And so she bounced down the slim dirt lanes in the dwindling light and took the precariously tight bends as fast as she dared behind the wheel of an unwieldy vehicle that made her feel small and out of control.
Or maybe it was Scotty who made her feel that way. He sat in grim silence, but Claire could see he was doing the jaw-clenching thing again. His brooding presence made her stomach knot. The idea that he could possibly be angry with her was galling. He had ruined her evening with Jared and was dragging her to the middle of nowhere to treat a pregnant horse that might not even survive until she got there. And now he wasn’t even going to speak to her? Where did this guy get off?
‘Don’t even worry about this, Scotty,’ she said when the tension in the car finally got too much. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘You can thank me later.’
He looked at her, surprised, almost as if he’d forgotten she was there. ‘Huh?’
Claire let out an exasperated breath. ‘I’m doing you a favour here,’ she said. ‘I was having a really nice time with Jared, but I dropped everything to come and help you. And you’re sitting there scowling and grinding your teeth like I’ve done something wrong.’
Was it her imagination, or did Scotty bristle when she mentioned Jared?
He turned to stare out of the window. Finally he sighed and said, ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. You haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘I know I haven’t,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t need you to absolve me, thanks very much.’
Scotty fell silent again as the car’s headlights illuminated a carved timber sign hanging on a post-and-rail fence. Cape Ashe Stud. In spite of her annoyance, Claire smiled. That sign had been there for at least twenty years, changing only with the addition of a threadbare Christmas wreath every December. Such a humble advertisement for one of the most renowned horse studs in the country. It was typical of the Shannon family’s approach to their business. They were in it for the love of horses, not the money or the kudos, though they’d earned plenty of both over the years.
Claire swung the four-wheel drive onto the gravel driveway and sped past the main house, where Chris now lived with his family, to the stables beyond. The huge pine tree in the front garden was hung with twinkling Christmas lights, just as it had been every year when she was a teenager.
In fact, every light on the property seemed to be blazing. Chris had even switched on the floodlights in the exercise arena adjacent to the stables. She could see Scotty’s little brother – now a strapping man himself – rushing in and out of a stall as she approached.
She shuddered. With no streetlights or road noise, nights in the hinterland were almost eerily dark and silent. There was something about seeing a building brightly illuminated against an onyx sky, sensing frenetic activity when there should have been stillness, that Claire found deeply unsettling. Growing up, she had loved the quiet of the country, that feeling of splendid isolation. But tonight, Cape Ashe Stud looked to her like a foreboding island in the middle of a churning, black sea.
Chris approached the car as Claire pulled up next to the stables. She rolled down the tinted window and his jaw dropped.
‘Claire!’ he said. ‘Of course. I should have known Scotty would rope you in. Thank you so much. You made it in record time. Haven’t forgotten the way here after all these years, eh?’
‘Hey, Chris,’ she said. ‘I’m happy to help. Where’s Autumn?’ She opened the car door and stepped out. As she turned to close it, she shot Scotty a pointed look. At least one of the Shannon brothers remembered his manners, she said with her eyes.
‘This way,’ Chris said and hurried towards the stall she’d seen him emerge from moments ago.
Claire opened the back door and grabbed her instrument box. Scotty still hadn’t moved from the passenger seat. ‘Are you coming?’ she said.
Her voice seemed to jolt him out of his reverie. He pushed open the door and jumped out. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘Just let me know what you need from me. You take the lead.’
Another wave of irritation crashed over her. ‘Well, obviously, Scotty,’ she said. ‘That’s the whole reason I’m here.’ She shook her head. He’d seemed sober enough in the pub – at least he’d had the self-awareness to know he wasn’t up to treating Autumn – but maybe those three beers had gone to his head more than Claire had realised. Why else would he be trying to micromanage a situation his own actions had excluded him from? It wasn’t like her to be so snippy, but she was in no mood to be told how to do her job.
Without giving Scotty the chance to further annoy her, Claire followed Chris to the stable block and Autumn’s stall. She heard the mare well before she saw her. Autumn was coughing. It was a strange sound – like a cross between a sneeze and a bark – and, to Claire’s dismay, each cough was followed by a deep, rattling wheeze as Autumn tried to drag air into her lungs.
Claire stopped to wash her hands in the stable sink, then thrust the stall door open with her hip and went inside. Scotty was close behind her. Immediately, she could see that Autumn was in agony. The heavily pregnant horse’s neck was extended and she was holding her head down, a clear sign that she was trying to alleviate pain or pressure, most likely in her throat. There was swelling below her jaw and Claire could see that the lymph nodes around her throat were
