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feel every muscle of his arms tight around her, his thighs against hers, his body fitted against her. She began to struggle, but he held on. “Let it go,” he whispered. “Let it go.”
    She drew a single breath that shuddered throughout her frame. It was as though that breath had hit her body’s off switch. She saw waves of red behind her eyelids...
     
    “WHAT THE HELL am I doing down here?” she said. She felt the rough hay beneath her body and realized she was staring up at the roof of the barn—and into the concerned eyes of Jamey McLachlan. “Oh, drat!” she said, then put her hands against the bale of hay beneath her and struggled to sit up.
    His hand on her midriff held her down. “Sit up now and you’ll probably pass out again.”
    “Pass out? Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve never passed out in my life.”
    He smiled. “Tell me another. I promise I didn’t deck you.”
    “Let me up!”
    “Answer a question first. Did you have any breakfast before you came trotting down here this morning?”
    Vic thought of the cheese and apple in her pocket. “No, actually. Of course, that’s it. Low blood sugar. Too much caffeine, not enough protein.”
    “If you like.” He stood and she realized he’d been kneeling beside her.
    “How’d I get here?” She closed her eyes, “Oh, Lord, you actually carried me? Probably herniated a bunch of disks in the process. Don’t bother asking for workman’s comp.”
    “Stop it.” His voice sounded harsh. “I could carry you one-handed.” His grin came back as he held out his gloved right hand. “As a matter of fact, it took one and a half, which is all I have available at the moment.”
    She sat up slowly and carefully. For a moment her head spun, then it stabilized. Her heart rate had returned to something close to normal. Thank God the attack passed quickly this time. “I’m terribly embarrassed. I should know better than to skip breakfast.”
    He turned away. “Come off it.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Low blood sugar my ass. I’ll go up to the house and bring you something to eat, and then you’re going to tell me what in hell has kept one of the finest riders I ever saw out of the saddle for twenty years.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    “B LOODY HELL!”
    Jamey trotted up the hill toward Vic’s cottage with both dogs trundling along behind him. The last thing he needed was a woman who had full-blown panic attacks, no matter how much he enjoyed her company.
    Liz Whitten wouldn’t be back with her new husband and child for two whole months.
    Unless one of ValleyCrest’s boarders was an extraordinary rider—doubtful, judging from the rest of the horses he’d seen at ValleyCrest—Vic Jamerson was the only one who had experience on a horse like Roman. All right, so it had been a few years.
    The woman had ridden with the U.S. equestrian team, for pity’s sake. The caliber of talent international competition required didn’t vanish with age.
    He’d never find another rider with her sort of experience within a radius of five hundred miles. Even if he did, no way could he insinuate a stranger onto the stallion’s back.
    Jamey was nearly convinced that Mr. Miracle was Roman. He couldn’t be entirely sure until he’d seen the horse put through his paces by another rider—a good one. He had to be able to assess the horse’s movements, temperament, and flair.
    No doubt Whitten had gotten papers on the horse’s breeding from the farmer in Germany who had sold him. The papers were forged of course, but that might be difficult to prove. Jamey might never be able to trace every step the colt had taken from the moment he’d disappeared from Oban until he’d wound up on a nameless breeding farm in Wurtheim, Germany.
    How could Jamey explain to Whitten or even to Vic that he’d spent the past two years searching the world for Roman? Or that he’d arrived in Belgium to check out a friend’s tip about a horse that might be his Roman only a day after Whitten had