CHAPTER 25
Victoria
“I’ll be back with the horses.” Summer says. Then she saunters over to Cal, pulls back her elbow, and punches him in the upper arm. “Know-it-all! Of course she can ride!”
Bless Summer for believing me, but now I’ll have to find a time to apologize for deceiving her. Ugh.
Cal’s hand flies to the spot where Summer punched him. “You got a permit for that concealed weapon?”
“Fifteen years of putting in fence posts will do that to a girl.” She winks at me before she turns for the barn.
Yet again, I admire her. She’s proud of her physical strength, proud that she’s been digging holes for fifteen years.
Summer and I are as opposite as women can be, but in many ways, I wish I was more like her.
She’s strong enough to stand her ground with Cal.
Jasmine is looking up at me. I smile down at her, but all the while, I feel my throat close up.
I think I have stage fright. Or at least what I imagine stage fright feels like, since I was never on stage.
For the plays at my boarding school, I always volunteered for set design or lights before anyone could pick me for a role.
But now I’m center stage in a farce of my own making. I just said I can ride a horse, so I guess I better figure it out. In a hurry.
“Can you jump?”
Jasmine’s question is so simple, yet it sends fear slicing through me.
“Well sure,” I say, keeping a smile plastered on my face. “I can ride all kinds of ways. I can do the jump thing and the lunge-y thing and anything with a horse, really, I can do those.”
I’m not even sure that statement was English.
Cal chuckles behind me, and I turn to see him enjoying himself. He throws me a sexy half-smile, nearly blinding me. “Anything with a horse you can do those? Be careful, business lady. I might test you on that boast.”
“Fine. But if it neighs, I’m an expert.” What am I doing? I’m doubling down for some reason, digging my grave as expertly as Summer digs her fence posts.
Just then, Summer returns with a huge black-and-white beast of a horse that looks like it would eat me if I glanced at it from the wrong angle. She hands the reins to Cal. “What’s going on here?” She looks from me to Cal and back again. “Are you two… flirting?”
“No, we’re not, Summer.” Cal’s voice drops to a lower register, which I didn’t even think was possible.
“Good thing,” Summer says, resting her fists on her hips. “Because if that’s flirting, you two are really, really bad at it. Flirting is supposed to be, you know…” She looks down at Jasmine, who is hanging on her every word. “A prelude to something more.”
“What’s a pray lord?” Jasmine asks.
“Since when do you use that word?” Cal’s trying to change the subject.
“Hey, I get a day off every week, and I like to spend it on self-improvement.”
Summer’s walkie-talkie crackles. She removes it from her belt and pushes a button. “Yes, my liege?”
“We got a calf down.” It sounds like Special K. “Where are you?”
“At the barn with Cal, Pinkie, and Victoria.”
“You mean the skinny chick in too much makeup? Well, stop. I need you up on Glasgow Ridge.”
It’s more words than I’ve ever heard Cal’s baby brother string together. Unfortunately, they aren’t exactly flattering.
“Be right there.” Summer clips the walkie-talkie back on her belt and turns to Jasmine. “Sorry, kid. We’ll go for a ride another time.” She looks at me. “Ignore him. Women make him uncomfortable.”
Just then, a ranch hand arrives at Summer’s side with a second horse, an only slightly smaller light-colored horse with a white tail.
She accepts the reins and immediately passes the leather strips to me.
I have no idea how to hold them. “This is my horse, Trixie,” she says.
“Since I gotta go, you can ride her. She’s a lot of fun. ”
Summer hops onto one of the ranch’s ATVs and drives off, kicking up dust and dirt.
Jasmine grabs my free hand and gives it a tug. “I don’t think you’re skinny,” she assures me. “You have big boobs, that’s all. But they’re not too big for you to jump on Trixie, because she’s a very sprightly horse. She jumps real high.”
Ah. So this is how I die. Me and my big boobs soaring really high on Summer’s spritely horse, right before I plummet to the ground and break my neck.
“Jasmine!” It’s Finn walking out to the barn. “Come on, kid! We’ve got the book fair this afternoon. Let’s hit the road.”
“But I was going to go riding with Victoria!” Jasmine balls up her fists and pounds her Barbie cowboy boot into the dirt.
“Another time. And we’ll see Victoria later. C’mon, let’s get you changed. You want your Snow White dress?”
Jasmine’s face turns red, and she eyes me with a heart-wrenching look of humiliation. “Dad,” she hisses, looking his way again. “I’m eight years old. I’m not a baby anymore.”
Finn’s mouth falls open and he stops short. It takes him a moment to process that comment. He flashes a WTF? glance at Cal before he rebounds. “Of course, Miss MacLaine. May I have the pleasure of your company at the book fair?”
Finn bows formally and then extends his arm for her. Jasmine sighs and says, “I guess,” then runs to him. We watch them head off down the ranch road.
“Being a single dad is rough,” Cal says. “But man, he tries hard. He can sing the entire Frozen soundtrack. He’s got a closet full of princess dresses, and he’s hosted more tea parties than the Queen of England.”
I nod, thinking that Jasmine may be about to step into that awkward no man’s land between little girl and pre-teen. It’s probably going to be difficult for Finn.
“Summer told me about Jasmine’s mother.”
Cal doesn’t respond. Maybe it’s a topic that’s too personal, so I don’t push it. “Too bad our riding plans are shot. Should we walk the horses back?”
“Nice try,” Cal says. “We’re going riding. But first, let’s get you some boots.” He loops his horse’s reins over a fence railing and removes mine from my hands, throwing them over, too.
“Boots?”
“Summer’s got extras in the barn.”
“I can’t borrow her things without permission.”
“She won’t mind. Half of her stuff comes from thrift stores, and she’s not exactly a diva.”
“But…” I’m running out of excuses. There’s no way I can do this. I can barely ride a bike, and that includes the stationary ones from my gym’s spin class.
He pulls me toward him and clutches my shoulders. He’s looking down at me, and his smirk disappears. “You’re not getting out of this.”
His voice is smooth and deep. I could bathe in that voice, and though I don’t like the words he’s saying, I don’t mind if he keeps speaking.
“You’re used to talking your way out of things, I can tell. But you’re going riding with me. I’m dying to see all those special abilities you have.”
This is it, the moment where I must admit that I exaggerated my horseback riding talents. I did try to learn, once. My father insisted that I take lessons when I was five because it would leave many years of training to perfect my skills. I think he pictured his daughter as an Olympic equestrian.
Unfortunately, I was too scared to sit on a horse when it was standing completely still, let alone moving. I stayed back to feed the horses apples and carrots from our kitchen while the other students went riding.
At the end of the summer, my father discovered my deception and unleashed an angry lecture on me about wasting time, telling lies, and how I had no respect for money. Of course I didn’t. I was a kindergartener.
The real lesson that summer was that I needed to avoid my father’s wrath in the future, no matter what it took.
I don’t tell Cal I’m a liar. He already thinks I’m a useless city girl whose only goal is to steal his family’s land. Besides, I’m not five anymore. I’ll just focus and remember to breathe. How hard can it be to stay on while a well-trained horse goes trotting around?
Cal drags me to the barn. I look around at a shiny-new, sparkling-clean, state-of-the-art building that smells of sweet hay and polished leather.
I’ve seen pictures of the high-end barns that house million-dollar Kentucky thoroughbreds, and the main barn at Yosemite Ranch is comparable.
Some of the stalls house horses, and one in particular eyes me with suspicion, as if I’m thinking of moving in on her luxury territory.
“Don’t you have work to do?” I ask Cal, trying one last time to avoid the inevitable. “I know I’ve got a lot more documents to study.”
“Liar.”
How true.
“Follow me,” Cal says. He takes me into what looks like a studio apartment. He points to a closet full of clothes. “Just pick anything—it’s not like this is a fashion show.” He closes the door.
I grab a flannel shirt—because that seems to be the uniform around here—and a pair of very lived-in jeans along with a belt, cowboy hat, and thick socks.
I find a pair of boots that will fit, cursing Summer for being a size seven, just like me.
I remove my normal clothes, put everything on, and look at myself in the full-length mirror.
If I didn’t know better, I’d assume the woman looking back at me grew up on a ranch. I grab a jean jacket from a hook near the door, just to add the finishing touch.
Cal’s outside the barn, waiting with the two horses. From this angle, I can see how big those creatures are. I gulp.
I pet Summer’s horse, Trixie. I keep petting it. If I keep petting it, maybe Cal will forget that I’m supposed to ride it. “It’s a pretty blonde one,” I say.
Cal chuckles. “She’s what’s called a Palomino. Leroy is a Paint. And they’re both Quarter Horses. Saddle up.”
This is it. I’ve backed myself into a corner. I put my foot in a stirrup and attempt to heave myself up. It’s a steep climb, and I hop on my other leg, trying to help myself, but I’m getting nowhere.
Suddenly, Cal grabs onto my middle. At first I think he’s going to lift me onto the horse, but he lifts me up in the air and back down onto the ground, away from the horse.
“Wrong side,” he mumbles.
“There’s a right side?”