'A life worth living' Hero (book 2)

Chapter 11

Luke's house is massive! "There's seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, two living rooms, kitchen, laundry." Luke says.
"Wow! Seven bedrooms!" I exclaim.
"I know. My parents went over the top when building it. You should see the stables. It's like heaven there." He said. We walk to the door and Luke offers to carry my bag for me. I blush but except it. He knocks on the door and we wait.
We can hear the keys turning in the door and then it suddenly flies open. There is a beautiful woman standing there which I guess is Luke's mum.
"Hi Mum." Luke says. "This is Stacey. She new to the school but her sister has been there for a while."
"It's nice to meet you Stacey." She says warmly. "You can call me Catharine."
"It's nice to meet you too." I say. We walk inside and Luke takes me to my room.
"This used to be my sisters room until she moved out of home. She's a professional groom for the famous event rider Mark Todd." He exclaims.
"Really? I've heard of him! That must be amazing!" I say amazed.
"Well I will leave you to unpack then we could go down to the stables and you could pick a horse to ride." He says.
"Ok. Give me five and I'll meet you at the front of the house." I say.
Five minutes later Luke and I walk to the stables. They were massive and so grand. Twelve stalls and then there were like ten paddocks. Even an indoor arena!
"So do you like it?" He asked.
"Do I like it?" I repeated. "I love it! It's so cool here."
"I thought you would." He says. "We have many horses here and I think there's one that you might connect well with. Her name is Armani and she is a beautiful pure bred chestnut thoroughbred. She is bred for track work as you can imagine. She's due to race next week so she'll be picked up and taken to the track to race." He says.
"Wait. I thought you owned her." I say confused.
"We do but people pay us to race her." He explains.
"Oh." I say.
"Dad says depending on how good of a rider I'll be, in two years he's going to enter us into the Melbourne Cup to race!" He says.
"Really! Armani must be pretty fast!" I exclaim.
"Yeah!" Luke says.
We walk up to a stall. Luke was carrying a saddle blanket, saddle and bridle. I open the bolted shut door and I get a surprise when a delicate chestnut head pops out and nuzzles me.
"Well, I see you've met Armani." Luke says dropping the tack on the ground. I giggle.
"If you groom and tack her up I'll go get my horse ready." Luke says.
"Ok." I say. I work my way along Armani's chestnut coat and admire this beautiful full blood thoroughbred.
Once I finish grooming and tacking her up I lead her to the front of the stable and see Luke. "Your horse is amazing!" I say to him.
"Thanks. He only three and has just been broken into the saddle and a little green so I don't know if this is going to end well." He says. As if to prove this the horse gave a little buck but Luke was to quick for him and stayed on.
"What's his name?" I ask.
"Honey." He says.
"Ha ha, very funny." I say.
"No seriously, that's his name. Don't blame me I didn't come up with it. My sister did." Luke says.

I mount up and we set off through the pines at a trot. Once we reached the clearings we started to canter. I could feel the strength and power the horse below me processed. Armani kept pulling on the reins as if begging me to let her go faster. Luke saw this and urged Honey on.
Armani didn't want to be left behind so she started to gallop out hard. We were gaining on Luke and Honey quickly and fast. If we didn't want to hit them then we would have to slow down. The path was only wide enough for one horse and rider. I had to think fast. I though of all my training sessions with Phill and Thomas. If you need to slow down sit back in the saddle. I tried this but nothing. I then tried pulling on the reins but that just made her go faster. Luke saw my struggling and moved Honey to right most side of the track and yelled. "Just let her run!"
"What!? Are you crazy?!" I shout back.
"Just do it!" He yells.
I take a deep breath and release my firm grip on the reins a little. As I do this Armani lengthens out her strides even more and before I know it we had passed Luke and Honey. We slow down after a while and Luke catches up. "That was amazing!" I exclaim.
"I know. You were rider her so well." He said and I blushed.
I jump down to catch my breath. Luke is looking at me. No, he's staring at me. He puts my hands in his and leans close to me. I feel his breath on my face and before I know it, his lips are on mine. But instead of pulling away I kissed him back and...

Authors note:
Hi guys I hope that was fun for ya'll to read. Let me know in the comments if you saw that coming or not. Keep reading my books. And vote, comment and share my books as well. Don't forget to read the first book in the series if you haven't already. If you type this in you'll find it:
-'A life worth living' Finding Myself (book 1)
Thanks,
-Kate.