As he pulled up outside the stables, he noticed the absence of vehicles. The big white barn slumbered in the encroaching darkness, seemingly empty of all but its equine residents. Good. Although help might shorten the needle-in-a-haystack search, he wasn’t in the mood for polite chitchat with Caroline Sheppard or for pretending to lighten up around her daughter.
Not tonight.
“We’re not that good,” he muttered as he strode into the barn…through doors slung wide open.
No lights, no activity save the rustle of straw beneath hooves and a distinctive pony snicker, yet those doors had to be open for a reason. Seth ignored Ed, his narrowed gaze fixing on the adjacent empty stall. A quick head tally confirmed the absence of the gray she’d been riding on Monday.
It was too late for riding, too dark for safety, too dangerous for the speed she’d favored that morning. He retraced his steps outside and halted, hands on hips and head lifted, all his senses on high alert. First he felt it, the rumbling in the ground under his feet, and then he heard the thunder of hooves.
Déjà vu.
The horse appeared like a gray ghost in the twilight, galloping at breakneck speed. Not controlled this time, no way, and everything inside Seth roiled in a volatile mix of fear and fury.
“You reckless fool,” he muttered. “If you don’t break your neck, I will wring—”
The threat caught in his throat, choked by pure dread, as he realized why the horse approached at such helter-skelter speed. This time it was out of control, the reins dangling uselessly around its forelegs, the saddle on its back empty.
Fear clenched deep in Seth’s gut as he raced to his truck and wrenched open the door. Without pausing to close it, he fired the engine and sent the back wheels spinning and spitting up gravel. The door slammed shut when he swung into the driveway at bone-jarring speed, spinning his back end so far out he almost collected a gatepost. His headlights sliced through the dusk and bounced off the white railing fence that bordered the lane, close—too close—to his right-hand fender, warning him to get a grip.
He needed to slow down, to think about where the horse had come from, to search with more method and less foolhardy haste.
Ahead he thought he saw a dark shape beside the road, and an image of Jillian’s unmoving body jammed his mind with dread. But it was nothing. A shadow, perhaps, or a darker patch in the roadside vegetation. He sucked in a deep breath, eased his foot off the accelerator and loosened his punishing grip on the wheel. His breath, he realized, was still ratcheting in his lungs from that short, sharp sprint through the stable yard.
Or simply from the adrenaline shock of fear.
On a mental flip of the coin—Left? Right? No, left—he turned and followed the dirt road all the way to the cottage at its end. No lights, no sign of life, but whichever Louret worker lived here could be out or away for the weekend. Vaguely he remembered a time when Saturday night meant something besides fewer work calls. More clearly he remembered this end of Louret from driving by on Route 29. He’d noticed the cottage and beyond it an artificial lake, postcard pretty in the blue-skied daylight, now an eerie hole of darkness as night stole over the land.
And there was no way of knowing if Jillian had taken a tumble into that eerie darkness.
Realistically, she could have been riding anywhere on the acreage, in any of the vineyards or down one of the many tracks cut for machinery access. He needed help. Cursing the frustrated speed of his departure from the stables and the cell phone left back in Napa, he turned his truck in a slow circle, scanning the wide arc of his headlights one last time as he prepared to head back to the Vines.
And there she was, a slender silhouette shading her eyes from the blinding glare of the high beams. Relief surged through Seth, overpowering in its intensity. Then he sucked it up and got moving, switching his lights to low before bursting from the truck and striding forward to meet her.
She was frowning—scowling even—but he didn’t give her time for more than, “Seth? What are you—” before his hands skated over her shoulders, down her arms and back again, tipping her face up and into the light.
“What are you do—”
“I’m checking you’re all right,” he cut in. Abruptly, harshly, but he had cause.
“Doing here?” She finished her question on a lame note, then drew an audible breath as he cradled her face between his hands.
“Are you hurt?” He dipped down closer, scouring her face and her eyes for any sign of injury.
“No.” But she must have sensed his lingering doubt because she lifted her hands to his and pried them from her face. “Apart from my bruised pride, I’m fine. See?”
Yeah, he saw. And he let his breath, his fear, his earlier crazed worry go in one solid exhalation. She was fine. She was standing there frowning up at him with a peculiar expression on her face, but since he’d turned his grip around, trapping her hands in his, she was probably trying to work out how to free herself without an undignified arm wrestle.
Right now it’d likely take that.
If he let go of her hands, he might yield to the real temptation of hauling her into his arms and holding her tight against his body. Of kissing her brow and her face and her mouth in a combination of repressed need and thank-you-God relief.
He figured he’d better keep holding her hands.
“What are you doing here, Seth?”
“Performing search and rescue, apparently.” Seth tried for levity but failed. Light humor, he decided, is a hard task when your heart’s still pounding with a crazy, dark dread.
Jillian shook her head slowly. “I don’t understand.”
“I was up at the stables when your horse came in.”
“Is she all right?” Her fingers clutched at his, suddenly tense and agitated. “Marsanne? My horse? She wasn’t lame?”
“Not that I noticed. She came galloping up the hill on all four legs.”
That seemed to offer the reassurance she needed. Her heavy sigh sounded a little shaky, but her posture eased from poker-backed alarm to a relieved slump. When her fingers relaxed their grip on his, Seth couldn’t help stroking his thumbs over the back of her hands. He felt her tremble and knew she was shaken up, no doubt more than her bruised pride would allow her to admit.
“I trust you didn’t come off at that speed?”
“No, and I shouldn’t have come off at all!” With a sound of disgust, she tugged her hands free. It seemed she couldn’t continue her explanation without their contribution. “I was lollygagging, not paying attention, and she shied at a quail in the grass. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if my carelessness injured Marsanne.”
“What about injuring yourself? Did you spare a thought in that direction?”
“I told you—I only bruised my pride.” She dragged her hands over her backside and feigned a wince. “Or mostly only my pride.”
Okay. He was not going there. Not thinking about checking out that part of her anatomy for injury. Instead he brushed a thumb along her cheekbone, touching what looked like a smudge of dirt. “Looks more like you landed face first.”
“Perhaps I bounced.”
“Perhaps,” he said, and with a will of its own, his hand continued to stroke her face, down over her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw and the point of her chin. Her acceptance of that simple touch, the warmth of her skin, the subtle rhythm of her pulse in her throat—they all combined to stir a deep response, something beyond the usual lust.
He should stop, get his hands the hell back where they belonged, but he couldn’t make himself respond. He didn’t want to respond. Not yet.
“Lucky