Page 64 of The Lucky Heart (Jamison Valley 3)
When my petting was done, I eased away from the horse. Silas began saddling Courage and I took the opportunity to check him out again.
Those chaps? Damn. I wasn’t sure if the front view or the back view was better. They sat in just the right place to highlight the curves of his behind.
“Felicity!” I begrudgingly turned away from the view. Emmeline waved as she and Nick walked my way.
“This is going to be epic,” Nick said after we’d all exchanged hellos.
Emmeline rolled her eyes. “Epically ridiculous. You’re going to hurt yourself trying to compete against twenty-year-olds. Felicity, can you believe that they’re going to—”
“Don’t tell her!” Silas shouted from the side of the horse trailer. “She has no idea what skijoring is and I want to see her face when she figures it out.”
“Seriously?” Nick asked.
“Yep. It’s taken every ounce of my willpower not to Google it the minute I showed up and saw the horses.”
Emmeline and Nick shared a look, then both burst out laughing.
Twenty minutes later, Emmeline and I followed Silas, leading Courage, and Nick, carrying snow skis, toward the arena.
“How are you so calm?” Emmeline asked. “I hate surprises. I’d be freaking out right now.”
“Years of practice,” I said. “Jess and all his friends, including Silas, used to love nothing more than to torment me. One of their favorite things to do was tell me we were doing one thing and then surprise me with something completely different. I had no choice but to learn to just go with it. That’s what Silas always told me. ‘Just go with it.’ ”
She shook her head. “That sounds like my personal nightmare.”
As we approached the gate to the main entrance, Silas handed Courage’s lead rope to Nick. “Be right back.” Wrapping an arm around my shoulders, he steered me through the masses of people shuffling up the ramp and into the stands.
“When did all of this get added?” I pointed to the tower of bleachers that separated the entrance from the arena itself.
“A couple of years ago. Between this event and the rodeo, the fairgrounds have been drawing bigger and bigger crowds each year. The county commissioners finally decided that those old wooden benches weren’t going to cut it anymore. Now they even do concerts in the summer.”
“As long as the band isn’t death metal, they can count on me to come. I love outdoor concerts.”
“Me too. I’ll bring you to one.”
As a date? I smiled but didn’t ask.
We passed a concession stand filled with snacks and a beer garden packed with people before Silas stopped me in front of the chain-link fence that encompassed the arena.
“That’s skijoring,” he said, poking a finger through one of the holes.
“Oh my god!” I laughed. “That. Is. Awesome!”
The arena had been filled with snow, an oval track smoothed in the middle, while large jumps and bumps formed an outer ring.
“Watch, over there.” Silas pointed toward the shoots and corrals at the far end of the arena where a two-man team was setting up to practice the course. One man was riding his horse while towing a skier on a rope along behind him. The skier went bouncing and flying over the many jumps, trying to stay on his skis, while the horse and rider sped along the center circle.
When the skier stumbled on the corner and crashed into a stack of hay bales, I knew why Emmeline thought Nick could hurt himself. The poor guy that had just crashed had been going very fast and had fallen very hard.
“Cheer for me?” Silas asked.
“You got it. Though I wish I had brought my air horn.”
Smiling and laughing, we walked back to Nick and Emmeline so the men could get lined up for their own practice run.
“Shall we go in?” Emmeline asked.
“Let’s do this.”
