“How did you know?”
“I’m psychic.”
“Really?”
“Don’t tell anyone, but I moonlight as a fortune-teller.”
“So where’s your crystal ball?”
“Don’t need one. They’ve been replaced by a Web site with links to the other side.”
She laughed. “I guess the Internet’s everywhere.”
“Well, it was fine until Gates came in. Now there’s only one server you can channel Elvis on and a single search engine to find people’s past lives and dead relatives.”
When her giggles subsided, he asked again what was on her mind.
“What if I said I was just relishing the morning light?”
“You’d be lying.”
“What would you say if I asked you to go to my father’s birthday party next weekend? I know it’s going to be torture but I’d really like you to come with me. I need your support.”
He tilted his head down. “Then I can’t say no, can I?”
His smile was slow and tinted with passion, but when he went to kiss her, she stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“Devlin, I need to know. Are you okay with this?”
“Sure. If it’s important to you for us to go, then of course we will.”
“No…I meant us.”
So much for waiting, she thought.
Devlin moved his hips against her pelvis. “I’m a little more than just okay with you. Fantastic. Delirious. Desperate. I think those are a little more apt.”
“I mean about continuing with our training.”
He took a deep breath. “I think we’re working together well. We’re making progress. What do you think?”
“I wasn’t the one who had a problem with it.”
His words became slow, deliberate. “From an objective point of view, I still believe it’s just not smart. But I can’t give you up and I don’t want anyone else training you, so I think we’re stuck with each other.”
A.J. smiled and kissed his lips. “I just knew you’d come around to my way.”
As his tongue slipped inside her mouth, she decided they could talk more about their relationship later. Now was a time for making love. And then there was breakfast and training and another meal or two. And then they could go back to bed together.
“I think we’re ready to try the water today,” Devlin said later as Sabbath was being tacked up on the crossties.
When A.J. nodded in agreement, Chester headed out to the ring to fill up the jump.
A little later, after she’d led the stallion out of the stables and gotten a leg up, A.J. noticed Sabbath was particularly antsy and sensed it was going to be a long training session. Unlike the horse, she was feeling sluggish. After she and Devlin had made love, she’d fallen back asleep, snoozing all the way through breakfast until she’d been woken up by her name being shouted up the stairs. It was obvious why she’d crashed. There was such relief in knowing Devlin was now committed to both her and their training. She felt as though they could now move ahead freely and that some of her bigger worries were behind her. Unfortunately, the consequence of her napping was that her reflexes were slow and she wasn’t riding as well as she usually did. The stallion sensed it. Unlike the last few sessions, when he’d settled down and begun to focus, now he acted up, resenting her lack of concentration.
When the flatwork was finished and A.J. brought the stallion toward him, Devlin toyed with the idea of calling it a day. Things hadn’t gone well in the warm-up and the rest of the session probably wasn’t going to be much better. He was thinking it might be wise to hold off trying the water jump but A.J.’s face held a wealth of determination.
“You still ready to do the water?” he asked.
“You better believe it.”
Bringing up the clipboard, he detailed the jump order. “Just take it slow and easy. See how he handles it.”
She nodded, reining the stallion around.
Sabbath tossed his head, impatient to get jumping. He always perked up when they started going over fences but today his exuberance had an edge to it. When she urged him into a canter, she found herself having to hold him back.
They took the first two uprights in the rough form characteristic of their early training, and coming into the corner the stallion was shaking his head, fighting the lead change. They took the next series of oxers badly and rails hit the ground in their wake, a drumroll of failure. A.J. tightened her lips and the reins, feeling frustrated as she brought Sabbath around to face the water jump that was set up in the dead center of the ring.
It was an unassuming low rail fence followed by a square pool. The purpose was to test the horse’s ability to cover distance as well as his reaction to visual stimuli. Depending on the weather, the water could look relatively benign or very intimidating, as it did at the moment. In the gray morning, wind licked across the surface of the water, agitating the reflection of a dingy, cold sky.
As soon as Sabbath caught sight of what they were heading toward, A.J. could feel him tense. During the flatwork, they hadn’t used the middle of the ring, so it was the first time he’d noticed the jump. She gave him some encouragement with her leg and held steady, prepared for trouble. Surprisingly, he settled down and seemed to concentrate while continuing forward. For a split second, A.J. was lulled into relief, but then the stallion shied to the left so violently, she lost her seat and was thrown from him like a doll. It happened faster than a breath.
This one’s going to hurt, she thought in midair.
The ground rushed up to meet her with an eagerness she could have done without. Landing in a heap, she tasted dirt in her mouth and felt a shooting pain in her upper body. With a groan, she rolled over to free the arm that had taken the lion’s share of the impact, cradling it against her chest as she squinted up at the disinterested sky. She felt as if someone were needling her shoulder and elbow with a hot poker.
Devlin ran to her while shouting for Chester’s help in corralling the stallion, who was galloping frantically around the ring.
As Devlin’s face pierced her tunnel vision, A.J. noticed he was white as a sheet.
“I’m gonna feel this one in the morning,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Can you sit up?”
“You got a crane handy?”
With his help, she managed to lift her upper body off the ground and she found, after blinking a few times, that the stars dancing in front of her eyes disappeared.