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the saddle.
    “Take her as easy as you can,” Jake said. “She’ll take a big hold of the bit. Keep her to an easy gallop.”
    “Will do.” Excitement and an indisputable sense of rightness, of homecoming, twined within Lyndie as she and Gold Tide set off together.
    ———
    Jake wasn’t sure what to do to his brother. Shooting him with a shotgun would be faster but strangling him with his bare hands would be more satisfying. “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled, his attention riveted on Lyndie as the mist did its best to steal her from view.
    “I’m helping you,” Bo answered.
    “You’re definitely not helping me.”
    “I think I am. You just don’t know it yet.”
    Bo, who usually knew what he was talking about, had no idea what he was talking about. Help him? His brother was dead wrong if he thought bringing Lyndie here would or could help him in any way.
    Jake had been telling himself to be glad that he’d gotten his first visit with her out of the way. Since their families were linked, he’d known he’d see her from time to time. Their first meeting should have made him better able to handle future meetings.
    It had gone the other way. Her unexpected presence this morning upset him just as much as her first appearance, if not more. Maybe because she’d broken into his private training session uninvited. Maybe because he’d been unable to get her out of his head since Tuesday.
    It was ridiculous. Lyndie James had rarely entered his mind in recent years. It was only when something made him remember the first twelve years of his life that he thought of her.
    He’d see a lake and recall that she’d been the one to hand him the knotted rope the first time he’d swung out over Lake Holley and jumped off. Dru would talk about shooting, and he’d remember the time he’d shot a bull’s-eye at their homemade slingshot target, and that Lyndie had been the one who’d clapped. An acquaintance of his would sprain a wrist, and Jake would recall the time he’d fallen out of a tree and broken his arm. On that day, he’d landedon his back, and Lyndie’s face had been the first to block out the sun above him.
    And none of that explained why she had the power to rattle him now. He was a thirty-two-year-old war vet. He hadn’t seen her in a long time and should feel toward her like he would a stranger. He wanted to feel that way about her. It made him mad that instead, her nearness slammed him with a confusing mix of resentment and protectiveness.
    Bo came inside the track to lean against the rail next to Jake, casually hitching a boot heel against a rung. “Well?”
    “I still want to strangle you.”
    Bo had the bad taste to chuckle.
    Jake had selected Gold Tide for Lyndie because he could depend on the filly to obediently do what Lyndie asked. Even so, worry circled through him so powerfully that he had to set his jaw against it. Exercise riders and jockeys were injured and killed every year when they fell on their necks, took a spill and were trampled, or got hung up in a stirrup and dragged.
    As she galloped past, he noted every detail of her posture and balance. All these years later, her light hair still curled and snapped behind her. She still moved with a horse intuitively, which for some stupid reason caused his chest to ache. Her experience was evident in her form. She rode safely, expertly following the instructions he’d given her.
    “The suspense is killing me,” Bo said.
    “I can hope.”
    “What do you think of her?”
    “She’s good,” Jake admitted.
    “Did you know she’s been exercising Mark Osten’s horses at Santa Anita for years?”
    “No.” Osten had an excellent nationwide reputation.
    “I gave him a call yesterday. He couldn’t say enough good things about her. He told me that she’s hardworking and reliable. He trusted her with horses he wouldn’t trust to other riders. She exercised Unhindered for him.”
    Unhindered, a young horse full of raw power,