I was afraid to ask why he wanted to see me. He was probably mad at me for dragging him into my dramas at camp.
“Melissa.”
I jumped, heat flushing my face and looked up. William leant over Jinx’s back, brush in hand.
“Yes?”
“Would you go out with me?”
Oh. My. Freakin’. God. “What?”
“I’d like to take you to get a coffee or go to a movie or something. Whatever you want.”
“Really?”
“I was going to ask you to dance with me last night, but, well, you weren’t there.”
Embarrassment at the reason I’d gone home and the reminder that he knew the full story mingled with the confusion I was already feeling to turn up the thermostat heating my skin. My cheeks burned.
“Sorry about that. Getting you in trouble, I mean.”
“I didn’t get in trouble. Besides, it would have been worth it.”
Oh, where was a bucket of ice cubes when you really needed it? I’d have given anything to be able to dunk my face in something icy cold right then. Something to slow my galloping pulse and force-feed some oxygen into my cramping lungs would be good, too.
“I—”
“William, hey, how long have you been here?”
I closed my eyes briefly. Gary. Oh my god, one look at my face and I’d be hearing about this until I was 90 years old.
“Not long,” William said. He gave Jinx a swipe with the brush and I could swear he looked annoyed at the interruption. I turned my back to my stepbrother and made myself look busy with putting stuff away.
“Brendan’s up at the house sleeping off his hangover. But come on up, have a beer or something.”
“Actually,” William said slowly, “I came here to see Melissa.”
Well, that stuffed it. William would be hearing about this until he was 90 too. I turned and looked over at Gary, who eyed me with an all too familiar evil glint in his eye, a grin breaking over his face.
“Oh yeah? And what about?”
“I’m asking her out.”
Kill me now. Please. I gave Gary a half-begging, half-sheepish glance, but he ignored me, pushing his hat back on his head and giving William a steady look.
“You do realise that’s my little sister you’re talking about.”
“Of course.”
“And that if I let you take her out you’d be expected to take exceptionally good care of her. Exceptionally good care. As in returning her in exactly the same condition you got her.”
Can you actually die of embarrassment? I gazed down at the dusty ground beneath my boots but it stubbornly refused to open up and swallow me. Although a definite thrill curled up through me at the thought of Gary calling me his little sister. I don’t think I’d ever heard him lay claim to me like that before.
“Of course I would take exceptionally good care of her. But she hasn’t answered me yet.”
Gary turned to me. “Well?”
“Uh. Yes?”
“Don’t tell me, tell him,” Gary said, jerking his head at William.
Face flaming, I looked at William, almost dying when those lake-blue eyes shifted to meet mine.
“Yes William,” I said.
I saw something flit over William’s face then. Something that totally changed the way he looked, as though he’d shifted into a different angle of the sun. But then he ducked his head and the brim of his hat hid his expression.
I looked at Gary. Gary looked at William, at me, at William again and finally back at me. His eyes moved to the brush I still held in my hands and when his gaze flickered back up to my face, he too had a look in his eye I’d never seen before. Here it comes, I thought, trying to brace myself for one of his bulls-eye smart arse remarks, the kind that are funny but painful because they cut right to the heart of something you’d rather not have dragged out into the open.
My stepbrother shoved his hat back down firmly on his head and nodded at William. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said and disappeared around the corner of the shed, leaving me, William and Jinx standing in the afternoon sun, Jinx dozing as he waited for us to finish fussing and take him back to his grass, William and I looking at each other and wondering something, I just don’t know what.
But a scary little flutter in my belly suggested I’d be getting a better idea what he was thinking real soon.
Chapter 7
I’d only been back at school after the holidays for two days and it sucked already. Getting home that afternoon was pure relief.
I’m not the freakiest freak at my high school, not by a long shot; JRA doesn’t really rate next to a wheelchair, Down Syndrome, CF, a recovering drug addict and a failed suicide attempt. And the legally blind girl in Year 8 with the guide dog is definitely the poster girl for the misfits. Everyone loves that dog, though I don’t know why; it’s blonde, docile and has all the personality of a sponge. I like kelpies and terriers and other farm or working dogs. Dogs that are brainy and busy.
I don’t even mind the classes as I’m pretty good at my schoolwork. One thing JRA does give you is plenty of time to read because often you can’t do much else. The main problem with school is the herds of kids on the move throughout the day and the constant worry that someone will bump into me and bang up my hands. By lunchtime every day I’m strung out and exhausted. If I was ever going to be tempted to seek pharmacological relief, it would be during school hours, not my riding time.
Eleni goes to my school, although we’re only in the same classes for English and Home Ec, which is lucky as I read out the recipes and do the easy stuff and Eleni does the more delicate or demanding hands-on parts. We eat lunch together, which usually means I watch as Eleni devours her lunch and then helps me with mine because I’m never hungry and she always is. Sadly, Tash goes to a posh private school in town, so we only get to see her on the bus home.
She hadn’t been on the bus that afternoon though, because she had to go to the dentist. As I shed my school clothes as quickly as my stupid hands would allow and wriggled into some comfy old jods, I wondered how she’d gone. Tash wasn’t daunted by much, but the dentist totally freaked her out. She reckoned it was having their face so close to hers, them peering down at her, that made her claustrophobic. No matter how quick the visit, she’d come home with a screaming tension headache. Lucky she had pretty good teeth; God knows how she’d cope if she had to have a tooth out or something.
I took a carrot with me when I went out to get Jinx, who’d been eating down the grass in the Jenny Craig paddock beside the shearing shed. Not that Jinx needed to lose weight; we put him in there whenever the pasture was getting too lush. As Brendan said, not much point having a starvation paddock for the fat horses if it was full of grass. Jinx was definitely not one of the fatties. He was more like the Posh Spice of the horse world.
As I slipped his halter on—Jinx had a hatred of the alpacas we kept to protect the sheep at lambing time and we had to pass them from this paddock, so the halter and lead was a reminder not to indulge his urges to shy and snort at them—I thought with satisfaction that he was looking very well at the moment. Grudgingly, I had to admit that Dad had been right and Jinx had come home from camp a little light-on in condition. The break had done him good.
He’d had a couple of sessions in the round yard since we came home, but that wasn’t much work, really. I was always careful not to over-stress his joints (I’m perhaps a bit paranoid where joints are concerned) and the round yard was only small—about 15 metres across. Too much work on a tight circle was asking for trouble and as Jinx had raced for a couple of years, his legs probably weren’t in the best shape to begin with.
I gave Jinx a quick brush and then saddled him, grateful as always for the modified system of straps that gave me greater leverage than on a standard saddle’s girth and allowed me to saddle him myself, except for the times my hands were really, really bad. It struck me then that William had never commented on my odd girthing system, even though he
’d unsaddled Jinx after I fell off at camp. Maybe one of my stepbrothers had mentioned it to him; after all, Brendan and Gary had come up with the design for me.
I put Jinx’s bridle on, picked up my helmet and decided I better give Jinx a few circuits around the round yard before I hopped on. After basically a week off and all that sweet grass he could be feeling a bit full of himself.
Going into the round yard made me think again of William and I could feel a stupid grin turning my mouth up. Last week, by the time we put Jinx away, it had been too late to catch the movie he’d wanted to see and William was leaving the next day for a week rouseabouting. But he’d asked me for my mobile number and said he’d call later after he looked up the times for the following Tuesday when movies were half price. I’d given him the number and watched his ute disappear into the shadows as dusk fell and kind of expected that to be the end of it.
But he had called. He actually wanted to go out with me. Me. We were going to the movies tonight; the 6 o’clock session, seeing as it was a school night (and you bet I was amazed that Jennie had given it the OK, but not enough to push my luck and ask why) so I couldn’t muck around getting Jinx worked or I’d run out of time.
As I looped Jinx’s reins out of the way around his neck and sent him out to start circling around me, I wondered for about the thousandth time if William really liked me. Obviously he didn’t hate me or anything. I wasn’t a moron (well, not all the time) and even I couldn’t believe he’d spend time with me or help me with Jinx if he thought I totally sucked. But I couldn’t help wondering. I couldn’t help coming up with all sorts of crazy theories. Like maybe Jennie had asked him to be nice to me, or Gary had put him up to it; he’d certainly acted a bit weird when William told him he wanted to ask me out. Or maybe it was even worse—maybe William just felt sorry for me.
I swallowed a sigh and stepped forward to stop Jinx and turn him around in the other direction. Maybe I should just stick to riding. It was about the only thing I had any clue about.
Twenty minutes later, I wasn’t even sure about that anymore. Jinx was fresh and silly, despite the lunging, and he wanted to jog and go faster, faster, faster. I kept trying to put him on my aids, get him between my leg and hand and he kept sort of oozing out.
I circled him in walk, changing to the right rein where things were usually a bit easier for us. I took a light hold of the outside rein with my left hand, wrapped my right leg a little more firmly around his ribs, then gave him a squeeze with both legs, on-off, to tell him to go into trot.
Jinx obeyed with way too much enthusiasm, bouncing into trot, poking his neck forward and grabbing at the bit, leaning on my hands. Wincing at the strain this put on my swollen joints, I clamped my aching fingers around the reins and braced my back in a firm half-halt, before releasing the tension I’d created in my spine and moving with him to encourage him forwards. But Jinx didn’t take the cue and shift his weight to his hindquarters to move forward in trot with energy and lightness. Instead he just sort of sucked back into himself even as his legs moved faster, a bad old habit from the early days, where he dropped his back and ducked his head behind the bit, tucking his nose towards his chest.
“Shit,” I ground out, my hands killing me. The frustration boiling up inside was almost worse than the ache in my knuckles and wrists. I clamped my legs around him, pressing my weight down through my knees, into my lower legs and to the stirrups, as I set the reins and pulled Jinx back to walk.
Sweat itched down my face from beneath my helmet and I tilted my head to wipe my face on my arm, breathing hard, my mind racing, going back over what I’d just done. I didn’t think I’d made a mistake with my aids, so I gathered myself, set Jinx into a small circle to get his attention and then asked again.
And again, he took off like a steam train, yanking on my arms, sending scalding red-hot daggers of pain shooting though my hands and wrists. I drove him forward, circling again, inside leg on the girth, outside hand holding as tight as I could, but I couldn’t close the door, the pain bringing involuntary tears to my eyes and sucking all the strength out of my hand. Jinx tugged at the contact and because he didn’t meet the check he needed to tell him to slow down and gather himself, he set his neck against the bit and pulled, taking the left rein straight through the weak grip of my left hand.
I bit my lip against the shriek of pain and frustration that wanted to burst out of my mouth and let Jinx spiral in to the centre of the circle in response to the hold I still had on the other rein, cradling my abused hand to my stomach. Jinx, unsettled, threw his head up, banging me sharply in the face. As I finally dragged him to a crooked halt I could only pray the rush of wetness down over my lip was tears or sweat, not blood.
I pressed the back of my forearm gingerly to my nose, then looked at it and grimaced. Blood. Bugger. I checked again with a clean patch of skin, but when I looked a big splotch of glistening dark red was sliding across my arm. Yuck.
I didn’t have a tissue in the pocket of my jods. I’d have to ride back to the tack room and find something. Letting the reins fall slack on Jinx’s sweat-darkened neck, I guided him towards the gate with my knees, putting my arm back to my nose. I was hot and sweaty and hurting and way too close to a crying fit. I knew by the time I got my nose or lip or whatever it was cleaned up it’d be time to put Jinx away. I hated finishing a training session on a bad note and today was not only bad, but barely started in the first place. We hadn’t achieved anything and the days left until Goulburn were racing by.
As I rode Jinx out of the paddock where I had my dressage arena marked out and turned back up the lane towards the sheds, I hoped for once that William would be late, rather than early. The way my luck was going lately his ute would turn into our driveway just in time to see me ride past with blood all over my face. The thought had me nudging Jinx’s side to get him to walk faster. I had enough going against me in the sex-appeal stakes without that.
“I loved that movie, I’m stoked I finally saw it. Did you like it? I hope you weren’t bored.”
“It was great,” I answered, my brain still trying to process a guy—William—admitting they loved anything, let alone a movie. We were coming down the escalator from the cinema into the main food court of the mall in search of a coffee or ice-cream. We hadn’t got as far as deciding exactly what, yet. I was tending towards ice-cream in the hope that the cold might be soothing to my sore face. Luckily I’d had time to get inside after I put Jinx away and get ice on my nose and lip without anyone catching me. As a result, there was hardly any swelling at all and it was barely noticeable from the outside, although that didn’t stop it hurting on the inside. If William had noticed anything, he hadn’t said so.
“You can choose the movie next time. A chick flick, whatever. I don’t mind those.”
“Uh,” I said, brain totally bogging down at his casual way of saying ‘next time’. That meant there would be a next time, didn’t it? God. I stepped carefully off the moving belt onto solid ground and then sidled quickly away from the bottom, making sure I didn’t get knocked into by the other people around me. William stretched his long legs, following me.
“No, really, I don’t mind girlie movies. There was one I saw a while ago that was really good. Mum has it on DVD. It’s set in the old days. Pride and Practice or something.”
“Pride and Prejudice?” I grinned at the thought of swapping Miss Elizabeth Bennett with Doctor Addison Montgomery. Yes, I watch a lot of TV.
“Yeah, that was it. That hot chick from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies was in it.”
“Keira Knightley,” I said more quietly. I love movies; again, when your hands are crap you have to find things to do that don’t involve manual dexterity or fingers and thumbs. There isn’t much.
William glanced swiftly at me and to my amazement I could see a blush fanning across his face. “Hey, no, I’m sorry,” he said, putting his hand on my arm and stopping me. “That came out wrong. I didn’t mean you weren’t as pretty as her. I wa
sn’t thinking that, I was thinking—I mean, you know, I think you’re hot, too.” His face was fiery red now, but even that didn’t make him look any less gorgeous. Wait, what did he just say? I gawped at him.
“Oh man, just wait while I change feet.” He looked down, abashed, and then back at me. The intense blue of his eyes as he held my gaze made my stomach quiver. The hair stood up on my arms as goose-bumps rippled over my skin.
William put his other hand on my waist and I felt the warmth of his palm through my top as he moved his hand around to my back.
“Actually, I think you’re way hotter than Keira Knightley,” he said, looking at me.
I licked my dry lips, utterly spellbound, as my heart leapt like one of Jinx’s over-excited upward transitions and hammered painfully against my chest. It was thumping so hard I was afraid William would see it or hear it, but as I gazed back at him I wasn’t sure it would matter if he did. I was pretty sure he was sincere. He seemed to actually be serious when he said I was hotter than Keira Knightley. It was all I could do not to float away on his flattery. Superficially at least, I actually do look a bit like her; we’re both skinny and big-eyed and brown haired. But where Keira Knightley is ethereal, I’m just angular. She’s an effortlessly elegant clothes horse and I’m more like a coat rack.
But maybe, just maybe, William liked coat racks. The way he was looking at me, the way his hands were pulling me towards him, seemed to indicate he liked me, at any rate. I had no idea why, but as he drew me closer I wasn’t about to ask any stupid questions. Was I going to look a gift horse in the mouth? I don’t think so.
And speaking of mouths, I could hardly believe it but it looked as though William was about to kiss me. My stomach plunged, rolled, bucked and finally bolted. I’d never been kissed by a guy in any way more serious than a peck on the cheek by a male relative at Christmas parties. What was I supposed to do? Should I lean forward to meet him? Should I take my hands out of my pockets and (carefully) put my arms around him? I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to touch him; the whole idea of actually being allowed to touch him was too much for my brain anyway. It jibbed like a frightened horse, locking my limbs in paralysis so I just stood there.
Riding on Air Page 6