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“It’ll be like school, but you’ll have it all to yourself. Mrs. Baylor’s a teacher, like Aunt Tris, but she only takes one student at a time.”

The boy looked at Mom a little warily. “Why?”

“It’s more fun that way,” Mom said, with that wide, warm smile that never seemed to fail to charm.

“Oh.”

“Especially when there’s a reward right away,” she added.

“There is? What?” Jeremy asked.

“Riding lessons with my daughter.”

The boy’s gaze snapped to Nic. “You’ll keep teaching me, so I can ride like that someday?”

Jeremy pointed to the framed photograph on the wall, a dramatic shot of her state championship run, her and Jet leaning hard into the last barrel, ready to explode into the straight run back to the gate.

“Someday, if you stick with it,” she said. She glanced at her mother, who, in essence, had just volunteered her without even a consult. But she found she didn’t mind, not with a kid who clearly loved horses this much. She’d find space in her schedule. Fortunately, her regular clients, the four-legged ones, didn’t go by a clock for classes.

“All right then,” Mom said briskly. “Jeremy and I need to get acquainted, so why don’t you two”—she waved them off—“go on a ride yourselves.”

It hadn’t been a suggestion as much as an order to vacate, and Nic knew better than to resist. Besides, it suddenly occurred to her that she would like to see firsthand just how well he handled himself around a horse.

“You and my mother reached an agreement?” she asked as she headed back outside. He came along as if he’d recognized the command as clearly as she had.

“Yes. She’s a powerhouse, and I think that’s just what Jeremy needs.”

He couldn’t have said anything she liked more than that her mother was a powerhouse, because it was absolutely true.

“Shall we take that ride she suggested, then?”

He closed the door behind them, then turned to face her.

“Absolutely, Ms. Baylor.”

She tilted her head as she looked at him. “Do you do that to annoy me?”

“What?”

“Call me Ms. Baylor.”

His brows rose. “I call you Ms. Baylor because you haven’t said I can call you anything else.”

She suddenly remembered when she’d told Jeremy he could call her Nic. And the boy had, but not his father. She realized now that he hadn’t interpreted the permission she’d given his son as permission for him to do the same. How very... old-fashioned of him.

It was a bit of a jolt for her to realize she liked that.

He held her gaze, and it was unsettling. She’d always thought they must use filters and such to get his eyes to look that startlingly blue, but now she knew better.

“My mistake,” she finally managed to say. “Please, call me Nic.”

“My pleasure,” he said, and the way he said it sent a tiny frisson of just that through her.

Pleasure.

This was going to be . . . interesting.

Chapter Seventeen