the rooms and decide on an approach. I think we should stay with more primitive, country themes. Besides, I’m really not very good with animals—dogs, cats, goats, horses.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “I think the standard decorations would be fine,” he said, striding out of the tack house. “You know, shiny balls and tinsel garland.”
She closed the door behind her and shrugged into her coat. “No! I meant real animals. They don’t like me. As a child I had a rather unfortunate encounter with a Guernsey cow.”
“This is a horse farm,” he said. “If you plan on staying until Christmas, it’ll be hard to avoid the animals.”
Resigned to her fate, Holly hurried after him, her heels sinking into the soggy snow along the path. They began with a tour of the barns, Alex showing her the indoor arena first. She stood on the bottom rung of the gate and watched as Alex’s father ran a horse in circles around the perimeter of the arena.
“Why does he have the horse on a leash?”
Again, she caught him smiling. “That’s called a lunge line,” he said. “It gives him more control. Some of our horses don’t need it.”
Their tour didn’t stop for long. He turned away from the arena and led her back to the main aisle of the barn.
“How many horses do you have?” she asked.
“We have about seventy horses on the farm,” Alex replied. “Just over forty thoroughbred broodmares, twenty-seven yearlings that we’ll sell at auction in January, a few retired stallions, a few draft horses and some saddlebreds. In the summer we can have another twenty horses that board and train here while they’re racing at Saratoga. They use the outer barns and the track.”
“That seems like a lot of horses.” Holly sighed. “Actually, one horse is one too many for me. I once had this horrible experience with a horse, the kind that pulls the carriages around Central Park. It was frightening.”
He forced a smile. “We’re really a small operation compared to some. In my grandfather’s day, we were a lot bigger. But we’ve got a good reputation and great bloodlines. Our yearlings fetch a high price at auction.”
He reached in his shirt pocket and handed Holly a few sugar cubes, then pointed to the horse in the next stall. “That’s Scirocco, grandson of Secretariat. He’s one of the old men we keep here and he’s retired from fatherhood. He’s got a sweet tooth and he likes the ladies.”
“If you don’t use him how do you get…horsey babies?”
“Foals. And that’s all done scientifically now,” Alex said. “These days, you don’t need the actual stallion, just what he has to offer.”
Holly frowned. “You mean he doesn’t get to—”
Alex shook his head. “Nope.”
With a frown, Holly held the sugar between her fingers, just out of the horse’s reach. “That seems so cruel. What about his needs?” Though she’d never liked animals and considered them smelly and unpredictable and frightening, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for the old horse—even though he did have very big teeth.
“Believe me,” he muttered. “A male doesn’t always have to follow his…instincts.” Though the discussion was clearly about a horse, Holly couldn’t help but wonder if there might be another meaning to Alex’s words.
Alex put the cube in her palm and pushed her hand nearer. The moment the horse nibbled the sugar, she snatched her fingers away. “Animals hate me,” she said nervously, her attention diverted by the gentle touch of his hand. “Dogs bark at me and cats shed. I—I won’t even tell you about my run-ins with chickens and ducks.”
“Funny, he seems to be quite taken with you,” Alex replied, capturing her gaze with his. For what seemed like an eternity, neither one of them moved. Holly wasn’t even sure her heart was still beating.
Somehow, she didn’t think Alex was talking about the horse this time, either. Uneasy with the silence, she braced her hand on the edge of the stall door and tried to appear casual and composed, as if handsome men stared at her every day of the week and she barely noticed. “If we’re through here, I think we should—ouch!”
Holly jumped back, a sharp pain shooting through her finger. But she moved so quickly that she didn’t notice the danger lurking right behind her. Her foot sank into a warm pile of horse manure. She tried to gracefully extract herself but when her heel struck the smooth floor beneath, her foot skidded out from under her. With a soft cry, she landed on her backside, right in the middle of the pile of poop.
The smell that wafted up around her made her eyes water and Holly moaned softly, not sure how to cover her embarrassment. She glanced down at her finger and found it bleeding. “He bit me!” she cried, holding out her hand.
She heard a low whinny come from the stall and saw the vicious horse watching her with a mocking eye and a smug smile, his lip curling over his huge fangs. Alex held out his hand and helped her struggle to her feet. “I’m sorry,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Scirocco can be a little aggressive when it comes to treats. And that should have been cleaned up.”
Holly winced as she tried to shake the filthy shoe off her foot. But the horse poop had seeped inside and it stubbornly clung to her toes. “Just because you haven’t had sex for a few years, doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me!” She glanced up to find Alex looking at her with an astonished expression. Holly felt her face flame. “I—I meant the horse, not you.”
“I’m sure you did.” With an impatient curse, Alex scooped her up in his arms and carried her across the barn to a low bench.
She might have protested, if she hadn’t enjoyed the feeling of his arms cradling her body. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing more than a feather. But before she could start to like the feeling too much, Alex dropped her to her feet, causing her knees to buckle slightly.
“Sit,” he ordered.
Holly twisted to see the damage done to her favorite coat, hoping to hide the flush that had warmed her cheeks. But standing on one foot, she almost lost her balance again. Alex grabbed the collar of her coat to steady her, then slipped it off her shoulders and tossed it over a nearby stall door. He shrugged out of his own jacket and held it out to her.
When Holly pushed her arms into the sleeves she could still feel the heat from his body in the folds of fabric. His scent drifted up around her, a mix of soap and fresh air and horses, a welcome relief from her previous parfum and a reminder of the time spent in his arms. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“Now, sit,” Alex said. He knelt down in front of her and gently removed her ruined shoe. The mess had seeped through her panty hose and stuck in between her toes. He circled her calf with his hands, then slowly ran his palms toward her ankle. But the imagined caress ended abruptly when he tore through the nylon at her calf. She sucked in a sharp breath as he skimmed her stocking down along her leg and bared her foot. “You should have worn those boots.”
“I told you animals hate me,” she reminded him, a bit breathlessly.
“I’m sure Scirocco had this all planned. He’s grown to be quite a curmudgeon in his retirement and, in truth, has a real talent for torturing our female guests.” With that, he pushed to his
