know, I know. But isn’t there a better way than teaching half a dozen Pat Whittens to ride?”

“Come on, Liz, you’re good with children.”

Liz gaped at her. “What lifetime are we talking about here?”

“We could sell Mr. Whitten that gray pony for his Pat,” Mrs. Jamerson said.

“No way! Edenvale has never been that sort of sleazy trader. We even kept Uncle Frank honest.” She caught the look in her aunt’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Aunt Vic. I know he was your husband, but he cut deals fine sometimes—or he would have if you and I hadn’t been there to remind him where business stopped and horse-trading started.”

Vic laughed. “He could have gotten away with a whole heap more, and the clients would still have loved him. I sometimes wonder how any of us put up with him when he was in one of his moods.”

“He trained great horses and riders.” Liz shook her head. “They adored him.”

Vic sighed. “I wish I had Frank’s charm. We could use a few hundred-thousand-dollar sales right about now.”

“Charm? Charm? He made Marine boot camp look like a first-class cruise to the Bahamas.”

“We won. We made money. We had a full barn. We had happy customers and top-notch horses. That’s results.”

“Results. Right.” Liz turned away, her chest heaving. She’d finally learned to pity Uncle Frank about the time she turned twenty. Before that. he’d terrified her. He couldn’t show affection, he couldn’t praise the people he cared about, not even Vic. Certainly not his gawky niece.

Yet for all his grumpy bullying, Uncle Frank had taken her in after her mother’s sudden fatal heart attack and her father’s grief made living at home impossible for her. Frank had tried to love her, an eleven-year-old de facto orphan, in the only way he knew. He drove her to ride better, higher, stronger. And when she cried he seemed baffled. Memories of those sessions still made her hyperventilate. What would confrontation with Mike Whitten do to her breathing? She didn’t doubt for a minute that he could bully with the best if he thought it would work for him.

The worst part was that despite his size and that lantern jaw, something about Whitten turned her on. He radiated confidence. He was in great shape. Probably played handball three times a week and had a personal trainer so he could impress the ladies on the tennis court at the racquet club. He wore no wedding ring, and Angie Womack had told her there was no Mrs. Whitten.

She wondered why such an obvious catch was running around without a wife in tow. Little Miss Pat probably fed arsenic to possible queen consorts the minute Daddy showed any interest in them. The girl didn’t seem eager to share.

The kid certainly had her father wrapped around her little finger. Pat held the key to the Edenvale contract, and if Vic said they had to get it to stay solvent, then Liz would do everything in her power to make that happen, even if she had to turn that kid into a centaur.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like kids. She rode against kids every day in the hunter ring. But ValleyCrest had always catered to adult riders.

As Uncle Frank’s exercise girl from the time she was old enough to sit a horse, Liz had been too busy after school to make friends her own age. She’d moved into the adult world when she was barely into her teens. She’d had crushes on the few teenaged boys who rode, but she’d been tall and so bony, and they’d always gravitated towards the cute little debutantes.

So here she was at thirty-seven with nobody in her life except her aunt and the animals, and that was the way it was likely to remain. At least it was peaceful. The dogs and cats never yelled at her.

She watched her aunt bending over the feed sacks, Vic’s youthful body lithe and strong. Liz often caught the longing in her aunt’s eyes when her niece swung into the saddle. Please God, Liz prayed. Let me never lose my nerve the way she did, never cringe at the thought of cantering down on a big fence. She knew it could happen to anyone, even someone as talented and fearless as Aunt Vic had been.

Vic was a great manager, a great teacher, but Liz knew how deeply it must hurt never to sit in a saddle.

All those years that Uncle Frank had tried to bully and cajole her out of her fear, Vic never fought back. Liz finally told him if he said one more word on that subject, she’d leave. Since by that time Frank Jamerson weighed over three hundred pounds, and had no one but Liz to ride his horses, he’d tried hard to watch his mouth from that moment on.

He never knew that after their fight Liz had walked out of the room and thrown up. Only Aunt Vic and Albert knew that angry words wounded Liz much more deeply than broken bones and concussions.

Now Liz was faced with Mike Whitten and his whiny kid, and probably a bunch of other equally bratty kids with bullying mothers and fathers.

She walked up the front steps to her cottage, opened the door to the screen porch, made her way across into the cluttered living room and felt her sweat freeze in the air-conditioning as suddenly as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on her.

“What a jerk!” A raucous voice spoke from the shadowy corner.

“Am not.” Liz said.

Jacko, her small gray parrot, hung upside down from the perch in his large wicker cage and regarded her over his shoulder with beady eyes.

“What a jerk?” he wheedled.

Liz laughed. “I wish you’d learn to say something else, anything else. How about ‘I want my dinner.’” She reached for the parrot seed on the window ledge behind the African violets.

“What a jerk!” The parrot bounced up and down in ecstasy.

“Keep that up and I’ll bake you into parrot potpie.”

“What a jerk.” The parrot sighed and stuck his beak into the seeds.

“You’re probably right.” Liz sank into the shabby sofa. It definitely needed new springs and new upholstery. She closed her eyes. Unbidden, Mike Whitten’s face loomed up behind her eyelids. She blinked. “Oh, hell,” she said. “That’s just what I need.” She pointed to the parrot. “And you, not one word. You got that?”

“What a jerk,” the parrot replied. This time he sounded as though he meant it.

CHAPTER THREE

THE VAN FROM Edenvale School arrived fifteen minutes late on a cloudless Monday morning. By nine-fifteen the temperature already hovered around eighty-five, but a steady breeze kept the humidity down.

Liz had been up doing her chores since six. When she heard the van, she turned off the water hose and set it down, walked to the front door of the stable and watched as three girls and two boys tumbled out of the van.

No Pat Whitten. Liz gave a sigh that was half relief, half disappointment. She wouldn’t be burdened with the kid, but she also wouldn’t see Mike Whitten. Why on earth she should want to was beyond her. The man was one step short of an ogre. That little Friday trip to his office to present him the syllabus for the camp had more than proved that.

After making such a big deal about the blasted syllabus, Whitten kept them waiting fifteen minutes, then barely glanced at the sheaf of papers Vic handed him. He hadn’t been rude exactly. Just cool. No, dammit. Downright cold. She’d been certain he’d turn them down.

But he hadn’t. He’d called late Friday afternoon to accept their terms without a quibble. Vic had set down the phone carefully, then turned a relieved face to Liz. “At least we can pay the feed bill,” she said.

“Yeah, but can we stand what we have to do to get the money?” Liz answered.

Today would definitely answer that question. Liz lounged against the open door to the stable. The kids formed a ragged line in front of her and eyed her warily. Only then did she introduce herself.

A moment later Aunt Vic and Albert came out of the stable. Liz introduced them to the children and made her first stab at learning the campers’ names.

They stared at Albert’s bulk with awe. The broad grin on his dark face made him look like a ravening wolf. Liz knew he was the gentlest, kindest man alive, but he’d try not to let the kids see that. Not right off, at any rate. He always said he liked to get the good out of folks while they were still scared of him. Unfortunately for Albert, most people caught on very quickly that he was about as scary as an oversize stuffed bear.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Liz said. “Lunch boxes in the fridge. I’ll show you around and give you the ground rules first. Then we can start to sort out who gets which horse.”

As she turned away, Mike Whitten’s Volvo pulled into the driveway. Oh, damn and blast, Liz thought. That’s all I need.

Pat opened the car door and stepped out. The other kids wore ratty jeans and T-shirts. She wore new jodhpurs and shiny brown paddock boots. She carried an equally new black velvet hard hat under her arm.

Two steps from the car Pat clearly realized what the other kids had on, and stopped dead. Liz felt sorry for her. She remembered how important it had been at that age not to be different, not to stand out from her peers.

One of the boys snickered. Pat kept her eyes straight front, but her face flamed.

“Morning, Pat,” Liz said casually. “You’re late.”

Mike Whitten climbed out of the car and answered for his daughter. “I had to take a transatlantic call.” No apology, merely a statement of priorities.

“It might be easier for Pat to be on time if she rode in the van with the others,” Liz said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

“Unnecessary,” he snapped. “In future we won’t be late.”

“Whatever. Come on, kiddo, join the group. We’re about to take the nickel tour.” She turned to the rest of the group. “Are you with me?”

“When do we get to ride?” the same boy who had snickered at Pat asked. He was a compact towhead who looked younger than the girls.

“You start out on the lunge line.”

“What’s that?” a redheaded girl asked.

“That’s when somebody holds one end of a long rope in the middle of a circle and the horse goes around the outside of the circle attached to the other end of the rope with you on top of it,” a cheerful brunette girl answered. “On top of the horse, that is, not the rope.” She giggled.

“That’s right, uh...?”

“Janey.” The girl smiled smugly. “I know how to ride already. I have a pony at my gram’s in Missouri.”

“Fine. Then you can go first and show the others how it’s done.”

“Oh, no,” Janey groaned. “Not first.”

“First. Okay. Aunt Vic will show you around.”

“What do we call her?” Janey asked. “We can’t call her Aunt Vic.”

“Why not?” Vic said. “Everybody else does. You’ll get used to it.” As she started in the door, she turned to Pat, opened her arm in a gesture of inclusion and smiled at her, “Well, come on, child. Don’t just stand there.”

Pat took a deep breath and followed, keeping a good five feet between her and the rest of the group. She didn’t even glance at Mike.

Mike’s eyes followed her.

“I’m sure you have things to do, Mr. Whitten,” Liz said. No way did she want him hanging around.

“I’ll stay through her riding lesson,” Mike replied.

“That’s not necessary.”

The eyes he turned toward her were icy. “Yes, it is.”

Liz took a deep breath, but it didn’t do an ounce of good. This man hit every hot button she owned. “Mr. Whitten,” she said, trying to keep her voice level, “Edenvale signed a contract with ValleyCresL We’ll fulfill our part, but we can’t do it with you or anybody else breathing down our necks. For heaven’s sake, do you plan to go to college with her?”

“She won’t fall off college and break her neck.”

“She won’t fall off horses either if she’s listening to me and not watching you. There’s really no nice way to put this, Mr. Whitten. You can go alone or take your daughter with you, but you absolutely cannot lurk.”

“Pat is my child, not yours. And my responsibility.”

“Fine. Then take her home with you.” Liz turned to walk into the barn.

He followed, caught her arm and spun her to face him. “Listen, there are special circumstances. Pat’s not like the other kids.”

“In what way?”

He took a deep breath. “I can’t explain, but she isn’t.”

“Fragile bones? Fragile psyche?”

“She’s been ill. She’s fine now, but I...oh, hell.”

“Tell me. If there’s anything I should know...”

“I’ve said too much already. I promised her I wouldn’t tell you or anyone else.”

“The kids don’t know?”

Mike shook his head. “Not even her teachers at school know.”

“What can’t she do? Surely you can see I have to know her limitations.”

“The doctors say she’s perfectly well, completely healthy, but I’m her father. I worry.”

Liz looked into those cold eyes. Didn’t seem so cold when he spoke about his child. “She doesn’t have the stamina to keep up with the other children? Is that it?”

He snorted. “At the moment she has enough stamina to run me ragged. That could change if she got sick. This is not exactly a sterile environment.” He waved a hand at a pair of cats snoozing in a patch of sunlight.

“The rest of the world isn’t sterile either,” she said. “Mr. Whitten, I have several clients who are asthmatics and one who is actually allergic to horses. With medication they manage fine. Is Pat on medication?”

“No. Listen, I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. If Pat finds out I’ve talked to you she’ll kill me. Think of me as being here to worry about her so that you won’t have to.”

“What a truly comforting thought.”

Mike’s heavy jaw tightened. Those eyes of his had gone glacial again.

Liz continued before she lost her nerve. “I have to establish my authority with these kids if I’m going to get anywhere with them. That goes for Pat as well. Oh, hell, let the child have some space, why don’t you? You saw how the other kids treat her. Is that what you want for her? Total isolation?”

“Of course not.”

“Then please go to work, Mr. Whitten. And try not to worry. You can pick her up this afternoon.” He made a sound deep in his throat that sounded to Liz like a pit bull about to attack, then seemed to think better of it.

He turned on his heel. “Her nanny, Mrs. Hannaford, will pick her up. She’ll have identification with her.”

“Oh, really.”

“Surely you wouldn’t release a child to a stranger?”

“No, no, of course not. But the other kids ride in the van.”

He said over his shoulder, “My child will not ride in the van. She will be picked up.” He got into his car and slammed the door so hard that Liz jumped. He dug a six-foot gash in the gravel as he peeled out.

Liz’s heart was pounding. She could almost feel the acid attacking her stomach lining. She’d won this round, but she suspected the man didn’t retreat often. Liz took a deep breath and went back into the barn. She looked down and saw that she was running her fingers over her arm where Whitten had held her. He hadn’t grabbed her hard, but she still felt his fingers on her skin. He had strong hands. She grinned. No doubt they were a hell of a lot softer than hers and a darned sight better manicured.

THE MORNING WAS BUSY, but by ten the campers knew what was expected of them, what they could and could not do. They’d made a passable job of grooming and tacking up one of the beginner horses and the old campaigner pony. Vic and Liz were now ready to take the kids—two at a time—to either end of the arena to lunge.