The Riding Master (32 page)

“Fine.” He let out a long breath, plucking up his courage. “I’m here because I want us to work this out and start over. I want you back home.”

She put the carton down on the countertop, considering his statement. “What about Lisa Shelby? At the party, you two looked real cozy. Maybe she wants to move in with you.”

He chuckled, a sinister sound that used to make Rayne cringe when they were first married. Now, she just found it annoying as hell. “I have no interest in that woman,” Foster protested. “Lisa Shelby is well-known by several of my business associates. She has quite a reputation as a gold digger. I only met her at that party because of Selene.”

A slow, unsettling feeling rose from her toes. “Selene? What has she got to do with you and Lisa Shelby?”

“I was at Tyler Moore’s because Selene had phoned me and said that you were going to be there, but I never expected to see you with Trent. After you left, Lisa let it slip that the real reason she was hitting on me was because Selene had suggested it in order to make Trent jealous. It seems Selene told her Trent was going to the party with you. I heard all about their affair and how he ended it when he found out about her reputation. Lisa wanted him back, and was only at that party because she thought she could win him away from you.”

“But how did Selene know I was going with Trent to that party?”

He leaned back against the bar. “I don’t know. Maybe she talked to Monique Delome. You know what a pathological little social climber she is.”

“Yeah, I know.” Rayne’s mind filled with questions as she stared at her ex-husband’s surly countenance. “So Selene planned the whole thing?”

“Looks that way.” He bobbed his head in agreement. “But after seeing the way you were with Trent at the party, it was obvious you two were pretty serious.”

“Why did you think that?”

“You looked happy, Rayne. Real happy.”

Images from the night of the party came back to her, and that warm feeling of contentment Trent had always evoked blanketed her weary body.

“So when Estelle told me you two had split up, I was kind of surprised, but also relieved.” He crept closer to Rayne’s side. “I’m not asking for you to move back in right away. I was hoping we could start seeing each other again; dinner, a few parties; maybe even go on a trip together…wherever you want. I’ll do whatever makes you comfortable.”

“Comfortable?” She retrieved her carton of orange juice from the counter. “But not happy.”

“Happiness will come, Rayne. We have plenty of time to find happiness.”

Rayne walked back to her refrigerator and replaced the orange juice on the shelf. “I’m sorry, Foster, but I can’t go backwards. I’m not the same woman you married.” She slowly faced him. “I’m different, a lot different, and I want so much more.”

He cast his eyes to the floor. “Perhaps you need some time to—”

“All the time in the world won’t change my mind,” she broke in.

When his blue eyes rose to her, the same cool, contentious look she had always associated with his dismissive nature stared back at her. Even on their wedding day, he had appeared as aloof, as disconnected from his emotions as he did at that moment.

“All right.” With an air of indifference, he shoved his hands into his trousers pockets. “But I want you to know I’m always here for you, and for Estelle. She is going to need help down the road, and I want to be there for both of you.”

“I appreciate that, Foster.”

She showed him to the door, and after he had left, Rayne settled back against the wall in her hallway. Ever since the divorce, she had dreamed of Foster coming back to her and making amends. Now that dream had come true, but she felt not an ounce of satisfaction. He was not the man she wanted…Trent was.

That certainty almost knocked her to the ground. “No, that can’t be. He’s going to turn into another Foster. He doesn’t care about me…he can’t….” But as a montage of her time with Trent skipped across her heart, her resistance faded.

Her mother, Rebecca, even Lindsey had been right. Trent was not Foster, and the emotion she had shared with him had never compared to the emptiness she experienced with her ex. Maybe all she had needed was to put her life with Foster behind her before she was ready to embrace a relationship with Trent. 

“What have I done?” She slowly sank to the floor. “What in the hell am I going to do?”

Chapter 24

The morning of the Golden Farms Horse Show, Rayne was adding the finishing touches to the tight braids arranged in Bob’s mane. Her fingers smarted from working the coarse horsehair into the decorative circles tied up with white yarn, but she was pleased with the results. Gliding her hand over his shimmering bay coat, she listened to the sound of other riders preparing their horses in the stalls surrounding her.

Rebecca had transported Bob, along with the other horses competing, from Southland to the guest stables at Golden Farms the evening before. Located to the side of the main green and white barn, the large guest stables housed over a hundred horses for the show, with entrants coming from all over Texas.

Rayne had done a good job avoiding Trent during the chaos of transporting horses the previous evening, and all the show prep that morning. He had been busy dealing with Selene and her dressage riders. Rebecca told her he had opted to oversee Selene’s activities, complaining that he was not comfortable with her abilities, while Rayne was left to supervise her beginner students who were entered in a few of the flat classes.

Having stuck to the shadows whenever he appeared, Rayne had managed to avoid him. But when he was not looking, she would sneak peeks at him stamping in front of her stall as he went up and down the shed row checking on his riders. Every now and then, she would hear his voice and her stomach would shrink to the size of a pea. Sooner or later, Rayne knew they would have to confront each other; she just hoped that eventuality could be postponed for as long as humanly possible.

While leading Bob from his stall to the post where her polished saddle and bridle were waiting, she saw Rebecca off to the side in a corner of the stables, waving angrily. When a figure across from Rebecca retreated from the shadows, she sighted Trent’s wide shoulders slouching forward, along with the nasty scowl on his face.

Tugging on Bob’s lead rope, hoping to make him move faster down the aisle, Rayne wanted to run for cover when Trent spotted her. Instead of confronting his gaze, she lowered her head and pulled with all of her might on Bob’s lead rope, making the stubborn animal come to a grinding halt.

“Shit, Bob, don’t do this to me.” 

“Rayne, get over here,” Rebecca’s masculine voice ordered. “We need to settle some things.”

She smiled sheepishly and kept on pulling at Bob’s lead. “I have to get him ready.”

“I’ll do it.” Rebecca marched down the barn aisle toward Rayne and wrenched the lead rope from her hands. “Talk to him. Do something, for Christ’s sake. I can’t have the two of you not speaking to each other in the middle of a show.” Rebecca pointed at Trent. “Go and fix this.”

The color drained from Rayne’s face. “Please don’t ask me to—”

“Go!” Rebecca yelled. “Or I’ll fire your ass.”

Quickly pulling Bob away, Rebecca left Rayne in the middle of the aisle with nowhere to hide. When she finally looked up, Rayne saw Trent’s arresting eyes taking in every inch of her.

“Son of a bitch,” she cursed under her breath as her dread dissolved into a spark of desire.

Squeezing her hands together, she very slowly walked toward him. With every step, she could feel his eyes burning into her. When she stood before him, Rayne proudly raised her head. She could not let him know that this was killing her.

“Trent.” She was thankful her voice did not crack under the pressure.

He tipped his head to her, keeping the cruel scowl on his lips. “Rayne.”  

“I guess we should discuss how we plan on breaking up the schooling schedules with our students.” She unclasped her hands. “I have three kids in the flat classes in the afternoon, while at—”

“That’s not what we need to talk about and you know it,” he grumbled, cutting her off.  

A thick silence formed between them, making Rayne wish she could be swallowed whole by the ground below her feet.

“I know we didn’t end on the best of terms,” she began. “But I—”

“End?” He angled closer. “What in the hell makes you thinks we have ended?”

She took a step back from him. “I told you that I needed time to think.”

He hurriedly closed the distance between them. “And I gave you time to think. But you need to know that I’m not going to let you go.”

“It’s not your choice, is it, Trent? It’s mine.”

“You’re mine,” he hissed under his breath. 

Rayne took two steps further back from him, her mouth slightly open. “You arrogant asshole. Where the hell do you get off, telling me—”

“Drop it, Rayne.” He grasped her arms, his fingers squeezing into her flesh. “Why did you run away? You thought I slept with Lisa, didn’t you?”

She shirked off his grip. “I know you didn’t sleep with her.”

“Then why run out on me like that?”

“Because….” She faltered, too afraid to tell him the truth about her misgivings.

“Because why? And don’t lie to me. Tell me what it is and let’s work this out.”

Work this out?
His words hit like a battering ram against her heart. How could they work this out? For Rayne, they had seemed doomed from the start. “There’s nothing to work out,” she calmly insisted. “You’re a man who…needs a lot of women to feel satisfied, and I will never be enough for you. Don’t you see that?”

He folded his arms over his chest and the thick muscles in his exposed forearms twitched. “No, I don’t.”

“When I saw that woman in your living room, I wondered how many other women had been in your home before me. I knew then that I would never be enough for you.”

“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” The silliest grin etched its way across his lips. “Admit it, you’re afraid. Afraid of being with me because you think I’m going to turn into Foster.”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“No.” He uncrossed his arms. “Not every man is going to become your ex. We’re not all the same, despite what a lot of women believe.”

She shook her head. “Well, I can’t take that chance.”

“You’d better take that chance with me; otherwise you will be making a big mistake.”

“I made a mistake once with a man, and my heart can’t afford to repeat it.” She turned away, showing him her profile. “In the future, please keep all conversations strictly limited to the lessons and the students.” Without another word, she walked away.

Rebecca was tightening the girth around Bob’s belly when Rayne walked up to her.

“So when’s the wedding?”

“Why did you do that to me, Rebecca? You knew how I felt.”

Rebecca patted Bob’s back. “That’s why I did it. Because you’re just too stubborn to admit that you want him—God forbid, even need him—in your life.”

“I don’t need anybody,” Rayne fiercely defended, checking her fancy show bridle next to the post.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Rayne. For someone who has taken so many chances in the show ring, don’t you think that perhaps it is time to take a chance outside of it?”

Rayne wrestled the bridle from the post and walked over to Bob. “Last time I took a chance on a man….” She slipped the blue halter from around Bob’s ears. “You know what happened.” Easing the snaffle bit into Bob’s mouth she edged the bridle over his head, securing it behind his black-tipped ears. 

“He’s not Foster, Rayne.”

“Yet.” She flipped the reins over Bob’s neck. “He’s not Foster, yet.”

“So that’s it. You’re just going to let him walk away.”

She clucked for Bob to move forward. “I have to go and warm him up before our class.”

“I hope you and Bob are very happy together. Because that’s the only man I know you won’t chase away.”

Reminded of her mother’s words, Rayne spun around to Rebecca. “I’m not chasing him away.”

Rebecca took a few steps closer to her. “That is exactly what you’re doing.” She patted Bob’s sleek neck. “You need to stop comparing every man to Foster, and start living your life again. You deserve to be happy; even though you may not be convinced of that fact, you do deserve it.”

“My father always said that to me, ‘you deserve to be happy,’ and then after he and Jaime died, I didn’t think I would ever be happy again. I hoped Foster could make me happy…you know, make me feel…whole again, but he never did. How do I know I won’t end up living the same kind of emptiness I had with Foster?”

Rebecca lovingly placed one hand against Rayne’s cheek. “Because you love Trent, and you never really loved Foster, did you?”

Rebecca’s words ripped into Rayne’s gut, spilling out the truth that she had for so long been too afraid to admit. “How…how did you know?” 

“I suspected from the beginning.” Rebecca offered a reassuring smile. “The way you spoke of him, especially when you first started riding at my stables, you never had love in your heart. You withdrew from him long before the divorce, and it wasn’t until Trent that I saw a part of you I had never seen before, the side of you in love. You never glowed with Foster, never blushed during your time together…you were always reserved, always calm. And I think with Trent, you’re absolutely terrified that another human being can have that kind of control over you.”