At three thirty, Amanda lured the two beautifully proportioned geldings from the pasture to the barn, fed them, and checked the automatic waterers. Everything was in order, so she showered, changed, and went to the house.
Harris Stembridge, the Brunswicks’ model-handsome chef, made Amanda a lobster quesadilla. She sat at the island in the efficiently designed kitchen, loaded with counter space and professional appliances, propped her injured foot on a stool, and draped her new friend, the bag of frozen peas, over it. Harris stood facing her, his tanned face relaxed as he chopped red peppers with precise, metronome-steady strokes. A single strand of wheat-colored hair fell across his smooth brow.
Sipping a crisp Riesling that complemented the quesadilla, she asked, “How did you end up with this job?”
He looked at her with mischievous, tropical-ocean-blue eyes. “You mean, besides Grady’s extraordinary good luck?” He smiled, deepening his dimples. “Weeeell . . .”—he drew out the word—“about twelve years ago, right after we graduated from Stanford—Grady with honors—Captain Hollywood and I were roommates in LA, trying to be actors. He made it in a disgustingly short amount of time; I kept waiting tables and hanging out in the kitchens. But if I had to choose between making a soufflé and auditioning, the eggs won every time. I went to cooking school and became a chef to the stars. That boy begged me to come here for the summer. I think he was afraid he’d be bored, since God forbid he ever take a day off. Our little Adonis is a workaholic.”
“That’s nice for you both.”
“He is getting such the better deal. I am a fabulous cook.”
“You are.” She waved her fork, the last bite of quesadilla impaled on its tines. “This is amazing.”
“Thanks.” He tilted his head and examined her face. “You have beautiful skin. What do you use? Laura Mercier? Prescriptives? Chanel?”
“Uh . . . soap?”
“Oh, honey. We need to talk. You’ll dry out like beef jerky in this mountain air.”
“I welcome your advice.” She was more at ease now that she knew for sure he was gay—no straight man could list skin-care lines that effortlessly. And the only concern a straight man would have about her skin would be how to see more of it.
“What about the daughters?” she asked.
“They can’t cook. They don’t even have an Easy Bake Oven.”
“What I meant was, they’re not exactly . . . ”
“Housebroken? They were in rare form today. Consider yourself lucky, Bo Peep—sometimes Solstice loads that gun with gravy. From a jar.” He shuddered on the last word, as though store-bought gravy was the real crime.
“Do they even like horses?”
“They begged for horses for months. Grady caved, as usual.” Harris moved on to onions.
“Caved?”
“The poor lamb chop has been on a major guilt trip since his wife died. He works so much, he barely sees them, so when he does, he tries to make it Christmas morning, Disney World, and a box of baby bunnies all in one. So they’re the teensiest bit spoiled, as you saw today. In fact, if I were you,” he said as he leaned toward her, “I wouldn’t let them near the whips.” He looked at her with a demonic gleam in his sea-blue eyes. “But if you have an extra pair of chaps, I might be interested.”
“You know . . . some people wear them over jeans.”
“Savages!” He grinned, and so did she.
Sobering, she said, “How sad that their mother died.”
“Brunzy keeps hiring nannies, but none of them take.”
He pursed his lips and looked at her. “So how was Jacqueline?” He turned his attention to a laptop open on the counter. “Damn!”
“What?”
“Giants are blowing this game. Sorry.”
“You like football?”
“Honey, it’s May, it’s baseball.”
“Why don’t you watch the game?” She indicated the small flat screen in the kitchen.
“I almost lost a finger a few weeks ago. I keep up online. Safer. Especially since my fall-back career is hand model.”
She laughed.
“So . . . Jacqueline?”
Amanda widened her eyes and took in a breath, considering what to say. She hardly knew him and, technically, Jacqueline held the reins to her paycheck.
Harris said, “Oh come on, she can’t hear you. I love Jacqueline to smithereens, but when you first meet her, she’s as cuddly as a cactus.”
“She was . . . formal.”
He laughed. “Don’t let her get to you. She’s like a pit bull, the way she protects Brunzy. She takes her job very seriously. She’s half German, for pity’s sake, she can’t help herself. She’s been his assistant for six years, and she’s seen him go from minor TV-show character to mega movie star and she’s determined to keep him safe from stalkers, the general public, and his staff.”
“I’m not allowed to speak to him. I’m only allowed in the kitchen because you told me to come up for meals.”
“Ah, so you got The Speech. Once she sees you’re not going to establish a base camp under his bed—like one Swedish nanny—she’ll loosen up. She’s totally cool once you get to know her, but don’t expect anything to happen in a mere three months. You’ll know you’re in when she shows you her tattoo.”
“Seriously?” she asked.
“As a heart attack. She also loves extreme cage fighting, but don’t tell her I told you.” He cocked his head. “So . . . I showed you mine—show me yours. Why are you here? From Florida, was it? Home of alligators and Anita Bryant—or are they one and the same? And yum, yum, those pretty South Beach boys.”
Amanda sipped her Riesling. Ran the palm of her hand along her hair. Adjusted the bag of peas. “Um.” Blew out a breath. “Ocala in the summer is unbearable.” She waved her hand. “Inland. No ocean breeze.”
Harris stopped chopping to look at her. “So you get a job elsewhere every summer? Were you permanently scarred by a bad hair day? Not that I’d blame you.”
“I wasn’t going to do any horse showing this summer, so I took this job. I couldn’t afford to take a whole summer off.”
“Why aren’t you . . . horse showing?” He resumed chopping.
She chewed on her lip. Took another sip of Riesling. Let it sit in her mouth as though she were at a wine tasting. Swallowed. Took a breath. Let it out. “I sold my horse.” It was true, just not the whole entire complete reason.
“Why? You seem to like the smelly things.”
“I couldn’t afford to keep her.”
He stopped chopping and looked at her. “Hm,” he said quietly, and with empathy.
She mentally begged him to stop. She liked him, but she wasn’t ready to tell him about the panic attacks or the accident.
“What kind of horse shows are you in? Are you a rodeo queen? Then there’ll be two queens on campus.”
Amanda snorted a laugh. “I ride jumpers.”
“Damn, girl! I’ve seen those in Griffith Park. You’re the shit. Is there a bobblehead of you?” He deftly scooped a pile of chopped onion and deposited the perfect white squares into a bowl. The pungent smell reminded Amanda of hot dogs at baseball games with her father.
Her face got hot. “There are plenty of grand prix riders better than me.”
“Those jumps are huge—over twenty feet, aren’t they?”
“Try five.”
“What was your horse’s name? Your best horse?”
“My horse is—was—Edelweiss. She’s the one I had to sell. She was the first horse I trained entirely by myself. I brought her up through the ranks to grand prix.”
“Like I said, you’re the shit.”
“Either that or crazy. The general consensus is, you have to be a little touched or brain damaged to ride in the big jumper classes. Not as crazy as eventers, but close.”
“No shortage of crazy around here—the place is owned by an actor.”
Clad in gray sweatpants and a worn pink sweatshirt with “Boss Mare” across the chest in faded blue letters, Amanda sat on the new couch in her apartment that night, reveling in the sense of accomplishment now that everything was in its place. The apartment was comfortable, bright, and modestly furnished with a couch, coffee table, small dining table for two, and a TV. The bedroom held smallish versions of the expected furniture, including a double bed. A now-ubiquitous bag of frozen peas draped over her foot—she was not going to have a painful, swollen foot if she could help it—Amanda leaned back into the cushions and called Beth Fanelli on the cordless phone because she couldn’t get a cell-phone signal in the barn.
“Did you meet him?” her best friend asked without saying hello.
“You won’t believe how.” Amanda recounted her day.
“So he’s nice?”
“Considering I broke his Emmy, he’s very nice.”
“What are you going to do about the kids?”
“Meditate. Say a novena. Drink. Why did I take this job again? I don’t even like teaching kids.”
Beth laughed, and Amanda imagined her sitting in the tired leather recliner in their apartment in Ocala, still in riding breeches and sipping a beer after a day of training horses and teaching students.
“You wanted someplace cushy where you could get over Courtney. You’re not showing. No driving a trailer all night. No grief from owners who think their horses should always win. Relax, smell the roses. You’ll have those kids, what, an hour or two a day? Why don’t you learn to fly fish? I hear that’s big up there, and it’s supposed to be relaxing.”
“How old am I, eighty? But you’re right. I’ll feel better once I get into a routine.”
Beth’s voice dropped an octave. “So? Is he hot?”
Amanda laughed. “I wondered when you were going to ask. Yes, he’s totally hot. And he’s got that voice. But supposedly I won’t see him much, and that’s probably for the best. God knows what else I’d break.”
The next morning Amanda escorted Jacqueline to the barn. “I want you to see for yourself that these horses are too much for the children.” She tried to sound confident, knowing the woman was annoyed.
Jacqueline sat at one of the ornate metal tables and chairs alongside the ring. Amanda mounted a striking chestnut and rode him like a beginner, clumsily. After prancing and tossing his head for long minutes, the poor confused animal finally bucked and took off at a gallop.
The other horse, who had been trotting and whinnying nonstop in a nearby enclosure, jumped the fence, galloped up the hill, and decimated a flower bed. Petals flew like confetti in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
“Stop!” Jacqueline cried, and sprinted toward her flowers. The equine athlete turned, barreled down to the pasture, and soared over the fence. Amanda, limping, finally made it to Jacqueline. The perfect assistant no longer appeared perfect as she panted and pieces of her shoulder-length, professionally straightened hair fell across her face. Amanda said nothing, just raised her brows in question.
“Get rid of them.”
Exactly thirty minutes after the wild-horse roundup and petunia massacre, Amanda stood in the doorway of Jacqueline’s office for an impromptu meeting.
“Hello, Amanda. Nice to see you again.” Grady rose from his chair. Amanda thought she saw amusement scamper across his face and settle into the shallow lines at the corners of his eyes.
“Nice to see you.” She picked up a tiny iPod with hot-pink earphones from a chair, placed it on the edge of Jacqueline’s desk, and sat.
“Oh,” Jacqueline said, “that belongs to Wave; she is always losing it.”
Grady settled into one of Jacqueline’s two midcentury chairs, while Jacqueline sat behind her sleek midcentury desk. The furniture was out of place in the rustic log mansion with its hewn-from-the-forest furniture, but it suited Grady’s personal assistant perfectly. Grady looked too big for the chair, like a teenager riding a Big Wheel. It was his legs—stretched out in front of him, they looked entirely too long.
Amanda noted the woman’s wrists below her long-sleeved, blindingly white blouse, searching for a hint of tattoo, but she only saw smooth mocha skin.
Amanda wanted to get this over with, since few clients loved spending money. She focused on Jacqueline and avoided looking at Grady because it would take precious little to embarrass her again.
“So we bought duds?” Grady asked.
Amanda gulped a breath. “No, just not suitable for beginners.”
“But we need new ones?”
“Only if you don’t want to kill your children.”
Grady’s lips curved up. “How’d we end up with these . . . child killers . . . in the first place?”
“If I may,” Amanda said, “sometimes when novice owners—no offense—go shopping, horse sellers think they want the cream of the crop. You didn’t get taken, you just got more than you needed. You needed a burger, they sold you”—she waved her hand as she searched for the words—“lobster thermidor.”
He looked at her, his fingers steepled, glee suffusing his blue eyes. “Lobster thermidor?”
Jacqueline’s office sure was warm. “You know. Lobster . . . that’s been . . . thermidored.”
She fought the blush she knew was gathering steam—she usually sounded more professional. Stupid movie star, flustering her! “You get the point.”
Grady pressed his lips together and she knew he was squelching a laugh. The amusement made his eyes sparkle.
“I think it would be best if Amanda handled the sale of the current horses and the purchase of the new ones,” Jacqueline said. Coolly.
“Definitely,” he said. “She’ll know lobster thermidor when she sees it.” He paused, then tilted his head. “Can you get two more? For guests? Also non-thermidor?”
“I’ll—I’ll get as many as you want.”
Jacqueline stepped in. “Shall I arrange for the girls to go to spy camp while Amanda acquires horses?”
“Sure. They’ll love that.” He looked at Amanda, his eyes an irrepressible blue. “Glad to see you dried off. How’s the foot?” He glanced at her swollen foot in the paddock boot with the laces loosened.
“Not bad. Getting better. Thanks.”
He looked at her like he was really listening, which surprised her. When she finished, he nodded.
“Do you need anything else for it? Anything at all?”
Again, surprising. Why was he asking this? “No. Thank you.” She held her breath for a moment, considering. “Yes, there is one more thing. Not for me. It’s the floor. The barn floor. It’s . . . problematic.”
“How so? Wait, let me guess. It’s lobster thermidor, too?”
“It’s slippery.” Amanda felt Jacqueline’s disapproving gaze but refused to look at her so she wouldn’t lose her nerve. “It has to be fixed.”
Grady looked at Jacqueline in mock exasperation and said, “What should we do with her, Jacqueline? She doesn’t like the horses. She doesn’t like the floor.” He turned to Amanda. “That place is brand-new. I hired experts.”
“Yes, I know,” Amanda said. “But they made a mistake. With that floor, somebody could get hurt.”
He looked at her with gentle eyes and said, “Let’s get the horses sorted out first, then we’ll worry about the floor, okay?”
Amanda wanted to insist but sensed she was already pushing the envelope. It was like training a horse—knowing when to back off was just as important as knowing when to persist. She bit her lip to stop herself from talking, then nodded.
Grady’s tone softened as he asked, “Do you need anything for your apartment? You settled in okay?”
“Yes, thanks. I mean, no, I don’t need anything. It’s great.” How did he keep flustering her?
He nodded again, looked at her for a beat longer than necessary, and left. Somewhere near the kitchen Amanda heard him call out, “Hey, Harris, we got any lobster thermidor?”
Grady was pleased with his first round of “muskrat” atonement. He’d asked about her well-being, her foot, her apartment, and if he’d thought of it, he would’ve asked about her lung function or her truck’s carburetor—anything to show concern. It wasn’t as effortless as usual, though. He realized he wanted her to like him. Which was ridiculous—he was Grady Brunswick; women loved him. He’d been fending off females of all ages since he was fourteen. The only women who had affected him this way were his mother, his fifth-grade teacher, and Annie. He might not know what to do with his children, but women? Women, he could handle. And Amanda Vogel was just a woman.
A woman who’d just convinced him to buy four new horses before his kids had even sat on one.