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wildebeest was an African antelope with a long tufted tail and upturned horns curved inward like parentheses. The one lying before her was nearly four hundred pounds, its coat a bluish gray. The vapors rising from its pelt were funky with the manure scent of the marshland, and its dark blood was as plummy and sweet-smelling as a lush Merlot.
    After she completed the knee cut, she stepped to a side table,switched on the grinding wheel, skimmed the blade against it, and bent into the shower of sparks.
    Twenty-seven years old, Claire Hammond had a lanky build and shoulder-length hair the color of ripe peaches. She had her mother’s brown eyes and her dad’s prim mouth and fine, straight nose.
    At least the nose started out that way. Now there was a pearly crimp at the bridge where she’d broken it playing volleyball on the university team. Her side lost the game, got knocked out of the regionals. Though, as her roommate, Sabrina, used to say, Claire scored big that day.
    Lying on the gym floor, blood spilling from her broken nose, she was scooped up by none other than Browning Hammond, who whisked her off to the campus infirmary, then hung around till she was released two hours later.
    Wild Dog Hammond, as he was known in those days, was cocaptain of the Miami Hurricanes, second team All-American defensive end, famous for batting down passes and body-slamming quarterbacks. Turned out he’d had a crush on Claire forever and came to all her home games. On several occasions her teammates had spotted him in the stands. How could you miss the guy: six-seven, two-eighty, shoulders out to there. But none of the girls had a clue who he was coming to watch. Until the day Claire went up to block a spike, her hands spread a little too wide.
    After that day, Browning courted her with unstinting devotion. He arrived with bouquets at every date, Russian chocolates, books of sonnets. He had a round, boyish face with pale skin, bright red cheeks, and hardly any beard at all. He blushed easily and often. He was simple, plainspoken, calm, and unhurried. It was a steadiness she believed he’d acquired from growing up in a stable farming family and living close to the measured cycles of the land.
    He was majoring in business and intended to take his book learning back to the ranch and run the place more efficiently when it came his turn to take charge. Not a sophisticated thinker or an intellectualin the usual bookish way, but smarter than any of the assorted jocks and college smoothies Claire had dated.
    Socially he was backward, slow to hold her hand, slow to kiss her, slow to move beyond kisses, clumsy in bed at first, but enthusiastic and open about his lack of skill and willing to be tutored. Happy to go slower, use a lighter touch, read her rising cries, and try his best to time his orgasm to hers. He threw himself into learning about her body and its responses with the same dedication he’d used to master college football.
    Though she kidded him about treating lovemaking as a sporting event, she did admire his devotion and his belief that with enough hard work there was nothing he couldn’t accomplish. Unlike Claire, he was not a natural athlete. On the football field, where he could have traded on his strength and bulk alone, Browning never slacked, but worked tirelessly to master the subtle spins and feints the best players in his position used to slip past blockers and attack the ball carrier. He was, in Claire’s view, a coach’s dream: physically gifted, hardworking, coachable, and a faithful team player.
    Browning was so strikingly dissimilar to any man she’d ever been with, so dedicated to his family and its traditional way of life, so sentimental that at times he could be downright corny, so formidable in body and spirit, that against all reason she found herself falling for him.
    After Browning Hammond entered her life, her careful career plans whipsawed in a new direction. A Connecticut girl,