A Love Like Ours Page 16

  Through a cloud of smoke and dust, he saw the remains of his vehicle tilted into a crater. The front had been blasted away, and the rest lay black and smoldering. Flesh and blood splattered the scene.

  A daisy chain of IEDs must have detonated, because he could see evidence of more explosions in a line stretching back along the road. The other vehicles in the convoy had maintained proper distance, so the next one had been damaged, but not badly. Marines were pouring out, moving in his direction.

  Oh, God. He scanned the view for Panzetti, Scott, or Boots. No sign of them.

  He neared the vehicle, lifting his arm to shield his mouth and nose. It only made it worse. He glanced down at his sleeve and saw that it was covered in dirt and streaked with black. All of him was.

  Through the flames, he could finally make out what had been the backseat. And Boots . . . Dan Barnes was still there. Metal had bent around him, trapping him. If he hadn’t been killed instantly, the fire had done it right after.

  “No,” Jake rasped, wanting to look away but unable to. Boots was an eighteen-year-old kid. He’d been Jake’s to protect. Sickening fury and confusion and despair circled within Jake. It should have been him dead and burned. Not the kid.

  He stumbled back. “Panzetti!” he screamed, but he could barely hear his own hoarse voice.

  Two of the Marines in his squad ran in his direction. “Make sure someone’s called Medical,” he yelled to them.

  They hesitated, nodded, and turned back to follow his order. Jake ran down the road, his attention cutting left and right, searching. He couldn’t breathe right through the liquid in his lungs. He continued to run. Saw nothing.

  Where were Panzetti and Scott?

  Jake bolted upright in bed with a gasp.

  The inside of his bedroom surrounded him. Dim and quiet. Far less real to him than the moments he’d just been living inside his nightmare. Fighting for breath, he screwed shut his eyes to avoid the sight of his bottom corner dresser drawer.

  Unlike the kind of nightmares other people had, he couldn’t tell himself his wasn’t real. How bitterly he wished it wasn’t real. His soul would burn in hell because it was real. It had happened.

  But it’s not happening now, he told himself. That was years ago. You’re in Holley.

  His breathing grew even more shallow. Panic tightened his throat.

  He saw her then, sitting on her stool in her studio. She was clean and sweet and so pretty he almost couldn’t bear it. She had her hair up. Her dog was snoring on his lap. And she was painting innocent things that had no darkness in them at all.

  Slowly, the mess of Jake’s mind began to steady.

  “Are you planning to stand there in silence the whole time?” Jake asked Lyndie later that morning.

  “I was under the impression that you didn’t like conversation.” She’d finished exercising her horses and arrived at Jake’s position near Lone Star’s track ten minutes prior. He’d agreed to let her shadow him for a short period each day, and she intended to make him follow through. She wasn’t sure, though, of his preferences. Not wanting to disturb him, she’d been standing quietly to the side and a little behind him.

  Below his black Stetson, he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. He appeared to be somewhat . . . entertained by her. “I like conversation more than I like you standing there watching me without saying anything.”

  “Duly noted.” She moved up, directly next to him. “As it happens, I like conversation more than standing there watching you, too.”

  He angled his chin toward Firewheel, one of his young colts. “Look.” Firewheel had spooked at something. It took the horse a moment to regain himself and settle back into his stride. “He’s not learning as quickly as he should.”

  “And he seems to spook at the same things over and over.”

  “That bush he just passed must look like a mountain lion to him,” Jake said dryly. “It bothers him day after day.”

  “Maybe Firewheel has an imagination like mine. To me that bush looks like a hunched-over dragon.”

  One edge of his lips ticked up. “You’d make a bad racehorse.”

  She laughed. After her fall, things between her and Jake had softened in some hard-to-define but integral way. Praise God! His extreme reserve had cracked. He trusted her enough now to talk with her, to show up at her apartment unannounced, to visit Mollie. They were, perhaps, becoming friends for the second time in their lives. It hadn’t been easy to get to this point with him. That she’d managed it, that he’d let her, was a present more valuable than gold.

  Surreptitiously, she skimmed a peek down the firm, uncompromising line of his profile. The sight reminded her once again of a scarred pirate, surveying his domain. If you liked that sort of thing.

  She—the girl who didn’t lose her head over men—did. Like it.

  “If you were Firewheel’s trainer, what would you do to help him?” Jake asked.

  “Is this a test? You already know what you’re going to do about Firewheel, right? You’re testing me to see if I come up with the same answer.”

  “Maybe.”

  For certain. “If I were Firewheel’s trainer, I’d put blinkers on him.” The nylon hood with cups for the eyes limited a horse’s vision to what was in front of him. In the case of Firewheel, the blinkers would likely calm him. “That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it?”

  “Nah.”

  “What?” she asked, incredulous. “Of course it is.”

  A span of quiet passed. “Of course it is.”

  Lyndie grinned with self-satisfaction. “Mmm-hmm. I passed the test.”

  “I wouldn’t get too bigheaded over it. The teenager that sells ice cream in the clubhouse would know to try blinkers on Firewheel.”

  “Then give me a harder test.”

  He looked at her then, a look of mixed caution and admiration. As if he both wanted and didn’t want to find her charming.

  She returned his level regard. Something real and enticing passed between them.

  “Did I tell you that I liked conversation?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I changed my mind.” The words were gruff, but there was a tiny shade of teasing in his expression that blunted them slightly.

  “Too late.” So, Jake wasn’t very good at friendship yet. Still, he was trying. His stilted, unpracticed efforts at it warmed her far more than effusive affection from another person ever could have.

  One of his riders brought his mount to a halt in front of Jake. “Hold up for a second,” Jake instructed him, then knelt near the filly’s front hooves. Jake ran his hand down the delicate bones of the filly’s leg, his strong fingers amazingly gentle and articulate.

  Lyndie watched, swallowing back tenderness. Did he know just how much his treatment of his horses communicated about him? It revealed to Lyndie his deep kindness. Unfailing fairness and compassion. Intelligence. Dedication. He worked through the weekends and watched over his recuperating horses vigilantly.

  You could tell a lot about a man by the way he treated animals, and Jake treated the animals under his care as finely as any animals could be treated.

  If you liked that sort of thing.

  Lyndie was returning Willow to the barn at Lone Star the next morning when she spotted Jake. He stood outside Silver Leaf’s stall with a short, dark-haired woman next to him.

  Lyndie came to an abrupt halt. She needed to return Willow to his groom, yet all of a sudden she couldn’t get her feet to move because, with a plummeting sense of disappointment, she recognized the woman next to Jake.

  Elizabeth Alvarez had been a jockey at Santa Anita during the years when Lyndie had been striving to make a go of her own jockey career. At that time, they’d been the only two female jockeys at the track and so had shared a tiny, makeshift room off to the side of the main dressing room.

  To be female in a male-dominated field had been a struggle for them both. They’d had a difficult time convincing trainers to trust them with
their best horses. Which became a downward spiral, because unless you had a shot with the best horses, you couldn’t win, and if you couldn’t win, trainers didn’t want to put you on their best horses.

  Her grip on Willow’s reins tightened as she watched Jake incline his head to listen to Elizabeth. It appeared that Jake had decided to stick with her “lady’s man” strategy for Silver Leaf. He was going to try a female jockey on him. But judging by the riding clothes Elizabeth had on, the female jockey wasn’t going to be Lyndie.

  Why had she waited so long to ask Jake if she could ride Silver in his opening race? She’d wanted the perfect moment, but her bide-my-time strategy had failed her.

  Willow’s groom approached, and Lyndie released the bay colt into his care. Heartsick, she made her way toward Jake and Elizabeth.

  When Jake looked over and saw her, a jolt of awareness and power traveled through their eye contact.

  Elizabeth acknowledged her with a reserved inclining of her head. “Hello, Lyndie.”

  “Good to see you again, Elizabeth.”

  “You two know each other?”

  “We both worked at Santa Anita,” Elizabeth answered.

  “I’ve thought of you several times since I’ve been here at Lone Star,” Lyndie said to her. “I remembered that you’d started coming to Texas in the spring.”

  “This’ll be my fourth season here. As soon as Lone Star closes, I head to California. Are you going to the West Coast this summer?”

  “No, I’m here full time now. My sister . . .”

  “That’s right.” Elizabeth’s face took on that down-tipping look people always gave Lyndie when she mentioned Mollie.

  “Elizabeth is going to breeze Silver Leaf,” Jake stated.

  Even though Lyndie had expected as much, the words still wrenched her. A breeze gave a horse an opportunity to stretch out in a run, not an all-out sprint, but fast enough to feel the breeze in his face, thus the term. In the days leading up to a race, a breeze could reveal much to a trainer about a horse’s mental and physical readiness. After today, Jake would likely gentle Silver’s training regimen in order to conserve the best of the horse’s energy for when it mattered.

  “He’s a good-looking horse.” Elizabeth stepped to the stall’s opening, her hands entwined at the small of her back, her gleaming black hair caught in a low ponytail.

  Lyndie shifted so that she could see into the stall and for the first time noticed Zoe kneeling within. By the looks of it, the tall redhead had nearly finished wrapping the stallion’s rear legs.

  Misgivings swamped Lyndie. Swamped her. The whole situation felt wrong. She didn’t know whether that was because putting Elizabeth on Silver was actually, intrinsically wrong or because of the envy twisting inside her. She had no right to say anything against Jake’s decision to let Elizabeth breeze Silver. Jake trained Silver Leaf; Lyndie did not.

  Elizabeth had been jockeying for seven or eight years straight now. She might only be two years older in age than Lyndie, but Elizabeth far surpassed her in race experience. On paper, Elizabeth was obviously the better choice.

  Zoe led Silver out and saddled him. Elizabeth donned her riding helmet, then Jake gave her a leg up into the saddle. “I’ll walk to the track behind you,” he said.

  Elizabeth set off.

  Zoe shot Lyndie an urgent look and did a double head tilt toward Jake. It seemed that Zoe didn’t want Elizabeth jockeying Silver, either.

  “If it’s all right with you, Jake, I’ll join you,” Lyndie said. Silver would have been the final of her horses to exercise. Since Elizabeth was riding him instead, Lyndie had completed her work.

  “All right.” Jake started walking.

  Your enthusiasm overwhelms! Hurriedly, she shucked off her protective vest and pulled a pale pink sweater over her white tank. She caught up with Jake outside the barn.

  Ahead, Elizabeth sat atop Silver, completely relaxed.

  Lyndie wrestled against jealousy she didn’t want to feel. Elizabeth has never been anything but professional toward you, Lyndie. Remember?

  She and Elizabeth had once shared the camaraderie of two outsiders banded together. They’d stuck up for each other, treated each other with respect, and encouraged one another through losses and setbacks. However, there had always, always, been a thread of competitiveness between them, too.

  Because they’d been the only two female jockeys at Santa Anita, the racing faithful had naturally compared them. As good as Lyndie had believed she’d had the potential to be, the stats had continually favored Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth was a blunt, no-nonsense, tremendously driven person, and her intense work ethic had paid off. Lyndie had been driven, too. But she’d been needed at home to help with Mollie. She hadn’t been free to put in the same number of hours as Elizabeth.

  During her jockeying days, Lyndie had begged God month after month for a trainer—just one—to give her a chance on a great horse—just one. That trainer and that horse had never come, but nonetheless, she’d poured every spare minute, plus all her hope and energy, into jockeying for two whole years. Eventually, though, unable to make ends meet, Lyndie had let go of jockeying and the tall dreams she’d built for herself around it. It had not been an easy decision. She’d grown up imagining herself riding in the Kentucky Derby.

  Elizabeth had continued jockeying. She’d toughed it out through seasons of low pay, danger, and adversities. Over time, she’d carved out a modest career for herself. She’d never ridden a big horse, the kind of Thoroughbred that the racing community called a World Beater. But Lyndie kept atop of things enough to know that Elizabeth had finished last year’s season at Lone Star near the middle of the jockey rankings, making her the best of the female jocks the track had to offer.

  So. Why, knowing what she did of Elizabeth and her journey, didn’t she have the grace to hand over Silver to her with blessings? Goodwill? Instead, miserable protectiveness, like that of a mother for her baby, engulfed her. She’d put in so much time with Silver. She loved the horses she exercised. For goodness’ sake, she loved all animals. But there was something about Silver. That indefinable magic. She’d been the one to comprehend his inner workings. She’d been the one to make him run.

  She and Jake, walking side by side, had covered most of the distance to the track in silence. Only fifty or so yards to go. Lord, should I say something?

  No discernible answer. She definitely didn’t want to ruin her fragile, hard-won camaraderie with Jake. Then again, she’d known she’d have to step on land mines with him occasionally. “Elizabeth’s very good.”

  Jake made a sound low in his throat.

  “She’s experienced. She has great instincts.”

  “Why do I think you’re about to tell me not to put her aboard Silver Leaf for his opening race?”

  “Because that’s exactly what I’m about to tell you.”

  Without looking at her, Jake frowned. “I thought you’d be pleased. She’s female.”

  “But she’s not me.”

  He came instantly to a stop. He surveyed her face as if searching it for answers. “No. She’s not you.”

  Lyndie straightened to her full height. “I want to ride Silver Leaf in his opening race.”

  Charged quiet. “What?” he whispered.

  “I want to be Silver Leaf’s jockey. Please.”

  “No.”

  “I jockeyed for two years. I’ve kept my license current. I won’t ask to ride any of the other horses, but I’d really appreciate the chance to ride Silver Leaf.”

  “You’re very good at what you do. But the answer’s no.” He turned and stalked toward the track, shutting her out.

  She stayed abreast of him. “I realized that I wanted to race him a while ago. I’ve simply been waiting for the chance to talk to you about it.”

  “It’s not going to happen, Lyndie.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “But it’s not too dangerous for Elizabeth?”
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  “No. It’s not.”

  Betrayal stung her. “I’m as capable as she is.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Surely he wasn’t holding her spill against her? He himself had said that there’d been nothing she could have done differently the morning she’d fallen. . . .

  Maybe her spill wasn’t at the root of his reluctance. His experiences in Iraq and the wounds he’d sustained there had likely made him more susceptible to worry, both justified and unjustified. “There are certainly risks involved in jockeying,” she said carefully. “But they’re calculated risks. I’ve been riding for years and I’ve had a few injuries, but they’ve all been minor.”

  “We both know that doesn’t mean you won’t be seriously injured the next time.”

  “I’d like to be the one who makes the call about whether jockeying Silver Leaf is safe enough for me to take on. It’s my neck.”

  “I’m Silver Leaf’s trainer. I make the call about jockeys.” His tone held the ring of finality.

  Lyndie saw that two of Jake’s other horses stood ready, both with their jockeys instead of their exercise riders astride. It appeared that Jake was going to breeze Silver in company, using the same method he’d employed with her a few days prior.

  “I’m worried,” she said, “that putting Elizabeth on Silver Leaf this morning is going to set him back.” Stupid tears pricked the back of her throat. She would not cry over this. She was an adult, a professional.

  “I disagree.”

  “You’ve paired him with a female, but that’s only part of the equation. He has to know and trust his rider before he’ll race for her.” She couldn’t be sure of this, of course. It could be that now that they’d unearthed Silver’s potential and he’d had a taste of competition, that he’d race for anyone.

  “Silver Leaf can get to know and trust Elizabeth,” Jake said.

  “I spent hours a day with him for two weeks straight before he began to trust me. His first race is in seven days.”

  “My decision stands, Lyndie.”

  She bit the inside of her bottom lip to keep herself from arguing. He’d agreed to let her join him at the rail each day, and he’d asked her opinion on his horses a couple of times. But she was painfully aware that those things in no way gave her permission to dictate to him what he should do about his racers.