Broken Strings

Eighteen

"Gypsy seems to be comfortable with you and you've mastered the art of going around in circles. We'll still be in a controlled area – it's just a big larger."

"A bit?" Jay quirked an eyebrow at her. "You said you want us to go for a ride into that super huge field over there."

"Yes. The paddock is all fenced in and it's really not that big. We need more space to work with and that'll do nicely for today. Now, come on. Follow me."

Without looking, Ginger prompted Fawkes into a walk. He moved easily, hardly a nudge required as if he knew instinctively where to go with little command. Bailey had trained him well.

Jay caught up with her after a few paces but kept his head turned straight ahead, not evening sparing her a glance. In fact, he'd barely looked at her at all in the two hours they'd been working together. Ginger supposed it was easy enough for him to avoid her gaze as she'd spent a chunk of their time showing Jay how to muck out a stall and tack a horse up properly. She was a big believer in understanding the animal and wanted to make sure that Jay realized, completely, that if he wanted the horse to work with him, he needed to do the dirty work too.

Yet even after she'd gotten him on Gypsy and put him in the round pen, the actor's eyes had stayed averted and the air between them was tense. The tension was her fault, of course, for snapping at him the other day. He'd been nothing but kind to her and she'd been curt. Rude. A total asshole when all he had done was ask her a rather simple question.

Why New York? Jay had wondered.

Because even though she'd never been there, even if she'd never stood within those bright city lights, the idea of New York felt like home.

A ludicrous notion, of course. How could a place she'd never been to feel like home to her? It was so preposterous that Ginger could hardly even fathom it.

The idea of admitting that feeling to someone, much less someone she hardly knew and was a celebrity to boot, had scared Ginger. Scared her to the point that she'd snapped, like a cornered, wounded animal in a trap.

And Jay had borne the brunt of that fear.

So much so that she'd accused him of being a shallow and manipulative person looking only for his next story to laugh to his famous friends about. Ginger had been worried of being the brunt of a joke amongst his peers – the stupid redneck chick who dreamed of living in the big city – that she hadn't even really considered that there was a person behind the celebrity. The moment she had was the moment that Jay had called her out on it.

The guilt had been immediate and despite Ginger's admission to Jay about her New York aspirations, it had lingered since they'd parted after that first riding lesson. Tension bloomed between them and Ginger didn't have the faintest clue on how to go about diffusing it. Still, it was hard to deny that things were awkward and it was making instructing him difficult as he hardly even looked her way.

Still, she was his teacher and so Ginger watched him with a careful eye as Jay led Gypsy into the paddock. She paused to pull the gate shut and then she urged Fawkes into a trot to catch up to where Jay was.

"Nice form. You're a quick study," she complimented and it wasn't a lie.

He looked good. Not quite natural but it looked as if thought he'd had more than one outing on a horse in his life which she knew was untrue. Usually, it took longer for her students to grow used to being atop a horse. That, more than anything, left people looking awkward and skittish as they stared at the far drop to the ground.