“Good work,” Reede told the rider when she brought the horse around.
“Better?”
“Several seconds better.”
Reede had more encouraging words for the horse. He patted him affectionately and spoke in a language the animal seemed to understand. The stallion pranced off friskily, tail fanning, knowing that a rewarding breakfast was awaiting him in the stable for having performed so well for his owner.
“You seem to have a real rapport with him,” Alex observed.
“I was there the day his sire covered the mare. I was there when he was foaled. They thought he was a dummy, and wanted to put him down.”
“A what?”
“A dummy’s a foal that was deprived of oxygen during the birthing.” He shook his head as he watched the horse enter the stable. “I didn’t think so. I was right. His lineage indicated he had every chance to be good, and he has been. Never a disappointment. Always runs his heart out, even when he’s outclassed.”
“You’ve got good reason to be proud of him.”
“I guess.”
Alex wasn’t fooled by his pretended indifference. “Do they always run the horses full out like that?”
“No, they’re breezing them today, seeing how they run against each other. Four days a week, they’re galloped once or twice around the track. Comparable to a jog. Two days after breezing them, they’re just walked.”
He turned and headed toward a saddled horse that was tied to a fence post. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” He mounted with the loose-limbed grace of a range cowboy.
“I need to talk to you,” Alex cried in consternation.
He bent down and extended his hand. “Get on.” From beneath the brim of his hat, green eyes challenged her.
She pushed her sunglasses higher on the bridge of her nose and approached the horse with an outward show of confidence she didn’t actually feel.
Clasping Reede’s hand was the tough part. He hauled her up with very little effort, though it was left to her to get situated between his buttocks and the sloping back of the saddle.
That was disconcerting enough, but when he kneed the horse forward, Alex threw herself against his broad back. Out of necessity, her arms encircled his waist. She was careful to keep her hands well above his belt. Her mind wasn’t as easy to control. It kept straying to his damned, well-worn fly.
“Warm enough?” he asked her over his shoulder.
“Yes,” she lied.
She had thought his long white duster with the steep pleat in the back was all for show. She’d never seen one outside a Clint Eastwood western. Now, however, she realized the coat was designed to keep a rider’s thighs warm.
“Who were you meeting in the bar last night?”
“That’s my business, Reede. Why did you follow me?”
“That’s my business.”
Impasse. For the time being, she let it go. She had a file of questions she wanted to ask him, but it was difficult to keep her mind on her task when her open cleft kept bumping into his hips with each rocking motion of the horse. She blurted out the first question that came to mind. “How did you and my mother get to be such close friends?”
“We grew up together,” he said dismissively. “It started out on the jungle gym on the school playground and evolved as we got older.”
“It never became awkward?”
“Nope. We had no secrets from each other. We’d even played doctor a few times.”
“ ‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours’?”