Almost Home Part 10

"I didn't mean to imply that. I'm trying to figure out why my mother had so many mementos from Golden's, and I hope that leads me to the truth. I don't know if the woman in the photo with you is even her. It didn't really look like her. But the name was close-Evelyn, Evie."

"No. Sorry. I can't help you."

"Well, thanks for your time."

Leeanne almost forgot to move. But she couldn't let Jimmy or Katherine catch her in the hallway, not after that bombsh.e.l.l. She dashed down the hall and into the ladies' room. It took her a few minutes to catch her breath, to settle her racing heart.

Had Jimmy had a lover she didn't know about? Had he fathered a child with someone else-a child who was now a beautiful grown-up blonde? But if he had, he wouldn't have shirked his responsibilities. He wasn't that kind of man. Unless he hadn't known...

Chapter 7.

Katherine walked out of the bank and stopped on the sidewalk, feeling unsettled after meeting with Jimmy Callaway. A handsome, serious man with the comforting scent of Old Spice clinging to his skin, he'd seemed a fine option for a father candidate, until he'd opened his mouth and emphatically denied knowing her mother. Not only that, he wouldn't even admit to being in the photograph, and her questions had definitely made him uncomfortable. Why?

Her mind drifted back to the redhead she'd seen in his office. His wife? In a trench coat? It seemed unlikely. And she certainly hadn't looked like a business a.s.sociate. Maybe that was why he'd been so nervous. Maybe she'd caught them in the middle of something.

As usual, her timing was less than perfect.

With a sigh, Katherine checked her watch and debated her options. It was midafternoon, the sun rising higher in the sky, and she had no idea what to do next. Walking down the sidewalk to a bench, she sat down and took out her spiral notebook. She opened it to a blank page and tried to concentrate. But all she could see was the smile in Zach's eyes when he'd read her lists, the amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice as he'd flipped through the pages.

She shook her head, knowing that trying to figure Zach out wouldn't be any easier than finding her father. Tapping her pen against the paper, she wrote down what she had so far; the initial J, Golden's, and the likely candidates, J.T., Justin, and lastly, Jimmy Callaway. She still had to check out the quilt. She could drive out to J.T.'s farm and try to speak to him. Although she was feeling a bit sh.e.l.l-shocked from her last confrontation. Maybe it would be better to wait until tomorrow.

"What should I do?" she murmured, writing the word what, what, what, over and over in her notebook. Usually, writing down the question made the answer seem so easy, so clear. Today she came up empty. In fact, looking at her words, she realized how neatly she'd written them. Even in the face of pure restless desperation, she'd managed to maintain control over her writing. d.a.m.n.

In a sudden burst of anger at herself, she took the pen and scribbled all over the page, obliterating the lines with ruthless abandon. It was cathartic to see such a mess. She'd always felt like a mess on the inside, but she'd never let it show, never let her real self out. Until now. And she felt suddenly free of the constraints she'd donned fifteen years ago.

That was when it had begun, when, left alone with a stepfather she barely knew, she'd tried to conform, to be what he wanted, what everyone wanted. She'd been so careful to show only the side of herself that was acceptable, for fear that any other side would lead to her being sent away. It was bad enough having lost her mother; the thought of being a real orphan, going to a family she didn't know at all, had terrified her.

She'd done what she had to do to survive. Only she wasn't a child anymore. Mitch.e.l.l and Cecily were never going to love her the way she wanted to be loved, no matter how good a girl she was.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but do you want to buy some chocolate?"

Katherine looked up to see two small girls dressed in some sort of uniform holding two large boxes filled with candy.

"Do I want to buy some chocolate?" she echoed with a smile.

"It's two dollars a box."

"How many boxes do you have?" Katherine asked.

"Ten."

"I'll take 'em all."

"You will?" The little girls looked at each other in amazement while Katherine dug out a twenty-dollar bill. "You must be hungry," one of them said.

"I haven't had lunch yet."

"You're going to eat candy for lunch?" the other little girl asked in amazement.

"You bet I am," Katherine said with a grin as they dropped their boxes at her feet. "And I'm going to enjoy every decadent second," she murmured after they left.

Katherine slipped her notebook back into her purse. She could think of at least a dozen reasons why she should not be eating chocolate, but she wasn't going to write them down. For this moment, this one tiny moment, she was going to do exactly what she wanted to do and to h.e.l.l with the consequences. Breaking open the box, she popped the first chocolate into her mouth and sighed with pure enjoyment. She'd never felt so liberated in her life * * *

Friday dawned with a clear blue sky broken only by an occasional puffy white cloud drifting across the perfect landscape. Katherine rolled down the window of the car she'd borrowed from Maggie and inhaled the crisp, country-fresh air. It was a new day, a new beginning, with all sorts of possibilities.

She was ready to continue her search. She'd set off with every intention of driving out to J.T.'s stud farm and introducing herself to him and his wife. But the turnoff to Stanton Farms beckoned, and she couldn't resist.

Zach Tyler wouldn't welcome her with open arms, but she didn't care. After all, she'd opened her notebook this morning and written down ten reasons why she needed to see Zach again. Some habits were impossible to break. The important thing was that she'd come up with one really good reason why she needed to see Zach: because she wanted to.

It was foolish. She didn't even know the man, yet she was attracted to him like a bee to a flower. He'd told her not to trust him, not to like him, not to think anything good of him. But she couldn't believe he was all bad. Or maybe she could-maybe being with a bad boy was just what a good girl like her needed.

Not that she had any intention of actually being with him in the most intimate sense. She'd never go that far out of the lines. But then, a week ago she hadn't thought she'd leave her job on a whim, hop a plane to Kentucky, and run her car into a drainage ditch. Nor had she antic.i.p.ated eating two pounds of chocolate in one afternoon. At this rate, she just might find herself in bed with Zach Tyler before the day was out. The thought sent an irrepressible shiver down her spine.

Two minutes later she pulled into a loosely graveled parking lot and parked the car in front of a life-size statue of a jockey wearing burgundy and gold with the letters SF branded on his chest.

She slipped out of the car and took a moment to look around. To the right there were numerous shade trees and a long narrow path leading up to what appeared to be an impressive three-story house. To the left were the barns, a half dozen or so buildings going back as far as the eye could see. And somewhere in that area she could probably find Zach.

Since the day Katherine had first stumbled across Zach on the highway, she'd thought of him as a rough-edged cowboy; now she was beginning to realize he was a lot more.

"Can I help you?" a woman asked, stopping in front of Katherine with a friendly smile. Wearing blue jeans, dusty boots, and a burgundy T-shirt with the now familiar SF crest, she was obviously an employee of some sort.

"I was looking for Zach Tyler," Katherine replied.

"He's in the breeding shed. Do you have an appointment?"

"No, I'm just a friend stopping by to say h.e.l.lo."

"Oh, well, the breeding shed is the second building on your right. If he's not there, stop in at the office. They can track him down for you."

"Thanks."

Before Katherine could move, a trio of horses came flying into view in a nearby pasture. She caught her breath at the sight of a mother and two foals chasing a bird or a b.u.t.terfly or something that had set them into a run on a beautiful spring morning.

"Oh, wow," she murmured.

The girl beside her laughed. "That's Misty and her babies. Actually, only one of the babies is hers. The other one's mother died at childbirth, so Misty sort of adopted the baby."

Katherine watched while the two younger horses played under the mare's watchful eyes. "They're gorgeous."

"That they are."

"I've never really seen a horse up close before," Katherine confessed with a laugh.

"You came to the right place. Get Zach to show you around. We've got some real beauties here."

"Thanks, I will." Katherine took one last look at the mare and her babies, then walked down the path toward the building she supposed was the breeding shed. Along the way she couldn't help noticing how busy the farm was, employees engaged in their daily activities, from hosing down horses, to walking them in a ring, to pitching hay into buckets and filling up water troughs.

Katherine could feel her eyes widening with every step at the same time her nose wrinkled from the odd smells: the horses, the hay, the manure. She was as far from her thirty-second-floor office as she could get. There was no sterile air conditioning out here, no men in suits and ties, no cell phones or pagers, at least not that she could see. There was just the land, the earth, the animals, the sky, and a mangy old dog sunning himself in front of the barn.

The large staff, the freshly painted barns, reminded her that this farm was also big business, just not the kind of business she'd even known anything about.

"Can I help you?" an older man asked, stopping in front of her to push his baseball cap up higher on his head. He squinted at her with friendly brown eyes that lit up his lined face. "I know you. You're that gal who landed herself in a ditch."

And she remembered him, the other man in the trailer with Zach.

"That's me," she said lightly.

"Well, you look a lot better than the last time I saw you. I'm Sam Jamison."

"Katherine Whitfield."

"You come to see Zach?"

"I thought I'd say h.e.l.lo. Is he around?"

"Oh, sure, he's always around. Lives and breathes this business, you know."

"I got that impression."

"He's in the breeding shed. I'll take you over there."

"Thanks," Katherine replied, falling into step alongside him.

"I'm sure Zach will be happy to see you," Sam said with a half smile in her direction.

Katherine wasn't so sure, but she appreciated the vote of confidence. "Have you known Zach long?"

"Since he was a sixteen-year-old smart-a.s.s. He's still a smart-a.s.s, but he's older now."

Katherine grinned. Obviously Sam and Zach were more than just co-workers. "I've heard his father has a less than stellar reputation."

"Yeah. When a boy grows up looking for a man to model himself after, and that man turns out to be a thief, well, the boy doesn't know what he sees in the mirror anymore, himself or the son of a thief."

Sam paused, letting his words hang between them. "But Zach is a good man, smart, honest, blunt. He runs this farm better than anyone I've ever seen. He's got a real fine horse, too. That makes people nervous. Folks around here don't want to have to take their hats off to him, but if Zach has his way, they'll have to do just that."

"Do you really think people will change their minds about him if his horse wins the Derby?"

"In Paradise, the Derby counts for a whole lot." Sam paused for a minute, sending her a speculative look. "You going to stay in town long, Miss Whitfield?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Well, I hope you'll stay until the Derby. It's only two weeks away, and it's an experience you won't want to miss." Sam paused in front of a large barn. "This is the breeding shed. When we go in, stay behind me. We're breeding John Royal to Miss Penny today."

Katherine gulped. They were breeding two horses this very minute, as in mating, as in s.e.x? She'd never actually seen two animals mate, and she wasn't all that sure she wanted to see it now. "Maybe I should just wait outside."

"Don't worry. There's a viewing area. You won't be right in the room with 'em," Sam said, heading into the barn.

Katherine stayed as close to him as possible as he led her into the breeding shed. He mounted a few stairs to the left and let her look through the gla.s.s.

"Oh, my," Katherine murmured, watching as two men held on to the bridle of a beautiful chestnut-colored horse.

"That's Miss Penny. She came all the way from Texas for this mating." Sam looked at her and smiled. "You don't know much about horses, do you?"

"I don't know anything."

"Breeding is our business. Owners send us their mares and we breed them to our stallions. The bloodlines are traced back for several generations. Every aspect of each horse's breeding is taken into account, and the result is a pure thoroughbred who will hopefully win some races and enhance the value of the bloodline."

"It seems so cold-blooded."

"It is," he said with a laugh. "But the horses don't care. Everything is kept one hundred percent sterile. The walls are padded, no nails or spikes, nothing that could injure a rattled horse or one of our men."

"You make it sound like a rather violent process."

"It can be. These are twelve-hundred-pound animals. And sometimes a mare can get a little nervous."

Katherine licked her lips. She could understand that. She felt a little nervous, too, and not at all sure she wanted to witness the coming event. As she turned to tell Sam she'd just wait outside, she saw Zach walk into the room, and everything else simply faded from view.

Dressed in tight-fitting, faded blue jeans that were stained with dirt at the knees, a navy blue polo shirt that stretched across his broad chest, and a baseball cap on his head, Zach Tyler was every inch a male with his long, lean legs and powerful arms. He strolled up to the mare and began to pet her as she danced lightly on her feet.

Katherine couldn't hear what he was saying through the gla.s.s walls, but it didn't matter. Watching him quiet the mare was an amazing experience. She'd seen him hard and angry and impatient and annoyed, but she'd never seen him so tender.

"Zach's good with the girls," Sam said with a grin in her direction. "The four-legged kind, that is."

As he finished speaking, Zach turned to look at them. He didn't appear happy to see her, but it was too late to get rid of her, because a large door had opened on one end of the room and all eyes turned to the stallion who began to whinny and snort and rear back on his hind legs.

Katherine pressed her hands against the gla.s.s, rea.s.suring herself that there was some barrier between her and these two wild animals.

"That's not the real one," Sam said in her ear.

"What do you mean?"

"That's the warm-up act."

At her look of confusion, he explained. "That's a standard-bred stallion, not a thoroughbred. His job is to tease the mare, see if she's ready, see how she's going to respond. If the mare is truly in heat, she'll be submissive. If not, she may try to resist the stallion and kick him. We can't risk our very expensive stallion getting injured, so we test the waters first."

Katherine watched as the mare was backed up against the wall of the adjoining room where the stallion was. The stallion thrust his nose at her, snorting with eagerness. The mare stood quietly under Zach's firm hand. A second later the door slammed shut between them.

"What happens next?" Katherine asked as Zach moved the mare through another doorway.

"Show-time," Sam said, leading her along the gla.s.s wall until they could see into another room. "Billy there is putting a thong over the mare's nose, which is attached to that thick stick. It's called a hobble and a twitch."

"I'll take your word for it."