Breeding Ground Read Online Free Page B

you’ve had a chance to listen to the tape. If you wouldn’t mind. Once I get to town.”
    â€œSo you won’t talk about the O.S.S. either? Just like Tom?”
    â€œWe’ll see. If you give me your number and address.” Alan pulled a small spiral notebook from his coat pocket and handed it to Jo. “Is there anything you need help with? Loading Tom’s books in the truck? Or—”
    â€œThanks. I’m just taking his personal stuff now. His landlord is shipping the books when he gets back this week. He’ll sell Tom’s truck and horse trailer for me too.”
    â€œLet me know if I can help before you go. Tom would never forgive me if I didn’t help Josie when she needed it.”
    â€œJo.”
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œNo, you’re not.” She smiled for the first time, then stood up and picked up the mugs. “You’re teasing me just like Tom. Thanks, anyway. Thanks for coming all the way out here.”
    â€œThe least I could do.” Alan Munro grinned at her then, and opened the door.
    â€œWhich kind are you?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDo you take more and more risks, or keep your head down and not make waves?”
    â€œThat’s a good question.” Alan turned away from her, and stuck his arms out to the side, then slid fast down the ice-covered walk, stopping himself with his hands, finally, on the hood of his navy blue Dodge.

Chapter Two
    Saturday, April 14, 1962
    O nce Jo Grant got Sam home from Tom’s, she rode him four times a week, trying to keep him going so he’d be ready to sell as a dependable hunter, before or after she got back from studying eighteenth century architecture on the East coast.
    Sometimes she hacked Sam around the farm through woods and fields she knew well. Sometimes she worked him on the flat, concentrating on gait changes and prompt responses to aids.
    The day her life took its next unexpected turn, which came out of Tom’s past, and got complicated by hers – that day she’d ridden Sam on the flat in the secondhand dressage saddle Tom had brought back from Europe.
    She’d never even heard of dressage before Tom saw it in Switzerland. But she liked the way the saddle sat her up straight, and Sam had moved really well under it, even with the wind pounding into them making it hard to move at all.
    Toss had taken the rest of the horses in long before Jo was done with Sam, and plenty of horses would’ve thrown a temper tantrum from having to stay out alone with a storm on its way in. But even though Sam had been worrying underneath her, he’d paid attention and done what she’d asked, and only leapt sideways once.
    When she climbed off, Jo kissed him on the snoot, and told him he’d been a very good boy – and realized how much she meant it. He was using his hindquarters better at the trot. His canter was one of the most comfortable she’d ever sat. And she knew why Tom had liked Sam as much as he had.
    She led him into the second broodmare barn, wind whipping them both hard, rattling doors and windows, which unsettles horses more than dogs or people, so that when they walked through the barn door, Maggie and two other mares trumpeted so loudly, saying something they had to say to Sam, it actually hurt Jo’s ears.
    Sam waited quietly in the aisle-way while she took off his tack and rubbed him down. And he was just as patient in his stall, not trying to rush to his feed tub, even though the others were eating and he knew his grain was waiting.
    Sam stood, breathing softly, ruffling his lips against the side of Jo’s neck as she talked to him and rubbed his chin, and pulled his halter off his head.
    He was crunching loudly before she got to his stall door, snuffling his lips through the oats and corn. And Jo smiled to herself without even noticing as she slid the heavy barn door shut, and ran towards home.
    It was almost a quarter of a mile from that barn