“What if she has other ideas?”
“Butter on bread,” he said. “Remember? I’m here.”
Her eyes shifted sideways. “Yes.”
“Use your legs to control her. Your hands to guide her.” He demonstrated bringing Bullet to a halt and starting up again and then helped Phoebe do the same by applying the right pressure of heels and knees and using the reins with authority. He was not surprised that she showed relative competence from the first, but he kept that observation to himself. There were plenty of nuances that would require hours in the saddle for her to master, and overconfidence would be her enemy.
They rode five miles before he judged he could safely encourage her. “Not bad,” he said.
“Don’t dress it up. You wouldn’t want to turn my head.”
“Precisely.”
She sighed. “It will take a long time to learn to do this well, won’t it?”
“Define ‘long.’”
“The remainder of my life.”
He considered that. “If you learn to enjoy riding, the remainder of your life will seem too short.”
Phoebe nodded, thoughtful. “You’re something of a philosopher, aren’t you? Have you ever had a sweetheart or maybe a fiancée?”
He considered stopping Bullet so he could get a good look at Phoebe’s face. From his present angle, her smile, if there was one, eluded him. “Are those two things somehow connected in your mind?”
“What? Oh. No, they’re not. The first was more of an observation. It’s the second thing I’ve been wondering about for a while now. I thought I might as well blurt it out as keep it in.”
“Hmm. I’m surprised you didn’t ask someone.”
“Why? It’s about you, but if you sidestep it again, I will probably change my mind.”
Remington took her at her word. “Yes,” he said. “Several sweethearts beginning with Miss Addie Packer. She was the schoolteacher in Frost Falls for three years before she married Jackson Brewer. He wasn’t sheriff then. Even now I think about not voting for him come election time.”
Phoebe laughed softly. “So she broke your heart.”
“Mine and just about every other boy’s in the classroom.” The memory made him smile. “Then there was Mary Ellen Farnsworth. She was first girl I asked to dance, and we were sweet on each other for a time, but mostly we liked kissing under the stairs at the back of the hotel.”
“I think I should stop you now if the sweetheart list is more than seven.” When he didn’t say anything, she said, “I see. All right. Maybe you could jump to the fiancée. Were there many of those?”
“Just the one. Alexandra Kingery. I met her when I was in law school. Her father was one of my professors. I proposed to her after I finished my first year. We were going to be married when I graduated. The engagement had her father’s blessing. Thaddeus met her twice, making the trip east both times. Alexandra charmed him because she wascharming. She did not know how to be any other way, or if she did, she never showed it. In hindsight, I think Thaddeus had reservations that he wasn’t able to put into words.
“I’m not sure when I understood that she and I had very different expectations about our lives after the wedding. I always knew I was returning to Twin Star. I never hid that from her. The problem was she didn’t believe me. She was planning our life around remaining close to the university so she could be near her family. There was to be a law practice for me, something modest in the beginning, but she envisioned that changing over time so I could run for elected office. At the very least, she thought I would secure a teaching position at the university as her father had and make my mark there. These were not plans that she shared with me. I learned them from her father when he mentioned that a friend of his, also a lawyer, had been making inquiries about me joining his firm.
“I spoke to Alexandra later, and for all intents and purposes, our engagement ended that night. It merely required three painful weeks for us to realize it.”
Phoebe nodded slowly, saying nothing for several long moments, then, “I’m sorry.”
Remington was struck by her sincerity. “It’s been years, Phoebe, and it was better that it ended before it began. We were both fortunate there.”
“Yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right, but...”
When she did not finish her thought, he said, “Are you sad for me?” Her rueful smile was answer enough. “Why, you’re a romantic, aren’t you?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I thought you were a realist.”
A shade defensively, she said, “Sometimes I am. Mostly I want to be.”
