The Riding Master (10 page)

“But you don’t feel that way about me anymore, do you?”

She hesitated before she answered. “No, not after…what we just did.”

“That’s good, because I would never have let you just give up on me like that. I can be pretty determined, Rayne.”

She blew out a long breath, stretching out on the bed. “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“Next time you feel the urge to run, talk to me. I want you to come to me whenever you’re nervous or scared. All right?”

“Sure, Trent.”

“Promise me, Rayne.” 

She nodded her head. “I promise.”

“Good girl.” 

“I can’t wait to see what we do tomorrow night.” She giggled and wiped her hand over her face. “Might be hard to top this.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to be tied up in meetings for the next two nights. I have a dinner party to attend tomorrow night at Tyler Moore’s house in Dallas. He’s the CEO who hired me for this job, and he wants to introduce me to a few of his friends in the oil business.”

“A dinner party at an oil tycoon’s fancy mansion? Poor you.” An image of him rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful fueled Rayne’s doubts about why he was pursuing her.

“It will be all about business,” Trent’s low voice broke into her thoughts. “Then I have the wrap-up meeting Friday night with Tyler’s department heads to discuss my findings. So we won’t have a chance to speak again until Saturday at the stables.”

A trickle of disappointment tightened her throat. “I understand. You have a job to do,” she said, sounding upbeat.

“I’ll be thinking of you the entire time, trust me.”

“Trust you?” She took a breath, leaving him hanging, and then added, “I’m not there yet, Trent.”

“But you will be, Rayne. One day you will trust me.”

“We’ll see.” She sat up in the bed. “But in the meantime, you should get back to work, and I need to feed Frank.”

“How is fluff face?”

Rayne spotted Frank waiting at her bedroom door. “Looking hungry?”

“Better see to him while I get back to my reports. With the way I’m going, I’ll be pulling another all nighter to get everything finished in time for my meetings.”

“Don’t work too hard,” she offered, feeling a little sad he had to go.

“Not to worry. I have thoughts of you and this weekend to keep me going.”

Rayne’s insides ignited with his words. “Do you want to hear something funny?”

“Absolutely,” he cooed.

“I think I’m nervous about seeing you again.”

“Don’t be nervous, Rayne. Tonight was only a prelude of what is to come. Pleasant dreams.” Then Trent hung up, leaving a mystified Rayne staring at her cell phone and wondering how she had let things progress so far.

“I must be crazy.” She tossed her iPhone to the bed.

Jumping up, she went to her favorite sweat suit laid out on a flower print high back chair by her bedroom door. After slipping on the gray sweat pants and sweater top, she clapped her hands at Frank.

“Come on, buddy. Let’s eat.”

With a happy Frank at her side, she made her way down the short beige hallway to her living room. As she crossed the plush burgundy carpet to her kitchen, the reality of what she had done with Trent hit her and the heat rose in her cheeks.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look him in the face again.” She spotted Frank dancing beside her, anxious for his dinner. “Maybe if you had chewed his face off that first night he came here, I wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Frank let out a loud “woof.”

She nodded her head. “Yeah, I know. I like him, too.”

Chapter 7

Existing. That was how Rayne saw her life evolving over the next two days. It was if she were going through withdrawal by knowing she was not going to hear from Trent. She was anxious, jumped every time a cell phone rang, and found her mind continuously drifting back to their night of intimacy over the phone.

What struck her as odd was that she had grown comforted by his phone calls. When she returned home that Thursday night from a long afternoon with Bob, Rayne had been sad knowing that she would not hear from him. She had occupied her time by paying bills and doing yoga, but as her bedtime hour came and went, she was unable to sleep.

Visions of Trent’s dinner party slowly turned from the business dinner he had professed to an orgy with prostitutes and horny businessmen running amuck. Rayne knew her overzealous imagination was getting the better of her, but she questioned if there was more to Trent Newbury than the simple life he described. After all, what did she really know about the man?

By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, her casual second-guessing about Trent’s lurid life away from the stables had morphed into something akin to a porn movie. As she envisioned him with a boatload of girlfriends, having affairs with wealthy, married women, and living a lifestyle even a gigolo would envy, she would talk herself out of seeing him again.

“He could be toying with me,” she told Frank that evening as she sat at her breakfast bar and picked at her frozen dinner of rice pilaf with chicken tenders marinated in a white wine sauce. “Maybe I’m just a distraction until something better comes along.”

Frank tipped his ears forward, but seemed more interested in her microwave dinner than what she was saying.

“I knew I should never have listened to Lindsey. That’s what you get for letting a girlfriend talk you into—”

Her cell phone ringtone reverberated inside her backpack on the counter next to her. She bolted from her stool and grabbed at her backpack. When she spied the number on her phone, her heart sputtered. With a slight shake of her head, Rayne flipped her thumb across the iPhone screen and took the call.

“Hello, Estelle.”

“You would think you’d be over that adolescent phase you’ve been in for twenty years and start calling me Mom,” a raspy voice drenched in a Texas twang came over the speaker of her phone.

“How many scotches have you had tonight, ‘Mom’?” Rayne returned to her stool and eyed her half-eaten dinner.

“Why didn’t you come and see me today?”

Rayne jabbed at her rice pilaf with her fork. “What makes you think I was coming to see you today?”

“It’s Saturday. You always come to visit on Saturday.”

“It’s Friday, Estelle, not Saturday. And I stopped coming to visit on Saturday’s when I started teaching my riding classes last year, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” A crackling sound came over the speaker. “Well, why don’t you come and see me tomorrow after your class?”

Rayne listened as the crackling sound continued. “What is that noise?”

“It’s a candy wrapper.”

“Is that what you’re having for dinner, Mother, candy?”

“I’m not hungry,” Estelle huffed, sounding like a ten-year-old.

Rayne rolled her eyes at the prospect of listening to another one of her mother’s childish tantrums. “What did you eat today?”

“Do you care? I could starve to death in this big old house and no one would find me,” Estelle whined.

“Don’t start, Mother. I’ve told you to get rid of that monstrosity.”

“It’s home, Raynie,” Estelle insisted, her voice wavering with emotion. “I can’t part with it.”

Disgusted, Rayne dropped her fork on her plastic plate. “Look, I’m busy. Why are you calling me?”

“What do you mean, ‘why am I calling’?” Estelle barked. “I want to see you.” More wrapper noises continued in the background.

“We both know that’s not true,” Rayne objected, raising her voice. “What do you want?”

“What makes you think I want something?”

“Mother, please.”

A hush over the line ate away at Rayne’s patience.

“Well,” Estelle finally began. “You know how I hate to ask, but I got another letter from the city today, demanding the overdue taxes. If I could just send them a little something to get them off my back for a while, I’m sure I can get the money later.”

Rayne mouthed a silent scream while squeezing her phone. “I don’t have anything to send you. I’ve told you before that since the divorce things are tight.”

“Oh, I see,” Estelle shouted. “You can spend money on that horse of yours, but not on your mother?” She feigned a whimper.

Rayne knew the sound was just a tactic to get sympathy. Estelle had been using the same manipulations for years, but Rayne was now immune.

“You know Foster pays for Bob. He pays all the feed bills, the vet bills, and his boarding fees. It was part of the settlement agreement in the divorce. I declined alimony in exchange for his keeping up with payments so I could hold on to Bob.”

“You should sell that nag, and use the money to help me. I need help, Raynie. If your father was still—”

“Dad and Jaime have been dead for fifteen years, so stop using them as an excuse for everything.” Rayne pushed her plate away.

“You don’t need to remind me that they’re gone. I think about it every day. I think about my good daughter who died, leaving me with you. Jaime was always better than you. Your father adored her, and he only let you take those stupid riding lessons because Jaime pleaded with him.”

Rayne ran her hand over her forehead. “Does it make you feel better telling me that story over and over again?”

“You need to know the truth.” Her mother’s voice was as cold as her words.

“Your truth, Mother. You’ve spent every day since Dad and Jaime died blaming me. But Dad wouldn’t have been picking Jaime up from school if you hadn’t forgotten her in the first place. You always forgot about us.”

“I never forgot,” Estelle’s voice howled over the phone speaker. “I was just busy maintaining the house for all of you. You have no idea how hard it was for me.”

“Hard?” Rayne snorted with contempt. “You had a maid, a gardener, and a cook to take care of everything. Dad was the one who worked sixty hours a week at his law practice.”

“I could have worked, but your father wanted me to stay home. You know how much he liked being the man of the house. He needed to take care of me, so I let him.”

“And after Dad died, you had Grandpa John and Grandma Rose to take care of you. They paid for you to go to therapy, sent you to all those fancy rehab programs, and even left you that expensive house when they died. Never once did you work or help pay for anything after we left New Orleans. So don’t tell me how hard your life has been, okay?” Rayne fought the urge to throw her cell phone across the kitchen. Every time her mother called she got sucked into the same argument.  

“You married Mr. Moneybags, and never once…once…did you offer to have me come over, or stay in that fancy house of yours. You never paid for any—”

“Foster paid for everything you ever wanted, so don’t even go there, Mother.” Rayne’s rage was reaching a boiling point. “And you know why he never wanted you living with us. He could never abide your drinking.”

“I drink because it helps me cope with—”

A musical tone from her phone cut in, alerting her to a text.

Thinking of you. Until tomorrow night….

Rayne’s heart sped up when she read the text from Trent. All the insane fantasies she had been having about his other life disappeared as she stared at the brief message.

“Are you listening to me, Rayne Elena Masterson?” her mother’s voice squawked.

She scowled at her cell phone. “I have to go, Mother.”

“Where do you got to run off to?” Estelle screeched. “You don’t have a husband to cater to, or friends you have to meet. Why can’t you talk to your mother?”

“Because it’s always the same old conversation with you. I have other things to do.” 

“Ah, I get it,” Estelle voiced, sounding smug. “You’ve got a new man.” Her mother chuckled, a sickly sounding laugh that reminded Rayne of a cat coughing up a hairball.

Rayne was unnerved by her mother’s uncanny perception. “What makes you think I have a new man?”

“Because whenever there’s a man in your life, you don’t want to talk to me.”

“I never want to talk to you, Mother.”

“Who is he, Raynie? Is he rich?” The hope in Estelle’s voice was nauseating.

“Drop it, Mother.”

“No, I want to hear about him.” Rayne could almost see her mother’s sarcastic smile. “God knows, I’ve watched you chase away more men than a whore in a white dress at a Sunday social.”

“I never chased away any men.”

“Then why did you find Foster in bed with that other woman?” The biting barb dug into Rayne’s flesh. “Maybe you drove him into the arms of that girl, you ever consider that?”

Rayne struck her hand down on her breakfast bar. “I’m not doing this again with you. Good-bye.” Rayne hung up and clicked over to Trent’s text message.

After the infuriating phone call with her mother, her reservations about Trent seemed almost inconsequential. Here was a man who at least was making an effort to win her affection. After a lifetime of Estelle Masterson’s conditional love, manipulation, and tantrums, it was a wonder Rayne’s tenuous self-esteem had not run the man off completely. Perhaps she should give Trent a little encouragement.