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“There’s nothing wrong with her.” He stroked her neck, soothing the horse and himself. “I know she doesn’t look it, but she has more confidence than any horse in this barn. She’ll keep you safe.”
He pulled her out of her stall and saddled her carefully. He led the horse out to the little yard outside his stables and then readied Bonanza, too.
Goldie didn’t move from her place dead center in the stalls.
“Come on,” he said like he was talking to a spooked horse and led her to the mounting block beside Beauty.
“I’m supposed to get up by myself?” Goldie asked.
“I’m teaching you to ride, not to sit on a horse.”
“Is this necessary?”
He grinned. “The next time some backwoods pack puts you on a horse and carries you away, you’ll know how to get out of it.”
“I can’t help thinking that extremely specific scenario is just not going to come up again,” Goldie said, eyeing the mare.
“With your luck?”
“Good point.” She stepped up on the old wooden stump and examined Beauty. “Nice horsey.”
Beauty eyed her.
“Gently,” he said.
“Are you talking to me or the horse?”
“Both.”
Goldie glanced at him. “Gentleness? That’s something nobody’s accused me of before.”
“Slowly, then. She’s not your horse, it’s true, but she’s your teacher. If you met your horse today, you’d run for the house.”
“My horse? I have a horse?”
He knew of a couple of candidates down in the main barns. “Everyone has a horse. They just haven’t met them yet.”
He maneuvered the mare next to the mounting block and held out one stirrup. “Put your left foot here.”
She fitted her foot into it.
He was at a loss for what to say next. He realized he’d never taught anyone to ride. He tried to deconstruct the movement of launching himself up as he swung a leg over. He patted her left leg. “This leg gets you up. Get your center of gravity in line with the horse in one move, keeping in mind that they move. I mean, she won’t, but you’re not just swinging a leg over a fence.”
She eyed him incredulously, then took a breath and swung a leg over. She missed the center and clung to the saddle horn. He soothed the horse and got a hand around her thigh above her knee to hold her in place.
“Get your foot in the other stirrup, and you can pull yourself back up.” He pulled on her leg until she was centered in the saddle and tried to ignore the heat of her thigh in his hand.
She started breathing again.
He liked the look of her on one of his horses. For the fiftieth time in the last twenty-four hours, he cursed his cousins for being greedy idiots and ruining…
Ruining what?
He tried to imagine meeting her somewhere else—like her hometown, the heart of her coven that was warded against werewolves. They would never have met.
“Now what?” she asked, cautiously turning to look down at him.
Stop having existential crises in the middle of riding lessons.
