Kept at the Argentine's Command

There were signs. Any damn fool would know enough not to enter a stallion’s stall. Chariot’s mood was dicey, at best, and with an injured fetlock he wasn’t making friends at the moment. One of those hooves, precisely placed, could have knocked the life out of her.

But when he turned around Lulu was crouched on the ground, head bent.

He was beside her in an instant.

‘Can’t breathe…’ she gasped.

He settled her back, only to realise she was still cradling something against her breast. He disengaged what turned out to be a newborn kitten from her hands and, at a loss as to what to do with it, slipped it into his shirt pocket. Then he returned his attention to Lulu, who had drawn her knees up. He gently encouraged her to keep her head between them while he rubbed her back in concentric circles, counting breaths for her. All the while she made wheezing sounds that sent him cold.

When her breathing was less laboured she lifted her face. ‘Oh…’ she said, and reached out gently to touch the head of the tiny creature hanging over the side of his pocket, its blue eyes barely open.

He was beginning to get a picture of why Lulu had been in the stall. ‘I believe you two are friends?’

Lulu insisted on wobbling to her feet, with his help, and indicated the neighbouring empty stall. ‘They’re in here,’ she said.

Sure enough there was a barn cat, with a litter of four kittens lying in a nest of fresh, fragrant hay. Lulu restored the fifth to the pile. They couldn’t be more than a few hours old.

She stood looking down at them. He noticed she had colour in her face again, but the expression in the eyes she lifted to his took him off-guard. She looked almost jubilant.

‘I did it,’ she said.

‘Did what?’ he asked huskily. ‘Rescued the kittens?’

‘Managed…’ She bit her lip. ‘Almost.’

He gave in to his frustration with her. ‘You could have been killed.’ His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been yelling. But he never raised his voice. He’d grown up with adults for whom screaming matches had been part of a daily ritual.

Lulu made a face. ‘I know. It was stupid. But I was passing and I saw the light on. I wanted—I wanted to pat the horses.’

‘You wanted to what?’

She sank down into the hay, as if her legs weren’t going to hold her, and he remembered she’d had a significant fright. Hell, he wasn’t feeling so crash-hot himself. Seeing her pinned up against that wall…

‘I saw the cat at the rear of his stall with her kittens and I had to get them out.’

‘You mean you went in more than once?’

‘Three times.’

His gaze dropped to what he could see of her chest, crisscrossed with scratches. He hunkered down and took hold of her hands, equally bloodied, pushing up the long sleeves to find her wrists red and white with raised welts.

‘Dios…’

‘I’ll mend,’ she said, almost impatiently, pulling her hands back.

‘Woman…’ he breathed, and the urge to shake her was subsumed in the need to hold her close. He dragged her in tight against him. She came.

‘What made you come out here so late in the day?’ he asked, holding her so that she rested against him in the hay.

‘I wasn’t ready until now,’ she said haltingly.

‘Ready for what?’

He looked at her as if she was speaking another language. Another minute of this and he was going to look at her as if she was a complete flake.

Lulu swallowed hard. She could convince herself that she had to tell him the truth now because whatever happened he was going to think she was crazy anyway. Or tell herself that he’d just rescued her and she owed him an explanation.

But right now what she really wanted was to tell him the worst thing about herself and hope he might overlook it and see the woman beneath.