My Favorite Mistake by Chelsea M. Cameron

Author:Chelsea M. Cameron
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-09-28T20:17:16+00:00

ELEVEN

At 10:30 a.m. on a Friday, the Upper East Side bistro was sleepy and quiet. That suited Tommi just fine. She and Alex had the place to themselves except for a trio of old ladies gossiping over tea and a harried-looking young nanny with a couple of little kids in strollers.

“I’m glad this worked out,” Tommi said, reaching for the salt.

Alex looked extra adorable that day in a button-down shirt and loosely knotted funky vintage tie. “Me too,” he said. “It almost makes coming into the city to see my great-aunt Koo-Koo—I mean Kiku—bearable.” He raised one eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want to come along and meet her?”

“Tempting. But can’t.” Tommi shrugged. “Like I said, I’m heading out to the barn after this.”

“Bummer for me. You have a riding lesson or something?” He grinned. “By the way, how come you still have to take so many lessons? I thought you already knew how to ride.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I never heard that one before.”

They both laughed. Tommi was finding that she laughed a lot when she was with Alex. She liked that.

“Anyway, for your information, there’s no lesson today,” she said. “Our group lesson is almost always on Tuesday, and I’ll probably do a private with Joy tomorrow.”

“Cool. So on Tuesdays you ride with all the other people your age, right? Like Zac Trask’s daughter and all of them?”

“Yeah. There are about seven of us who usually ride together.” Tommi took a sip of her iced tea. “It’s fun to hear their feedback and watch how other people handle stuff. Like, this week we worked on this cool exercise where we had to take three jumps on a serpentine, and one of the girls—Marissa—was having trouble with her horse bulging out on the turns, and she got a little rattled.”

She glanced over at Alex, expecting him to look bored. But he’d actually put down his fork to listen. “I get it,” he said. “So you can watch the others ride and figure out how to deal yourself when it’s your turn. So how’d your horse do? Were you riding that one you’re trying to sell? You said he can be hard to steer when he’s excited.”

Tommi was impressed. So he had been listening to her all this time—not just faking interest to win her over.

“Actually, I didn’t ride Legs this time. I still wasn’t sure he was totally back to normal and didn’t want to take any chances, so I rode Toccata. He’s my junior hunter—he’s awesome.” She smiled, remembering how it had felt to just relax and let her horse do his job. “I’m kind of glad I rode him in the lesson. I’d almost forgotten how fun and easy it can be, you know? Just riding, doing your thing, without worrying about whether you’re screwing up his training, or how you’re ever going to sell him when you can’t even get him to pick up his right lead or whatever.”

Alex nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. “It’s like

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