Heartbreaker

by Karen Robards

  The answer was, she just did.

  “You’re supposed to post, Mother,” Rory offered, assessing Lynn’s horsemanship, or lack of it, with a critical glance.

  “Post,” Lynn echoed, hanging on to her smile as her backside whacked the saddle.

  “You know, like this.” Rory demonstrated, rising and falling in her stirrups in time with her pony’s movements. “You grip with your knees. Like Mrs. Greer. And Mrs. Stapleton.”

  Pat and Debbie were riding together about three horses ahead. The women seemed to have no trouble at all carrying on a conversation while avoiding being jounced to death. In fact, they looked as if they were enjoying themselves.

  Pat Greer was too perfect to be believed. She could even ride a horse without suffering. But her rear was a little large—okay, a lot large. Lynn squeezed what comfort she could from that.

  Maybe that was what she needed, Lynn thought—more padding on her backside to make the never-ending barrage of blows endurable.

  Or horseback-riding lessons. For which it was too late now.

  One of the trip requirements for the girls had been riding lessons. The adults had just been asked if they knew how to ride.

  Lynn remembered checking the yes box on the form Rory had brought home. At the time she had thought it was just a little white lie that no one would ever uncover. After all, how hard could riding a horse be?

  In the case of this pony, and this saddle, very hard.

  Ouch!

  “Don’t worry, I’m getting the hang of it,” she lied to Rory with as much jauntiness as she could muster, while every tooth in her head was being jolted loose. Doing her best to grip the accursed beast’s hairy sides with her knees—the pain that went shooting up the insides of her thighs when she squeezed was unbelievable—Lynn managed to rise out of the saddle and lower herself again in rough approximation of the other riders’ smooth styles. She did it twice, three times.

  “That’s better. How can you not know how to ride? I thought everybody did.” Rory’s impatient superiority annoyed Lynn.

  “Not everybody. Only people who are fortunate enough to have someone pay for their lessons,” Lynn answered tartly. This home truth made Rory scowl.

  “And that’s why you work so hard, and that’s why you’re gone so much, and that’s why you never have time for me, so you can pay for things like my lessons, right?” Rory’s reply dripped sarcasm.

  “Rory—” Lynn was already regretting her words.

  “I hate you!” Rory cast her a malicious look and kicked her mount on up the line.

  Left alone again, Lynn sighed. Everything she said to Rory nowadays seemed to provoke a fight.

  Of course, Rory didn’t really hate her. Lynn knew that.

  But, oh, how that I hate you hurt!

  This trip wasn’t working, Lynn decided wearily. She had hoped it would draw them together, but if anything it was just pushing them further apart. She should have taken her station manager’s advice and spent her vacation on a cruise ship in the Caribbean being pampered.

  Without her daughter.

  But the only reason Lynn had even taken a vacation was to spend time with Rory. With all the changes going on in the newsroom, this had not been a good time to leave.

  A thirty-five-year-old woman anchor was too easily replaced.

  Smack!

  She had lost the rhythm again. Remembering the knifelike pain in her thighs when she gripped with her knees, Lynn couldn’t summon up the strength of will to give posting another shot.

  Bounce, thud. Bounce, thud.

  Oh, God.

  “Heigh-ho, Silver!”

  Though Lynn wouldn’t have believed it possible, bad suddenly got worse. Riding up beside her—grinning—came Jess Feldman.

  “Bug off!” Lynn said through clenched teeth.

  “Now, now.” He rode as if he were born doing it, on a mount that was taller and sleeker than her own shaggy steed. A horse, in fact, not a chubby pony. His tan cowboy hat and suede vest over a flannel shirt were picture-perfect. His blue eyes twinkled. His tawny hair blew in the wind. He could have posed for one of those God’s country ads that were always being used to sell Jeeps and jeans. Like his lying brochure he was all glossy superlatives—on the surface. But on the subject of men, at least she knew enough to read between the lines.

  “That’s not very friendly,” he said.

  “I don’t feel very friendly.” And that was an understatement if she had ever uttered one.

  “You ever ridden a horse before?”

  “Frequently. Can’t you tell?”

  “We don’t generally encourage nonriders to come on one of these trips. I think we make that pretty clear in our literature.”

  “So I lied on the form. So shoot me. Please.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Worse.” The word emerged sounding embarrassingly like a groan.

  He laughed. Lynn shot him a look that should have blasted him backward out of his saddle. Instead of falling, he cupped a hand around his mouth.

  “Yo, Owen!” he bellowed to his brother, who was near the middle of the column talking to Lucy Johnson. Lynn suddenly remembered that Mrs. Johnson was the teacher who had recommended this particular experience as something that would be “good for the girls.” The woman had to be a couple of cards short of a deck—or maybe, Lynn speculated with pain-filled venom, Adventure, Inc. paid her some sort of kickback for all the poor fools she helped rope in.

  “Owen!”

  Owen glanced around. Like Jess, he wore a wide-brimmed hat, vest, jeans, and boots, and rode a horse, not a pony. He looked one hundred percent at home on the range—but of course, he was a faux cowboy too. Lynn wasn’t about to forget that.

  “Speed it up!” Jess yelled.

  “What?”

  Jess repeated himself. Lynn just managed to swallow an appalled whimper and fixed Jess with a look of burning hatred. The fiend, to deliberately torture her even more by increasing the hell-born beast’s speed, when he knew she was hurting already!

  Owen’s horse pulled away from the others, galloping to the head of the group. Without any further warning the animals all increased their pace, flying across the meadow at what seemed like breakneck speed. Hero bolted along with the rest. Lynn gasped and grabbed the pommel. It was all she could do not to close her eyes.

  Mountains and sky and earth formed a weirdly beautiful kaleidoscope around her as she clung to the saddle, convinced that she would be flung from her mount and thus meet her Maker at any moment.

  But it didn’t happen.

  And there was no bounce. No thud.

  The pace was scary, but the ride was—sort of—smooth.

  “Better?” Jess yelled, keeping pace alongside her.

  Lynn glanced at him, found that the earth and sky and mountains were settling down again just where they should be, and nodded grudgingly.

  “It’s called a canter. Gentle as rocking in your own rocking chair.”

  He grinned, saluted, and left her, moving along the column until he caught up with Owen. After a few seconds of conversation with his brother, Jess dropped back to ride beside Debbie Stapleton.

  Of course, schmoozing with the customers was part of the job. Lynn wondered if he was offering to rub liniment on Debbie. If he did, the tall, athletic mother of three would probably deck him. Lynn smiled at the thought.

  Her smile vanished as Rory and Jenny rode up behind Jess. Watching Jess fall in beside her daughter made Lynn almost forget about the pain that, whether she was bouncing or not, seemed to have become a permanent part of her anatomy.

  Almost.

  By the time they stopped for the noonday meal, Lynn could barely slide out of the saddle. When her feet touched the ground her knees threatened to crumple. The hot throbbing in her thighs and rump was excruciating.

  All around her, her fellow riders dismounted with apparent ease, laughing and chattering about such mundane matters as the weather and what they would be having for
lunch. Nobody collapsed. Nobody complained. Nobody even groaned.

  It was unbelievable.

  To the remarks that came her way Lynn managed to reply with smiles and nods. If everyone else could hold up under this hellish torment, then by God so could she.

  She hoped. No, she prayed.

  “Need some help?”

  Jess Feldman came up behind her as she clung to the edges of the saddle with both hands and rested her forehead for a moment against the cool leather. Lynn saw his hand first, long-fingered and brown, when he reached past her for the strap that held the saddle on the horse—the girth, she remembered. The riders were expected to unsaddle their mounts during the two-hour lunch break, tether them, and let them graze. Most of the others had done so and gone to eat. The way she felt, Lynn wasn’t sure she could lift a cup of coffee, much less a heavy saddle. But she was not going to wimp out—and she was not going to accept favors from Jess Feldman either.

  “I can do it,” she said ungraciously, glancing at him over her shoulder. His hand dropped, and he stepped back, waiting. Lynn was forced to make good on her words. Gritting her teeth, she straightened and went at it. It took several minutes to work the knot in the leather strap loose, but she did it. With what felt like the last of her strength she grabbed the saddle with both hands and half pulled, half lifted it from Hero’s back.

  It was heavy, heavier even than she remembered from that morning or the day before. But Lynn managed to hang on and lower it to the ground—just.

  “Good job.” Jess had his hat pushed back on his head, his arms crossed over his chest, and a lurking smile in his eyes when she turned, task complete, to face him. “Don’t forget the bridle.”

  “Don’t you have something else to do?” Lynn said to him with loathing before turning back to her steed. Hero was already munching grass, head down. The reins rested loosely halfway down his neck, with the middle third of the leather straps trailing the ground. Lynn realized that she had forgotten to secure the animal before unsaddling him.

  Good thing he was more interested in filling his belly than running off.

  “You need to tie him up before you turn him loose. Or he just might not be here when we’re ready to leave.”

  I couldn’t get so lucky, Lynn thought. Then she reached down—an action that required a whole range of painful movements on her part—grabbed the reins, and yanked upward.

  Hero kept on eating grass, shaking her efforts off with more indifference than he would have shown a buzzing fly.

  Lynn swallowed the not-very-nice word that sprang to her lips and jerked on the reins again, hard.

  This time Hero’s head came up—for a second. Then he lowered it to the grass again, ignoring all Lynn’s subsequent tugging as he grazed.

  “Tech!” Jess walked around her with a shake of his head, picked up the tether line that was attached to a long rope stretched between two stakes to which all the horses were secured, and fastened it to the metal loop on Hero’s halter. Then he pulled the bridle over the pony’s head and turned to lay it across the saddle, which rested on the grass.

  “I could have managed,” Lynn said as he straightened.

  “I didn’t want you to miss lunch.” The barb was accompanied by that annoying lurking smile.

  “Mother, do you need help—Oh, hi, Jess.” Rory came around Hero’s rump and stopped short in simulated surprise, barely glancing at her mother before focusing all her attention on her target. Jenny and Melody were right behind Rory. Rory’s whole demeanor made it clear that the detour had been carefully planned. The girls were chasing Jess, and pretending to offer help to Rory’s mother was simply the means to an end.

  Lynn decided then and there that she was going to put her foot down where her daughter and Jess Feldman were concerned, and let the chips fall where they may.

  “We were wondering …” Jenny began as the trio advanced on Jess, leaving Lynn alone and forgotten a few paces behind.

  “… if you could give us another casting lesson. Please,” Rory finished with a beguiling smile.

  Jess looked at the girls, then glanced over their heads at Lynn. With a frown and a shake of her head, she nixed that idea.

  He grinned and refocused on the girls.

  “Sure,” he promised, chucking Rory under the chin in an exaggeratedly avuncular fashion that set Lynn’s teeth on edge. “We’ll be making camp near Lake Fork River tonight, and that’s where you’ll find some of the best trout in these mountains. If we get lucky we’ll be having fresh trout for supper. If we don’t get lucky it’s leftover barbecue and refried baked beans.”

  “Euuw!” the girls said in unison.

  Jess’s grin was wicked as he glanced at Lynn again.

  7

  AFTER LUNCH IT STARTED to rain. Not just a gentle shower, but a deluge. An icy deluge. Mounted on Hero’s back again, Lynn resigned herself to utter misery. She was wet, cold, saddle sore, grumpy—and to top it off she felt as if she might be coming down with a cold. Her throat tickled, her nose had started to run, and every five minutes or so she gave vent to a mighty sneeze.

  Trying to make use of a tissue under such conditions was a waste of time. By the time she extracted one from the wad in her jeans pocket and brought it to her nose, the rain had soaked it through.

  Finally she gave it up and—yuck!—resorted to swiping at her nose with her sleeve.

  Not that that was much help either.

  Bounce, thud. Slog, splash. Shiver, quake.

  Would the day never end? Would the vacation never end?

  Vacation, hah! Lynn thought. It wasn’t a vacation, it was an endurance contest!

  At last they took a break, crowding beneath a stone overhang around a small fire Owen lit. Snacks carried in saddlebags were eaten, instant coffee and hot chocolate were drunk. The outfitters, impervious to the rain in what looked like army-issue ponchos and cowboy hats, saw to the horses. The girls chattered animatedly among themselves, barely paying attention as Mrs. Johnson pointed out what she said might be Anasazi drawings on the layered rock. Pat Greer passed out packets of trail mix. Debbie Stapleton and Irene Holtman stood near the edge of the overhang, talking as they peered out into the silvery curtain of rain.

  Resting wearily against the stone wall, Lynn savored the cessation of movement and enjoyed being alone. She pulled out a semidry tissue and blew her nose. She rolled her head and shoulders to stretch the cramped muscles of her neck. She eased off her boots and wiggled her pinched toes in their damp socks. Changing her socks—as well as the rest of her soggy clothes—would have been smart, but her gear was being transported along with everything else by four-wheel drive to the site of the evening stop. Besides, anything she put on would just get wet again anyway.

  Her waterproof poncho (suggested gear in the to-bring list) was bright yellow, very sporty, very cute, manufactured by a trendy designer. Unfortunately, it ended at her thighs, leaving her legs and feet at the mercy of the elements, which were not very merciful. The poncho’s loose cuffs allowed rain to soak the wrists of her white turtleneck. Dampness had wicked through the thin cotton until it didn’t feel like there was an inch of her left dry above the waist. Hero’s saddle had turned into one big puddle beneath her by the time they stopped, so her butt was soaked too, clear through to her underwear. Only the top of her head, which had been protected by both the hood of her poncho and her cowboy hat, felt dry.

  “Oh, look, a rainbow!”

  Lynn glanced up from her disgusted contemplation of her sorry condition to find that the downpour had at last slackened to a fine drizzle. The sun peeped out from behind the thick bank of gray clouds that had dogged them all afternoon—and an enormous, sparkling rainbow arched from somewhere on the mountaintop above to the horizon.

  The sight was breathtaking, and it improved Lynn’s mood instantly. Translucent bands of gold, pink, lavender, and orange melted into each other, their beauty rendered more spectacular by the knowledge that it was ephemeral.

  We promise you
sights you’ll never forget.

  For once the brochure was right on target. Standing, Lynn tugged on her boots, stomped once, twice to get her heels in place, then followed the group out to get a better view.

  She emerged into a cleared area strewn with boulders. The overhang the group had sheltered under was an outcropping of a stony cliff that rose about thirty feet straight up on the north side of the clearing. A rocky, sparsely treed slope curled around the cliff and out of sight; that was the terrain over which they would ride after the break. The lush blue-green of the pine forest was below them. To the west the mountain fell away. It was there, over a breathtaking panorama of snowcapped peaks that stretched like an ocean of vertical rock to the horizon, that the rainbow shimmered, beckoning.

  Lynn’s gaze skimmed the ooh-ing and ah-ing girls as she searched for Rory. She found her, as she would have expected, standing with Jenny at the forefront of the group.

  Rory’s hot-pink poncho, bought to complement the paler pink of her had-to-have cowboy hat, made her impossible to miss even amid the sea of colorful rain gear covering the other girls.

  Maybe, Lynn thought, what was happening between the two of them was just a product of “the teen thing.” Maybe she was making too much of what were basically just hormone-influenced teenage moods.

  Sidling up beside Rory, Lynn glanced at her daughter’s fine-featured profile. The look of wonder on Rory’s face as she admired the rainbow was unmistakable. Suddenly Lynn was fiercely glad to be standing right where she was.

  This was a sight they would never forget—and a memory they would always share. Even the fine cold mist that hung on in the aftermath of the rain did not detract from the magic. Some four thousand feet above the rest of the world, dwarfed by the vastness of the wilderness surrounding them, Lynn felt that she and Rory and the others were being given a private viewing of the symbol of the oldest promise of all time.

  “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Lynn put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The Day-Glo vinyl felt slick and wet to her touch.