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“But you have an idea, I know you do.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Please take me back now.”
Her back was rigid again.
“So I have to slice open a vein, but you don’t?”
“Unlike your story, mine is long and boring, and I have no wish to recount it. Plus, I didn’t ask you to slice open a vein, you did that all by yourself.”
“I don’t remember you being such a hard-ass.”
She snorted. “I wish. Had I been a hard-ass, life would have definitely been smoother.”
“Why was it bumpy?”
She didn’t answer.
“How did you hurt your arm?”
“An accident, I told you. I fell through a window. My hand took the impact.”
“It looks bad.”
“It was. For a time they wondered if I’d play again.”
Joe wondered who’d held her, and sat at her bedside while she recovered. Who told her that everything would be all right.
“And yet you can, so that’s a relief.”
She sighed, a soft little sad sound, but didn’t say anything further. He didn’t push, instead he said, “I have your Carnegie Hall concert on my iPod.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said in the same polite tone.
He turned them round, and retraced their steps, this time heading to the outbuildings.
“I thought you might like to hug a few more horses, seeing as you’re all tense again.” Joe stopped inside the stables.
“I’m not tense.”
“If this is you not tense, I can only imagine what you’re like when you are,” he said, dismounting. He grabbed her around the waist before she could argue, and pulled her down. “Funny how you used to tell me to relax, and now it’s you who needs that advice.”
“A little warning,” she said, bracing her hands on his chest. “And there is nothing wrong with my everyday state.”
Joe could feel the warmth of her palms, and then they were gone and she was stepping away from him.
“A little on the skinny side, but I have to say that your everyday state works for me.” He looked over her fitted black designer jeans, and pale blue cotton shirt. On her feet were peach sneakers.
“I’m not skinny.”
“You are a bit. But it shouldn’t take long to fill out the hollows in those cheeks, especially if you keep eating those donuts, and a few of the teashop scones.”
“Are you deliberately trying to insult me?” She dragged her eyes from the stalls, where the horses who weren’t out in the fields were hanging out of their boxes.
“I’m deliberately trying to get a reaction out of you. Is it working?”
“No.”
