The silence felt as if it was stretching out forever between them.
“So I take it that means you’ve never ridden a horse before,” Declan finally said.
He was looking at her as if she came from another planet, Josie thought.
“There’s not much call for horses where I come from in Florida,” she told him, doing her best to sound friendly. “But it’s always been on my to-do list and I’m eager to learn,” she added, hoping that would win this brawny sphinx over.
“Florida,” Declan repeated. “Is that where you’re from?”
She was surprised that he was showing some interest in her life. She had to admit that it made her a little uneasy. “If I say yes, will you hold that against me too?”
Declan frowned. He hadn’t meant to come across as if he was interested in her, although he had to admit that in a way, he was. “I’m not holding anything against you,” he told her.
Josie flashed a bright smile at the instructor. “Oh, good to know. My mistake,” she willingly acknowledged cheerfully.
He stood there for a moment, not knowing what to make of this woman. And then his eyes narrowed. “You’re one of those people who tries to make the best of everything, aren’t you?”
She was not about to deny it. After all, it wasn’t something she was ashamed of. It had actually helped her get over some very bleak times.
“I try,” Josie answered honestly.
Declan decided that his best way out of this discussion was just to focus on the reason why she was there in the first place.
“All right, we’ll start with the basics,” he told her, his voice devoid of any and all humor. “This is your horse.” He held out the reins toward her.
Josie nodded, taking the reins into her hand. She petted the mare’s muzzle. “Marigold.” She said the name warmly.
“You were listening.” There was just a trace of surprise in his voice, as if he really hadn’t expected her to have been paying any attention.
“I always listen,” she told him. There was neither annoyance nor pride in her voice. She was merely stating a simple fact.
“Admirable quality.” He said the words as if he felt he was obligated to.
He was baiting her, Josie thought, and she had no idea why. Maybe he had come here to begin her riding lesson fresh from having an argument with his wife. Whatever the reason, she decided to ignore it.
Instead, she answered, “I find paying attention saves a lot of time and keeps me from asking annoying questions I would have known the answer to if I had been listening the first time around.”
Somehow, Declan reasoned, that was aimed at him—and he supposed that, in a way, he did deserve it.
He suppressed a sigh. Doing his best to remain neutral, he said, “Okay, let’s get started.”
“I’d love to,” Josie answered with unmistakable enthusiasm. He could have even sworn that her eyes were sparkling.
“Since you’ve obviously made friends with your mount...” he went on—for some reason, the mare seemed to be responding to this woman faster than he could remember ever observing any of the horses responding to one of his students before. “We will skip the step where you attempt to familiarize yourself with your horse in order to get the horse used to you.”
His new student nodded in a manner that made Declan feel as if she were absorbing every single syllable coming out of his mouth. Nobody was that attentive, he thought, but he let it go.
“And what’s the next step?” Josie wanted to know.
That was almost too simple to verbalize. But he saw that he had to. “Mounting your horse,” he told her.
That sounded easy enough, Josie thought. After all, she had grown up watching classic Westerns on TV thanks to a beloved grandfather who’d doted on the genre. During that time, she must have seen literally dozens of cowboys get on their horses from as many angles. It was all part of the action—she just hadn’t paid that much attention to the exact procedure, she realized.
Well, there was a fifty-fifty chance of getting this right, Josie told herself. After all, the mare had two sides.
She picked one.
As she approached her horse, ready to comply with Declan’s order, she saw her instructor shaking his head. Josie froze in her tracks.
“Wrong side?” she guessed.
Declan raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
It was the wrong side, but the bigger problem was that she needed to understand all the steps before just jumping in. He was waiting for her to realize that for herself. People tended to assume that they knew how to ride just because they’d seen others do it before. She had to understand that there was a process she’d need to learn, step by step. Thankfully, she seemed to figure it out before he had to intervene.
Josie blew out a breath. “I think you should show me by getting on your horse first so I can mimic what you do.”
Well, at least she was actually willing to learn and didn’t have a chip on her shoulder like his last student had—or his niece, for that matter, he added as a postscript.
So far, this wasn’t as bad as he had anticipated, Declan thought.
“I’ve got another idea,” he told her.
“You’re not going to quit already, are you?” she asked, anticipating the worse outcome. The man’s manner made that a very real possibility from where she was standing.
Her question caught Declan off guard. “I never quit,” he informed her. He watched the expression that washed over her face. She actually looked visibly relieved. Maybe this really was important to her.
“My idea,” he told her, “comes in the form of another suggestion. How about I talk you through this?”
Josie brightened at his proposal. “Okay.”
There was that unbridled eagerness again, Declan noted, doing his best not to get caught up in the thoughts that were suddenly materializing in his head. He wasn’t there to admire the woman and was certainly not there to be attracted to her. He was there to teach her the basics of horseback riding and send her on her way—and ultimately away from him.
“Get on the other side of the horse,” he said, moving his hand around in a semicircle in case she missed his point.
Josie obediently did as he told her and moved over to the correct side of the animal, then stopped, waiting for further instructions.
“Now insert your left foot into the stirrup, hold on to the saddle, and pull your weight up, then swing your right leg over to follow through,” he told her in a singsong voice.
She did exactly what he said, remaining completely calm—at least until she attempted to swing her right leg over the horse’s rump. To her surprise, she couldn’t.
Her second attempt didn’t have any better result than her first attempt. On her third attempt, she felt a hand push against her butt. There was nothing sexual about the contact. It was pragmatic, meant to get her up and over, which it did.
Embarrassed by her need for the boost, Josie glanced at him from her perch. “I never had time for any real exercise regimen.”
He had no idea what that had to do with anything, but her statement felt as if it begged for some sort of follow-up from him so, after a moment, he asked, “Why not?”
Without realizing he was doing it, he glanced at his new student’s body. He saw nothing out of shape about the woman.
“I was too busy working and putting my husband through medical school to take any time to minister to my own needs,” she said in answer to his question. “Whatever time I had left over after work, I spent with my little girl—when she was a little girl,” Josie amended, thinking of the young woman she had sent off to college three years ago.
Without actually asking her for any specific details, he now had two pieces of information that he didn’t want. He knew that his student was married and that she had a daughter.
The way she was looking at him, Declan supposed that this now required some sort of response or acknowledgment on his part.
He said the obvious. “So, you’re married to a doctor.”
Josie surprised him by saying, “No.”
Was she playing some sort of a joke on him? “I thought you said you put your husband through medical school. What happened, he flunk out?” Declan asked. Her husband had probably been a kid born to privilege who didn’t know how to buckle down and make something of himself. So, while his wife worked, he probably just liked to party. He caught himself feeling somewhat sorry for the woman.
“Only when it came to being a husband,” Josie answered honestly as she tried to get comfortable in the saddle. This struck her as being more difficult than she had imagined.
“What happened?” Declan heard himself asking.
She had signed on for forever. Sadly, her ex hadn’t.
“Classic story,” she said dismissively. “He opened a practice, got a nurse, then left with his nurse to set up a practice, and a marriage, somewhere else.”
Declan hadn’t expected to get such an honest answer. “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask such personal questions.” He really hadn’t, he thought. How did this woman even manage to get him to think along these lines? It wasn’t like him. “Let’s get back to your lesson,” he told her gruffly.
She nodded then said, “That’s okay.”
She had managed to lose him with that simple phrase. “What’s okay?” He was mystified.
Her forgiving smile seemed to penetrate right into his chest. “I don’t mind you asking questions.”
Her tone sounded almost charitable and that only managed to further rub him the wrong way.
“You’re the one who’s supposed to be asking questions,” he pointed out. “About the horseback riding lesson,” he clarified in case there was any doubt in her mind what he was referring to.
Rather than become defensive, which he had to admit he was expecting and braced for, the woman just nodded her head as if accepting his words as gospel.
“Sorry,” she apologized again. “I guess I just got caught up in things.”
“Stop doing that.” He caught himself before he wound up snapping the words at her.
She cocked her head, as if that would help her understand his meaning. It didn’t. “Stop doing what?”
“Stop cleaning the slate and giving me a pass as if you were the one who had committed the offense instead of me,” he told her in a less than charitable voice. He realized that she wasn’t doing this on purpose, but it still irritated him.
Josie shook her head. In her mind, Declan hadn’t committed any sort of offense against her. “But you didn’t—”
She was doing it again, he thought. Removing all blame from him. He hadn’t felt guilty, but now that she was absolving him of it, it seemed to manage to stoke those embers.
“Let’s just get on with the lesson,” he told her gruffly.
That was the whole reason why she was there and she didn’t want to needlessly waste his time. She knew he had to be busy taking care of things. The ranch didn’t run itself and, so far, she hadn’t seen anyone else, like a hired hand, around.
“Absolutely,” she cheerfully agreed.
Declan couldn’t help wondering how someone so agreeable could be so annoying at the same time. He took a breath, reminding himself that the woman was saying all the right things. There was no reason for him to get his back up like this.
So why was he?
He had no answer for that.
The lesson. Focus on the damn lesson, he told himself. The sooner you get that out of the way, the sooner you can get back to your other work.
“Do you know how to make your mount go to the right?” he asked, pulling the question out of the air in a desperate attempt to get the lesson back on track.
Rather than risk making a wrong guess this time, she said, “Tell me.”
The woman was a blank slate, Declan thought. She was just waiting for him to write words on it.
She had to be the most agreeable woman he had ever encountered and, right now, he wasn’t in the mood for agreeable. Not when his mood was so sour from his confrontation with his niece.
Startled, Declan suddenly realized that he had just admitted, albeit silently, that he was in a bad mood. He supposed, he grudgingly thought, that was a step in the right direction to resolving this internal problem he was having.
He spent the next couple of hours walking Midnight around the corral while giving Josie instructions on the correct way to hold and use the reins to guide her mount, correcting her posture in the saddle, and her feet in the stirrups. He even let her walk the horse as he watched carefully.
“Do you want to go for a ride?” he asked her without any warning.
Josie looked at the horse breeder in surprise. She was doing her best not to make any sudden moves that might cause her to slip off the horse. She still didn’t feel all that secure on the mare’s back.
“Do you think I’m ready?” she asked the unsmiling cowboy.
“Well, I know you’re nervous, but I’ve been watching you and you’re doing better than you realize. Trust me.”
If she didn’t know any better, she would have said that his voice had sounded almost light as he’d offered her that last observation.
“I guess so,” she answered after a very long beat. Her voice was less than filled with confidence.
“All right,” he told her.
Glancing around, Declan found what he was looking for. A goal for her to ride toward. “We’ll just take a short ride over to that tree,” he told her, pointing it out for Josie’s benefit. “Is that all right with you?” he asked as an afterthought.
She was surprised he had even asked. It didn’t seem like something he would think of doing. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Just checking,” he told her.
Most of his students were opinionated or difficult to deal with or just interested in flirting with their riding instructor, namely him. His experiences with teaching horseback riding were still rather limited at this point, but he hadn’t really run into anyone who was so genuinely interested in wanting to learn the fundamentals from him and nothing more. There was always something else involved in the scenario.
Declan glanced at his student. She had a nice profile, he decided. But the woman definitely didn’t seem to have any interest in charming him or exercising her feminine wiles to make herself feel better because her husband was ignoring her.
Oh, that was right, she didn’t have a husband—not anymore. The man, he decided, had been a jerk, leaving an attractive woman who had worked hard to put him through medical school. That had been a hell of a thank-you for her efforts and sacrifice, he couldn’t help thinking.
“Ready?” he asked, nodding toward the goal he had selected.
“Ready,” she answered almost eagerly, her eyes trained on the target.
“Then let’s go!” he ordered.
Without meaning to, he sped up his horse, hitting his heels against the stallion’s sides. It was just an automatic reaction on his part. He hadn’t taken into account that his student wasn’t accustomed to riding fast—or at all.
Turning to her, he saw her mimicking his movements almost as if she were a mirror.
And just like that, they were riding toward the tree he had pointed out.
The woman had potential, he caught himself thinking. He continued to rein in his horse so she wasn’t tempted to speed up her own mount. He knew how tempting it could be to stay abreast of his horse. He wondered if she knew how easily he could have given Midnight his head and gotten to the tree way ahead of the woman. But no, better to have taken it comparatively slowly.
Because, glancing toward her now, he could see that she was barely hanging on.