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How did I tell her that while I loved dogs, I was terrified of horses. “Sure.” I hoped that my voice sounded more confident than I felt. I’d grown up riding secondhand bicycles, and that’s if I was lucky – not six-figure thoroughbreds.
But as we walked through the barn and Everleigh introduced me to each one of the horses, I realized that while some were magnificent and had fancy names like Rambling Rex Regum, at least half of them were smaller, with ordinary names like Ralph and Junebug.
“Do you want to give Ralph a treat?” Everleigh asked. “Or are you going to keep pretending that you’re not afraid of horses.”
I let out a huge breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding in. “Was it that obvious?”
Her laugh was sweet as she stood on her toes and kissed me. “Not to me, but the horses can tell.”
“I haven’t spent much time around horses. Actually, I think that I saw some at a fall fair once. But I’ve never actually touched one. They just always seem suspicious to me.”
Everleigh reached into a bag that was slung at the end of the barn and handed me a sugar cube. “They seem suspicious? Or they’re suspicious of you?”
“Both.” I laughed nervously and took a cube from her hand. “What kind of horse is this?”
Ralph was light gray with spots, and had a white mane.
Everleigh stepped beside me and flattened out my hand, placing the cube on my palm. “Keep it flat, like that.” Her touch was light and warm, and her breasts brushed against my back. I wasn’t sure what was making my heart beat so fast – her touch, or the excited stamping and whinnying that Ralph had decided to make just as I got the nerve to hold out my hand.
Sensing that I was nervous, Everleigh held out her hand to show me. “Ralph isn’t a horse, he’s a pony. And we don’t know what kind he is.”
I wasn’t afraid of many things, and this pony wasn’t going to be one of them. “If he bites off my finger, you can’t cut me from the roster. It will be on you.”
“He’s not going to bite off your finger. Although he’s almost blind and your fingers could look like a carrot.”
She said this just as I had my hand in the stall. Ralph’s face whiskers tickled my hand, and then his gray lips were soft on my palm as they plucked the cube from it.
The smile that spread across my face couldn’t be stopped. “Can we give them all a treat?”
Nodding, Everleigh’s eyes sparkled. “I could also teach you how to ride.”
I met her eyes and she smiled.
“After the season is over.” We both spoke at the same time and she fell into my arms as we erupted in laughter.
Everleigh introduced me to every single horse in the barn and told me their back stories. She had rescued most of the horses. “People can be so—”
“Cruel? Terrible?” Everleigh tried to finish my sentence.
“Both of those things.” I nodded grimly. “I was involved with a rescue in Laketown. A dog rescue called the Bad Dog House,” I clarified.
“Really?” Everleigh seemed surprised. “I didn’t know that about you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” I wrapped my hand around hers. We were both a little sticky from the sugar cubes, but I didn’t care. “And,” I gestured to the barn with my free hand, “there’s a lot about you I don’t know either. Why don’t you tell people about this rescue?”
A pink hue traveled along her jawbone and disappeared beneath the collar of her shirt. She opened her mouth as though she were going to speak but then stopped. I squeezed her hand, my way of urging her to continue without pressuring her to talk. She took a deep breath. “I’m a private person, Gunnar. Colton likes living in the spotlight, but it might surprise you to learn that I don’t actually like it.”
This was news to me. Everleigh King had been on business magazine covers, and she didn’t shy away from giving interviews to the press, especially when they were to protect her family. The whole mess with Colton before he settled down with Alison had brought the entire King family into the limelight. “That is a surprise,” I replied honestly.
“I’d love to just do my job, go home, and have dinner with…” She paused. “Have dinner, ride my horses, and snuggle into bed with a book.”
I immediately thought about what it would feel like to come home and cook dinner with Everleigh; whether we would sit at a dining room table together or snuggle up on the sofa and watch sports highlights. I chuckled, as I was sure that my idea of a perfect night was likely very different from Everleigh’s. And who was I kidding? Everleigh had chefs; she had staff. She would never argue with someone about who forgot to unload the dishwasher, because she’d likely never done it herself.
“But maybe if you let people know about your rescue organization, the press might be a little more…forgiving.”
“Like I said, Gunnar, I have thick skin. And this isn’t my only charity work. For years, I’ve been sponsoring young hockey players who can’t afford to play. But I do it under a fake name, so that when the sponsored kids write to the person who paid for their equipment and dues, they think they’re writing to Sam Strand.”
“You’reSam Strand?” I thought my eyebrows were going to shoot into outer space.
