A Summer Without Horses Read Online Free PDF Page A

other things I really like about Skye is that he understands what’s important. Fancy riding clothes are nice, but safe riding clothes are important.
    After about four hundred curves, turns, and dips on the mountain road, we were suddenly in a valley and then in some more mountains and then, with one final turn, we were there.
    The Double H was a huge stable surrounded by rings and paddocks. Several riders were working on a jumping course, while others worked with cavaletti, and another was lunging her horse. I took a deep breath as I looked around. It was great to be back around horses. The only thing missing was Stevie and Carole. I felt a twinge of guilt. It bothered me so much that I spaced out for the next few minutes, until Skye introduced me to my horse for the day.
    His name was Kip. He was a chestnut gelding with three white socks. He was very tall and elegant and at first I thought he was a Thoroughbred.
    “Not quite,” Mr. Ward, the owner of Double H, said. “He’s only half Thoroughbred, but when you ride him, you’ll find that it’s the bigger half. He’s a wonderful horse. I know you’ll enjoy this ride.”
    I thought it was funny the way he described Kip as having a “bigger half.” I knew just what he meant.
    I’m not the expert that Carole and Stevie are, and Iknow I’ve made mistakes judging horses by their looks, but one look at Kip and I knew he was a good one. I turned out to be exactly right, too.
    Mr. Ward put Skye on a bay named Chesapeake. Some stables choose their horses’ names in themes and a quick look around at the nameplates of the bay horses at the Double H confirmed that this was one of those stables. Their other bays were named things like Hudson, Cape Cod, Biscayne, and Botany. They were a real geography lesson in the bays of the world!
    Twenty minutes later Skye and I were mounted and ready to go. Skye had just one more surprise for me and that was when the limo driver pulled a picnic for each of us out of the trunk of the car. They were packed in backpacks so we could ride with them. I knew it was going to be a perfect day.
    Skye was familiar with the land around the Double H and Mr. Ward told us where to head for views and safe riding. We were off.
    Skye had learned a lot about riding since the first time we’d met. He was comfortable at a walk, trot, and canter, at least on level ground, and he knew how to handle his horse well. Since I was the more experienced rider, I rode behind. The best rider should always be at the back in case something happens to someone up ahead.
    The trail was incredibly dramatic. The path snaked up a hillside and every time we cut a turn, it almost took my breath away to see how high we were and how far wecould see. There were vast sections of towns and villages in the valley on one side of the hill and on another, there were endless stretches of hills, cliffs, canyons, and gorges. When we rounded the mountain we were climbing, suddenly there was the Pacific, stretching to the horizon. Skye stopped Chesapeake to look and I pulled up alongside him.
    “Beautiful, isn’t it,” I said.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “I feel so far away from Hollywood when I’m here. That’s why I love this trail.” He glanced at me. “You help me with that, too,” he went on.
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you and Stevie and Carole,” he said. “I always think of you three as my
good
friends because you’re good for me. You three somehow manage to treat me as a human being and not as a superstar. Does that sound stupid?”
    “No,” I told him firmly. “After seeing what happens when you go out, it makes total sense to me.”
    Skye went on. “When the reporter wrote her column about me, all she was thinking about was the superstar part, but when you said the things you did, and started me talking about the things I do that I think are the most important and that I’m able to do for other people only because I
am
a superstar, well”—he looked at me and gave me that