Christmas Countdown Read online

  Mac Titus intrigued her and frightened her all at the same time, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to truly draw him out into the open.

  “We’ll need this.” He held up a small hacksaw she’d put into the saddlebag and moved around to hobble Navigator, before he unclasped the lead rope.

  “Have you spotted a Christmas tree yet?”

  “Patience. I like to take my time. Besides, the good ones are at the center of the garden.”

  He grinned at her and shook his head, as one by one they hobbled the other two horses and removed their bridles so they could graze on the grass uninhibited.

  “This is a beautiful spot, Emma.”

  She pointed to a path and fell in step behind him as they climbed the base of the knoll and followed the trail into the dense stand of blue spruce, pine and noble fir.

  “Yes, it is. I use to ride out here all the time.”

  “And you don’t anymore?”

  “Not so much since my dad’s stroke. I haven’t been able to find the time to do the things I used to do. It helps that he has a private nurse now; it has freed me somewhat, but I still worry about him and don’t leave the farm too often.”

  Mac ducked under a low-hanging branch and held it back for her until she passed and moved on ahead of him.

  “Do you see one you want to take home and dress up like a Christmas tree?”

  “Impatient, aren’t you? Just stay on the path, we’re almost there.” Excitement forced her to pick up the pace now that she was in the lead. She’d never brought a man out here before, out into a place she grew up calling her secret garden, but she wanted Mac to experience its magic just the same.

  Tension knotted the muscles between Mac’s shoulder blades as he scanned the dense layers of trees surrounding them, and looked for anything that posed a threat.

  He didn’t like feeling so exposed. Someone could easily take another round of shots at them and he’d have a hard time isolating their location. Hell, if he weren’t tagged up with Emma on a clear path, he’d be as lost as a draft horse on a Thoroughbred racetrack.

  The lay of the land progressed up in elevation with each step, and he relaxed slightly at the sight of an opening in the curtain of green at the top of the knoll fifty feet in front of them.

  Closing the distance between himself and Emma, he emerged into the small clearing and stepped in front of her as he searched for danger around the perimeter of the perfect circle he found himself standing in.

  “So what do you think?” She brushed past him and moved into the center of the circumference. “Isn’t it great?”

  Mac turned all the way around before he joined her in the middle. “You and your dad planted all of these trees?”

  “Yeah. We put in the first ring of seedlings the spring I turned five, the year after my mother died. And another ring every spring after that until my dad’s stroke.”

  He had to keep his teeth clamped together to keep his mouth from gaping open as he turned around, staring at the graduated layers of trees all rustling in the breeze and giving the small clearing the feel of an arena, with row upon row of cheering fans surrounding the center. “It’s amazing, Em.”

  “What did you call me?”

  He turned to face her, realizing in his state of awe, he’d let an affectionate abbreviation of her name slip.

  “Em. I called you Em. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She stepped closer to him and gazed up into his face. “Only my dad calls me that, but it sounds good coming from you.”

  Mac’s heart skipped a beat as he stared at her lips, then back up into her whiskey-brown eyes. The moment seemed to blend them together like a smooth drink. He reached for her, slipped his fingers under her chin and raised her mouth to his.

  The air around them was cool, but her lips were hot against his. He closed his eyes and deepened the kiss, pulling her body to his with a need that burned through him like fire.

  Heat exploded in his veins when she pressed her body to his and locked her arms around his neck.

  He ended the kiss and lowered her to the soft grass, where he pulled her on top of him and stared up into her face.

  Emma worked to get her ragged breathing under control. “I knew this place was special, but that. That was—”

  Cupping the back of her head, he pulled her lips to his again, cutting off her words.

  She kissed him back. Giving. Taking. Working to satisfy the need building inside of her inexperienced body.

  He broke the kiss and rolled to the left, pulling her underneath him, where he kissed her again, before relenting and slowly rolling off her. He pushed up into a sitting position. “I shouldn’t have kissed you without asking.”

  Rolling onto her side, she sat up and faced him. Reaching out, she cupped his scarred jaw in the palm of her hand. “I’m not complaining. I know where my boundaries are, and if you’d have crossed them just now, I’d have told you.” She swallowed, enjoying the pulse of heat that ricocheted between them like lightning.

  She wanted him to kiss her again and again. She wanted to explore the myriad sensations flooding her body. Sensations she’d never explored to their ultimate conclusion with any man.

  In the distance the purr of an engine caught her attention. “Do you hear that?”

  She saw Mac turn his head slightly to the right, as if the movement could somehow dial in the sound.

  “No. What is it?”

  “It sounds like a motor. Maybe to the east, down by the creek on the other side of the knoll.”

  Mac stood up and helped her to her feet.

  On a hunch, Emma reached up and snapped her fingers inches from his left ear. He didn’t even blink. “Why didn’t you tell me, Mac? Why didn’t you say something? The shooting damaged your hearing.”

  “It’ll come back.” He stared down at her with a look of certainty in his dark blue eyes.

  She sobered, realizing the effect profound hearing loss would have to have had on his ability to do his job for the Secret Service.

  The grind of the engine grew louder over the whisper of the wind in the pines.

  “Come on.” She grabbed his hand and headed for the trees on the other side of the clearing.

  Mac could hear it now, the hum of an engine, as clear as rain. “Is anyone supposed to be out here?”

  “No.”

  Caution hedged his pace through the pines. Pulling to a stop, he grabbed Emma and held her against him as a pickup truck roared past their location on the edge of the tree line. From the cover of a massive spruce, they watched the truck make its way along the narrow dirt road running parallel to the creek.

  “Where does the road go?”

  “It dead-ends at a gate that leads to the lower pasture. My father fenced it off years ago because of the shallow caverns carved out in the limestone by the water. He didn’t want any of our horses to fall through the weak topsoil. He dynamited the largest cavern’s entrance so no one would get hurt.”

  “Do you recognize the vehicle?”

  “Yeah. It belongs to Victor Dago.”

  Mac took Emma’s hand and guided her along several feet inside the protective layer of trees. “Would Dago have any reason to be out here?”

  “No. His lease doesn’t include access to Firehill lands, with the exception of six stalls in the stud barn, the paddock and the track.”

  They circled the top of the knoll, stopping at a vantage point a hundred yards from the spot where the truck rolled to a stop at the closed gate.

  Mac pulled Emma to the ground, watching as the man behind the wheel climbed out of the pickup and looked around in every direction before walking toward the gate.

  “That’s one of Victor’s grooms,” Emma said.

  “Yeah, his name’s Rahul. He’s the one who went to call the vet for Dragon’s Soul.”

  “He’s the only one who speaks English besides Victor.”

  Caution stilled Mac’s body as he saw the man stop, then turn with a jerk. He star
ed in their direction as if he knew they were there and was trying to pick them out of the trees.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Emma,” Mac warned, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.

  The air charged around him as he watched Rahul hurry back to the truck, climb in, fire the engine and turn the rig around. But rather than speed off, he braked to a stop in a cloud of dust and revved the motor.

  “What’s he doing?” Emma whispered.

  “I think he may have spotted us.” Mac gauged the amount of protection around them, glancing at the mature pine perimeter six feet in front of them. If Rahul came into the grove on foot, he could easily be taken down. But if he found a way to penetrate the tree line with the pickup they were in real trouble.

  The transmission ground into gear. The pickup lurched forward, traveling back along the dirt road headed in their direction.

  Tension knotted Mac’s nerves as he watched Rahul move closer, then slow down.

  Reaching under his coat, he unholstered his weapon and drew a line of sight on the pickup as it flashed through the trees and drove right past their position.

  Emma sucked in a breath and rolled over onto her back. “What the heck just happened?”

  Mac glanced over at her, still listening to the drone of the truck as it went back the way it had come. He holstered his weapon. “I don’t know.”

  “Rahul’s driving lesson 101, maybe. Did you hear the way he ground the gears?” Emma asked.

  “Maybe.” Mac tried to reason out the scenario they’d just witnessed. What if Emma was right? What if Rahul was just trying to learn to drive a stick shift? He estimated the man to be in his early twenties, and in light of Victor’s possibly bogus trainer’s license, maybe Rahul’s was, too.

  “Come on, we better get your Christmas tree cut and back to the farm.”

  Emma scrambled to her feet. “I know just the one I want.”

  Mac followed her back into the clearing where he retrieved the saw he’d dropped on the mashed-down grass in the exact spot where he’d kissed her unrepentantly.

  His heart rate ticked up as he watched her peruse an eight-foot-tall blue spruce, then shake her head and point at a well-shaped noble fir.

  “This one,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  He watched her smile and rub her hands together in anticipation. His heart expanded in his chest as it filled with a measure of her childlike excitement.

  Three minutes of sawing and the fir was felled and being dragged back down to the pasture, where the horses grazed on bluegrass and his emotions returned to seminormal.

  He planned to make another trip out here to find out what lay beyond the closed gate. He wanted to know for sure what Rahul had really been up to.

  A self-imposed driving lesson, or a distraction to hide something nefarious? Something just beyond the locked gate?

  Chapter Seven

  Emma’s cell rang just as Mac was dismounting Oliver to open the pasture gate leading back into the farm’s main paddock.

  She pulled the phone out of her pocket, glanced at the screen and felt her stomach pucker. “Hello.”

  “Emma?”

  “Hey, Doc.” She glanced at Mac as he paused next to the gate to watch her, his concern unavoidably tied to hers.

  “I’ve got the results of Navigator’s blood test.”

  “How bad is it?”

  The veterinarian’s long pause at the other end of the line made her heart turn in her chest and she waited for the guillotine to drop on her dreams.

  “I’m not going to lie to you Emma. The levels in Navigator’s system are high. Butazolidin binds with proteins in the blood at a rate of 99 percent. He most likely ingested upward of 800 micrograms a day from the tainted feed for over a week. If you do get him clean, one percent of the bute could still be present in his tissues.”

  Emma finger combed Dandy’s mane, trying to soothe her disappointment with the gesture, but it wasn’t working.

  “What about the drug test he’ll be required to take at Keeneland? Will that disqualify us?”

  “It wouldn’t show up on the drug test on race day, but he’s going to need an injection of thyroid-stimulating hormone to counteract the bute. It competes for the same cellular binding sites as the hormone does. Your only chance is using Mac’s remedy for purging his system with natural diuretics, but I have to tell you honestly, it’s a long shot.”

  Emma rubbed her forehead with her fingertips and tried to swallow the news with an ounce of dignity. “How soon does he need the thyroid injection?”

  “As soon as possible, or his conditioning will suffer, if it hasn’t already. We can give him another shot at the end of Mac’s treatment to make sure he’s working at his full capacity.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Doc. Can you come by tomorrow afternoon?”

  “I have a three o’clock opening.”

  “We’ll take it. I’ll see you then.” She closed her phone and slipped it into her jacket pocket. “It’s bad, Mac.”

  In a few steps he was next to her, helping her down off her horse and gathering her in his arms.

  She leaned into him and closed her eyes tightly against the sting of tears behind her lids.

  They were so close. So close to an end shot at the Derby. Who knew something like this could derail everything she’d worked so hard for?

  “Don’t give up, Em,” Mac whispered against her ear. “You have to hang on and it’ll work out. I promise.”

  She wanted to believe him. To hold on to the hope in his assessment of the situation. She pulled in a deep breath and pushed back, staring up into his face, at the way his features softened as he gazed down at her. At the long scar on his handsome face that probably carried with it more discouragement than she’d ever known.

  “You’re right. If I can hope that the colt will win the Derby if given the chance, then you have every right to hope your hearing will return someday.”

  She reached up and brushed the side of his cheek. He closed his eyes for a moment, reopened them and focused on her.

  “We’ll make it happen. With the mash and green tea, we can purge the drug from his system. I’ve seen it work.”

  She nodded in agreement, but her awareness had shifted to the feel of his body against hers, to the warmth and pleasure it generated in her veins as they pressed together between the two horses.

  Her gaze dropped to his lips, then back up to his eyes. She wanted to kiss him again. To experience the surge of emotion and curiosity it had awakened inside of her. She watched a muscle flex along his jaw as he gritted his teeth.

  “Emma,” Mac said, transfixed in a moment he was unwilling to resist. Her invitation was subtle but effective. He lowered his mouth to hers.

  Contact.

  Searing heat flared, scorching his nerves and churning his blood to white-hot.

  A low nicker from Oliver brought Mac out of the fever and he ended the kiss. Staring down into Emma’s face, he watched her eyes flick open, her chest rising and falling in a heightened rhythm that matched his own.

  “Come on. We’ve got a lot of work to do.” He reached up and pulled the rope they’d used to drag her Christmas tree home off of Oliver’s saddle horn and dropped it.

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding as he returned to the gate latch, slid the bolt action pin and pushed the sixteen-foot panel open.

  He was out of line. Kissing Emma Clareborn, repeatedly, didn’t play into his career plan and as much as he enjoyed doing it, it had to stop.

  Determined, he worked to curb the desire in his body and lead Oliver through the gate and over to the front of the stable, where he looped the reins on a hitching post, and went to work unsaddling the horse.

  Emma tied Dandy up next to Oliver, then led Navigator into the barn.

  Mac worked the cinch, pulled the saddle and blanket off of the horse and deposited them on the hitching rail. About to turn and unsaddle Dandy, he caught a glim
pse of movement in the paddock across the way.

  Rahul stood behind the six-foot-high fence, staring through the gap between two of the rails. He immediately turned around and headed for the Dago stable.

  Caution surged in Mac’s blood as he watched the man’s progress until he ducked inside the main door of the stud barn.

  “Hey.”

  The sound of Emma’s voice returned his focus to the job at hand.

  “What are you looking at?”

  He unsaddled Dandy while she brushed Oliver out. “Rahul was across the way in the paddock. I think he was waiting to see who came in out of the pasture.” He watched her shudder, then continue working the brush over the horse’s coat a second later.

  “That’s just creepy.”

  “Yeah, but it makes sense. He knows someone saw him out at the southeast gate. He knows this is one of only two ways in and two ways out.”

  “And now he knows it was us?”

  “Yes.” Mac couldn’t alleviate the measure of concern that locked onto his thoughts. If Rahul’s business on Firehill’s land was benign, he’d have no reason to want to discover who’d been a witness to his trek out there this afternoon.

  “After we put the horses away, will you help me drag the Christmas tree to the back of the house, and soak its base in a bucket of water?”

  “Yeah.” He glanced up, watching her stroke the brush across the horse’s back, and remembered the feel of her lips on his. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever kissed, but it was her grit that intrigued him the most and aroused curiosity in his veins.

  Keeping his distance from her from now on wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it would probably be the hardest thing he’d ever have to do.

  EMMA CHOPPED ANOTHER BAG of carrots on the makeshift cutting board Mac had rigged up next to Navigator’s stall and scraped them into the five-gallon bucket they were mixing the mash in.

  Mac reached in up to his elbow and stirred the vegetables into the mix with his hand.

  “Thank God he’s eating this stuff.” She wrinkled her nose at the sulfur smell of the green cabbage, which had permeated the interior of the stable.

  Mac glanced up at her and grinned. “It’s the molasses. Suckers them into eating it every time.”