Free Lauraine Snelling by Breaking Free Page B

starting with one to Amy, his secretary at the main office who wanted to know the progress of house hunting.
    “I cannot believe I am buying the first and only house I looked at. It just isn’t done.”
    “But if it is perfect, why question your judgment?”
    “Good point.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
    They worked for several hours, e-mailing and faxing things back and forth, confirming his travel for the next few months. When he seemed to be overbooking himself, she reminded him of his commitment to stay at home more.
    “I think you’re all ganging up on me.”
    “That’s what you pay me for.”
    He laughed at her teasing. “Thanks, Amy. Let me know on the convention in New York. That one I might take Maria and Eddie along with me.”
    That evening he and Eddie played chess and cleaned up the rest of the caramel corn. Eddie’s comment about a mom who did stuff like caramel corn kept circling in his mind.
    She is a beautiful woman, Gil thought the next afternoon when he took Eddie out for his riding lesson. Carly wore her shoulder length dark hair pulled back with a leather slide at the base of her skull. Today she was wearing a straw hat that had met with the dirt a time or two and perhaps had even been stepped on. But her dark eyes lit up when she greeted Eddie, and her smile softened a very square jaw.
Come on, Winters, you’ve not paid attention to her before—why now
? Of course he had paid attention to her, just not the male-female kind. Leave it to Eddie to stir things up.
    The boy in question was not smiling today. His near fall during his previous lesson made his aides walk closer to the horse’s sides, even with his stirrups, a real step down from his growing freedom. When one of the aides said something, Eddie smiled back. There would be no trotting today, a punishment in Eddie’s opinion.
    Carly strode to the center of the ring where three different students were circling the arena at the same time. Eddie was by far the more proficient rider. Two assistants were holding one little girl in place while a third led the small horse around. The third rider, an older teen, clung to the saddle horn, terror being the only visible emotion.
    Eddie had been terrified at first too, but the way he’d blossomed in the nearly two years he’d been riding here was nothing short of miraculous. He was stronger, his balance much improved, but mostly his self-confidence had him sitting straighter and willing to tackle obstacles in the rest of his life too. Not that he’d ever been an introvert, Maria had seen to that, but now he was independent too. Carly had added to that independence.
    “Now, Eddie, I want you to circle the ring once, turn in to reverse, and go around the other way. Keep him at an even walk and paying attention.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Gil made his way to the bleachers and took a seat halfway up so he could watch his son around the entire arena. He glanced over to the side when he heard someone crying. A little girl did not want to get off her horse, not an unusual situation.
    Sure, just buy my son a horse. Carly’d made it sound so easy. Resentment tried to raise its sneaky head, but he squashed it like bashing pop-up critters in an amusement park. He knew letting thoughts like that get comfortable would take dynamite to get rid of them. And besides, resentment might bring along rage, and he’d beaten that one into oblivion more than once. He believed what he taught at his conferences. One could control one’s thoughts and must, if you didn’t want your thoughts to control you, but doing so took a lot of desire and practice.
    Why was that easier on some days than others?
    “There at the end, I finally rode all by myself again. Did you see, Dad?” Eddie popped a wheelie he was so excited.
    “I sure did.” Although his heart was in his mouth most of the time, he was not going to let on to Eddie that he felt that way. “You did really well. But I could sure tell you