Dee Turner was frustrated close to tears before Sandra even stepped into ear shot. It was turning out to be a steamy day, the kind where the burning sun and thick humidity were evenly matched as annoyances with the constant interruptions that led to Dee being behind schedule and forced to do the hardest physical work of the day at the hottest point of the day. Her shirt was moist with sweat, her skin gritty with dust, and she was trying very hard to get as much done as possible between her late-morning beginners group lesson and the after-camp intermediate group. After that her schedule was dry erase board-shaped and filled with a dozen little squares of private and semi-private lessons.
Dee heard Sandra laughing, high, bubbly and carefree, before Sandra peered through the bars of the stall. Sunlight filtered in through the big open doors behind Sandra, outlining her in a hazy glow and casting Dee into a gloomy, sweaty darkness.
Sandra looked perfect, of course. Her dark blonde hair was pulled back into one of those slick ponytails that Dee could never manage, where not a strand of hair was loose. She wore makeup, which looked freshly applied, and waved a hand full of French tips, friendly-like, at Dee, who stood, pitchfork in hand, halfway through her fifteenth stall cleanup with ten more in her near future.
“You work here,” Sandra said with a bright smile. “I need you to help me out.”
The piles of manure looked enticing compared to whatever Sandra might want. She was likely just searching out the grubbiest person in the barn to make her look that much better. But Sandra had a bigger mouth than the bits and pieces horses left behind, and therefore was potentially more damaging. The dirty stalls wouldn’t complain if Dee put them off a little longer. Dee had learned very quickly how much of her job was customer service, and, out of the horses and the owners, who were the real customers.
Dee pasted on an answering smile–it was easy with the stickiness of the sweat on her face–and squeezed her way past the wheelbarrow in the stall door. “What can I do for you, Miss Wallis?”
Dee spotted the man with Sandra only after crawling past the soiled sawdust. He stood further back, barely inside the barn, looking out over the fields. Those fields were the reason Sandra had moved her horses into Deepdale Acres’ care. In the competition off-season there was plenty of room to let her horses have a real vacation.
The man with Sandra looked about as perfect as Sandra did. His red T-shirt and blue jeans were casual enough for a trip to the barn, but still brightly colored, crisp and spotless. He was well-built, even if there was a layer of fat over what she could see of his arms, softening them from something monstrous into something pleasantly male. His hair, a colorless dishwater blond, was pulled back into a short ponytail, his at the back of his neck rather than bouncing at the top of his head like Sandra’s. He had a vacant sort of smile on his face, and a pleasantly lost look to his eyes.
Yes, he was the type of male Sandra would bring in. Obedient and handsome and probably about as smart as a turd. He turned to them and looked at Dee as if he’d never seen a woman sweating, on edge, smeared with mud, sawdust and horse hair, before. Dee tried to give him a friendly smile as well, but she couldn’t screen out the suspicion that he only worked up a sweat when he visited whatever over-priced gym he kept a membership with.
“We want to go for a ride,” Sandra was saying. Dee tore her obvious stare away from the man-accessory behind Sandra and tried to pay attention. “It’ll take forever for me to groom and saddle two horses, so I hoped I could talk you into helping me. Just for a bit.”
Sandra looked at Dee with a happy sort of pleading look on her face. The tears threatened to rise again. No, cleaning all the stalls in ninety degree heat after being up at six a.m. to feed the horses so that the owners could ride early, before the heat really kicked in, then having to clean up after the boarders and kids taking lessons before feeding the horses again, none of that was enough. Now she had to stop everything to saddle a horse for Sandra so that she could show off for her date without getting too much horse hair on her name brand T-shirt.
Dee wanted to go back into the stall and answer Sandra with a good hard poke from the pitchfork, but instead she tried not to scowl and said, “Sure, I have a minute.”
So she found herself standing in one of the freshly cleaned stalls, listening to Sandra laugh and the low rumbling of her male friend speaking back to her. Dancer, Sandra’s Warmblood mare mostly cooperated, other than an attempted nip when Dee bent over to brush down the mare’s hind legs. Sandra, so helpfully, set her spare saddle out on top of her tack trunk, with the bridle slung over it. In fifteen minutes both horses were brushed, saddled and mounted and Dee stood in the barn doorway watching their rear ends vanishing toward the trails surrounding the farm, feeling only slightly more gritty than she had before.
She idly hoped Sandra got thrown right in front of her boy toy, but she wouldn’t. Sandra was probably the best rider in the barn. She had three horses, each one worth more alone that Dee’s truck, and she had mentioned, more than once, that the horses would only be stabled at Deepdale when they weren’t competing or in special training.
There was a group of the stable people at Deepdale that showed horses, but none of them toured the country in a matching RV and horse trailer, both air-conditioned, while doing so, save for Sandra. A four-hour drive was the furthest Dee had ever had to transport horses for an event, and that had been a special case, when the barn drill team made it to the state level show.
Dee never competed. There was no time. When she got the job as stable manager she’d been in heaven, for about a day, until she realized her dreams of exercising a horse, then dismounting, handing the reins over to a stable boy before stepping over to another ring, still in pristine breeches and shiny boots, to instruct a group of starry-eyed child beginners, were way beyond idealistic thinking. In the first month she’d cleaned out more stalls than she could count. Three months in she’d moved into the little cottage at the back of the property, behind the closest paddock. She’d been spending so much time at work she’d figured renting the cottage would just make things easier. It was two months before Jessie, the stable owner, thought to put her on a horse and finally declared her riding skills serviceable.
Today Dee had been looking forward to only half a day at work, before the full-time stable hand, had called in sick. He wasn’t the type to lie, or shirk work, but Dee couldn’t help griping at him under her breath as she got back to work. He, at least would have had some joke or smart ass comment to make that would have made Dee forget that she’d just seen one of the most attractive men she’d probably ever see, and she’d been angry, sweat and filthy when she’d done it. At least the day couldn’t get much worse.
