Flash Flood by Susan Slater Read Free Book Online

slap on the back here, a whispered word and an explosion of laughter there. One of the servants interrupted and indicated the phone. Billy Roland took the call at the bar. Must be difficult to get away from business. There was no sign of Iris. Probably wouldn’t be at these all-male gatherings, sort of a cross between a roundup and a foxhunt.
    â€œLet’s you and me push back from that buffet table and think about getting this show on the road.” Billy Roland had returned to stand by him. Dan was wondering how the man could look just like he thought he would. A combination of a past President, someone who could get into swinging a beagle by the ears, and his grandfather who looked over his glasses, fixed him with a stare like he was taking a sighting off the end of his nose, a bulbous large-pored thing that dominated his face.
    But that’s where the comparison to his grandfather stopped. Billy Roland was something else. His posture screamed intimacy. An arm thrown around Dan’s shoulders, leaning just close enough to rub that belly-muscle slack paunch against him, voice conspiratorially low when he wanted his attention. Dan fought back an urge to make sure he still had a billfold.
    â€œI’m going to take Dan here on down to the barns. You all join us real soon now, you hear?” With that pronouncement Billy Roland steered Dan through the kitchen, a high-ceilinged monstrous room with assorted clerestories, ignored the genuflecting servants whose jabber in Spanish had abruptly ceased, pushed through the back door, crossed the porch, a screened affair filled with expensive outdoor furniture, and covered the distance from the house to the closest barn in a dozen strides.
    â€œHank. Thought you’d be saddled up by now.”
    Hank must be the vet, Dan thought, unless all the ranch hands wore a lab coat over chaps, but Billy Roland was more intent on walking down the long row of stalls than introducing him.
    â€œHere we go. Baby Belle. Hell of a smooth ride, just like her long-backed mama. She’ll do you just fine.”
    Dan thought that Hank blanched and started to say something. But knowing which side the bread was buttered on probably buttoned his lip. Baby Belle in the meantime had reared and struck the front of the stall a couple times and Dan hadn’t seen her ears stand up once.
    â€œRay was saying you know your horseflesh.” He was handing him a halter and lead. “Saddles over there, tack room on the left.”
    One time forty years ago when his parents moved to the suburbs and he had had to change schools he felt this same way going out at recess. The wall of sixth grade boys had bloodied his nose, kicked him in the shins, bruised a kneecap but accepted him because he didn’t yell “uncle.” Was it too late to yell now? He slid the stall door open wide enough to step inside and eased the lead rope over Belle’s neck. The horse eyed him, sized him up, let him buckle the halter in place before lashing out with a sidewinder-fast front hoof, catching him a glancing blow below the knee.
    Without dwelling on what he had to do, Dan stepped her out into the walkway, grabbed her head, a hand on each side of the halter, and muscled her backward, pushing hard, not letting her get her bearings.
    â€œComing through. Little attitude adjustment.”
    He backed the mare through the crowd entering the barn, wheeled her around and headed her backward to where they started. Then he released her, leaned close and whispered, “One more kick and you’re Alpo, sweetheart,” in his best Bogart imitation.
    But the mare had broken a sweat on her neck and had both ears forward. Leery respect, Dan decided. He’d won one and might not be tested again. He tied her to the stall door and went to get tack. Was it his imagination or was Billy Roland struck dumb? That’s a man doesn’t like his fun ruined.
    The riders waited in twos and threes before falling