“Oh, really?” Sasha asked. If possible, she sat up even a little straighter, her interest unwaveringly engaged. Delight was all but vibrating in her voice.
“Yes,” Chloe replied. Her voice was as quiet as Sasha’s was vibrant and enthused.
“You don’t know how to ride a horse?” Sasha questioned, clearly surprised.
Chloe shrugged. Not wanting to get into a discussion about that, she just said, “The opportunity never came up.”
For a second, Sasha was quiet and Chloe thought that, mercifully, that was the end of the discussion on that topic. But then Sasha looked at her, her smile even wider than it had been a moment ago, her eyes dancing.
She clapped her hands together. “This is wonderful!” the woman exclaimed.
“I wouldn’t exactly go that far,” Chloe protested, not really sure why her newly discovered sister-in-law would be so happy to find out that there was this definite gap in her education. “It just...is,” she finally said.
This was what she got for trying to be completely honest, Chloe thought a second later. Rather than moving on, she had the feeling that she was about to get sucked down in the ocean by the undertow.
If the gleeful look of anticipation on Sasha’s face—the origin of which was a complete mystery to her—wasn’t enough, Chance picked that exact moment to walk into the room.
The man had awful timing, Chloe thought, feeling her stomach tighten at the same time that there was this sinking sensation right in the center of it. She was definitely a woman torn.
“Speak of the devil,” Sasha declared, amusement as well as pleasure surrounding every syllable that she uttered.
Chance looked just a little taken aback. “Since when have I become the devil?” he asked uncertainly, not quite sure what he’d just walked in on.
Sasha rose from her chair. The binder she’d brought in with her to make notes while observing Chloe’s session was in her hands and pressed up against her chest.
“We were just talking about you,” she said dismissively. “Well, I’m sure I hear Maddie calling for me so I’ll just leave the two of you to it,” she said.
Chloe shifted self-consciously. Sasha had all but held up a sign with instructions on it as to what she thought they should do next once she left and they were alone.
One of Chance’s eyebrows arched as he turned to regard the woman who was left standing in the room.
“‘To it?’” he asked Chloe, torn between being bemused and confused.
“I told Sasha you offered to give me riding lessons.” Chloe cleared her throat. She couldn’t remember when she had ever felt more awkward. “Sasha thought it was a good idea.”
“Oh.” He nodded as if comprehending what he had just walked in on—except that Chloe wasn’t 100 percent convinced that he wasn’t reading a great deal more into Sasha’s comment. “Well, it is a good idea,” he told her. “Everyone should know how to ride.”
“I would think it’s more a matter of preference,” Chloe countered. “It’s not like it’s a life-or-death situation, like learning to swim.”
Chance wasn’t about to get into an involved discussion on the subject. He had a far simpler way to resolve it.
“Wouldn’t you rather know how to do something than not know how to do it?”
Chloe suppressed a sigh. She supposed that Chance did have a point. And she didn’t want him to think that she was reluctant to broaden her horizons.
“Sure.”
She stood up, telling herself she was making way too big a deal out of this. Chance was just giving her a simple horseback riding lesson—same as what he was hired to do with the boys. She had to stop feeling so nervous about it.
So nervous about him.
A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Are you going to be teaching me to ride in the corral?”
Chance hadn’t given it much thought. “Yes. That’s where I’ve been doing it with the boys. Why? Would you rather not have your lesson there?” he asked, sensing her reluctance.
She avoided making eye contact with him as she spoke, not wanting to see amusement or something even more demoralizing in his eyes.
“I’d rather we didn’t have an audience,” she confessed. “Is there any place else that we could go for these lessons?”
“Sure. It’s a big ranch,” he reminded her. “I just thought you’d rather get your first lessons somewhere where you felt safe.”
That was when she finally looked at him. “Why wouldn’t I feel safe somewhere else?” she asked him.
“The corral’s contained. If I give you riding lessons out in the open, I figure you’d worry that Mirabel could get it into her head to just run off with you on her back.”
“Oh.” Enlightenment came to her riding a thunderbolt. He wasn’t talking about her feeling safer in the corral because she felt he wouldn’t try to kiss her in broad daylight in front of possible witnesses. He was talking about the mare running off with her. “You’ve got the faster horse, don’t you?” she asked.
“No disrespect meant for Mirabel, but yes, I do. By quite a lot when you come right down to it.”
This time her eyes didn’t leave his when she responded. “Then if something happens, say, to spook Mirabel, you could catch up to me on your horse, couldn’t you?”
“If it came to that, yes. But from what I’ve been told, Mirabel doesn’t spook easily. That’s one of the reasons why I picked her for you.”
She believed him. “Then I’d rather you took me somewhere where no one else can watch and see how bad I am at this.”
“You’re not bad at riding,” he told her. “You just need to learn the right techniques, that’s all. It’s not all that hard.” He tried to soothe her, but he could see his words weren’t working. “But if you feel that strongly about it, I know this quiet clearing not too far from the lake that’ll do just fine for our purposes.”
A quiet clearing by the lake sounded as if it would do fine for other purposes, too, Chloe thought. But she kept that to herself, hoping that the same idea hadn’t occurred to him.
* * *
Because the lake was some distance from the corral, Chance decided to take her there on his horse. He told Chloe that right now it was safer for her if they rode double on his horse.
“What about Mirabel?” Chloe asked, wanting to be clear on the logistics. “Isn’t she coming, too?”
“She’ll be right behind us,” he explained. “I’ll just hold on to her reins so she doesn’t get it into her head to hang back.”
“And your horse won’t mind?” she asked, looking at the black stallion that Chance had already saddled and was waiting for them in the stable. Mirabel was in the next stall, saddled, as well.
Chance unconsciously furrowed his brow. He wasn’t sure he understood her question. “Mind what?”
“That we’re both going to be riding on him at the same time?” She looked at the stallion doubtfully, worried about the extra weight.
Chance laughed, tickled by what she was innocently suggesting. “He’s fine with it,” he told her. “He’s not the jealous sort.”
Chloe flushed. When he said it out loud like that, she realized that she sounded like an idiot. “I didn’t mean...”
He was quick to try to save her from embarrassment. “I know what you meant. C’mon, we’re wasting daylight,” he urged. “Or was that the idea?” he asked, pretending to look at her as if the light had suddenly dawned on him.
“No,” Chloe denied quickly. She wound up sounding almost breathless.
He was going to have to tread lightly with this one, Chance thought. Most of the time, he preferred to keep to himself and not bother interacting with people. It saved time and saved him from spinning his wheels. But he had to admit there was something about this woman that had burrowed under his skin.
He liked seeing the way her eyes flashed and the way she tossed her hair when she was digging in and being stubborn. But for all that, Chloe made him think that he was dealing with a vulnerable, wounded bird.
The whole thing was a revelation to him, he thought. He had never realized until just now that he had any desire to protect a wounded bird.
Or that he rather liked it.
Maybe his soul hadn’t died on the battlefield after all.
“Then we’d better get going,” he told her. “Come on. Let’s get you up there.”
The next moment, while Chloe was absently regarding just how much taller his stallion appeared in comparison with her mare, she felt strong hands come around her waist. Suddenly, she was airborne.
As her breath caught in her throat, Chance had her in the saddle in a matter of seconds. She barely had time to suppress the cry of surprise that had all but escaped from her lips.
And then, the next moment, there he was, right behind her. Snuggly right behind her, she couldn’t help noticing as his body seemed to fit perfectly against hers.
A multitude of sensations went zipping through Chloe, some familiar, some brand-new, all unsettling.
A riding lesson, this is just a riding lesson, she silently insisted.
There was no need for her to react like this to any of this. Chance was just doing her a favor, teaching her how to ride so she could go out with the boys. She had to think of it in that light, she told herself.
And only in that light.
Chance brought his arms around her, picking up his horse’s reins as he formed a protective circle around her.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she answered. If you don’t count the fact that my heart is just about ready to break the sound barrier.
She felt Chance leaning into her. Her heart raced a little harder.
The next moment he was whispering into her ear. “I guarantee that you’ll feel a whole lot better if you breathe.”
“Right. Breathing,” she agreed the next second.
And then, just to prove that she had heard Chance, she went on to elaborately do just that.
* * *
Chloe really didn’t remember the journey to the clearing, at least, not when she thought if it in terms of miles or scenery. All she was aware of was how the gentle back-and-forth rocking of the stallion caused Chance’s body to move seductively against hers. She was concentrating so hard on not reacting to him that she didn’t even realize when they’d reached their destination.
“We’re here,” Chance announced.
The next second, without any warning, Chance was dismounting. Abruptly deprived of his support and thinking something had gone wrong, Chloe quickly turned to look down at him and wound up nearly tumbling out of the saddle.
“Hey, no sudden trick moves until after I’m satisfied that you know how to ride. We don’t want to rush you off to the nearest doctor.” He looked up at her face. She’d turned almost completely pale. “Hey, are you all right?” he asked, concerned. “I was just kidding.”
“I knew that,” Chloe mumbled although she clearly didn’t.
“Good.” He didn’t believe her for a second. Chance extended his arms up to her and said, “Let’s get you down from there.” Taking hold of her waist, he eased her down until her feet were back on the ground. “This is the last time I’m going to help you dismount,” he told her. “I’ll teach you and then you’re on your own.”
He saw the apprehensive look that crept over her face. Rather than being off-putting, he thought she looked even more adorable.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “You’ll do fine.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she informed him perhaps a little too quickly.
He graciously accepted her protest, even though he felt he knew otherwise. “My mistake.”
Bringing Mirabel closer to Chloe, he announced, “Okay. This is lesson number one.”
And so it began.
* * *
Chance patiently kept at it for the next four hours, verbally diagramming every move he wanted her to make so precisely that after a little while, Chloe forgot to be nervous.
Progress came by tiny inches—but it came.
At the end of the session Chloe had a good handle on the basics. He’d taught her how to fluidly mount her horse and how to dismount, as well. He’d taught her how to give the most basic commands to the animal so that the mare knew when she was expected to go and when to stop.
Through it all Chance didn’t raise his voice or lose his temper, nor did he easily dispense praise, either.
He did, however, let her know if she was doing something wrong so that she wouldn’t repeat it. On the few occasions that she did repeat her mistake, he patiently reviewed the steps again, and had her go through the paces over and over until she got it right.
And then, finally, when she thought she was never going to see it again, it happened.
Chance smiled.
“I think that’s it for today,” he told her.
She was exhausted and so ready to go home, but even so, she had to ask him. “That bad?”
“That good,” Chance corrected.
Her eyes fairly danced as she asked, “Really?”
“Really,” he echoed. “And our next session is going to be in the corral,” he informed her, “because you have nothing to be ashamed of. Now, for your reward, I want to take you to see something that a lot of people live out their whole lives without ever being able to see or appreciate.”
“Oh? What?”
The nervousness was back in her voice, Chance thought. But he knew just how to put it to rest. Taking her hand, he led her over to the lake.
“Look,” he said, pointing out what he wanted her to see.
Once again, Chloe’s breath caught in her throat.