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“You were a horse girl?” he teased.
I smiled. “Who wasn’t?”
“Well then, riding one should be a treat.”
My heart thumped with fear. I’d dreamed of riding horses since I was a kid, but... they were taller than I imagined. Powerful in a beautiful but scary way. “I don’t even know how to get up there.”
“I’ll get you a bucket,” he said. “Easy.”
He disappeared into the barn, leaving me to stand by Blister. I noticed long, thick eyelashes over dark glassy eyes. “You won’t buck me off, will you?” I whispered.
The animal didn’t answer before Ford came back with a bright orange five-gallon bucket. Then he turned it over and set it next to the roan horse. “Climb up and put your foot in the stirrup.”
I looked at him doubtfully.
“I’ll help you up if you need it.”
I gave him another skeptical look, but then remembered our tryst in the weight room. He could handle me. The thought turned me on when I should have been focusing. “Okay, okay,” I finally said. “Hold on to me.”
He put his large hands on my waist, and I liked the feel of his support as I stepped onto the bucket, took hold of the saddle, put my foot in the wooden stirrup, and used all my strength to hoist myself on. The saddle cupped to my ass, and honestly, I felt kind of hot up here.
Judging by the way Ford grinned up at me, a slight heat to his gaze, he agreed. “That wasn’t so bad, right?”
I shrugged a shoulder, acting like it was no big deal. (It totally was.)
Then he took the reins connected to my horse, untying them from the post. “First, I’ll walk you around so you can get used to the feel of riding,” he explained. “Then you can try on your own. Sound good?”
I nodded. But my heart still lurched as he began leading my horse through the corral. I grabbed nervously onto the saddle horn. Blister’s jaunty gait would definitely take some getting used to.
“Use your core muscles to hold yourself upright, and you can press into the stirrups to absorb some of the movement.”
I nodded, focusing on the task at hand. I’d gotten my MBA. Surely, I could get this down too.
After a few laps around the corral, I was starting to get the hang of things. Ford kept adding skills until soon I was holding the reins and guiding Blister to trot in circles on my own.
There was something so freeing, so powerful, about sitting atop a horse and gazing down at the world around me. Feeling the wind blow back my hair. Feeling my muscles work in tandem with the animal.
“That’s my girl!” Ford whooped from the opposite side of the corral. “I think we’re ready!”
I grinned. “Yee haw!”
His laugh made my heart feel light. As I led Blister toward him, he easily untied and swung up onto Acres like he’d been doing it all his life. Probably because he had. “You made that look so easy!” I called. “You didn’t even need a bucket.”
The horse pranced underneath him as he settled in. He calmed it down, talking and guiding it in circles.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure I could handle a horse like that.
“Yeah, this is Dad’s new horse. Still a little high-strung.”
“Okay,” I said uncertainly. He was the expert, and I realized... I trusted him. I just couldn’t bear the thought of him getting hurt, especially during football season. “So where are we going?” I asked.
“Follow me.”
We rode through the gate of the corral, then he led the way into another pasture. When we reached the top of the next hill, we had an incredible view.
He pointed out a white farmhouse maybe a mile away. There was another red barn and dozens of cattle in a different pen along with farming equipment. “That’s the Griffens’ place,” he said. “And their feed yard where they fatten the steers for meat.”
He pointed toward a stand of trees in the valley forming a triangle with the two houses, a stream winding through it. “This is the creek where we’d always meet up with the Griffens and play.”