Her Last Chance. Deanna Talcott

Sue jumped, a dangerous whicker rumbling through her gaunt white sides.

      “Don’t,” Chase spat, clenching his hands. “You’re going to spook her, and then there’ll be hell to pay.” He stepped one foot inside the stall.

      Peggy Sue whirled her great head in his direction, as if daring him. The motion knocked Mallory off her planted feet, and the currycomb sailed across the stall.

      “Mallory, for your own safety and well-being—”

      Peggy Sue laid her ears back, giving the illusion that two flat wings flanked her forelock. The knotty protrusion on her forehead was exposed, and it vaguely resembled a devil’s horn. Chase had nightmares about her goring him with it. The vet said he didn’t think the bone malformation caused her pain—yet pain was the only logical explanation for the mare’s rages, her unpredictable behavior. Ever since Skylar had died…

      As if reading his mind, Peggy Sue’s eyes went hard, glassy, as she fixed her relentless gaze on him.

      Chase drew a deep, cleansing breath and experimentally moved his shoulder. He had firsthand knowledge that Peggy Sue could go berserk before either of them could bat an eyelash. He prayed for the strength to whisk Mallory away. God knows, the horse could kill her.

      He took another step, this time on his bad leg, the one she’d kicked the bejeebers out of a week ago.

      Mallory looked up at Peggy Sue’s unforgiving countenance. The shadow of a doubt immediately crossed her brow. “All right, all right,” she said quickly. “I’ll fill her grain bucket and then…” Mallory moved to the front of the stall, leaving the space between Peggy Sue and Chase wide open.

      Peggy Sue saw the moment as an opportunity. The muscles in her neck and her shoulders twitched with anticipation. She pawed the ground and lowered her head.

      “Easy, girl,” Chase intoned, lifting a hand.

      Pivoting on her hind legs, Peggy Sue reared four feet off the ground. Mallory gasped, but held fast, instinctively putting her hand up to catch Peggy Sue’s halter.

      Peggy Sue snorted, shouldering Mallory aside, so she could have at Chase. She faced him, blind with rage, as she cornered Mallory at the back of the stall.

      Chase dashed forward, concerned Mallory would fall victim to Peggy Sue’s slashing hooves. The animal was deadly. He’d have to have her put down; she wasn’t right.

      He moved toward the manger, and Peggy Sue’s rump swung away from Mallory as she followed him.

      “Mallory, get out of the corner,” he ordered. “Now!”

      Mallory slipped around Peggy Sue, and Chase moved farther into the stall so Mallory could exit. “Are you all right?”

      “Of course I’m all right. I’m fine! You don’t understand,” she said behind him. “She’d never hurt me. It’s her nature, she knows I’m—”

      Looking over his shoulder at Mallory, Chase never saw it coming. But he heard Peggy Sue whirl before her two rock-hard hooves caught his side and propelled him against the wall. In the recesses of his mind, he heard Mallory scream—and in one insane flash of recognition he felt inordinately grateful it was he who had taken the blow. The air whooshed out of him, collapsing his lungs into aching sacks of tissue.

      It was then he knew the ultimate meaning of “being hit by a two-by-four.” The pine walls of Peggy Sue’s stall smashed against his backside; he slowly slithered down them, as if the bones had been removed from his body, and he sank onto the straw-covered floor in a mangled blob of body parts.

      “Chase! Chase!”

      His hearing had been rearranged; it was if the sounds were coming from deep inside his head. His eyes fastened on the strangest things—a loose nail protruding from the manger, a small split in Peggy Sue’s hoof, the dainty toe of Mallory’s boot, the curve of her jeans as they stretched over her bent knee. He lay there, wondering if he was breathing, wondering if that was what made him hurt so much.

      “Chase, answer me!”

      Over the scent of straw and manure and horseflesh, he smelled her sweet perfume. Wildflowers on a summer day. The overhead light circled a mane of blond hair, and he looked, dumbly, into the most angelic face he’d ever seen.

      “You are so beautiful,” he mumbled thickly, tasting blood, his teeth feeling loose in his head. He heard the shrill, agonizing warning of a horse named Peggy Sue.

      Mallory looked up and over her shoulder at the monstrous beast that pawed the air above them. “We’ve got to get you out of here,” she said, slipping her hands beneath his armpits and dragging him from the stall. She dumped him on the hard-packed dirt floor.

      His eyes shut, he heard the gate close with a bang and the latch pin sliding into the slot. He lay there, fading in and out of consciousness.

      Peggy Sue continued to fuss, her back hooves splintering the boards of her box stall. He’d have to patch it up again. My God, that was one contrary horse.

      He felt hands flutter over him, touching him. Sliding down his arms, his legs. Loosening his belt, unsnapping his shirt. For a moment, Chase wondered if these were heavenly ministrations. Maybe someone was putting him back together. It didn’t matter, it was glorious and comforting. Whatever was happening kindled a tingling that surfaced through the pain. He wanted more of it. He didn’t want it to stop.

      He struggled to open his eyes. Colors blurred together in a haze of pain and pleasure. Focusing on a full, sensuous mouth, he vaguely recognized lips that belonged to Mallory. For a moment that surprised him, and he wondered what had happened to Sharon, his ex-wife. She should have been yelling at him by now.

      “Talk to me,” Mallory whispered, her hands stirring anxiously over his chest, his shoulders, his neck. “Tell me you’re okay. Talk to me,” she implored. “Say something. Anything.”

      He opened his mouth but only coughed, pitifully strangling on a rush of air.

      “I’m so sorry. I should have known.” Her voice caught as she stroked his temple, his cheek. “What can I do? Tell me.”

      Chase went all sappy inside, then he said the first idiotic thing that went zinging through his muddled head. “Could you…could you…kiss it and make it better?” he mumbled.

      She stared at him for a split second before swiveling a glance up at that idiotic horse, Peggy Sue, who was locked inside the box stall. For a moment it appeared indecision raged inside Mallory’s head, then her lips swooped down over his, covering them with sweet, sweet heat. Fireworks exploded behind his eyelids…and he knew he’d died and gone to cowboy heaven.

      Chapter Four