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care what we get as long as it’s reliable. It’s a thirty-day romance, not a marriage.”
    “What’s his sport?”
    “Dressage.” The only sport where the contestants competed in top hat and tails.
    “Ah, that must mean he’s come to California looking for a new horse?”
    “Yes,” she answered, surprised that he knew enough to ask. “Judging by the scores he received before his horse was out of commission, his trainer thinks Christopher should move to the next level. That requires a horse capable of moving up with him.”
    “Word is that there are a couple of exceptional Dutch and German warmbloods at Harden Stables. I imagine they’re on his list?”
    She wasn’t sure whether they were or not. Christopher did most of his own research and negotiating using his trainer for advice when he felt he’d gotten in over his head. She limited her involvement to enthusiastic spectator. “You’re a rider?”
    He shook his head. “Just a longtime friend to someone who is. He and my daughter were engaged, but it didn’t work out. I think she got tired of coming in second place to a horse.”
    “I’ve seen it happen,” she said.
    Alison stopped to look at a metallic blue 2006 Mustang convertible. It was what Dennis would have called a muscle car, owned by someone who considered his transportation an extension of his personality. She tried to picture Christopher behind the wheel and couldn’t. He wasn’t the muscle car type. She started to move on when it hit her that maybe it was time her grandson tried something new. “How much is this one?”
    “Twenty.”
    “ Thousand? ”
    “This isn’t a six-month car. It has less than twelve thousand miles on the odometer, and according to the mechanic at the shop where I have everything checked, it’s not only show-room quality, it’s as sound as a twenty-dollar gold piece. I could ask another three or four grand, and it would still be gone by the end of the week.”
    “If you were going to buy this for your grandson—”
    “I wouldn’t.”
    She frowned. “Why not?”
    “It’s too much car for a seventeen-year-old. Especially a first car.”
    She peered through the window at the interior. It looked brand-new. “He’s very responsible.”
    “I have no doubt. Kids who do well in school and ride dressage rarely have enough time to get into trouble.” He pulled a yellow cloth out of his back pocket and used it to wipe a set of fingerprints off the hood. “Give that same kid a car that pouts if it’s driven under seventy and thirty days with little to do but run around looking for something to do, and you’re just asking for trouble.”
    “Christopher isn’t like that,” she insisted.
    Kyle laughed. “ Every guy is like that. It’s in our genetic makeup, the same way it’s in the genetic makeup of preteen girls to be attracted to Justin Bieber. Neither one makes sense, at least not to me, but there you have it.”
    She was tempted to tell him that even as a young girl she’d never been drawn to the “pretty” Bieber type, that it was the raw sexuality of Bruce Springsteen that made her toes curl, but that was the kind of conversation you had with longtime girlfriends, not a man you’d just met. “Okay, you have my attention. What kind of car would you recommend?”
    He thought a minute. “How involved is he in the care of his horse?”
    “If he could, he would spend all day every day at the stables.” If it didn’t come across sounding so melodramatic, and if they hadn’t just met, she would have told him the truth—riding had saved Christopher’s life.
    After his father and grandfather died, he’d pulled deeper and deeper into himself until there was nothing left of the little boy who had charmed jaded cab drivers in Manhattan as easily as he’d captivated the men and women who worked in Dennis’s office. Struggling with their own grief, Alison and Nora did what they could to help Christopher, including sessions with the top child