“Jewel started Haven for old or injured racehorses. The big money winners are well taken care by their owners, but those with less successful careers are sometimes neglected and often resented because of the high cost of their maintenance. Those unwanted animals come here until she can find them new homes.”
A huge draft horse tossed his head over the stall door and whinnied.
“That isn’t a thoroughbred,” he said.
“No,” Crystal agreed. “Some of them are, some aren’t. But they’re all horses that have been rescued or are in need of rehabilitation.”
“So this is what she does in her spare time,” he murmured.
“Jack Callahan established the Center,” Crystal told him. “Jewel took over running it after he died because she could, and because she loves horses. But CTC is a business. This is her passion.
“And this—” she indicated a powerfully built chestnut in the end stall “—is Cayenne. Also known as The Demon Stallion.”
“Temperamental?” he guessed.
“You might say,” Crystal agreed. “His trainer thought a heavy hand with the crop would teach him to obey. Instead it taught him to be mean. And then there was an incident in the stables and—” She shook her head. “Let’s just say his owners wrote him off.”
Marcus had heard about trainers like that and thought the crop should be used on them. How anyone could abuse such a beautiful animal—or any creature—was beyond him. And while he didn’t doubt Cayenne was capable of acting like a demon, right now the horse just looked wary, and scared.
He moved closer, keeping one eye on the stallion and his voice low.
“How did he end up here?”
“Jewel heard about him from a friend of a friend, or something like that. It’s hard to keep all of their stories straight sometimes.”
He was starting to realize there was a lot more to the story of Jewel Callahan than she wanted him to know.
“Anyway,” Crystal continued, “the owner was looking to unload him rather than invest in further training, so Jewel made him an offer. Now she’s faced with the challenge of undoing the damage that has been done so that she can find a good home for him.”
“Who decides what a good home is?” Mac asked.
“Jewel, of course. But never before a personal interview with the potential buyer and a thorough inspection of the premises.”
“Is there anything she doesn’t do?” he wondered aloud.
Crystal grinned. “She doesn’t make a cheesecake that compares to mine.”
“I have a weakness for cheesecake,” Mac admitted.
And he had a growing fascination with Jewel Callahan. The more he knew about the beautiful, stubborn woman who had reluctantly given him a job, the more he wanted to know. And he had a pretty good idea about how to get what he wanted.
Cayenne was in the paddock when Jewel returned to the farm after her trip into town, so she knew her sister was cleaning his stall. Knowing how much Crystal hated that job, she felt a twinge of guilt that she’d been gone as long as she had, but only a slight twinge. Crystal had been helping out at Haven since they took in their first horse, but with her own business turning into such a success, she’d had to severely cut back her volunteer time. Since she was only able to put in a few hours on Tuesdays and Fridays now, Jewel figured mucking out a couple of stalls was actually necessary to keep her in practice.
But as she carried the bags of vitamin supplements through to the storeroom, she couldn’t resist teasing. “You must be losing your touch, Crys, if you didn’t manage to sweet-talk some cute stable hand into doing that for you.”
But the head that popped up in response to her comment was neither blond nor female, and “cute” was far too bland a description to do it justice.
“Hey,” Mac said.
“Obviously she hasn’t lost her touch,” Jewel muttered beneath her breath.
But not so quietly that Mac didn’t hear, because he flashed her an easy grin that, even from a distance of twenty-five feet, made her tummy quiver.
“Does that mean you think I’m cute?” he asked.
She ignored the question. “You haven’t mucked out enough stalls already this week?”
“More than enough,” he assured her, leaning on the handle of the pitchfork.
“Where is my sister?” Jewel asked. “And how did she con you into doing her job?”
“She didn’t con me—she bribed me.”
“With?”
“Promises of homemade cherry cheesecake.”
Jewel began stacking bottles and jars on the appropriate shelves. “I’d say she got the better end of the deal, but she does make a spectacular cheesecake.”
“Pot roast was also mentioned,” he told her.
“Crystal invited you up to the house for dinner?” Not that she objected, exactly. And since Simon had a late meeting and Crystal would be dining with them, she had no reason to object. But she was still a little wary of her sister’s reasons for issuing the invitation.
“She thought it would give you and I an opportunity to talk about my duties for the next several weeks.”
“If you want to stay on, I’d be happy to have you continue doing what you’ve been doing.”
“I want to stay on,” he told her. “And I want to help out here.”
She closed and latched the door. “Why?”
“Because it’s obvious to me that you could use a couple extra hands.”
“I could use a dozen extra hands,” she admitted. “But Haven doesn’t have the funds to hire any help. Mostly we take on coop students from the local high school.”
“And you come in every day after they’re finished to redo what wasn’t done properly,” he guessed, tossing fresh bedding into the stall.
She shrugged. “They’re kids. They do the best they can.”
“And they’re scared to death of Cayenne.”
“There’s no shame in being afraid of a twelve-hundred-pound animal. Randy Porter trained horses for more than thirty-five years and even he watches his step around Cayenne.”
Mac finished spreading the straw before he turned to her. “I could work with him.”
She’d have to be crazy to let him. He’d proven he was a competent groom, but what he was suggesting was way beyond the scope of anything he’d been doing in the past week, and Cayenne wasn’t like any of the horses he’d encountered at CTC. The Demon Stallion had earned his nickname by being both difficult and unpredictable, and though Jewel had been working with him personally over the past couple of months, she’d made little progress.
But while she might worry about Cayenne’s inconsistent behavior, her own had been no better. When she’d started training him, she’d planned to spend a couple of hours with him every day. The reality was that she didn’t always have a couple of hours to spare, there were simply too many demands on her to be able to dedicate the time and attention he needed.
And there were too many reasons why she should refuse Mac’s offer, not the least of which was that if he started hanging out around the Haven stable, their paths would cross more often.
On the other hand, if she spent enough time around Mac she might become inured to his presence so that warm tingles didn’t dance through her veins every time he looked at her, and her heart didn’t