“Kind of. They don’t belong to us, though. They’re Dex’s. He’s got a place in Plymouth, but it’s too noisy for these old girls, so he keeps them here. Pays us enough for the space to keep the water on.”
“Sounds like a good bloke.”
Emma smiled. “He is. His fella has a Michelin-starred restaurant attached to their stables, so his place is rolling in it. Dex has bailed us out so many times I’ve lost count. The least we can do is take care of his girls.” She clicked her teeth and one of the elderly horses ambled to the half-door. It fumbled its whiskered lips on the wood until Emma gave it a treat from her pocket. “Do you want to give her one?”
“Me?” I eyed the horse—Tauna, apparently—with a healthy dose of apprehension. She seemed gentle enough, but I’d never been this close to a horse in my life, and her teeth werehuge. “Um, okay.”
Emma passed me a cube of something grassy. “Hold your hand out flat and keep your thumb tucked in. If you don’t want to do that, you can balance the treat on your fist.”
Her gaze was playful, so I figured that only idiots took the second option. I held my hand out to Tauna, expecting her to come at me with her teeth, but of course, she didn’t. She took the treat like it was made of glass and bumped my hand with her nose. A thank you? Who the hell knew?
Not me.
Emma took me around all of the stables and paddocks, including a couple of Shetlands who’d recently retired from the beach and a pair of donkeys who’d arrived from India a few months ago.
“Ronnie and Reggie,” she said. “Joe and George think they’re hilarious when they’ve been on the whisky, but the names stuck.”
I couldn’t help smiling as I studied the donkeys. “They’re more delicate than I thought they’d be, and much prettier.”
“Were you expecting Eeyore?”
“Probably.” One of the donkeys came over. I was an expert at treat giving by now, so I held my hand out and fed it a grassy cube. “What’s in the field with the hill?”
“Shadow. He’s our only stallion, but I don’t take visitors up there. He’s too volatile.”
“Hormones, eh?”
“Something like that. He was Grandpa’s last horse from the old stud we used to have years ago. Never handled by anyone else. Even Joe struggles with him—” The landline phone attached to Emma’s back pocket rang loud enough to send the donkeys skittering away. She reached for it, but it cut off. “Someone’s picked up in the house. God knows who. Joe’s horrible on the phone.”
Emma stared out over the fields and paddocks. Her shaking had eased as we’d walked around, and she seemed calm enough now for me to take a chance. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Sal said something about you being better online than in person, and you seemed pretty freaked out about meeting me today. Do you have an anxiety disorder?”
“Wow.” Emma shook her head slightly. “You’re the first person around here to ever work that out for themselves. It took me years to explain it to this lot.” She jerked her head towards the house. “Not that they aren’t sympathetic, of course.”
“I think it’s difficult to imagine if you haven’t experienced it or studied it yourself.”
“You’ve studied it? I thought you were a personal trainer?”
“I’m a physiotherapist, actually. PT is part of that, but the work I do is more holistic.”
“Holistic Harry.” Emma nodded.
I snorted. “That’s my blog. And I started that as therapy for myself.”
Emma’s eyes widened slightly, but any response she may have made was cut off by Joe coming up behind us, his face far more animated than I’d seen so far.
“Police on the phone,” he said. “There’s a pony loose at Crantock Beach.”
“What?” Emma glanced around quickly. “It’s not one of ours.”
“That’s not why they called. It’s running riot and they need someone with a horsebox to come out and catch it. George is coming with me, but we’ll need to put Ava in with Mani and get a stall ready.”
“On it.” Emma nodded like this kind of thing happened all the time. Perhaps it did.
Joe spared me a glance as he turned away, and I sucked in a breath. His dark blue eyes had been on my mind since I’d first seen them this afternoon, but they’d been flat then—dull, even. Now they glittered, alive with whatever it was that got him out of bed in the morning, and I couldn’t look away.
