Breeding Ground Read Online Free Page A

one of their chemists.”
    â€œSo that’s what he meant in the letter. That he still had hopes there might be a woman for him.”
    â€œSounds like it to me. I think he wondered if he was too set in his ways to marry anybody, though. After living alone for so long.”
    â€œWhy didn’t he tell me anything about her?”
    â€œWouldn’t he have, if he’d seen you? He only mentioned her to me once, when we’d spent two days on a road trip.”
    â€œMaybe. You couldn’t get much out of him on the phone. Unless he called you.”
    â€œTrue.” Alan Munro laughed, and threw another log on the fire. “He hadn’t even gone out with her when he saw you at Christmas.” Alan studied Jo for a second, as she played with the bottom of Tom’s sweater, before he added, “A pickup truck hit Tom out of the blue. There wasn’t anything he could do.”
    â€œWhy did he do things he knew were that dangerous? He rode Sam alone cross country all the time, trailering him all over, jumping walls and fences when he didn’t have a clue what was on the other side. And skydiving, for heaven’s sake! It seemed like after he got back from the—”
    â€œWar?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThat’s how it took some of us. Others, it was safety first, once we got back. Keep your head down, and don’t make—”
    â€œIt was hard, if you loved him. We worried about him, and prayed for him constantly, all those years he was fighting in Europe. Mom, and Uncle Toss and I. And then he comes back and leaves again. He travels all over, and does everything he can think of to test himself, or endanger his own life and limb, almost as though he wanted to—”
    â€œHe explained it some in the letter.”
    â€œStill.”
    â€œWhat if you tamed lions for a living, and then you were forced to sort mail in a post office?”
    â€œIt’s not quite the same, is it? I can imagine myself liking the lions, but—”
    â€œWar brings out the best, and the worst, and triggers a lot of unexpected reactions. Though that was an unintended pun.”
    â€œI don’t want him to be gone.”
    â€œNo. I don’t either. Tom was a great friend.”
    They were both quiet for a minute. Watching the fire. Feeling the heat and the hurt in the air. Wondering where else to go with both.
    â€œHow old were you in ’45, when he got back from the war?”
    â€œAlmost fifteen.”
    â€œAh.” Alan set his mug on the table and pushed himself up off the sofa. “I guess I ought to head back.”
    â€œAren’t you going to tell me about the O.S.S.?”
    â€œI don’t know that there’s that much to tell. You listen to the tape, and then maybe we could talk again. If you want to.” He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and laid it on the table.
    â€œWhat do you do for a living?”
    â€œI work for a pharmaceutical firm, but I’m actually moving to Lexington. I’ve taken a job with an equine pharmaceutical company and I start in a couple of weeks.” He laughed at the look on her face, and picked up his coat.
    Jo was holding the card, reading the address in Fairfax. “Why Lexington? Why equine drugs all of a sudden?”
    â€œI’m tired of working for a big company, and my boss, whom I like a lot, is a long time friend of the guy who started Equine Pharmaceuticals in Lexington, and he put me in touch.”
    â€œBob Harrison. Sure. I don’t know him well, but I know him.”
    â€œTom told me he respected him as a scientist. And I’m ready to live in a smaller town. I’m sick and tired of D.C., and I’m interested in horses. Tom did that for me. Tom and Sam. I don’t know, I can’t explain it all, but I’m ready for a big change.”
    â€œLexington’ll be that.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll call you in a couple of weeks. When