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    Unbridled Love: A Romance with Horse Sense
    Unbridled Love: A Romance with Horse Sense
    Unbridled Love: A Romance with Horse Sense
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    Unbridled Love: A Romance with Horse Sense

    By Michael Bracken

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    About this ebook

    Melissa Grant, the 25-year-old owner of a tack shop, is disgusted with the way the new riding instructor at Rocking Horse Stables treats her classmates during their first lesson, and her attempt to confront him is thwarted when she bursts into his apartment over the observation room and finds him half-undressed.

    Will an escalating series of attractions and repulsions set against the backdrop of the riding stable where Hans Edelmann teaches and the narrator has her shop--including their preparations for the annual competition at Stallion Stables, the pending sale of Rocking Horse Stables, and the narrator’s mistaken belief that Edelmann is interested in an older woman--lead to true love?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael Bracken
    Release dateJun 5, 2011
    ISBN9781458086570
    Unbridled Love: A Romance with Horse Sense
    Author

    Michael Bracken

    Michael Bracken is the author of several books, but is better known as the author of more than 1,200 short stories, including erotica published in the Lambda Award-nominated anthologies Show-offs and Team Players and in Best Gay Erotica 2013, Best New Erotica 4, Fifty Shades of Grey Fedora, Fifty Shades of Green, Flesh & Blood: Guilty as Sin, Gent, Hot Blood: Strange Bedfellows, Oui, Ultimate Gay Erotica 2006, and many other anthologies and periodicals. Learn more at www.CrimeFictionWriter.com.

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      Book preview

      Unbridled Love - Michael Bracken

      UNBRIDLED LOVE

      a romance with horse sense

      Michael Bracken

      Unbridled Love © 2010 by Michael Bracken

      Smashwords Edition

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      UNBRIDLED LOVE

      a romance with horse sense

      CHAPTER 1

      If I had it to do all over again, I would do many things differently and hope that the end result remained the same. I was young when I first met Hans Edelmann and had never truly been in love. I barely understood my own emotional turmoil, and I can only blame the stupidity of my youth for nearly driving him away.

      The afternoon we first met, I sat astride Hershey, my chocolate-brown mare, and stared in bewilderment at the new riding instructor.

      He stood in the center of the dusty arena, a well-used riding crop jutting from the top of his black knee-high right boot. "I have never, ever, seen such sloppy horsemanship, he shouted at us. The louder he spoke, the thicker his German accent became. I can see that we have a lot of work to do if any of you expect to compete at Stallion Stables in August."

      He paused, glared at each student individually, then said, Class dismissed.

      I glanced at the other women in my riding class and noticed that many of my classmates were fighting back tears. No previous instructor at Rocking Horse Stables had ever been so harsh in his assessment of our riding abilities. My own chin had trembled a bit when Hans started his tirade, but I had forced myself not to succumb to his ranting. At twenty-five, I was the oldest student in the class and I felt as if I had to be the group’s pillar of strength.

      Swinging my right leg over the horse’s broad back, I dropped to the arena’s dirt floor. I took the mare’s reins in my hand and led her around the arena. After Hershey cooled off, I led her out of the arena, across the dusty gravel parking lot, and into the massive white barn. Once I had Hershey in her stall, I stripped off her tack.

      I heard two of my classmates talking in the next stall.

      Mr. Edelmann is an ogre, the first said.

      He isn’t anything like the instructor I used to have, came the response.

      Did you see what he did to Bertha when she missed the second jump?

      He even criticized Melissa, and she’s the best rider we have!

      I nodded in agreement with the young woman’s assessment of Hans Edelmann as I brushed Hershey’s coat. He had criticized me, but his comments were nothing compared to the things he told other riders. The two girls hadn’t been exaggerating when they classified Hans as an ogre. Based on his performance during class, I thought he was that or worse. I shook my head, almost ashamed of myself for the tingle of excitement I’d felt when I’d first met him the day Mr. Harriman gave him the two-minute tour of Rocking Horse Stables.

      Hershey stood sixteen hands tall, each hand equaling four inches, and I could just see over her withers when I stretched up to brush her mane. As I did, I could see down the long corridor between the stalls and out through the open barn doors. Hans strode across the parking lot past the open doors, his riding crop tucked under his muscular triceps, his bearing military in its precision.

      Watching Hans march past brought my blood to a boil. Who did he think he was to be yelling at us the way he had? He’d only been at the stable a week and already he’d brought tears to the eyes of most of the younger girls. I didn’t think anyone deserved the kind of treatment Hans had been dishing out.

      After I finished grooming Hershey, I cleaned the horse’s tack, including the saddle, bridle, reins, and other accessories. Finally, I hoisted the heavy leather saddle over my shoulder, gathered the rest of my tack in my arms, and carried the entire bundle to the tack room where most of the private owners had specially-built cubbyholes.

      I stored everything, then wiped the sweat off my forehead. The barn had become uncomfortably warm.

      By then, I had worked myself into an emotional lather. I was determined to speak to the new instructor about his teaching methods. Cleaning my tack had kept my hands busy, but my mind had been free to continuously relive the worst moment of my class.

      I searched the stalls in the barn, scanned the two practice fields and the pasture as I crossed the parking lot, then walked to the arena. Hans’ apartment was at the far end, above the glass-enclosed observation room. When I didn’t see him in the arena, I hurried toward his apartment. I strode across the room, then took the stairs two at a time, my boot heels clicking against the worn wood of the stairs.

      I rapped on the door once, then shoved it open without thinking. Mr. Edelmann, I said as I stepped through the open doorway. I stopped when I caught sight of him standing in the middle of his small living room, stripped to the waist.

      He turned to stare at me. Yes?

      I—, I started to say. Then I blushed, the heat warming my cheeks. I had seen the grooms strip off their tattered T-shirts to work bare-chested in the hot summer sun, but I had never seen a man as well proportioned as Hans. His broad shoulders tapered to a slim waist and a firm abdomen, and I could see the muscles ripple under his skin. His glossy black riding boots, the toes covered with dust, stood upright on the hardwood floor beside him. He was clad only in a pair of tight-fitting tan breeches that easily revealed the shape of his muscular legs and his tight buttocks.

      Staring at the tall, broad-shouldered Aryan, an indecent thought flashed through my mind and I flushed again. My determination to confront Hans melted away in embarrassment for having barged in on him while he was undressing. I...oh, forget it.

      I spun on my heel and stalked down the stairway to the observation room, where I stared out across the empty riding arena. Although angry at myself for my unexpected schoolgirl reaction to the sight of his half-naked body, I was more upset by my inability to tell Hans exactly what I thought of his teaching methods.

      Frustrated, I ground my teeth together and marched to my two-room tack shop under the main grandstand. After graduating from college three years earlier with a business degree, I realized that my love of horses overshadowed my other ambitions. With a loan from my father, I purchased the tack shop from the woman who

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