“Need a hand getting on?” Jeremy asked Nory as Isaac brought a dappled, hardy-looking cob mare to stand near her. Katie was due to arrive this afternoon after a brief visit to her parents’ house, and Jeremy had been as skittish as any wild stallion all morning.

Nory gulped at the size of her horse. They never seemed that big when they were frolicking in the fields, but up close, they were intimidatingly tall. She was a fairly good rider; she could certainly hold her own hacking across the fields, but she’d always struggled with mounting. Clearly Jeremy remembered her ungainly attempts from their school days. She wished sexy Isaac with his sexy eyes and ridiculously sexy smile wasn’t here to watch her climb onto a horse. Every ounce of last night’s allure was about to be obliterated.

She looked around: Ameerah, Pippa, and Charles were now sitting on their mounts, and Jenna gracefully swung one leg over hers and nestled her perfecto gym-bottom into the saddle.

“Come on,” said Jeremy. “I’ll give you a leg up.”

“Thanks, Jez.”

“I’ll help too,” said Isaac.

Oh, fantastic, this isn’t embarrassing at all.

Nory lifted her leg to hook her foot into the stirrups. Why were the stirrups always so high up? Clearly they were designed for people with longer, more flexible legs than hers. She sighed, resigned, and looked at Isaac.

“This isn’t going to be pretty,” she told him. Isaac raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

Using both hands beneath her thigh—cheeks blazing with embarrassment—she hoisted her leg up high while Jeremy, remembering the drill from their gymkhana events, held the stirrup firm and guided her boot into it.

“We’ll head on down the lane to the meadow and wait for you there,” said Ameerah. Nory felt a glow of gratitude to her friend; Ameerah knew Nory wouldn’t want an audience. The others trotted off down the lane, their voices and the braying of the horses becoming fainter as they disappeared out of sight.

Nory threw both her arms over the saddle and pushed off the ground with the other leg. She felt two sets of hands on her backside propelling her upward. The heaving noises they made did nothing for her already disheveled ego. As she swung her other leg over and finally settled herself into the saddle, she wished that this wasn’t Isaac’s first experience of grabbing her bottom and wondered if he’d even want to grab it again after watching her ungainly performance. She ventured a look down and found Isaac smiling up at her.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

“Don’t be. I enjoyed it.”

He was smiling in a devilish way, and Nory wondered if maybe she hadn’t blown it after all.

“I’m actually very good in the saddle once I’ve mounted,” she said.

Isaac’s smile widened, one eyebrow lifted. “Good to know,” he replied.