Free The Riding Master by Alexandrea Weis

laugh. You should do it more often.”
    Rayne traced her fingers over her smooth, beige granite counter. “Haven’t had a lot of reasons to laugh lately.”
    “I promise that is going to change.”
    Rayne shook her head, not sure she wanted to get bogged down in his promises. “Tell me more about what you do.” She headed to her bedroom to change.
    Trent described the ins and outs of his job as she wiggled out of her jeans and slipped into her favorite sweat suit.
    “I hear grunting. What are you doing?”
    She tugged her sweatshirt over her head. “I was changing.”  
    “Changing into what?”
    “Sweat suit.” She reached for her iPhone on her bed. “I like to get comfortable when I get home.”
    “What else do you like to do when you get home besides drink orange juice and put on a smelly sweat suit?”
    “It’s not smelly. I just washed it,” she defended.
    “I’ll let you know what I think the next time I come over.”
    Emboldened by the way he made her feel, she playfully posed, “What makes you think you are coming over again?”
    There was a lapse of silence, then Trent whispered, “Tell me what else you like to do when you come home.”
    Rayne smiled and began to tell him of her nightly routine. How she collected her mail from the floor of her entranceway where it fell from the slot in her door, what she fed Frank…. Trent was still listening to her as she popped a frozen dinner in the microwave.
    “That’s not healthy,” he insisted.  
    “I don’t like to cook.”
    “Lucky for you, I love to cook.”
    He listened as she munched on her hearty chicken and potato dinner, asked her to describe the flavor, and then went into a long explanation about what kind of wine she should have with her meal. That conversation led to a lesson on how to choose the best wine at restaurants.
    They had talked of favorite foods, favorite movies and television shows, and had even touched on the best place to get ice cream.
    “Braum’s Ice Cream in Lewisville, hands down,” he had related. “No place like it.”
    “Best flavor?”
    “Mocha chocolate chip. I like ice cream with a kick. What’s yours?”
    “I’ve always been a straight up chocolate fan,” she had replied. “But that mocha flavor sounds intriguing.” 
    By the time Rayne glanced up at her microwave clock, she could not believe she had been on the phone with the man for over two hours.
    “Trent, it’s almost nine o’clock. Don’t you need to get back to your safety audits?”
    “Probably,” he said, sounding downhearted. “But I prefer talking to you. I have all night to do my paperwork.”
    “Then I’ll be responsible for keeping you up all night, and I can’t have that. You’d better get back to work.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    Rayne glimpsed Frank asleep beside her stool. “Let Frank out in the yard, watch some television, and go to bed.”
    “No yoga?”
    She smiled, glad he had remembered. “No, not tonight. Too tired.”
    “Then get to bed early, and I will call you tomorrow.”
    “You don’t have to keep doing this, you know. You don’t have to call me every night.”
    “I like talking to you. Get some sleep.” Again, he hung up before she could get in a comment.
    As she put her black cell phone down next to her backpack, she realized she enjoyed talking to him, too. It had been so long since Rayne had just talked with anyone about all the small trivialities of life. Not since she had been a carefree student in high school back in New Orleans had she spent hours on the phone chatting about nothing in particular. In a way, that was how Trent made her feel…like an innocent girl, before all the pain of loss had beaten down her belief in hope. That warm, jubilant glow attributed to the unmarred magic of adolescence was returning, making Rayne feel completely alive for the first time in years.
    Leaning against the breakfast bar, she wiped her hands over her face, concentrating on the reality of her