by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair
Then, as though she had conjured him, Paul strode up to her.
“Hello, Amanda.” She stood and returned the greeting. She was about to introduce him to everyone, but he silenced her with his next sentence. “I need a favor. Would you ride in a baby jumper class? Right now? The woman who was going to got stung by a bee and is allergic. I’d ride, but my back can’t take it.”
Ride in a show? Her brain went numb, then her first coherent thought was no way. But then again, it was a teeny show with small fences. But a green horse? That was the wild card.
Again, as though he’d read her mind, Paul said, “You’ll love the horse. He’s sensible and solid; he just needs some mileage. He’s as push-button as they come.”
Yes. Yes, she could do this. It would be like schooling. She’d be fine. She’d say yes before she chickened out. “I’m not registered.”
“I took care of that.”
Of course he had. “Okay,” she heard herself saying. She looked at Grady, who smiled encouragement. “I need a shirt.”
“I’m sure we can find something,” Paul said. “If not, we’ll buy one.” There were several vendors on the grounds. “This way.” And he walked off.
She grabbed her helmet and gloves and followed.
Grady stood and said to Harris, “I’m going with her.” Then to Beth, “You think she’ll be okay?”
“Yeah.”
Grady looked at Beth. “How can I help her?”
Beth shrugged. “It’s up to her now. Just be there for her. Buy her a drink when she’s done.” She grinned at him. He smiled back. He liked this Beth. She was a good friend to Amanda.
“Can we come?” Solstice asked, and Grady glanced meaningfully at Jacqueline.
“You need to finish eating,” Jacqueline said to them. “She will be back soon.” Grady didn’t want to put any more pressure on Amanda, and having the girls ringside counted as pressure. Or were his overprotective tendencies expanding to include Amanda now?
“Pleeeease?” Wave begged.
“Waver, hang on,” Grady said. He turned to Beth and said quietly, “Could you bring them, but so Amanda won’t see? I don’t want to make her nervous. Does that make sense, or am I being dumb here? You know her better than I do.” Lately, dealing with Amanda had been making him feel dumb. His ability to say the right thing, to charm her, had completely evaporated.
Beth smiled. “Yup, I can do that, and it makes sense. You’re doing the right thing. She’ll want you there when she’s done.”
She will? Grady smiled back. He wanted to get on Beth’s good side. Because where Amanda was concerned, he needed all the help he could get.
Before she knew it, Amanda was in a borrowed blue polo shirt, sitting on a five-year-old bay Dutch warmblood gelding named Epiphany. The moniker seemed appropriate, since Amanda was about to have a realization of her own, for better or worse. Paul stationed himself next to one of the jumps in the warm-up arena, and Amanda walked Epiphany just inside the gate. And stood. Was this a test? Did Paul want to see if she’d fall apart?
She sat still, waiting for one of the symptoms she feared. She wasn’t shaking, she didn’t feel faint, her breathing and heart rate were normal. She was a little excited, but that was it. She seemed . . . okay. She took several deep breaths, pushed her heels farther down in the stirrups, took a feel of the reins, and said to the gelding, “You take care of me and I’ll take care of you.” She squeezed the horse’s glossy sides and they walked off. She warmed up the gelding and herself at the walk, trot, and canter in both directions. Paul had her pop the gelding over the practice fences a couple times, then told her the course. The warm-up completed, she took inventory again.
She felt fine. Better than that, she felt good.
Still, her heart pounded a few minutes later as she entered the ring.
But it was a show. And the last time she’d shown . . . Suddenly the horrible image of Courtney flashed in her head. She saw her dear friend on the grass, in the fetal position, a red-and-white jump pole pinning her legs. Amanda felt a cold sweat break out all over her body. No! her brain shouted. Don’t do it!
“You can do this,” she said aloud. She took a deep breath. Closed her eyes and replaced Courtney’s inert form with a vision of Epiphany soaring over each low fence, sweet as you please. She opened her eyes and although she felt shaky, she knew she could do this. She could get in there and get this sweet, uncomplicated fellow over all those easy jumps. It would be a piece of cake.
Yes.
She nudged the horse into a trot as the buzzer sounded. She picked up a canter and guided Epiphany through the laser to trip the timer.
She would do this.
But the first jump was coming up too fast, and Epiphany was falling on his forehand and picking up speed. The fence was getting higher. The novice gelding could midjudge the takeoff and tangle his legs in the poles, panic and flail. He could flip over. Just like Courtney’s horse did.
No.
No fucking way.
The fence was the same height. This gelding was a star. She’d sit up and close her fingers. She’d balance the horse. Take charge. Epiphany wasn’t sure how to do this. She was. As the first jump passed beneath them, Amanda’s brain clicked into autopilot and she rode with the focus and finesse that had won her blue after blue. She could easily see the distance to every fence, like crosshairs pinpointing where the horse needed to take off. She gave her mount confidence and showed him exactly where to go and how fast to get there. Epiphany jumped clean and within the time allowed.
Grady had barely breathed during Amanda’s round. He watched the panic cross her face as she came into the ring, and he fought the urge to yank her off that horse. Instead, he clenched his hands into painful fists and willed her to recover. “You can do it,” he said under his breath. When she relaxed into the rhythm of the course, he blew out a sigh and straightened his fingers. “Thank God.”
Immediately after her faultless round, Amanda and Epiphany went fast and clean in the jump-off. She rubbed the warmblood’s neck as they marched out of the ring to a smattering of applause. Paul, the horse’s owner, Grady, Beth, Solstice, and Wave congratulated her and walked back to the jumper’s stall.
Amanda vaulted off the horse with a gymnast’s grace. Grady wanted to hug her right then, but hung back because he knew she’d hate to look even remotely unprofessional in front of Paul. The trainer thanked her again and told her to keep the polo shirt. Grady stood next to her as she gave Paul her impressions of Epiphany and recovered her lucky pink shirt. They said their good-byes to Paul and the horse’s owner, then Team Brunswick started back to Rainy and Bramble’s stalls, the girls scampering around Amanda like puppies.
Grady caught Beth’s eye and she asked the girls, “Who wants ice cream?” They took the bait. He handed Beth a fifty, and she took the girls to the ice cream vendor’s tent.
Now that they were alone, he turned to Amanda. Her cheeks were pink, her wavy hair pulled back in its customary ponytail after being smashed under a helmet. “You okay?”
She stopped and turned to him. Astonishment flickered in her tiger-quartz eyes. She let out a trembling sigh. “Yeah. I’m okay. How about that? I’m okay . . . Thanks.”
The woman had just overcome a debilitating fear without letting on anything was wrong. She was downplaying it, but he understood full well what the ride had cost her. It had been an emotional ambush, a hijacking of her psyche, but she’d taken it in stride. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“You were great out there.” He held her gaze for a second or two before she looked away, and he knew she was about to protest. Just then he remembered Beth’s instructions. “How ’bout a drink?”
She laughed. “I would love a beer.”
“It’s on me.” He slung his arm around her shoulders, expecting but not getting a reprimand. Encouraged, he led her to the makeshift bar.
The show wrapped up at four thirty. Grady took the girls home to clean up, and then t
ook his daughters, Harris, and Jacqueline to dinner. Amanda and Beth trailered the horses home, unloaded the truck and trailer, and returned to The Little Nell for one last night. They talked about the girls’ performances, Paul Reade, and Amanda’s ride. They did not examine Amanda’s encounter with Grady in the elegant portable toilet, since Amanda couldn’t bring herself to tell Beth about it quite yet. She felt like she had distilled a year’s worth of emotions into one day.
They took turns showering, and as Amanda clicked off her hair dryer, her cell phone rang. It was Grady. Her heart, lousy traitor that it was, leaped. If she had any sense, she’d be online right now, scoping out apartments in Georgia. Oh, hell. Hell hell hell. With that, she did the dumbest thing in the world and answered the phone.
Fifteen minutes later, against her better judgment, Amanda tapped her knuckles on the door of another suite in the hotel. Grady answered, wearing one of those damn light-blue shirts of his that made his eyes all oceany.
“Hi,” she said, feeling jittery. It was chemicals in her brain, that’s all. She could override them. Just a few minutes and then she could go back to her room and sleep.
Grady looked her up and down and she felt her cheeks heat up. Damn! She wore a black T-shirt and jeans just low-slung enough to reveal a thin strip of flat belly. She’d worn the outfit to please him, which she hated to admit, even to herself. His eyebrows lifted and his lips parted in the expression that meant he liked what he saw.
“Hi yourself.” He stepped back so she could enter.
“I can’t stay.” The table was loaded with a dinner for two, candles, and an open bottle of champagne in a silver bucket of ice. She could smell steak, burning candles, and that wonderful, clean scent of Grady as she passed into the suite.
“So we’ll eat fast. Or take it with you.” He pulled out a chair for her. “Come on. You’ve got to eat. You put in a long day, and it was because of my kids. At least let me feed you.”
Her unhelpful brain provided a cruelly seductive image of Grady placing a morsel of tender steak in her mouth with his fingers, and she blinked to get rid of it. Boy, but the meat smelled good. Really, really good. And she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Mouth watering, she sat in the proffered chair and realized that at this moment, she wasn’t much different from a Labrador retriever.
Before he sat, he poured champagne into a flute for her.
“No thanks.”
“One glass. To celebrate.”
She looked at him, her jaw set.
He sat. “You don’t have to drink it.” He sounded like he was talking to a petulant Wave as he placed the flute on the table in front of her. He poured himself a flute and raised it, “To the victors: Wave, Solstice, Rainy, and Bramble.” She raised her glass and he clinked the rim with his. “And you,” he added, skewering her with a look that would make a celibate saint do a swan dive into his bed.
She put her glass down without drinking as he sipped from his.
He said, “So are you just going to sit there and not say anything?”
“I told you, I can’t stay.” She arched her eyebrows defiantly. So there.
“Do you realize we’ve never had dinner together, just the two of us?”
“We had ice cream. We had dessert.”
“Some of us had two desserts.”
She made a face at him. Sighed. Looked at her covered plate. “Damn it.” She lifted the metal cover.
“It’s the least you could do.”
She stared at a beautiful grilled filet mignon, green beans, and steak frites and had to concentrate on not drooling. She swallowed her first bite of steak, then closed her eyes, her head back. “Mmm. That’s so good.”
He laughed. “Let me know if you need a cigarette.” Which earned him a warning look. “The girls had a great time today.” He uncovered his own plate. “They were ecstatic. You made their summer.”
“You’d better keep making multimillion-dollar movies if they want to keep showing.” She speared another piece of steak.
“I blame you for that.” They talked about the girls and the show, and the conversation remained solid and pleasant as they ate. Amanda eventually caved and drank her champagne, along with a terrific cabernet. He was fun to talk to. And he was annoyingly sexy as he sat there, eating. Even watching him masticating green beans generated pornographic thoughts.
She ate everything, including the garnishes, but damn, everything was so good. She glanced up to find Grady staring at her, looking amused.
“What?”
“That ranch hand called. He wants his appetite back.”
“I haven’t eaten all day!”
“I love that about you. Especially since most of the women I know starve themselves to look good for the camera or the parties or, hell, the walk to the mailbox.”
He said “love,” which made her feel like she was free falling. As she realized he’d stopped talking, she said, “Everything was delicious. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
She sipped her wine, then looked at him. “Why’d you do it?”
He spread his hands to indicate the table. “I was hungry?”
“Paul Reade. Why’d you give me a glowing recommendation?”
“You deserved it.”
“So you don’t want me to stay on?”
Alarm skittered across his face, which both surprised and pleased her. “Of course I do. More than anything. But I realize you might not want to.”
“So you want me to stay, but you talked me up for an amazing job?”
“Correct.”
“That makes zero sense.”
“I’m a nice guy.”
“Nobody’s that nice.”
“Apparently, I am.”
“Seriously. Why?”
He got up and took their wineglasses with him. “Come here.” He moved to a love seat and set the glasses on the small table in front of it. She followed, frowning, and sat. He took her hands and her stomach blipped.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I care about you.”
“How could I take it the wrong way?”
“I don’t know, but you will. I want you to come to California, but not if you feel like you’re missing out on something.”
Had she heard him correctly? “Really? This Paul thing is the chance of a lifetime, do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Lots of his students go to the Olympics—it’s almost a given. It’s not just a matter of money, because you can have the most expensive horse in the world, but if you can’t ride it, it doesn’t matter. He gets the right horse for the right rider. He’s got a ton of influence and everyone likes him.”
“Sounds like a good person to know.”
She stared hard at him. “Who does this? It’s like an O. Henry story. You’re some kind of saint.”
“Believe me, based on my many, varied, and frequent carnal thoughts about you, I’m no saint.”
She—again—felt herself blush.
His expression turned serious. No one, but no one, had ever looked at her with such concern. “Tell me about Courtney.”
She swallowed and cleared her throat. “What—” she started, but had to try again because her voice quit on her. “What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you’d like me to know. I know how she died, but I don’t know anything about her.”
Amanda smiled and felt her lips quiver. “She was great. We were like sisters. We’d show all over the place and be each other’s ground person, coaching each other when our trainer wasn’t around. We met in Young Riders, which is like the farm team for equestrian competition—it’s for serious kids. You might want to think about it for Solstice, eventually.
“Courtney and I hit it off right away, you know? She’d make me laugh when I got too serious and she’d tell me she was going to beat the pants off me whenever we were in the same class—she was fierce on course—but she’d be the first to high-five me if I beat her. She and Beth and I hung o
ut all the time. When you’re horse-showing like we were, your friends become your family.”
“You finally got over your PTSD today, didn’t you? You’re the bravest person I know.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t have time to think. It’s not like I ran into a burning building and saved orphans.”
“Amanda.”
She felt his eyes, his stunning eyes, on her. She met his gaze.
He said, “It was a big deal.”
Her chest tightened and she looked away. She got up and walked around the room. She gathered her hair in her hands to lift it off of her neck, needing to cool off. “I should go.”
Grady stayed on the love seat, watched her, and considered what he was about to say, because it was more important than any line he’d ever delivered. He inhaled. “I saw your face when you rode into that ring today. I saw you panic for a split second. You were deciding whether or not you were going to stay on, afraid you might have an attack. But you did it. You had no time to prepare and you did it anyway. In my book, that’s a big deal. It took a hell of a lot of guts.”
She stopped across the room and stared at her feet, then looked at him. He wasn’t sure she believed him, so for good measure he added, “I mean it. You beat your fear.”
She sank into her chair at the table and dropped her forehead into her hands, then looked at him, a hank of wavy mahogany hair falling across her cheek. “Why couldn’t you be a scumbag? Then there’d be no question; I’d go to Paul’s. Why are you so nice?”
“I get extraordinarily nice when I’m around a courageous, talented, beautiful woman.” He grinned to lighten her mood. “Who usually has a stinky baseball cap glued to her head. Nice to see it comes off.” He lowered his voice to a seductive pitch. “I like your hair like that.”
She straightened, touched her hair absently. “Thanks.”
Grady pushed himself to his feet and crossed to her. Wow, she was so pretty without half trying.
“You know,” he said, gazing down at her, “we can still try this whole you-and-me thing even if you work for Paul. It’s called a long-distance relationship.”