“Bend now,” Clovis urged.
Amanda stared diligently at her kneecap caught between her face and the stamped leather of the saddle. She thought of the patient attention Pokey was paying her, her head turned around to watch Amanda’s progress. She thought about what she was doing to her tendons and ligaments. She tried to bend.
She tried to vault.
She made it just about up as far as Pokey’s rib cage.
“I’m...too short,” she panted, trying desperately to lever herself higher by clutching at the saddle horn. Pokey stood there. Amanda was afraid the saddle that she had tightened would slip right down to the horse’s belly, and she’d end up in a little heap in the dirt. Then she remembered that anyone in a ten-mile radius could be privileged to see her ignominious position.
Clovis made the most interesting choking sounds, but he stayed right by Pokey’s head to make sure she wouldn’t move.
Amanda closed her eyes and prayed they didn’t have an audience. She must not have been sincere enough. Suddenly a set of strong, impatient hands grabbed her around the waist and lifted her right up into the saddle.
“Is that how your uncle did it?” Jake asked, his voice very dry.
Amanda faced him. “Thank you,” she acknowledged, her voice sounding just a little more breathless than she’d actually been, her cheeks growing rosy. She could still feel the dig of his fingers into her skin, the easy, fluid power of his muscles as he’d lifted her. She saw the glint of suspicious humor in those steely blue eyes beneath the rim of his hat.
“I hope you don’t have this much trouble getting into your books,” he retorted dryly.
Amanda proffered a wry smile. “Heck, no. I only have to climb those one chapter at a time.”
Still he didn’t take his gaze from her. “Clovis,” he said. “Didn’t it occur to you that Pokey might be a little much for her first lesson?”
Clovis seemed to find that scratching behind an ear helped him answer. “Pokey’s the sweetest mare we got, boss.”
“She’s also the biggest. Next time, let her have Sweet William.”
Clovis started at the periphery of Amanda’s vision. “You sure?”
Jake nodded. “He’s more her size.” Then he turned his conversation as well as his attention to her, and Amanda felt it like the brush of a warm breeze. “Unless you got something against geldings.”
Amanda saw frank appraisal in those eyes. Arousal, hard challenge. It lit a small, very hot fire in her belly that made sitting in a saddle a little uncomfortable. “I understand they’re easier to control than stallions.”
The corner of Jake’s mouth crooked just a little. “Takes a real rider to handle a stallion,” he admitted, his voice low and almost intimate, his thumbs hooked in his back pockets, which made a person want to look closer at his front.
Amanda almost looked over at Clovis to see whether he was hearing what she was. She couldn’t pull her gaze from Jake’s, couldn’t break free of that freezing, burning blue. She couldn’t shake herself of the feeling that his invitation was more challenge than attraction. A game of dare by which he would judge her. Whatever it was, it was snaking along her limbs and setting up the most unnerving static dance along the back of her neck. Her chest felt uncomfortably tight inside her Aran knit sweater, and her palms were damp.
“From what I understand,” she countered, her voice as intent as his, her own hands clenched around the reins, “most stallions are all bluster. All you have to do is call their bluff and they back right down.”
Jake’s eyes sparked dangerously. Amanda kept reminding herself that she was situated above him. She shouldn’t have felt so intimidated. Still, there was something so overwhelmingly male about his stance, his expression. Something so dominant.
He shrugged. “It could be real dangerous finding out, though, couldn’t it?”
Amanda couldn’t quite come up with an answer.
He tipped a finger to the brim of his hat to Amanda, his mouth quirked. “Hope the rest of your first lesson in the Wild West goes a little better.”
Amanda fought to control her rebellious body. It took a second to find breath and unscramble words from the puddle Jake left her in, but she did. “I doubt it,” she managed to say, still breathless, wishing she could somehow get Jake Kendall to stay and talk to her a little longer. “I have a feeling you’re dying to see me make an ass of myself again.”
Jake allowed a brief, smug grin. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”
And he turned toward the barn.
Behind him, Clovis had taken to staring. “Hey, boss!” he yelled as Jake opened the big wooden door, “Sweet William? You sure?”
Jake never turned around. “I don’t think I stuttered, Clovis.”
Amanda watched Jake disappear into the darkness of the building and thought how suddenly cool the spring wind was here.
