“I don’t care for the cooler weather,” Alexander said. “Or the hot,” he added, and we laughed together.
“We’d be happiest in the Caribbean, you know. Always a breeze, never hot and never cold.”
“Do you want to go and live in the islands, and trade your ponies for boats?”
I looked at Luna, a dark figure in a darker paddock. “Of course I don’t.”
There was a flurry of hoof-beats behind us, and I turned to watch Personal Best, his white face ghostly in the gloom, cantering around his paddock, head and tail high, seemingly just for the fun of it. He was fully recovered from his kidney infection, ready to start training again. Training for what? I wasn’t sure, and Alexander refused to make the decision. Personal Best was my horse, he’d told me. It was up to me to decide what the horse did next. And the same for Virtue And Vice, Shearwater, Idle Hour, Bonnie Chance, Elegantly Wasted, and Luna Park.
The best horses that we had in the barn.
“I’d rather not train alone,” I said then. “I told you that before, over the summer.”
“They’re your horses now,” he said lightly, rubbing my shoulder reassuringly. “You’ve done a lovely job with them. Keep going, Alex. I won’t stand in your way. I can manage the breeding business, you know. There’s enough to do here.”
I shook my head and turned to face him. “Not alone,” I said softly. “There’s no point in doing this alone. This whole summer — this was a mistake.”
“Come on, now, we both did what we had to do. . .” But his voice was less sure.
“Listen,” I started earnestly, and stopped.
He waited.
“This is sappy,” I warned.
“Try me.”
I swallowed. “Where you go, I go,” I whispered. “That’s all.”
“Where you go, I go,” he repeated. He dipped his head and kissed me.
“Promise,” I said.
“I promise.”
The whip-poor-wills lamented in the blackjacks and the lightning flickered on and the horses grazed and the mosquitoes whined, and we walked arm in arm back up the drive, the golf cart left forgotten by the training barn, to the house on the hill.
About the Author
Natalie Keller Reinert has always had the horse bug. From short stirrup classes on a gray pony named Silver to eventing on a retired racehorse named Amarillo, from teaching dressage to galloping Thoroughbreds, it’s always been about the horses. In 2011, following the success of Retired Racehorse Blog, and several equestrian short stories, Reinert released her first novel, The Head and Not The Heart, which quickly became a category best-seller at Amazon. Other People’s Horses is her second novel.
Natalie Keller Reinert currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family, where she continues to work on equestrian-themed novels. Find out more at nataliekreinert.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter: @nataliegallops.
Other titles:
THE HEAD AND NOT THE HEART (Alex & Alexander #1)
Amazon — Barnes & Noble
HORSE-FAMOUS: STORIES
Amazon
Other People's Horses (Alex and Alexander Book 2) Page 26
