The Riding Master (18 page)

Rayne took a sip from the coffee. “Should someone stay with her tonight?”

“That’s up to you, Ms. Greer,” Dr. Clifton replied in his thick accent. “The injury was just a slight cut that didn’t require stitches. I think she was scared more than hurt because she didn’t remember fallin’ down. But the amnesia was a result of the alcohol in her system, and not the head injury. Her alcohol levels were still pretty high when we drew her blood.”

Rayne sucked in a breath, quieting her outrage. “Thank you, Dr. Clifton.”

Dr. Clifton patted her shoulder. “Good luck to you, Ms. Greer.”

While silently cursing her mother for putting her in this situation yet again, Rayne watched the long legs of Dr. Clifton stroll away.

Trent rested a reassuring arm about her waist. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. I’ve been here many times before.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Rayne stared into his warm gray eyes and then gave him an encouraging smile. “Thank you for just being here. I know this is a lot to take in with my ex and my mother, but I—”

“Rayne, I don’t care about your ex-husband or your mother; I care about you. Now tell me what can I do to help you?”

She tenderly kissed his cheek, touched by his offer. It had been a long time since she had shared her burdens with anyone. “You’ve already helped.”

He looked to the exam room door. “I’ll wait out here until you are ready to take her home.”

“Perhaps you should just bring us back to my house. I can get my car from your place and then take her home.”

“No way.” Trent dismissed the suggestion with a stern glare. “We’ll take her home. I can leave you at her place, then go to the stables. When you’re ready, I’ll pick you up.”

“Trent, my mother lives in Highland Park. That’s an hour away from the stables. I can’t ask you to drive back and—”

“Rayne, stop arguing with me,” he insisted, cutting her off. “We’ll take her home.”

“You really are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”

He kissed her cheek and took the coffee from her hand. “It all depends on your vantage point, baby.”

She sighed and eyed the watch on his wrist. “I should call Rebecca. I’ve got a lesson in a little over an hour.”

“I’ll take care of it.” He set the coffee cup on a nearby medicine cart. “After I drop you off at your mother’s, I can go to the stables and take over your lessons for you.” 

“That’s just perfect. My students are never going to forgive me. You’re the Marquis De Sade of riding instructors.” She swerved to the exam room door.

He put his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her to him. “You don’t have to be brave with me, Rayne. I know this is killing you.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not being brave.” She patted his thick chest, relishing the firm muscles beneath his T-shirt. “Estelle and I have never had a great relationship, so when she has setbacks like this….” She shook her head and dropped her hand from his chest. “Setbacks? Who am I kidding? Her entire life has been one big setback. She’s been drinking for so long…she’ll never give it up.”

“Do you have any idea why she drinks?”

Rayne took in the busy ER hallway around them. Everywhere people were going in and out of exam rooms, phones were ringing, voices were humming in the background, and occasionally the sounds of papers shuffling, or a mechanical beeping would float by.

“I think she drinks to forget her past.” Rayne wrapped her arms about her body. “She was once the darling of Dallas society. My grandfather owned two meatpacking houses and was keen on marrying her off to a man who could help continue the family business. But my mother met my father at a college fraternity party, and after that…all my grandfather’s plans went out the window. They eloped and settled in New Orleans, where my dad started a law practice. Mother used to say she gave up everything for my father, but I think it was the other way around. Dad worshipped the ground she walked on until the day he died.”

“Is that why you two don’t get along? Because of your father?”   

“That list of reasons is way too long and too sordid to get into.” Rayne dropped her arms to her sides. “Suffice it to say, when I was growing up my mother stayed out of my life, and I’ve always tried to stay out of hers.”

Trent knitted his dark brows. “But what about your riding? All the horse shows you competed in? Surely she—”

“She never attended any of my shows,” Rayne interrupted. “Not a single one. My mother believed my riding was…foolish. No matter how successful I was in the show ring, she was always disappointed in me. Still is.”

“I can’t believe Estelle is disappointed in you, Rayne. I think maybe she’s just too stubborn to admit how she feels. Kind of like you.” Trent gripped her shoulders. “But there’s always a chance to fix things between the two of you.”

“There’s nothing to fix.” Rayne’s back stiffened. “We’re so broken that even God couldn’t fix us.”

“No one is beyond hope. Not people, horses…or mothers.”

She opened the exam room door, hardening her resolve against his encouragement. “Don’t even go there, Trent. I gave up on hoping for any kind of relationship with my mother a long time ago.”

“But it’s never too late to try again. Sometimes if you just give someone a chance, they might surprise you.”

Rayne gazed into his keen eyes and knew he was talking about more than just her mother. She longed to give him that chance, but past heartbreaks had taught her that looking to another for strength only led to deeper torment. Wanting to spare him further insights into her warped psyche, she rested her hand on his forearm and forced a pretty smile on her face…the kind men always preferred.

“I appreciate that. Perhaps someday I might heed your advice…but not today.”

She turned away and slipped inside the door. The past was done, and she had more pressing matters to attend to. For Rayne, looking ahead in some ways was just as painful as looking back. Sometimes she did not know what was worse; the regret over past mistakes, or the worry over mistakes yet to come.

Chapter 13

Estelle’s home was nestled in the opulent neighborhood of Highland Park, close to the campus of Southern Methodist University. With green, manicured lawns, bright gardens bursting with colorful flowers, and palatial mansions, the premium real estate in this section of Dallas was considered by many to be a necessity when entering the ranks of the city’s social scene.

Trent eased his car up to a stunning French Provincial home tucked behind an overgrown lawn cluttered with unkempt gardens of tall juniper trees, red azalea bushes, and gardenias.

“There’s a side entrance.” Rayne pointed to a small cement road that meandered through the overgrowth in front of the property.

“Estelle, you have quite a place,” Trent commented as the car drew closer to the impressive structure.

Four huge, white colonial windows with stylized cornices on top, and ten-foot high double front doors that were carved with long swirls and stained in a very dark birch, accentuated the façade of the home.

“My father bought it when I was in high school,” Estelle recounted from the back seat. “When my parents died, they left everything to me. I used to have lovely gardens in front, but they got to be too much. It costs a small fortune to keep this place going.”

“A small fortune you don’t have,” Rayne piped in as the front of the house passed before her passenger window. “I’ve told you a million times to sell it.”

Estelle clucked disapprovingly. “And live where, Raynie, with you?”

“You could get something smaller that you could afford with the money you would make unloading this place,” Rayne suggested with an equally contentious tone.

“Move to Carrolton or Richardson? You must be joking? I’ll never leave Highland Park. Only the best people live here. I need to be among my kind.”

“They’re not your kind anymore, Mother.”

“Bite your tongue, Raynie. They’ll always be my kind, and yours, too.”

Trent gave Rayne a lighthearted grin as he steered the car around the side of the wide home.

“Just drop me at the door,” Estelle directed.

“Mother, I should stay with you.”

Estelle waved a thin hand at her daughter. “Nonsense. I’m fine, and you two need time alone.”

Rayne sighed with frustration, only making Trent’s humorous grin even bigger.

Pulling under a high portico with a stucco and stone archway, Trent glimpsed the smaller replica of the wide front doors at the side entrance.

“How big is this house, Estelle?”

“The lot is two and a half acres, and the house is almost seven thousand square feet,” Rayne volunteered.

“That’s a lot of house for one person,” he remarked.

“Well, you never know when you might have guests,” Estelle added.

“Your days of having guests are long gone, Mother.” Rayne opened the rear car door for Estelle.

“One always needs extra rooms,” Estelle argued.

Trent came around from the driver’s side of the car. “I’ve got only about four thousand square feet and I’ve got a maid that comes twice a week. How do you manage?”

Estelle retrieved her keys from her leather purse. “Oh, I manage.” She marched up a small flight of cement steps to the darkly stained doors. “Let Raynie give you a quick tour before you head out.”

“You shouldn’t be alone, Mother.”

“I don’t want you to stay. I’m fine.” Estelle then pushed the double doors open and walked proudly into her home, like a queen entering her castle.

The accentuated sway of the hem of her aquamarine dress made Rayne swear the woman was putting a little more swing in her hips, probably for Trent’s benefit.

“I’m sorry,” Rayne softly said as she climbed the back steps with Trent. “Mother is sort of like a sixty-year-old version of Scarlett O’Hara. She hasn’t quite come to terms with the fact that she isn’t the belle of the ball anymore.”

“How has she held on to this place? The taxes alone must be a small fortune,” he whispered as they stepped into an elegant marble entranceway with oak hardwood floors and high ceilings.

Rayne waited as her mother disappeared around the corner of the entranceway, and then turned and shut the heavy double doors behind Trent.

“The taxes haven’t been paid for two years, and the city of Dallas has been threatening to auction the house off unless she comes up with the taxes in the next six months.”

She walked with Trent to the end of the entryway. A long hallway with parquet wood floors had several high doors running along either side, and was painted in alternating panels of taupe and white.

“Mother has struggled for years to hold on to this house.” Rayne motioned to a bright room at the end of the hallway to her right. “There used to be a gardener, and a maid to help keep it clean, but she let Mattie go a few years back.”

As they walked down the hallway, Trent inspected the impressions in the walls where long pictures had once hung. The nails were still left in some places, and dotted along the detailed wood floor, small dents could be seen where furniture once sat.

They entered a rectangular living room with a vaulted wood ceiling and a wall of glass doors that opened on to a slate-covered patio. There was not a stick of furniture anywhere, and more dents marred the hardwood floor. Along the walls were additional impressions where paintings had once hung.  

Trent gestured about the room. “It seems rather…empty.”

“It’s how she has held on to her home. My grandfather was an avid antiques collector. This house was crammed with them when we moved here from New Orleans. Now, there’s barely any furniture left. She sold off his collection of paintings shortly after he and my grandmother died in a car accident.”

He went to one of the windows that looked out to a matted garden of weeds and shrubbery. “How long ago was that?”

“A little over eight years. It happened after I was married to Foster.”

Trent turned to her in astonishment. “And she has been keeping this place going since then?”

Rayne walked over to his side and stared out to a tall oak just beyond the gardens. “Foster helped some when we were first married. He sent over his gardener to keep up the grounds and paid the bills, but after a few years of putting up with her drinking escapades, he stopped helping.” Rayne nodded to the living room entrance. “I’ll just check on her, and then we can go.”

“I’ll be right here,” he told her.

Rayne took in the curve of his square jaw, the rise of his Adam’s apple, the way his blue T-shirt hugged his wide shoulders, and the fit of his jeans around his round butt. Like a mirage to a thirsty traveler across a wind-torn desert, he seemed too good to be true. But as she relished the memory of their morning together in her bed, the fantasy of Trent Newbury began to blur into a newly unwanted reality; this was a man she could really fall for.

Hastily leaving Trent, she proceeded down the hallway to one of the tall doors at the far end. When Rayne stretched for the dull brass handle, she squared her shoulders, preparing to take on the cantankerous beast inside.

The door opened with a slight creak, and the only light from inside was from a lamp set on a simple wooden desk to the side. In the center of the crimson-painted room, elevated on a platform, was an unmade king-sized walnut bed. The only other furniture in the large circular room was a thick oak dresser with dulled brass handles, set against the far wall. The creamy carpet was worn and frayed in sections, and the white baseboards contained a thick layer of dust.