Sylvie's Cowboy Read Online Free PDF

of the crooked bureaucrats.”
    Leslye snatched the brochure and stuffed it
back into her purse. “Watch your mouth! Everything’s a joke to you,
isn’t it!”
    “Calm down. There’s nobody here but us
ponies.” He put one arm on her shoulder to soothe and direct her,
and he led a saddled pony with the other hand as they walked across
the field toward the grandstands.
    …
     
    A little over an hour west of the Palm Beach
Polo Club was a different world, a world of wildlife and wild
country, of farms and ranches and small towns, and horses that
would mostly not play polo.
    Outside his barn, Walt McGurk had saddled two
horses while the mismatched dogs, Butch and Maude, played nearby.
Sylvie approached from the house. She wore high, flat-heeled,
glossy black riding boots, silk shirt, and jodhpurs. Under her arm
were a riding helmet and leather crop.
    “How long will this take?” she asked.
    “What do you care? You’re unemployed.”
    “I am not unemployed. I am at leisure. There
is a vast difference.”
    Walt looked her up and down, unimpressed.
“Honey, with Harry’s money you were at leisure. Without it, you’re
unemployed. Either way, we’ll be back by supper. Course, if it’s an
imposition, you don’t have to go at all.”
    Sylvie plopped her helmet atop her head. “I
think one should be familiar with one’s assets. I did not ask to be
a partner in this ... this enterprise, but partner I am, and I
intend to take an active role in making it profitable. Leg up,
please.”
    Walt boosted her into the saddle. He gestured
to her helmet. “What’s that for?” He swung into his saddle and
brought his horse close alongside hers.
    “So I won’t crack my skull if I fall,” she
said.
    “You fall a lot?”
    “Never!”
    Walt removed Sylvie’s helmet over her squeal
of protest and tossed it into the tack shed a few feet away. He
sidled his horse close to the shed door, took an old straw cowboy
hat from a nail on the shed wall, then leaned over and smushed it
onto her head.
    “Reckon you’re more likely to get sunstroke
than a concussion. And when it rains, this’ll keep the water outta
yer collar, too.”
    He led the way. They walked their horses out
of the ranch yard and onto a narrow trail through trees and
brush.
    Walt turned in his saddle. “Next time we get
to town, we’ll do somethin’ about them boots, too. Hold your reins
in one hand.”
    “I’m used to riding English,” Sylvie
protested.
    “Fine for you, but this ain’t an English
horse. This here’s a Florida Cracker horse, and he knows his
bidniss. He don’t need you to confuse him.”
    Sylvie complied, moving her reins to one hand
with elaborate gestures.
    Walt increased their pace from a walk to a
trot. Recalling a steep dip in the trail ahead, he though it
chivalrous to warn Sylvie. If she kept bouncing loosely in her
saddle, she’d part company with her horse when the cayuse did a
quick-step into the six-foot ditch and back up again. Walt shouted
over his shoulder, “Ride yer stirrups!”
    “What?” she said.
    The earth dropped away, Sylvie’s horse
bounced down into the ditch, and Sylvie tumbled arse-over-teakettle
into the grass.
    She was standing up, rubbing her backside,
when Walt rode back to her, leading her horse.
    “Thought you said you never fall off,” he
deadpanned.
    “And I thought if you didn’t want to
ride
English, you’d at least try to
speak
it,”
she said.
    Walt dismounted and gave her a leg up onto
her horse. “All I said was, ‘ride yer stirrups.’ You apparently
took that to mean somethin’ acrobatic.”
    Sylvie looked daggers at him as he mounted
his own horse. “Why don’t I go first for a while?” she
suggested.
    “Suit yerself. Just stay on the trail, right
on through there.”
    Sylvie started off. The trail wound through
pines, vines, spiky palmetto, and moss-draped live oaks. She pushed
a low-hanging, limber branch forward and let it go as she passed
it. She smiled at the resulting thump