By the time they moved onto the horse’s digestive process he was hooked, and when she asked him if he wanted to help her to feed Buckmaster at the end of a lesson he was so excited he fairly danced across the yard to the stable.
Soon feeding Bucky was the highlight of his visit and eventually Jodie used it to get him up onto the horse’s back. She started gently.
“You can take him back to his stable today,” she told him as he rubbed his fingers across Bucky’s velvety nose. For a moment he looked doubtful.
“You can do it because it’s almost the same as leading him around the arena and you’ve done that lots of times.”
By the following day that, too, was part of his routine, and by now completely absorbed in the program she had put together for him. Jodie knew it was time to challenge him further. A few days later she did it by swinging herself up onto Buckmaster’s back when the lesson finished.
“I’m going to ride Bucky back to his stable to feed him today Luke. You can see him again tomorrow.”
She didn’t look back as Buckmaster trotted out of the indoor school and across the yard, even though she could hear Luke complaining. Hardening her heart she decided to leave Rob to cope with him. It would do him good to have to think of a way to handle the change to Luke’s routine, and now, after weeks of working with him, she knew he would be able to do it. He’d stopped rolling his eyes and started to watch and listen to what she was saying weeks ago, and nowadays when he and Luke arrived for the lesson it was difficult to tell who was the most excited.
She sighed as she forked fresh hay into Buckmaster’s stall. “He’s only a kid himself Bucky; someone who is looking after Luke while he tries to discover what it is he really wants to do with his life. Why Marcus thought he was suitable I have no idea. Maybe it’s because not many people want to spend day after day shut up with a challenging eleven year old, so he was all that was available. He’s only doing it for the money anyway. He told me. He says when he’s earned enough he’s going travelling, so he’s not really interested in what makes Luke tick.”
Buckmaster gave her the long suffering look he always gave her when he wanted her to go away so he could eat his supper in peace. She chuckled as she slapped his rump. “It’s alright, I’m going. You better prepare yourself though because tomorrow’s the big day…I hope!”
* * *
When Luke arrived the following day it was clear he was angry with her. Rob shrugged when she raised a questioning eyebrow.
“He thinks you’re feeding him too much hay.”
She grinned at him. “Well if he thinks that then he’d better learn to ride Bucky to his stable hadn’t he…so he can feed him himself.”
Luke stamped his way across to the bin and grabbed some apples and carrots. Jodie waited until he’d laid them out in his usual orderly fashion before she said anything. Then, after making sure he was listening to her, she issued her challenge.
“How about it Luke? Can you sit on Bucky’s back just like I do?”
When he ignored her, she swung herself up into the saddle and rode Buckmaster around the arena several times. Then she stopped beside him and slid off. Immediately Luke walked across to the hay bale and selected an apple but before he could hold it out, Jodie intercepted him.
“Not yet Luke. Bucky can’t have a treat yet because he hasn’t worked hard enough. He needs someone to ride him around the arena one more time before he can eat that apple.”
After what seemed forever, Luke spoke to her. “You do it. You ride Bucky.”
She shook her head. “I’m too tired to ride him again. It’ll have to be someone else. I’ll ask Rob to do it for me.”
“NO!” Luke’s roar of protest would have startled any other horse, but Buckmaster just blew down his nose and waited.
“Well if you don’t want Rob to ride him, and I’m too tired, then you’re going to have to do it yourself Luke.”
Slowly he nodded. Then he walked across to the hay bale, moved the apples and carrots to one side and waited. Jodie gave an inward smile. So he had been taking everything in all those times when he’d just watched the other children have their lessons. He knew he had to stand on the hay bale to reach Bucky’s back. He knew he had to hold onto the saddle pommel and put his left foot into the stirrup before he could swing his right leg over.
She watched him do it with a certain amount of trepidation and she didn’t let go of him, even when he was sitting securely on Buckmaster’s back. One small mistake and he could fall off and break his leg or worse.
“Don’t let go of the saddle Luke, not until I’ve shortened the stirrups,” she told him. “You need to be able to feel them with your feet before you can tell Bucky what you want him to do.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rob step forward, his face tense with anxiety. “Don’t move,” she hissed. “Don’t do anything!”
He stopped mid-stride and watched while she secured the stirrups and handed the reins to Luke. “Don’t tug them,” she instructed. “Bucky knows where he’s going.”
She kept one hand on his leg and held tightly onto the leading rein with the other as she led them both around the training arena. Then she gave Bucky an apple. Luke watched her approvingly and then he did as she asked and kicked his feet against Buckmaster’s flanks. Immediately the horse started moving.
“Good boy Bucky,” Jodie whispered as she led him out of the arena and across the yard. Good boy!
Chapter Twenty-nine
“God Jodie, you look absolutely exhausted! Go and have a bath. Use the oils I gave you for Christmas. A couple of drops of lavender or patchouli will help you relax.”
Jodie gave a tired smile. “You listened then, when I used to add oils to your bath or put drops on your pillow to try to help you sleep?”
Izzie grinned at her. “I listened to everything you said, I just didn’t let you know it. I must have been such an irritating child.”
“No you weren’t…well not often anyway. Maybe two or three times a day!”
Her sister’s peal of laughter followed her up the stairs, as did her promise to bring up a hot drink a little later. Going into the tiny bathroom that just fitted into the roof space, Jodie turned on both taps and then swirled a few drops of oil into the water. Within moments she was enveloped in fragrant steam and as she stripped off her clothes she felt herself begin to relax.
Lowering herself into the water she lay back and closed her eyes. Immediately images from the past week paraded across her eyelids: Luke climbing up onto Buckmaster’s back; Luke letting her lead him around the arena; Luke laughing out loud the first time the big chestnut horse broke into a trot. With a groan she wondered what she was going to do about the growing bond between Bucky and the little boy.
From the outside it didn’t appear to be that unusual. Many of the children on the riding program developed a special relationship with the horses they rode, but she knew Luke and Buckmaster had something different. Everything they did together had such a calming effect on Luke that, increasingly, he behaved like any other eleven-year-old boy when he was with the big chestnut gelding. It didn’t matter whether he was sitting in the saddle, brushing Bucky’s mane, or forking fresh hay into his food trough...everything he did made him happy. He was back to chattering non-stop too, although now his interests were all horse related.
Rob had noticed the improvement as well and had said things were also much better at home, adding, as a jokey afterthought. “Only as long as he knows he can come back tomorrow though, so don’t ever take a day off will you Jodie?”
Sliding down under the water so her hair floated out around her in a billowing cloud, she wondered what she was going to do. The problem was she’d been too successful with Luke and she knew she’d done it by breaking every rule in the book. She’d given him lessons at the same time every day; she hadn’t involved any of the other instructors; she’d let him spend all his time alone with Bucky instead of encouraging him to join a class; in fact she’d do
ne everything she could to turn his riding lessons into a part of his daily routine. Had she done it because she wanted to help him or had she done it because she wanted to prove Marcus wrong, or had she done it for another reason entirely?
She surfaced in a swoosh of water and tipped shampoo into her hair, but all the time she was massaging her scalp and then sluicing away the soap with the shower head set to warm, a single thought kept going round and round in her head. Unless she could find a way to lessen Luke’s reliance on her and Bucky then, whatever her original motivation had been, all she would have achieved was another problem for Marcus to deal with.
With a sigh she climbed out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel. How could she have been so stupid and what was Marcus going to do when he realized Luke had merely found another obsession, and that it involved the one person he didn’t want to talk to any more?
It didn’t take her long to find out because her cell phone rang while she was drying her hair. She scanned the caller ID, even though she knew it could only be one person. Nobody else ever called her this late in the evening. For a moment she contemplated not answering it but then her conscience about Luke got the better of her and she picked up.
“Jodie?” The sound of his voice after so long sucked the air from her lungs. Shakily she lowered herself onto the bed and cleared her throat.
“Hello Marcus.”
“I need to speak to you about Luke and that horse of yours!”
“I know…I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to do. I’ll find a way to sort it out, I promise…I…”
“Whatever are you talking about?” There was puzzlement in his voice as he interrupted her but she was too full of guilt to notice it.
“I…about Luke and Bucky…about making him to reliant on a daily routine at the riding school. I should have known better…I do know better…I don’t know why I did it…”
There was a long pause and then he began to laugh. “So this is another of your failures is it? Another Jodie Eriksson fiasco where you’ve let everyone down.”
Confused by his reaction she didn’t answer. Instead she waited to hear what he would say next, wondering, as she did so, how she was going to be able to explain her actions. The silence between them went on for so long that for a moment she thought he’d cut the call. Then he spoke again only this time he wasn’t laughing and there was a catch in his voice.
“I’m not calling to complain Jodie. I’m calling to thank you. I know Luke will always have problems so I was never expecting a cure but then I wasn’t expecting a miracle either…and yet a miracle is what you’ve given me. Thanks to you and Bucky I now have a son who wants to tell me things. Each time he visits the stables he comes home and searches me out so we can talk about it. He tells me about Bucky and what they’ve done together. He tells me about the food he’s given him. He tells me about you!”
“What will it take to persuade you that everything you’ve ever done in your life is close to a miracle Jodie? I’ve never met anyone who comes close to you for sheer bloody-mindedness. I don’t think you know what the words ‘giving up’ mean, but I’m glad you’re that way because otherwise you might have given up on Luke, like I did. What will it take to persuade you to forgive me for being such an obstinate idiot? What will it take to persuade you to trust me enough to marry me?”
The flush that had started in her cheeks suffused her whole body as his voice washed over her. In it she could hear a mix of love and doubt and fear as well as the memory of the bitter words they had spoken to one another the last time they met. She took a deep breath knowing there was only one way she could erase them.
“Maybe a lifetime together,” she said.
* * *
In the silence that followed she heard Izzie’s footsteps on the stairs and turned towards the door; only when it opened it wasn’t Izzie after all.
“Are you sure about that?” Marcus carried on speaking into his phone even though his eyes were locked on hers.
When she nodded he frowned. “Sorry, I can’t hear you. The connection seems to be breaking up.”
“I…I said…yes,” Jodie’s answer was little more than a tremulous whisper as the sight of Marcus standing in the doorway threatened to overwhelm her, but it was enough. In a moment he had cut the call, tossed his cell phone onto the bed and she was in his arms.
* * *
“I can’t promise I’ll never say or do stupid things again. I can’t promise I’ll never lose my temper; and sometimes, when I’m composing, you won’t get a word out of me for days; but you’ll always be able to trust me Jodie. I’m not your father, or your stepfather, or any of the rest of your mother’s lovers…I won’t leave you…I won’t cheat on you…and I’ll do my very best to stay alive as well! All I’m ever going to do is love you.” Marcus drew back slightly and tilted her face towards him.
She was serious as she looked up at him. “I know...I was just too frightened to accept it before. I’ve had to fight my own battles for so long that giving up some of my independence as well as the security of my job and the cottage seemed like such a big deal.”
“So what changed your mind?”
Her sigh was heartfelt as she answered him. “I missed you.”
He tightened his arms around her again. “Even after I was such an idiot?”
“Especially after you were such an idiot because it was only then I got to see the real Marcus Lewis instead of Marcus Lewis the famous musician. Until then I sometimes felt I was grasping at shadows. I would believe everything you told me for a while but then I’d lose faith again. I couldn’t understand why you wanted someone like me in your life when you could take your pick of any one of a dozen beautiful women every time you went to California, or to anywhere else for that matter.”
“You know that for sure do you?”
She buried her face in his sweater so her voice was muffled as she answered him. “It’s difficult not to. I saw how everyone reacted when they heard you were moving here…and then there’s Izzie. She told me almost everything there is to know about your career whether I wanted to hear it or not, especially about the days when you were touring!”
“Let me guess…those would be the days when, according to the Press, all the girls in the audience threw their underwear at me, and I took a different groupie to bed every night!”
The top of her head brushed his chin as she nodded but he could hear the laughter beginning to bubble in her voice when she answered him. “That’s right…except she didn’t mention the groupie thing.”
He chuckled. “Sensible girl! By the way she wants to know if you’re passing on the hot drink?”
With an effort Jodie twisted free of his arms and as she did so, the towel she’d wrapped around herself finally unraveled and slithered slowly to the floor.
“What do you think?” she said
Epilogue
“I told you she was good,” Marcus handed his companion a can of beer and then leaned on the railing fencing off the outdoor training arena and watched Jodie putting one of her pupils through his paces.
The man standing beside him nodded, his eyes fixed on the activity in front of him. “And yet you say she’s not interested in publicity, let alone featuring in a documentary…or better still, a film. All the stuff she does here would make a terrific film if we sweetened it up a bit, threw in a love interest…you know the sort of thing.”
“Yes, I do! And that’s why she won’t be interested. These kids can’t be cured even though this sort of therapy does seem to help them in some indefinable way, so a film that tries to romanticize it would do more damage than good.”
“Shame! A film like that! Just think of the box office! Your music, her story…children, animals; it couldn’t fail.”
“Maybe, but it’s something you’re never going to know…now have you seen enough? Are you ready to do what you actually came for, and talk about Izzie’s next release?”
Marcus’ agent grinned as he finished his beer and cru
shed the can. “Okay I know when I’m beaten! Is she in the studio already?”
‘No. See the girl in the bright pink beanie leading the child on the small pony…that’s Izzie. She says she’s just keeping her hand in but, truth be told, I think she misses the countryside when she’s away on tour. The first thing she does whenever she comes home is to change into her jodhpurs and go riding with Luke.”
The older man shook his head. “And you won’t even let me take a promotional shot of that will you, despite the fact it would help sell thousands more of her songs? Bella Blue on a horse, riding bareback, with those long, long legs dangling. Just think how fantastic it would look. Come on Marcus, you know it would be an absolute winner.”
“Not a chance! And don’t try to get there through Izzie either because she isn’t Bella Blue when she’s here, she’s just Izzie, and she values every minute of her privacy. She’s very protective of Luke too, and Jodie, and she’d never countenance anything that would push them into the limelight.”
Okay! Okay! I know when I’m beaten, even though I think you should be shouting from the rooftops about the work that’s going on here. Think of all the accolades you’d get if the public knew how much money you pour into this therapy centre.”
“For what…just so I can feel good about myself. You know me better than that. If I sold out on Jodie and her principals, and on Luke, then all I’d have left would be a sour taste in my mouth and a very angry wife.”
“I guess, but she’s one lucky lady to have you at her back.”
Marcus shook his head. “You don’t know the half of it. I’m the lucky one here, and I aim to keep it that way.”
Mending Jodie's Heart (When Paths Meet Book 1) Page 19
