The Riding Master

by Alexandrea Weis

  “Have you ever considered buying a gun?”

  Rayne went to her refrigerator. “Only if I get to use it on you.”

  Trent’s deep chuckle made her insides quiver. Removing a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator, she took a few quick sips.

  “Now what are you doing?” His voice was strained with curiosity.

  She thumped the carton down on the kitchen countertop. “What is it with you and questions?”

  “I just want to know how you spend your time when you’re not working.”

  “Why?” she challenged, sounding aggravated.

  “Rayne, I’m making an effort here. The least you could do is talk to me.”

  She silently berated her shortness with the man. If she wanted to make a go of it with him, Rayne knew she needed to open up. “What do you want to know, Trent?”

  “How do you spend your evenings at home?”

  Rayne spied the open living room that connected to her kitchen and tried to think of something interesting to say. “Sometimes I watch television, other nights I go online, and three nights a week I do yoga.”

  “Yoga?” The surprise in his voice made her smile.

  “Yes, yoga. It’s good for the joints, and helps to condition me for riding. You should try it.”

  “I prefer running five miles a day.”

  She pictured his toned and tanned body and her smile got a lot bigger. “Yeah, I can see that is working out just fine for you.”

  “So glad you noticed.” The husky quality in his voice soothed her.

  But when the conversation stalled, Rayne searched in vain for something to say, reviving her anxiety. “Well, I should go,” she mumbled.

  “No, don’t go,” Trent seductively begged through the phone speaker. “Talk to me, Rayne. Tell me about your job.”

  “Trent, I don’t understand why you want to—”

  “Just talk to me.”

  She took a moment thinking of something to tell him. “My job. Okay. I work as a lab technician for this group of physicians in Lewisville. I’ve been there for about a year and I really like it.”

  “That’s good.” Trent’s silky voice skipped about her kitchen. “Go on.”

  Rayne did go on. She took a seat on a wooden stool by her kitchen breakfast bar and began to tell Trent about her job and the people she worked with. Rayne explained what she did in her small lab, the kinds of tests she ran, and how she liked working with the staff there. She even told him about Lindsey.

  Rayne was still in her dirty jeans and boots, and Frank was lying patiently at the foot of her stool when she caught sight of the clock on her microwave oven.

  “Oh, my God. It’s after eight. I’ve been talking to you for over an hour.” She ran her hand over her flushed face. “Why didn’t you tell me to stop?”

  “I like listening to you. You open up to me over the phone, unlike when you’re alone with me. You always seem so nervous.”

  “I do not,” she argued.

  “Afraid it’s true, Rayne.”

  She heard a muffled rustling in the background. “What’s that?”

  “Paperwork. I’m still sitting at my desk.”

  She imagined him working in a high rise office building. “Where do you work?”

  His boisterous laugh rang out from her phone speaker. “No, I think I’ll save that for our discussion tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night?” she skeptically returned.

  “Yes, we should make this a nightly thing. I’ll call you, you can tell me about your day, and I’ll tell you about mine. So by the time we have dinner this weekend, you will know all about me, and hopefully won’t be so nervous.”

  “I don’t think that—”

  “I’m just trying to gentle you into me, Rayne.” He uttered a long sigh and then she heard the sound of more rustling papers. “I need to get back to my paperwork, and you need to get to your yoga,” he added.

  “Actually, I need to feed Frank.” She eyed the dog sleeping next to her.

  “Give my best to the beast, and I’ll talk to you again tomorrow night.”

  She was going to tell him not to call, but something stopped her. There was a part of her that wanted to speak to him again.

  “All right, Trent.”

  “No protests, no begging me not to call? Can it be that I’m making headway with you?”

  Rayne smiled and envisioned his lively gray eyes. “Don’t get your hopes up, Mr. Newbury.”

  “Too late.” He hung up before she could bid him good night.

  She eyed the iPhone in her hand, grinning at his childlike exuberance. Perhaps he was right; he was “making headway.” She had always been so reluctant to let new people in her life. And even when someone did manage to squeak by her rigid defenses, she was still wary about trusting their intentions.

  Developing friendships had never been easy for Rayne. Not long after settling with her mother in Dallas, she had made the fateful decision that hers would be a life of acquaintances, and no friends. Acquaintances were easier to forget and it was a lot less painful when someone suddenly disappeared, or worse…died.

  That was the real crux of it for her. Recalling the terrible day when her father and sister had been killed, Rayne had been home alone when the police had knocked on her door. She had been the one to break the news to her mother. After being told, her mother had curled into a ball on the living room floor, sobbing like a child. At seventeen, Rayne had become the adult, spending her time caring for a parent who was no longer emotionally capable of making any decisions.

  Shaking off her memories, she stood from her stool. Those days were long behind her, and even though every now and then the heartache still stung her eyes with tears, Rayne was convinced she was over it.

  “Maybe, this is a new chapter for me.” She rested her black iPhone on the countertop.

  The sound of a tail thumping on the floor made her glance down at Frank’s eager face.

  “Come on, monster. Let’s get something to eat.”

  ***

  The following evening, while whipping torrents of rain poured from the black skies above, Rayne ducked in her back door. After checking on Bob, she had returned home disappointed she was unable to take her horse out for a trail ride. Just as she was locking her back door, her cell phone began belting out its musical ringtone. Eagerly grabbing for the phone in her backpack, Rayne was anxious to hear his voice on the other end. All day long she had been looking forward to the call.

  “Hi, Trent.” She punched in her alarm code.

  “Are you home yet?”

  “Just walked in the door from the stables.” She looked out the window in her back door. “But it’s pouring down, so I couldn’t ride.”

  “Raining here, too.”

  “Where are you?” She headed down the short rear hall to her kitchen.

  His frustrated sigh poured through her phone speaker. “I’m sitting at a desk on the thirtieth floor of some nondescript office building in downtown Dallas. The rain is smacking against my window, and as I look out I can see flashes of lightning in the dark sky.”

  “Is that where you work?” She entered her kitchen and patted Frank’s head as he came loping up to her.

  “I’m doing a consulting job for an oil and gas firm I work for every now and then, Propel Oil and Gas. The CEO, Tyler Moore, is a good friend. He hires me to do QA for him.”

  “What does that entail?” She slung her backpack on the breakfast bar countertop and went to the refrigerator.

  “Safety protocols mostly. I assess whether or not industry safety standards are being maintained on gas and oil wells.”

  “Is that what you do? Safety inspections?” She took the orange juice carton out of the refrigerator.

  “I’m a safety engineer who specializes in the petroleum industry. I mostly do consulting work for big oil companies. Tell them what they are doing right and wrong, so they can keep the feds off their backs.”

  Rayne swallowed a few
quick mouthfuls of the orange juice. “Do you like what you do?”

  “Why do I hear slurping?” Trent’s voice rumbled through the speaker.

  “I was drinking orange juice. I always drink orange juice when I get home from the stables.”

  “Out of the carton or in a glass?”

  Rayne giggled, feeling flirty. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It tells me a little something about you.”

  She replaced the orange juice in the refrigerator. “What? That I’m a slob because I drink it out of the carton?”

  “No, that’s the way I drink it, too. See there? We have something in common.”

  “Hardly a reason to pick out china,” she ribbed, shutting the refrigerator door.

  “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about the glassware.”

  Rayne’s unexpected laughter surprised her. It was the first time she could remember laughing, really laughing with happiness in a long while. She stood by her kitchen sink, a little mystified that Trent had done that for her.

  “I like the sound of that,” Trent remarked. “You’ve got a great laugh. You should do it more often.”

  Rayne traced her fingers over her smooth, beige granite counter. “Haven’t had a lot of reasons to laugh lately.”

  “I promise that is going to change.”

  Rayne shook her head, not sure she wanted to get bogged down in his promises. “Tell me more about what you do.” She headed to her bedroom to change.

  Trent described the ins and outs of his job as she wiggled out of her jeans and slipped into her favorite sweat suit.

  “I hear grunting. What are you doing?”

  She tugged her sweatshirt over her head. “I was changing.”

  “Changing into what?”

  “Sweat suit.” She reached for her iPhone on her bed. “I like to get comfortable when I get home.”

  “What else do you like to do when you get home besides drink orange juice and put on a smelly sweat suit?”

  “It’s not smelly. I just washed it,” she defended.

  “I’ll let you know what I think the next time I come over.”

  Emboldened by the way he made her feel, she playfully posed, “What makes you think you are coming over again?”

  There was a lapse of silence, then Trent whispered, “Tell me what else you like to do when you come home.”

  Rayne smiled and began to tell him of her nightly routine. How she collected her mail from the floor of her entranceway where it fell from the slot in her door, what she fed Frank…. Trent was still listening to her as she popped a frozen dinner in the microwave.

  “That’s not healthy,” he insisted.

  “I don’t like to cook.”

  “Lucky for you, I love to cook.”

  He listened as she munched on her hearty chicken and potato dinner, asked her to describe the flavor, and then went into a long explanation about what kind of wine she should have with her meal. That conversation led to a lesson on how to choose the best wine at restaurants.

  They had talked of favorite foods, favorite movies and television shows, and had even touched on the best place to get ice cream.

  “Braum’s Ice Cream in Lewisville, hands down,” he had related. “No place like it.”

  “Best flavor?”

  “Mocha chocolate chip. I like ice cream with a kick. What’s yours?”

  “I’ve always been a straight up chocolate fan,” she had replied. “But that mocha flavor sounds intriguing.”

  By the time Rayne glanced up at her microwave clock, she could not believe she had been on the phone with the man for over two hours.

  “Trent, it’s almost nine o’clock. Don’t you need to get back to your safety audits?”

  “Probably,” he said, sounding downhearted. “But I prefer talking to you. I have all night to do my paperwork.”

  “Then I’ll be responsible for keeping you up all night, and I can’t have that. You’d better get back to work.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Rayne glimpsed Frank asleep beside her stool. “Let Frank out in the yard, watch some television, and go to bed.”

  “No yoga?”

  She smiled, glad he had remembered. “No, not tonight. Too tired.”

  “Then get to bed early, and I will call you tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to keep doing this, you know. You don’t have to call me every night.”

  “I like talking to you. Get some sleep.” Again, he hung up before she could get in a comment.

  As she put her black cell phone down next to her backpack, she realized she enjoyed talking to him, too. It had been so long since Rayne had just talked with anyone about all the small trivialities of life. Not since she had been a carefree student in high school back in New Orleans had she spent hours on the phone chatting about nothing in particular. In a way, that was how Trent made her feel…like an innocent girl, before all the pain of loss had beaten down her belief in hope. That warm, jubilant glow attributed to the unmarred magic of adolescence was returning, making Rayne feel completely alive for the first time in years.

  Leaning against the breakfast bar, she wiped her hands over her face, concentrating on the reality of her situation. She was a thirty-two-year-old divorcée, and the lure of romance was something better suited to the young and impressionable.

  “No!” She beat her fist on the beige granite countertop. “Don’t let him do this to you. If you let him in, he’ll hurt you. They always do.”

  Feeling her determination return, Rayne reasoned that all the phone calls in the world would never make her comfortable with the inquisitive man. Anyway, how could a man like the alluring Trent Newbury be interested in her?

  She went to the living room and flopped down on her comfy, white leather sofa. As her gaze drifted to the kitchen where he had pinned her against the counter, she mulled over that kiss. Closing her eyes, Rayne lingered over the memory of his lips, the feel of his firm body, and as she reveled in the image of him naked in her bed, Frank jumped onto the sofa and nestled his furry muzzle in her lap.

  Stroking the dog’s soft head, her eyes closed again and she slipped further into her fantasy of being with Trent. Rayne’s skin flushed, her breathing quickened, and her loins ached with lust. The urge to have him touch her, to run her hands along the curves of his wide chest and round, tight ass, made her heave with longing. Just when her racy daydream started getting a little too graphic, her eyes flew open.

  A new dilemma seized Rayne. She might not have wanted to hand her heart over to Trent, but she sure did want to give him her body, and that was a feeling Rayne had never had with any man. Maybe she had been too hasty in wanting to end it. Perhaps she should just give in to her desire for the handsome man and see what developed.

  Chapter 6

  All the next day at work, Rayne was distracted. She kept dropping vials of specimens in her lab, and asking people to repeat information on the phone. Obsessed with Trent’s impending phone call, she had found room for little else in her mind. Even Lindsey noticed the change in her when they shared a mid-morning cup of coffee in the break room.

  “You’ve got it bad.”

  Rayne shook off her preoccupation and turned to her friend. “What?”

  “You.” Lindsey lifted the coffee mug in her hand and grinned at Rayne over the rim. “You’ve been sitting there for five minutes staring off into space. I’ve seen you distracted before, but this takes the cake.” She took a sip from her coffee. “Is this about that horse guy?”

  Rayne kept her eyes on her mug of coffee, sitting untouched on the round table before her. “He’s been calling every evening when I get home. We talk a lot, about all sorts of things, but I’m still not sure about the man.”

  Lindsey’s eager blue eyes deepened with worry. “Why? He’s calling you all the time, that’s a good sign. If he only wanted sex, he would come over and try to sleep with you. Over the phone means he wants to get to know you.
Unless of course you have phone sex, then I guess you could say he was after you only for sex, but it’s not the same…I think.”

  “Phone sex?” Rayne’s tinkling laughter permeated the break room. “No, that hasn’t happened. We talk about silly things really. Movies, food, wine, you know, the casual stuff.”

  “Ever try phone sex with him?”

  “No.” Rayne shifted uneasily in her chair.

  “Ever want to?”

  “Eww! No.”

  Lindsey settled her coffee on the table, sat back in her chair, and folded her arms over the front of her pink teddy bear-clad scrub top. “Have you ever had phone sex with a man?”

  Rayne reached for her coffee. “Of course not.” She quickly sipped from her mug.

  Lindsey smirked, shaking her head. “Yeah, Foster never struck me as that type, but this guy…you should do it.”

  Rayne almost choked on her coffee. “What?”

  “See what he’s like on the phone. It will give you a good idea of what he will be like in bed.” Lindsey ran a finger through a strand of blonde hair that had fallen from her ponytail. “Me and Casey used to do it all the time when he was working offshore.”

  Rayne plopped her mug on the table. “Lindsey, I’m trying to get rid of the man, not have sex with him over the phone.”

  “Get rid of him? What on earth for? You’ve got a guy you’re crazy for who wants to be with you. Why would you want to push him away?”

  “I’m not crazy for him,” Rayne declared.

  “Do you think about what he would be like in bed?”

  Rayne shocked eyes dropped to the table.

  “Rayne, you have got to loosen up,” Lindsey giggled. “You only live once, and you’ve seen enough sorrow in life to know that you have to grab every chance you’re given for happiness.” She patted Rayne’s hand. “Besides, I’ve got a feeling about him.”

  “A feeling?” Rayne knew she needed more than Lindsey’s feelings to believe in Trent. “What kind of feeling?”

  Lindsey let go of her hand and clasped her white mug. “I can tell when two people are going to make it or just go up in flames. You and this guy are going to make it.”

  Rayne sat back in her chair, amazed at her friend’s confidence. “Ever think you could be wrong?”