Kiss and Tell by Fiona Walker Page B

Faith’s decision to let her dressage horse take part in a dangerous new three day eventing career.
    ‘No. He can stay with Rory.’
    Faith had already decided that Rio would be her hairy, four-legged spy in the Midwinter camp, keeping links with Rory alive while she focused on implants and half-passes in Essex.
    ‘I see,’ Anke said carefully, hoping that she wasn’t expected to fork out for a new dressage schoolmaster.
    ‘I’ll ride whatever Kurt has free,’ Faith insisted. ‘You always told me that it’s best to ride as many different horses as possible when you’re learning the ropes.’
    Anke was impressed. It was the way she herself had improved from national to international grand prix level over thirty years earlier, selling her top horses to fund a trip to the UK to be based for six months with top judge and trainer Peggy Rees-Eddison and her then working pupil Kurt Willis. The rest was dressage history.
    ‘I’ll call Kurt straight away,’ she told her daughter delightedly.‘He’ll be thrilled. He and Graeme are coming to your birthday party on Saturday.’
    Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that Rory wouldn’t be there, Faith consoled herself. He was just Kurt’s type.
    Later that afternoon, having cycled up to Upper Springlode to pay the farrier, Faith found Rory asleep on the sofa in his ramshackle cottage. Twitch the terrier was curled up on his chest, and both were oblivious to the television blaring in the corner of the room.
    With his dark blond hair falling over his face, tangling with those long, sooty lashes and flopping over his wide cheeks to tickle his half-smiling mouth, he was so beautiful he made her heart burn with longing. His languid, greyhound-lean body was dressed in threadbare breeches, mis-matched loud stripy socks with his toes poking out and an ancient British Eventing polo shirt. He looked like a ragamuffin but, just like his horses that wore ancient, holey rugs and moth-eaten bandages, the body beneath the rags was glossy, muscled and unfairly super-fit given how much he abused it.
    Quietly and efficiently, Faith tidied the worst of the mess away from the floor and surfaces – the place was a tip, as usual – and made Rory a cup of strong black coffee because he had run out of milk, although she did find a big box of chocolates in the cupboard, no doubt a gift from another admiring client. It was the only food in the house.
    He awoke groggily, muttering about a broken stopwatch.
    ‘What?’ Faith thrust the coffee at him.
    ‘Nothing – a dream. What are you doing here?’
    ‘Looks like I’m going to finish off the yard work for you and turn horses out, as you’re in no fit state.’
    ‘I was just catching forty winks after watching the Ebor.’ He nodded towards the television.
    ‘Channel Four Racing finished over an hour ago – that’s some crummy old movie.’
    Rory squinted tiredly to the screen, where two people were riding on horseback across a spectacular landscape.
    ‘This isn’t a crummy old movie, Faith. It’s The Man from Snowy River . Man, I love this film! You wait – the best movie kiss ever is about to happen. The girl in this film is gorgeous.’
    Immediately interested, Faith squashed in beside him, only toleap up again a moment later as a set of teeth as sharp as a piranha’s sank into her thigh. ‘What the …?’
    Rory barely glanced round. ‘Oh, that’s just Milo, Nell’s dog. I’m looking after him while she’s in the States.’
    Emerging from beneath a very flat tapestry cushion, the poppy-eyed Chihuahua gave Faith a dirty look and slunk on to the arm of the sofa to lick his miniature paws.
    ‘Is Dillon serious about her, d’you think?’ Faith sneered, certain that any control Nell had over the Rafferty eventing string would be a decidedly bad thing.
    But Rory shushed her as a couple appeared on screen sharing the same saddle, and Faith watched agog, now sitting on a pair of spurs.
    When it happened, the kiss was curiously