It was a good, solid building, with the stylish touches that the Templetons were known for. The loose boxes had plenty of space and light and air, a more important feature to Michael than the intricately laid brick flooring, the decorative tiles around the mangers, or the ornate ironwork above them, with its center stylized T in polished brass.

Though he did consider the fancy work a nice touch.

The layout was practical, with the tack room at one end of the block, the feed room at the other. Though he was baffled by the obvious neglect and disuse, he put his back into it and dug in to correct the situation. He hauled and hammered, swept and scrubbed until every stall met his stringent standards for his babies.

He thought of them as such, secretly.

He’d had fresh hay and straw delivered that morning and had been grateful that the boy who delivered it had been willing to make a few extra dollars by helping Michael store the bales.

Now each stall was deeply bedded with wheat straw—expensive and difficult to come by, but these were his babies, after all. Some tools and some ingenuity had put the automatic drinking bowls back in working order. He oiled hinges on stall doors, replaced hooks that had rusted away.

Since he’d lost all of his supplies in the mud, he had to restock grain, electrolytes, vitamins, medicines. He’d managed to salvage some tack, some tools. Every piece had been cleaned and polished, and what couldn’t be saved had been, or would shortly be, replaced.

His fifteen horses were housed as royally as he could manage, but as yet, he hadn’t done more than sleep in the upstairs apartment.

“You’ve come up in the world, Max. You might not know it, but you are now a tenant of the Templeton estate. That is one big fucking deal, pal, take my word for it.”

He slapped the horse affectionately on the flank and pulled a carrot out of the pouch tied at his waist. “I’ve already started designing your new place. Don’t worry. Maybe we’ll add a few of the fancier touches ourselves this time around. But in the meantime, you can’t do much better than this.”

Max took the carrot politely, and the dark eye he turned to Michael was filled with patience, wisdom, and, Michael liked to think, affection as well.

He stepped out of the stall, latched the bottom half of the door with its foot bolt, then moved down the block. The floor might have been fancy enough for a garden party, but it sloped perfectly. His boot heels clicked. In anticipation, a chestnut head poked over the adjoining stall door.