Myra paced around the outdoor arena, leaving uneven circles of footprints in the sand. She watched Jamie canter toward the next small post-and-rail fence on the course Myra had set for her. The jump was under two feet high, but Kate’s girlfriend Jamie made so many adjustments to Dragon’s stride, Myra would have thought she was riding a Grand Prix course. Myra’s relationship with Kate had always been smooth and easy. Even their minor disagreements were mere bumps in the road. But Jamie? She and Myra had been at odds since their first meeting, when investment banker Jamie had come to the barn to observe Kate’s riding and evaluate her as a potential client. Myra had risen to her friend’s defense against Jamie’s badgering, but they’d since formed a rocky friendship. Most of their head-butting was in fun, some of it wasn’t, and Myra couldn’t help but enjoy the challenge of knowing someone with Jamie’s strength and brilliance. Most of the time…
“Relax your hands,” she called. “You’re pulling too hard on the reins.”
Jamie slowed the big bay’s stride out of the corner, and then nudged him with her heels at the last minute. Dragon chipped at the fence by adding a short, choppy stride right before he popped stiffly over the jump.
“Why won’t he take off when I ask him?” Jamie trotted to where Myra stood in the center of the ring. Her face was red from exertion under the brim of Kate’s black safety helmet, and she had her usual look of obsessed determination Myra knew all too well. “He keeps getting too close and practically hopping straight in the air to get over it.”
Myra crossed her arms over her chest. When Jamie had first told her about the surprise horseback riding trip across Ireland she was planning for Kate and Anna, Myra had been excited to be in on the secret. As part of the surprise, Jamie wanted to learn how to jump well enough to manage the cross-country obstacles they’d encounter on the intermediate level ride. After three months of frustrating lessons, Myra was having serious second thoughts about her initial offer to help. And third and fourth thoughts.
“He’s doing exactly what you’re asking,” she explained for the umpteenth time with what she hoped sounded like patience. “You’re making too many adjustments on the approach, so by the time you get to the fence he doesn’t have enough length of stride to take off from that long distance.”
“Of course you’d take his side,” Jamie muttered. She unbuckled the helmet and pulled it off, running a hand through her damp red-blond hair. She gave an exasperated sigh and fanned herself with the hard hat. “Horse people.”
Myra bent at the waist and put her hands on her knees, stretching her lower back while she searched for a way to phrase her instructions so Jamie would understand. She’d rushed through rides on three horses just so she’d be able to teach Jamie while Kate hauled a horse to the vet for X-rays. She wanted to tell Jamie to give up. Plan a cruise vacation instead and never ride again.
“You turn everything into a competition,” she said. She straightened up and stuck her hands in her pockets. Anything to keep from throttling her best friend’s girlfriend.
Myra put a hand on her belly and realized she felt the same tension as when she was talking to Ainslee. Another woman who challenged her well-being and made her feel the urge to stretch and grow. But Ainslee’s presence brought up other urges than Jamie’s did. Myra wanted to punch Jamie sometimes, but Ainslee? She’d prefer to kiss her. All the time. She curbed her sudden desire—as strong as if Ainslee was standing right next to her—and concentrated on teaching. “You seem to believe we’re all out to get you. Dragon and I are in cahoots—he’s trying to mess up the jumps on purpose. You’re learning a new hobby, not marching off to battle.”
“Do you know me at all?” Jamie asked. She jammed the helmet on her head so it sat low over her brow. “When I want to do something, I attack it. I’m not going to be one of your flower-child students, cantering around in a Zen-like state and communing with nature. Be the jump. Lift your heart over the fence with butterfly wings.”
Myra had to laugh. “Where the hell did you come up with that?”
“Some book Anna’s reading. She keeps reciting passages about breathing with the horse and forming a beautiful partnership. I’m paraphrasing.”
“Yeah, I assumed as much.” Myra was still laughing at the picture in her mind of Jamie galloping bareback along a beach, like a scene in a movie, with her eyes closed and her arms spread wide.
“My point, Myra, is that you need to teach me how to ride. I’m not going to change who I am just because I’m sitting in a saddle and not a boardroom chair.”
Myra shook her head. Again, Ainslee was filling her mind. Don’t expect me to heal more quickly than I can. “And the student teaches the teacher,” she said. “Okay. You’re in a competition here, but you’re not seeing the real adversary. You’re trying to conquer and control the horse instead of focusing on the actual enemy. The jump.”
Jamie looked at the tiny obstacle with a skeptical expression. “Hardly a worthy adversary.”
“Please. It’s been tripping you up for an hour. Humiliating you. Do you know how funny you looked the time you landed halfway up Dragon’s neck? I thought I was going to pee, I was laughing so hard.”
“Your point?” Jamie asked, frowning.
“My point is that Dragon and I are your partners. Like your assistant Jenn and your research department. We’re gathering information for you, to help you overcome your foe. You trust Jenn when she gives you advice, don’t you? Or do you try to control what she says? You need to trust Dragon the same way. He’s more experienced and knowledgeable than you are right now, but he can’t help you beat that damned pile of poles unless you stop micromanaging and let him do his job.”
“That was a painful metaphor, but it makes more sense than most of your other advice,” Jamie said with a wicked grin as she quickly moved Dragon before Myra could sock her in the leg. She urged the horse into a canter and aimed toward the jump again. She couldn’t seem to completely stop picking at the reins and changing Dragon’s stride, but she fussed with him less and the jump was smoother because of it.
Myra whooped and clapped. “Better!” she called as Jamie circled around her. “Try again, and this time make sure you have the pace you want before you turn the corner. Once you do, don’t make any more changes before the jump.”
Fifteen minutes—and at least as many jumps—later, Myra finally felt confident that Jamie had internalized the lesson. “Let him walk and cool out,” she said, falling into step beside the pair. Jamie let her reins slide through her fingers and Dragon stretched his neck toward Myra. She rubbed his nose. She felt the quiet elation she experienced after particularly good lessons, when she was able to communicate more clearly and her students achieved breakthroughs, no matter how small.
“Good job,” she said to Dragon. She patted Jamie’s knee. “You, too.”
“Thanks, Teach,” Jamie said, tugging off one of her black riding gloves. “I’m not saying I achieved nirvana out there, but I think I got a taste of the whole partnership-with-the-horse thing.”
“Careful,” Myra said, peering around as if looking for eavesdroppers. “If anyone hears you, they might think you’re getting soft. Even downright cuddly.”
Jamie playfully slapped the top of Myra’s head with her glove. “If you repeat anything I said today, I’ll have to make you disappear.”
Myra held up one hand. “I swear I won’t. Except maybe the part about butterfly wings.”
“You’d be wise to take my threats more seriously,” Jamie said. “I’m sure Kate would miss you.”
Myra laughed and draped her arm over Dragon’s neck. They walked in silence halfway around the ring before Jamie spoke again, in a more serious tone this time. “How are you doing with your soldier therapy program?”
“They’re doing well,” Myra said. With only one lesson left in the initial eight-week session, Myra felt confident in her statement. Blake seemed more open, and Drew was already moving better on the ground because of the stretching and strengthening work he was doing in the saddle. And Ainslee? She’d improved physically, at least while on the horse. During last week’s lesson, she’d trotted around the arena several times without noticeable tension or fatigue. She showed flashes of humor and the briefest of smiles. Had she really made definite progress, either physically or emotionally? Myra couldn’t determine the answer, although she spent long hours trying to decide whether she thought Ainslee was getting healthier in the ways that mattered. She wanted to know for certain, since not only Ainslee’s future happiness, but possibly also her own were at stake.
“Of course your students are doing well. You’re a great teacher,” Jamie said, waving her hand dismissively. “What I’m asking is how you are. I never met Jeffrey, but Kate’s told me a lot about him. He sounds like he was a really special guy, and I’m betting you’ve been dealing with some difficult memories over the past seven weeks. I can’t claim to know exactly how you feel, but I do have some experience in living with regrets and guilt.”
Oddly enough, Jamie was probably the only person who really did understand what Myra had gone through. Jamie’s sister hadn’t committed suicide, but she’d pursued a dangerous life of addiction that had culminated with her death in a car crash. Myra knew Jamie had been left with memories of their last fight, as well as her injured niece Anna. They’d found a place of healing and love here at Kate’s barn, but the scars never faded completely. Jamie and Kate had just started dating when Myra had lost Jeffrey, and Jamie had offered quiet and steadfast support without forcing Myra to rehash her story or rush through her grief. The shared experience had helped the two very different women establish an unexpected friendship.
“I see part of him in each of the riders,” she said. She was still feeling a connection with Jamie because of their accomplishments in the lesson, and somehow that made it easier to talk about the emotions she’d been keeping locked inside. “Every time I celebrate a step forward for one of them, I wish I had been able to help him the same way. I swing back and forth between happiness and mourning so often I’m wrung out after only an hour with them.”
“And it’s even more intense when you add attraction to the mood swings. I know that firsthand.”
“How did you…” Myra halted and Dragon stopped as well without any cues from Jamie.
“Kate told me,” Jamie said with a fond smile. “She’s been scheming.”
“Tell her to stop.” Myra’s voice held more force than she’d intended. “I might admire qualities in Ainslee, but I won’t take a chance on anything more than a student-teacher relationship.”
“Why not? You’re all flushed and pissed, so you must really like her.”
Myra fumed silently for a moment, until she was sure she could speak without stammering. She wanted to vehemently deny any desire for Ainslee, but her voice and apparently her face would prove her a liar. She opted instead for honesty. “I can’t go through losing someone like I lost Jeffrey. Never again. Ainslee seems so strong at times, but then she’s as fragile as a stunned bird that just smacked into a window she didn’t see coming. She doesn’t know who she is anymore, and I can’t…”
She stumbled to a halt after her spate of truth, and Jamie finished the thought for her. “You can’t invest your heart without being sure she’s here to stay.”
“Exactly.”
“Have you done a risk assessment? Have you told her about Jeffrey and asked her whether she can identify with what he did?”
Myra gave a bitter laugh. Leave it to Jamie to reduce love to numbers. Love? No—attraction. “Do you have a specific percentage of certainty you recommend?”
Jamie shrugged. “Sixty-three. If a proposal has a feasibility score of sixty-three percent or more, according to my personal scale, then I’ll recommend my bosses invest in it.”
Myra shook her head in disbelief. “What was Kate’s score?”
A slow smile spread across Jamie’s face, so full of love that Myra had to look away from the brightness of it. “Much lower,” she said. “But it could have been zero percent, and I’d still have taken a chance on her. On us.”
Myra stared at her hand where it rested on Dragon’s neck. She wished she could be as brave where her heart was concerned, but the risk of loss seemed much too high. Intact and lonely had to be better than being shattered by love.