Wild Horses (15 page)

Only fifteen minutes later, Attila was mentally congratulating himself on his brilliant idea to separate Lindsey from her mother during their lessons. There were no critical eyes, no “helpful” comments, no witnesses to the inevitable mistakes everyone made while learning to master a new skill. Lindsey was comfortable, relaxed, and learning fast.

His apologetic e-mail to Mona had been well worth the embarrassment he suffered as he manufactured a scheduling emergency of his very own. Their usual slot was unavailable due to his personal appointments, and only Wednesday afternoon was open, which would conflict with Mona’s regular session with her personal trainer. Would she mind terribly… well yes, she did mind terribly, and she did extract a promise from Attila to “make it up to her.” Even the dreaded time together with Mona, who seemed blind to his lack of romantic interest in her, was well worth it, considering her daughter’s progress. Not only progress, but even enjoyment. She rode with a slight smile on her face, leading Zorro forward and back and sideways, her legs not moving visibly at all and her hands navigating the unfamiliar feel of an extra set of controls.

“Excellent!”

Lindsey beamed at the rare praise from her instructor. “Really?”

“I do not like to repeat myself,” he said in a cool voice.

She grinned. “Please? Just this one time?”

He looked up, meeting her eyes, his face a stone mask. “Excellent.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll keep working on it.”

“How are you feeling? How’s your back?” All muscles, big and small, had to work in concert to give the impression of a motionless rider who controlled the horse with mind alone.

“My shoulder blades are cramping up,” she admitted.

He looked at the clock. “We have some time. If you’d like, you can canter him around while I set up some jumps for you.”

He watched her incredulous smile. “Oh, oh! That would be so much fun!”

While Attila set up a series of two mid-level obstacles at a distance suited especially to Zorro’s gait, his mind was on Cayenne and his rider, his thoughts drifting toward the way the red hair had fallen down the broad shoulders, the way it slipped between his fingers like raw silk. A tendril of hot arousal stirred within him, diverting his blood to all kinds of places.

Kai.

He had to fight a sudden urge to sneeze.

K
AI
’
S
bruising had faded to a pale yellow by the time he scheduled another meeting with Clarisse Johnson to get his documents sorted out. They sat in the viewing room again so she could watch her two daughters ride while talking to Kai.

“You don’t look as bad as I heard you did,” she said, her eyes curious. “Did you and Hal resolve your issues?”

“Yeah.” He nodded and twirled his thumbs. Her presence still made him nervous. Even in her casual slacks, with milk-chocolate arms emerging from a bright summer top, she exuded an unmistakable sense of command.

“Look, Kai,” she said, perceiving his discomfort. “You can relax around me. I am your attorney. I’m here to help you.”

Kai’s eyes flicked to her face. He read her no-nonsense body language, and nodded. “Okay.”

“No, not just ‘okay’. You need to trust me, Kai. You are my client, and what we talk about between the two of us stays between us. Even Tibor will not know, because even though I report to him and he’s my boss, you’re my client and I report to you first. This is known as ‘raising a Chinese wall’. A pretend wall that will protect your privacy, so all our communications are covered by attorney-client privilege. So whatever you say, or whatever we find out as we get your documents restored, all that information will be within your control.”

Kai waited. When she didn’t say anything else, he broke the silence. “All of it?”

“Yes—with the exception of certain criminal activities. If I became aware of your plans to commit a crime that would result in imminent personal harm, I would be obliged to contact the authorities, so don’t go robbing a bank or anything like that.” Clarisse smiled.

“But my personal history and stuff—you mean you may know, but Tibor and Attila won’t?”

“Yes. That’s what it means.”

Kai’s shoulders relaxed and his face loosened into a small smile. “Okay, then. So… what did you find out?”

Clarisse opened her briefcase and pulled out a large, brown envelope. “Here is a copy of your birth certificate.”

Kai took it and fished inside the envelope to produce an official-looking piece of paper.

“Now the bad news: you’ll receive your replacement Tennessee driver’s license in the mail within two weeks, but it expires in another few weeks. So….” Clarisse pulled a thick booklet out of her briefcase. “Here are the rules of the road for Pennsylvania. You’ll need to master them well enough to pass the test before your license expires. If you don’t, you’ll have to do your driver’s license all over again. And the rules have tightened up. They now require you to wait half a year, and actually practice and keep track of your hours before you take your road test. So….” She eyed him with concern. “Unless you think it would be safer to go through the whole instructional process again, I suggest you hit the books and pass the test the first time around.”

Kai accepted the book with obvious trepidation. “And if I fail?”

“If you fail, you will go to the police station, where they will give you a sheriff’s photo ID, and you can keep working on your driver’s license.”

Kai eyed the booklet with a baleful glare. “Okay. If you think this is the best way, then I better do it.”

“Good. Also… please keep Attila in the loop on these things. He will be happy to help you with whatever you need.”

Clarisse rose and extended her hand, and Kai rose from his seat and shook it. “Thank you,” he said, and she only inclined her head, smiled, and walked over to the window of the viewing room to watch her daughters ride for the last ten minutes of their lesson.

A
TTILA
’
S
six o’clock class ran late. The adult students had many questions, and he was grateful that Sally and May were on hand to help him handle the horses as well as the bipeds. For the first time in days, he regretted grounding Kai to the dusty tack room with Hal, despite the obvious benefits the punishment had reaped. The whole place was now clean and organized. The small space had been freshly painted and there was a brighter light fixture installed on the ceiling. All the hooks and pegs were labeled with horses’ names and stall numbers, all the tack was clean and shiny and hanging where it should, and the floor was swept clean. Hal and Kai went beyond the call of duty, except Kai was now unavailable and Attila dreaded coming home and having more chores to do.

He was pleased to see the horse stalls were clean, the buckets topped off with clean water, and there was hay in the mangers and grain in the buckets. All but six horses were in for the night. He listened to their complacent eating sounds as he considered what to do next. Sally and May took care of the rest and helped the beginners untack. It would have been faster to just do it for them, but Attila believed horse care was part of becoming a rider. Besides, they all seemed interested, spending an inordinate amount of time currying and brushing their mounts and feeding them carrots and peppermint candy.

Only Kai brings them apples.

Sheer habit forced Attila to look around and search the crowd of horses and people for the brilliant, telltale head of burnished copper hair. Kai wasn’t there, however, and Attila experienced a curious pang of longing in his chest. He peeked into the tack room. Kai was no longer there either—only clean order reigned, exhibited in rows upon rows of saddles on their racks and tidy stacks of saddle pads in a new bin underneath.

“I’ll take care of the rest, boss! You look like you woke up early again today,” Sally said, her hoarse, tobacco-damaged voice easy to recognize.

“I’m alright.”

“I know you are, dear.” The woman was heavy and short. Her work around the stables paid for her three kids’ riding lessons, and she handled both horses and riders with the same maternal, stern hand she used on her own children. “But it’s time for you to go and have something to eat and have a shower.” Applying her child-rearing technique to Attila himself, she turned his shoulders and walked him out of the barn. “There you go. I’ll see you on Saturday!”

“Thanks, Sally,” he said. He took a shortcut down the hill. At this rate, maybe he should just cut a path and mulch it, because the grass was beginning to show wear from his and Kai’s constant passage to and fro.

Attila navigated the makeshift path between his flowerbeds. He rounded the corner around a copse of windbreak poplars. His one-story ranch house came into view, with its patio out back and a small swimming pool, all awash in the warm light of the evening sun. The smell of food tickled his nostrils; surprised, he stopped in his tracks. A splash betrayed Kai’s presence in the pool. Attila saw a flaming-gold head in the setting sun, its owner floating along as though asleep. Then a kitchen timer beeped from within the house. Transfixed, Attila stood at the edge of his garden as Kai pulled his nude form out of the water to tend to dinner. Water dripped down his loose strands of hair and rivulets ran along the dips and ridges of his muscled back, converging down the crack created by two sculpted butt cheeks. The little streams then broke against the fine, orange hair of Kai’s legs, leaving naught but footprints on the warm concrete slab.

Attila bit his bottom lip, afraid to move, watching Kai’s appealing profile as he reached for a towel, bent over, and flipped his hair down to get at least some water out. Then he ran the soft fabric down his limbs in a perfunctory effort and wrapped the towel around his waist before he rushed inside the house.

No longer rooted to the ground, Attila drew a ragged breath and tiptoed around the house. Heat coiled in his belly as he thought of the spectacle, and he felt a stab of acute embarrassment for having stayed and
enjoyed
it. By taking the time to use the front door, as Kai had expected him to do, he would maintain decorum for both of them. He called out a hello as he came in—his greeting answered from the kitchen amidst a great slamming of pots and pans—and took off his shoes, then quickly disappeared into his bedroom to change from the skintight riding breeches into the loose and concealing comfort of his swim trunks.

T
HEY
sat on the patio as Kai served roasted chicken legs and sweet-potato oven fries. There was a salad, the vegetables chopped by an unsteady hand into pieces that were entirely too small, but Attila felt nothing but gratitude toward the novice cook across the table.

“Thank you. Everything seemed to have run late today.”

“I figured,” Kai said, separating the drumstick from the thigh. “I would have stayed, but I didn’t want to leave the food in the oven unattended.”

“I didn’t know you could cook,” Attila said, doing his best to avert his eyes from the topless man across the table.

“Heh, neither did I! I looked up some easy stuff on the Internet. There was even a video.” He poked around in his salad bowl. “The salad looks like it had a hard day, though,” he grumbled. “You make it so much better.”

“It’s great.” Attila allowed a tired smile. “Really. And… wait until I tell you about Lindsey and her lesson.”

“Oh?”

Attila reported on Lindsey’s progress, and dinner passed in such easy conversation that a giddy mood came over him. Suddenly he felt uncommonly rash and brazen. He felt a helpless kind of joy as he watched Kai stretch his back, relaxing after a long day. The younger man was tired as well, but Attila was buoyed by a sudden sense of mischief, such as he had not felt in many years. “Come on. Let’s get in the pool.”

“Umm….” Kai stood between the table and the pool, about to reach for his dirty dinner plate.

“Hey, Kai?” Attila asked with a bit of an edge to his voice.

“What?” Kai’s hand fell away from the plate as he saw the older man walk toward him.

“Just….” Attila body-checked him toward the pool, grabbed the edge of his towel, and yanked hard. “This!” And he pushed, sending Kai into the water. He tossed the towel over the back of the chair and glanced over. Just as he had hoped, the sputtering redhead was still in his glorious birthday suit.

“I think I have failed to mention how very much I loathe bathing suits, Kai,” Attila pronounced in a conversational tone. Then he slipped his thumbs behind the elastic of his trunks, slid them off, and followed Kai into the water.

K
AI
had felt pleased with himself—so happy and proud. He made dinner and Attila liked it. As they ate, Attila’s tired eyes almost regained some of their blue glimmer as his blood sugar rose to a more acceptable range, and Kai even saw a hint of a smile on Attila’s otherwise serious face.

Now Kai was sputtering water, his wet hair blinding him and his body bare to Attila’s eyes.

Attila’s words began to sink in. His boss, his housemate—he loathed bathing suits? Just like Kai did? But… how did Attila know he wore nothing under the towel?

A sleek body disturbed the water next to him in its passing, and Kai turned to see Attila emerge two feet away from him.

“Ahhh… I’ve been looking forward to this all day long!”

“To pushing me in?” Kai asked, now feeling self-conscious and uncertain.

“I have looked forward to a good dinner in good company and a peaceful swim.” Attila sighed, floating on his back for a bit. “And discovering that you
really
don’t mind going naked is the best part. I have been wearing that old monstrosity only because I thought you would feel self-conscious about that kind of a thing.”

“Oh,” Kai said, leaning his shoulders against the side of the pool while deciding how to react.

Attila observed him in the dusky twilight. “It looks like your hair is a real mess again.”

“Yeah. It is,” Kai said with a mischievous grin and shook his tangled tresses in exasperation. “I’m a hopeless case. Maybe I should just cut it off.” Attila was halfway across the pool, and the distance gave Kai a sense of detachment. This far away, he didn’t have to pay attention to the feelings that stirred him in Attila’s presence. They were just talking—weren’t they?