Free Changespell 01 Dunn Lady's Jess by Doranna Durgin

completely absorbed in her own thoughts and showed no sign of noticing Mark's barefoot approach. As the fact became apparent to Mark, he made his advance even cattier, snuck up behind her and tweaked her ribs with a "Gotcha!"
    Jess' reaction, immediate and intense, was to lash out with a mulish kick that caught Mark squarely in the shin and knocked his leg out from under him. Eric laughed out loud at the astonished look on Mark's face, but Jaime, Dayna noticed, only became more thoughtful.
    "That's the kind of thing that makes me wonder," Jaime said.
    "No wondering about it," Dayna responded, "he's never going to grow up."
    Jaime gave her a startled look, glanced at Mark, and then dismissed him. "That's not what I meant. I was talking about Jess."
    Dayna said flatly, "Horses have four legs and weigh about a thousand pounds more than Jess."
    This time it was Jaime who shook her head, while Eric realized what they were talking about and tuned in to their conversation, bending his long frame around in the lawn chair he was draped over. "Dayna, just pretend, just for a moment, that it might be possible to change animals to people."
    "There's no point," Dayna said flatly.
    "Sure there is," Eric said. "It'll amuse me." Dayna rolled her eyes at him and Jaime took it as permission to continue.
    "I've been watching Jess for two weeks now. I'm certain she understands almost everything we say, although she's still not talking much."
    Fifty yards in front of them, the object of the conversation was standing before Mark in obvious consternation, her eyes wide in anticipation of retribution for her reflexive kick. Jaime nodded at her. "Look at her now. A well-trained horse will, if badly startled, kick out like that. And afterward they know they've done wrong, and they have the same expression she does."
    "Horses don't have expressions," Dayna said out of pure contrariness.
    Impatience flashed across Jaime's face. "Body language, Dayna. You know what I mean. I see dozens of things that just keep adding up—the way she stands when she's alarmed, the way she pays as much attention to what she hears as most people do to what they see, the way she interacts with my horses . . . do you know she won't handle JayDee or Leta?"
    She stated the question in a way that left no doubt as to its significance in her mind, but when Dayna exchanged a glance with Eric she saw he didn't get it, either.
    Jaime leaned forward over her elbows, skewing the plastic gingham cover of the picnic table. "Those mares are in their teens. If you were to equate Jess' age into 'horse years,' she'd probably be four or five. And that puts her way down on the pecking order, as far as she or the horses are concerned. It's a rare filly that'll challenge an older mare."
    "And you think Jess is the filly," Dayna said in dry amusement.
    "A couple days ago, Sandy was working her horse," Jaime said instead of answering. "He was going crooked, evading her outside leg no matter which direction she took, and they were both getting pretty mad at each other. Then Jess walked right out into the ring, took Sandy's whip, and showed her where the end tassel was tickling the horse. Every time Sandy changed directions, she'd move the whip to her inside hand, and he'd go crooked that way to avoid the tickle."
    "So you think Jess can read horses' minds."
    "Dayna," Eric said, "you're being an ass. She means that Jess has an extraordinary understanding of horse body language."
    In the short silence that followed, they watched Mark get to his feet and reassure Jess. In a moment, she nodded happily and ran for the yard's small outbuilding—no doubt after the soccer ball.
    "Okay, so I was being an ass," Dayna said. "What I should have said is, what's the point? You're not really trying to convince us she used to be a horse, are you? Or do you think she was raised by them in the wild?"
    Jaime gnawed briefly on a cuticle, ignoring the last facetious question. "I don't know," she said. "Except that it