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She walked out the door and headed to Judy’s Beauty Shop across the street.
“Amber, are you free?”
The pretty platinum blond manicurist, Bakersville’s reigning rodeo queen, looked up. “Hi, Angie. Yeah, I can squeeze you in. Manicure?”
“Mani and pedi. It’s been a day.”
Amber motioned her over to her table. “What’s going on? Deb didn’t have what you were looking for?”
Angie noted the sarcasm in Amber’s voice but decided to ignore it. She had bigger fish to fry. “Deb never has what I’m looking for, but that’s not the main problem.” She sighed. “My father thinks I need riding lessons.”
Amber picked up her cuticle nippers. “I thought you knew how to ride.”
“I do. Sort of. I just haven’t done it in a while. I was good enough to do the rodeo queen patterns a million years ago, but I was just never that into it. I’m not Catie.”
“Catie’s a natural.”
“Totally. Did you hear she’s pregnant again?”
“Yeah, she stopped in yesterday and told me. I’m so happy for her and Chad.”
“Yeah, me too.” At least she wanted to be. But Catie’s pregnancy only reminded her of her own biological clock. Her baby sister would be a mother before she would. Not that she had any grand desire to be a mother. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
Hell, how did I get on this subject?
“Can we get back to my riding?”
“Sure. You brought up Catie being pregnant.”
Oh yeah. “I know. But right now this riding thing is driving me nuts.”
“Riding is tough to learn, for sure, but there’s nothing like it. I love it myself.”
“Maybe you could teach me then.”
Amber laughed. “Me? Are you kidding? I can get around, but I’m not qualified to instruct anyone.”
Crap. Oh well. She’d approached a few local riding instructors before Chad led her to Rafe Grayhawk. They’d all turned her down flat. Course she hadn’t offered any of them a hundred bucks an hour, but they’d all seemed eager to tell her how they were too busy to teach the older Bay daughter how to ride a horse properly. Was she that difficult?
“Do I have a…reputation in this town?” she asked Amber.
Amber’s gaze was locked on Angie’s cuticles. Was she deliberately avoiding eye contact?
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean…as being…difficult to work with, or something?”
Amber cleared her throat. “You’re not difficult with me. We get along great.”
“I know. I guess I mean… Oh heck, I don’t know what I mean.”
Amber placed Angie’s right hand into the little bowl of solution and grabbed her other. This time she didn’t look away. “Do you want me to be honest with you?”
“Of course.”
“You’re a friend to me as well as a client, so I don’t want this to hurt our relationship.”
“It won’t. I promise.”
