Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega 4)

“Heaven forbid that we should get what we deserve,” Joseph said, examining Anna. “You have a beautiful song in your heart,” he said at last. “I am grateful that my old friend would find such as you because he is too often alone. Don’t break his heart or my ghost will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

“It isn’t me who is breaking his heart right now,” she told him.

Joseph nodded. “But that is the dual gift of love, isn’t it? The joy of greeting and the sorrow of good-bye.” He narrowed his eyes at Charles. “You came here to buy this woman a pretty horse? Something exotic? A horse that will be living art?” He didn’t sound like he approved.

“Arabians,” said Charles, following Joseph’s conversational trail without protest, “are the cats of the horse world. Anna doesn’t need to dominate. She will enjoy having a partner rather than a servant.”

“An Arabian,” said Joseph to Anna, “can be your best friend. He will not desert you when you need him. He will come to your call and be the wings that take you where you need to go.”

Charles laughed. She’d thought he laughed like that only with her, and she was grateful to be wrong. How terrible to live centuries and never laugh with your whole body.

“Wasn’t Jasper an Arabian?” he asked. “Your ‘best friend’ dumped you by the roadside to walk home plenty of times.”

Joseph grinned, but said, “Hush. I’m making a point. If you spend time with them and treat them with justice, they will reward you.” He cleared his throat. “Jasper excepted.”

“I can do justice,” Anna said.

“My father likes horses,” Joseph confided to Anna. “But he also likes money. There’s a reason this farm kept making money after the market for Arabs crashed in the eighties and breeding farms were abandoned to banks by the dozens. He knows that Charles can afford to indulge you. Unless you want to show, you don’t need a twenty-thousand-dollar horse, which is what he’ll try to sell you. My son, Kage, he loves the horses. He loves the five-hundred-dollar geldings as much as the million-dollar stallions. You listen to my son Kage about the horses we have, and not my father.”

“All right,” she agreed.

Joseph’s eyes closed. “It’s been a long time since I had no pain. It’s hard to sleep when you hurt.”

“Go ahead and sleep,” Charles told him. “You won’t die today.”

Joseph nodded, but opened his clear eyes to meet Anna’s. “Don’t let Dad talk you into Hephzibah. She’s a witch who only looks like a horse.”

“I thought Arabs are all friendly except for Jasper,” said Charles.

Joseph grinned—and it was the same expression that he’d worn when someone had taken a photo of him as he rode a bucking horse. “Hephzibah will kill someone someday. There’s something wrong with her spirit.” He shut his eyes again and his voice slurred. “Maybe the evil dead have touched her. Maybe she is really a skinwalker. You keep your wife away from her.”

“I’m a werewolf,” Anna said. “I’m not in danger from a horse.” But Joseph was already asleep.

Maggie met them at the door to the hallway.

“It is good that you’ve come to see him,” she said to Charles. Anna suddenly realized that Joseph’s apartment had been entirely masculine. Didn’t Maggie share the apartment with him? “Are you going to do as Hosteen asks now? Do you see what has happened to Joseph? He is gone already, that man I married.” She brushed an impatient hand over her face, and Anna realized Maggie was crying.

“No,” Charles said, but he said it gently. “Joseph does not want to be a werewolf. He has no need to live forever. And whatever the rest of us feel like we need, that is, it must be, his choice.”

She grabbed his arm, swift and sudden. Anna instinctively moved to intercept her but caught herself before Maggie noticed.

“I don’t want him to die, Charles,” Maggie told him intensely.

“Neither do I,” he said in the same gentle tone. “But everyone dies, Maggie. This is not the worst death I have seen. He is not afraid, not of death, anyway.”

She let go of him and took two steps backward. “Joseph has never been afraid of death,” she agreed. “I think it surprises him that he has lived this long.”

The intense intimacy of their conversation faded, caused by some trick of Maggie’s body language: she was once again the gracious hostess.

“Food is ready downstairs,” she said. “Kage said that after dinner, he’d take you to see some horses.” She smiled suddenly, “He is grateful for Chelsea, and my son can see no greater reward than to take you to see his horses.” She started down the hallway. “In that way, he and his father are just alike. Horse-mad idiots.”

“You, too,” Charles said, his hand on the small of Anna’s back as he followed. “Remember that poor skinny pinto you saved from that pair of cowboys, Maggie?” He looked at Anna, his eyes smiling. “One woman against two armed men, and she took after them with a broom for the way they’d half starved a mare. Only it turns out, when the dust settled, that they’d just bought that mare from another guy because they didn’t like the way he wasn’t feeding her.”

“I apologized and fed them my burritos,” Maggie said. “They didn’t care about a few bruises after that.”

“Won’t it be too dark to ride?” asked Anna.

“The main barn has lights,” Maggie said shortly. “You won’t have any trouble seeing.”

They ate in the big dining room because there were too many to fit around the kitchen table. Ernestine had roasted a huge beef brisket and topped the meal off with corn bread and a green salad. She ate with the family, deliberately sitting next to the kids and helping Max and Maggie keep a normal conversation going.

Anna sat next to Charles and watched everyone (except for her husband) try not to stare at Chelsea.

Chelsea, when she was not dying on a bathroom floor, was a strikingly attractive, if not beautiful, woman. She was tall, half a head taller than Kage, and built like an athlete. Her hair was a Nordic blond that complemented her icy-gray eyes and was cut very expensively to frame her expressive and rather bony face.

Max had given Anna a picture of a charming and funny woman. But Chelsea didn’t engage with anyone, not even when someone spoke to her directly. She would eat a few bites quickly, then set her utensils down as if they were puzzle pieces she had to fit into place. Then she would take a gulp of water, stare at the wall or the table or her hands—and then suddenly grab her silverware and eat another two or three mouthfuls with ravenous intensity. Every once in a while she’d try to eat something besides the meat, and Anna could see her fight to get the food down.