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Slowly she fired one shot after another, and by the time the clip was empty Trace realized he couldn’t tell her he knew. That expression he’d seen the first day he’d met her came back to him, the same expression he’d seen on Labor Day after he tried to set her at a distance. The patient expectation and acceptance of rejection he’d been shocked and then angry to see told him there was something going on with her he needed to handle with kid gloves.
Friday night Liam had told him he was pretty hard on the princess, and he’d been right. Maybe she was just trying to overcome what she saw as his dislike of her by getting him to see her in a different light. Or maybe she just wanted to practice her feminine wiles on someone she saw as safe. Whatever the reason, if he told her he’d seen through her little charade she’d be embarrassed. And worse, humiliated, just as she’d been on Mount Evans. She doesn’t deserve that, he thought protectively.
She turned to him again, her brows raised in a question. “I emptied the clip.”
Silently he reached into his pocket, pulled out the spare clip, and handed it to her. “See if you can change the clip,” he said. “Then try again. Keep trying until you hit the target at least once.”
* * *
The next evening Trace was watching Monday Night Football in the guest house living room with half his attention and doing the crossword puzzle with the rest when the phone rang. He muted the sound of the football game and reached for it. “McKinnon.”
“It’s Alec. I’m out here in the stables with the princess, and—”
“What the hell is she doing riding without me?”
“She’s not,” Alec assured him. “She just came out to visit her horses like she does most evenings after dinner, but there’s something wrong with Suleiman and I don’t—”
“Where’s her groom?” Trace asked sharply, then answered his own question. “It’s Monday so he’s off, damn it. Call the vet and get him out here,” Trace told him. “The number’s posted beside the phone. Do you see it?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep the princess calm, if you can. I’ll be right there.” Trace headed for the stables in a hurry. She loves that horse, he thought, perturbed. If anything happens to him...
When Trace arrived Alec was just hanging up the phone. “Vet’s on his way,” he said.
Trace heard him on one level and nodded, but he only had eyes for the princess. She was in Suleiman’s stall, trying to get him up. Suleiman was thrashing around on the ground, in obvious pain, and she was tugging on his mane, calling to him urgently in Zakharan, but Suleiman either wouldn’t—or couldn’t—rise.
When Trace entered the stall she turned a face of desperate pleading toward him. Two tears had trickled down her cheeks, leaving trails that glistened, but she ignored them. She said one word in Zakharan, then shook her head as if angry at herself, and switched to English. “Colic.”
Trace had understood her the first time. “Let me get in there, Princess.” But his hands were already on her arms, moving her firmly out of the way. To Alec he said, “Got to get him up—colic can be a killer if the horse rolls around on the ground and gets his intestines all twisted up.” He grabbed a halter from where it hung near the stall and quickly strapped it to the horse’s head despite the way Suleiman tossed his head in an attempt to resist, forcing the bit between the horse’s teeth and into place. Then he tugged hard, bracing himself against one wall for extra leverage, his muscles distended.
“Call to him, Princess,” he ordered.
“Suleiman! Up, boy, up, up!” she repeated, in a mixture of English and Zakharan.
With a shrill neighing sound, the horse staggered to his feet. Trace stroked the horse’s neck soothingly. “Good boy,” he praised in a calm tone, although he was feeling anything but calm. Just because Suleiman was standing didn’t mean he was out of danger. “Get back, Princess,” he told her curtly when she started forward. “Let’s make sure he doesn’t become violent.”
“Not with me,” she assured him, careless of her safety, her eyes anxious for her horse. “Suleiman would never—”
“Not normally, no. But with colic you can’t be sure. If the pain gets too bad he could lash out, and I don’t want you too close to him.” He started leading the horse out of the stables. “I’ll walk him until the vet arrives.”
* * *
It was nearly midnight before Trace finally fell into bed. It hadn’t taken long for the veterinarian to confirm the princess’s and Trace’s diagnosis when he arrived, and apply the proper treatment. Trace had been tremendously relieved it hadn’t been anything worse than impaction colic that didn’t require surgery. But it had been bad enough...and messy. Not just for the vet. He’d been surprised at the princess’s active participation, but then realized he shouldn’t have been—nothing was too much for her where the horse she loved was concerned.
