Pride (The Eventing Series Book 2) Read online

  In tonight’s crushing heat, everyone was either making love to their fan or eating their hay over the aisle, hoping for a bit of breeze and making a huge mess for Lacey and I to sweep up in the morning. Dynamo was one of the former; he took no notice of me when I stopped outside his stall and peeked in at him. He’d been with me for two straight days, he was probably thinking, and the sooner I went back to wherever humans stabled themselves, the better.

  Mickey was one of the latter, cheerfully strewing hay across the aisle with a glutton’s abandon, and when I leaned against his stall door, he kindly decided I was more interesting than getting another mouthful of hay to waste on the floor. Ordinarily, I wasn’t a huge fan of having a horse rub his hundred-pound head all over my torso, but getting this kind of attention from Mickey was flattering, especially when you considered there was still some poisonously green, heavily rationed, sweet leafy alfalfa to extricate from his pile of hay. He’d had a long, hot weekend, and he would have been well within his rights to ignore me for a day or two, which was what Dynamo was surely planning. I couldn’t turn down a little extra loving, if he was offering.

  I let Mickey get his head-rub on while I busied myself playing with his stubby little forelock. One day, once it had grown back to a proper length, it would be absolutely gorgeous, like a unicorn’s forelock, flowing blindingly white over his wide, dark eyes. He’d sheared it off in a barn accident last year, the very night he’d arrived at my farm. I thanked the eventing gods every day that the hair had grown back, and so spectacularly beautiful. Although the rest of his coat and mane was pale gray, shot through here and there with darker strands, the abused forelock had grown back in a luxurious lock of purest white. Finally long enough to lie flat on his skull, its snowy perfection made the whole ordeal seem almost worthwhile. Talk about an ill wind blowing no good.

  I just wished I knew what I was doing wrong with him. We should have done better this weekend. Something wasn’t going right with his training. Was it him? Or was it me?

  Mickey nuzzled me, to let me know it didn’t matter, as long as he was getting plenty of love.

  “You look so dashing,” I told him affectionately. “Such a heartthrob. The most handsome man I know.”

  “It’s about time you realized that.”

  I jumped about fifty feet in the air, more or less, sending Mickey ducking back into his stall in alarm.

  “Pete, dammit, don’t do that!”

  He was leaning against the doorframe at the end of the barn aisle, arms folded across his chest. The orange light hanging over the barn door, studded with flying moths, made his lanky frame a black shadow against the artificial glow. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that lazy grin was spread across his tanned face, that laughing sparkle was dancing in his eyes, and that faintly patronizing eyebrow of his was arched in its usual display of amusement. Pete had decided early on that he found all my sulky moods and arrogant airs rather entertaining, like a hoity-toity filly who is too busy being a brat to pay attention and trips over her own two feet. He was essentially trying to train me out of being such a brat by laughing at my bad behavior. I wasn’t sure if it was working, or if I just saved my sulks and moods for the isolation of the barn, like I was tonight. I guess he won either way.

  “Sneaking around my barn again, huh?” I challenged. “Trying to find my secrets?”

  “I know all your secrets, baby,” Pete said smugly. “You come out here at night and hug and kiss your way to blue ribbons. I just wish you’d do that with me.”

  “Hah.” I turned back to Mickey, but the horse had rediscovered the joys of alfalfa. He was done with me. “I’m going to have to do a lot more hugging and kissing if I’m going to start beating you again.”

  Pete straightened up and started down the aisle towards me. “I know you have it in you,” he said lightly. “Typical horse-crazy teenager. I’m surprised you don’t sleep in the barn.”

  “Hey, I’m over twenty-one,” I reminded him. “I’m all grown up.”

  “And still horse-crazy? Shouldn’t you have grown out of that by now?”

  “I’ll never grow out of it. Just like you won’t.”

  “I’ll admit that.” Pete stopped in front of me. “But if you could be boy-crazy for just one minute, I sure could use a late night in front of the TV with a pretty girl.” He opened up his arms invitingly, and after a moment’s pretend hesitation, I stepped into them.

  Wrapped up in Pete’s arms, feeling his easy strength around me, I could just let go for a few moments. Let go of all of it—the daily demands of caring for the horses, the constant bowing and scraping to my handful of owners, the constant fear someone would overtake me at any moment, stealing my thunder, poaching my clients, and leaving me with nothing again. I’d been so close to losing it all, and not very long ago. I’d lost my farm to a hurricane, and I’d lost most of my business in the wake of the storm.

  Still, hadn’t I come out on top? I had to remind myself of that a lot. Sure, I didn’t have my own farm anymore, and that had been like losing a piece of myself. I had lost a lot of ground, literal and figurative, but I had clients, I had horses, and I had Pete, the only person in the world I trusted enough to take charge every now and then.

  Okay, I admit, there were occasional sleepless nights when I woke up beside him and wondered what would happen if we fought (really fought, mind you, not the silly, constant fights I provoked simply by being me) and I had to move out. Naturally, I was constantly aware I was living on his property and in his house, instead of being queen of my own domain. Of course, it was scary relying on someone else. But, Pete explained gently, one night when I couldn’t quite get over the fear, when he woke up and saw me sitting up in bed, counting out down payments and mortgages on my fingers, relying on someone else—that was how love worked. You could rely on someone, and it was perfectly okay. “And of course someday,” he’d gone on confidently, “I fully expect that you’ll pick up the slack and I can live on your dime for awhile.”

  After about fifteen seconds of being thoroughly offended, I realized that I would absolutely love to be the breadwinner and champion of the farm, and I agreed. “You’re on,” I told him. “I hope you like being a kept man.”

  He’d leaned back on the pillows and grinned at me. “I can’t wait. Well—I can wait. I can get some sleep first. Let’s try that, huh?”

  Now I rested my chin on his shoulder and closed my eyes, blocking out the view of the shadowy barn. There was nothing but the sound of his heartbeat—and the sound of horses chewing their hay, snorting into their water buckets, pacing through their shavings. I felt peaceful for a brief shining moment.

  Someone kicked a wall and someone else whinnied, and the moment was gone. I stepped out of his embrace and glared up the barn aisle at my offending children. “Knock it off!” I roared viciously. “That’s enough!”

  There was an intense quiet as the horses gauged my level of outrage.

  “We should be turning them out at night,” I mused. “It’s easier having them inside for breakfast, but it’s too hot to leave them in. And they train better when they’re out all night. They run around playing and they’re worn out the next day. Less arguing. Whaddya think?”

  “What, turn them out right now? Can’t we go to the house… and take showers… and not work for, I don’t know, four or five hours?”

  “I’m just saying, tomorrow night, my guys are all going back out after dinner. Yours should, too, or they’ll hear mine and fuss in their stalls all night.”

  “Anything, if you’ll just come inside now.” Pete mopped his brow dramatically. “You’re so worried about them being hot, when are you going to start worrying about me?”

  “When you’re as delicate as a horse,” I said absently, casting a glance around the aisle to make sure that all the stall doors were latched and all the light switches were flicked down. I couldn’t resist one last night-check, and holding up a finger to let Pete know I’d just be a second, I walked the barn aisle,
looking for trouble.

  He sighed.

  I paused by Dynamo’s stall once more. The chestnut Thoroughbred I’d had since I was a teenager stood with his hindquarters to me, face deep in the hay-pile he’d dragged to the back corner of the stall. “Dyno,” I called gently. “Dyno-saur…”

  He flicked one ear towards me and snorted into his hay. I bit my lip, disappointed. There was a time when he would have come over for a kiss. Love fades into friendship, I supposed.

  To my right, there was soft nicker. I turned and saw Mickey leaning over his stall grill again, watching me with pricked ears. Even in the gloom, his gray coat was luminous, that snowy forelock nearly glowing. He saw me watching him and nickered again. My heart lifted. We were still young lovers, Mickey and me. There were years ahead in this relationship, before he got so tired of my face he buried his eyeballs in hay.

  Pete chuckled. “That horse sure does love you,” he said fondly. “You two have come together nicely.”

  My heart was in my throat, choking me, and I could only nod. I took one more look at Dynamo, still ignoring me in favor of his hay, and gave a parting kiss to Mickey’s soft gray nose.

  It was a changing of the guard, and it was bittersweet. I didn’t want to leave it this way. I would stay, I thought, until Dynamo gave in and said goodnight to me.

  Pete sighed and caught my hand in his. “Come on. I have a beer waiting for you in the kitchen.” I went with him, throwing one last warning glance back at the dark barn aisle. No shenanigans while I’m gone. The horses went on chewing, the fans went on blowing, roaring their artificial breeze into the sweltering night.

  We walked quietly for a few strides, boots crunching on the gravel drive. The stars glittered overhead, eerily close, winking mischievously in the humid air.

  “My favorite time of night,” Pete said. “I don’t see it much, though.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I agreed. “But it’s so hot.”

  “Fall’s only a few months away. You gonna make it? We can always run away to Canada.”

  “I don’t have enough blankets for them. That would cost a fortune. Anyway, as long as they’re okay, I’m okay.” I looked back over my shoulder at the annex barn, squatting low on the hillside under its shade of live oaks. The twilight hid its faults—the missing shingles, the flaking paint, the airless stalls—but the barn was sturdy and strong and had sat there uncaring through many a hurricane. That had recently become paramount in my mind, and I knew I wasn’t the only one in Ocala who was living with a newfound respect for nature. “We can live with a little heat.”

  “Now it’s time to take things a little easier, anyway,” Pete said contentedly, and he slipped his arm around my shoulders. “A little time off, and I have a secret plan to make you leave the farm and go to the beach with me.”

  I laughed. “Fat chance of that!”

  Time off, with the prospect of prepping Mickey for a three-day event? Time off, with Dynamo still jumping strong and only a few years of competition left in him? Time off, with only a handful of horses in a big barn just begging to be filled? Time off, with bills to pay and mouths to feed? I had work to do. Vacations were for other people.

  MORNING CAME TOO soon, the sun peeping through the windows at first, then blasting into the bedroom with a death-ray no one could withstand. I got up with much groaning and sighing; Pete grinned at me as he went out the door, but I could see he was tired too, so I let it pass.

  I had a horse show weekend hangover. Too much coffee, Gatorade, and cheap granola bars, not enough actual food and water. Staying in bed all day was the obvious answer.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Marcus?” I looked over my shoulder for my beagle.

  Marcus snuffled around the base of a tree, his whip-tail wagging, and ignored me.

  “Of course I would, Mom!” I answered for him, and went on down the road, because the obvious answer was definitely impossible. Marcus ran ahead of me, pretending he was fast enough to catch a chattering squirrel escaping down the fence-line.

  The walk down to the annex barn had been peaceful enough: an easy amble down an oak-lined drive, the trees whispering and rustling above, the black-board fences running with pleasant symmetry along either side of the road. I had views of my domain a king would envy: the cross-country field disappearing over a rise to my left, and the long sloping pastures sliding away to my right. Briar Hill was a big hill, practically a mountain by central Florida standards, and the driveway ran right through the center, giving me a birds-eye view of the neighborhood.

  I gazed out over the rural patchwork of Marion County while the mockingbirds gossiped in the branches overhead, taking in the ovals of training tracks where young racehorses were learning their trade, the stern rectangles of dressage arenas, and the generous sweeps of open pasture, full of animals and humans very occupied at the business of life before the hot sun took control of the hazy sky, and felt deeply, deeply lucky to be me.

  I still missed my old farm, although now it was just a flat spot of ground grown over with weeds, but there was no denying I’d landed on my feet at Briar Hill. Sure, the past year had been rough, both competitively and financially. I’d lost a good chunk of business right after last summer’s hurricane destroyed my farm, and I’d lost even more horses in training in the months since, with a recession raging and my temporary housing status making me unattractive to owners, which made it all the more fortunate Pete was deluded enough to fall for me and invite me to stay here for as long as we didn’t kill each other.

  I knew potential clients didn’t like that I was a renter instead of an owner. They’d see my temporary status as the possibility that I’d pick up in the night and move like so many horse trainers loved to do when the going got tough. They didn’t know how good I had it, though, or they could put their fears to rest. At least I was living like a citizen of the first-world, in an actual house, complete with air-conditioning, hot water, and cable television. There were a lot of good horsemen living in broken-down single-wide trailers, sharing their kitchen cabinets with mice. I’d take an unexpectedly comfortable life for as long as it was on offer. And as long as Pete maintained his aforementioned delusional status, I’d continue to call his home, my home. I looked across the green fields and waggled my fingers in the humid morning breeze. Good morning, darling farm! Good morning, lovely hills! Pete wasn’t the only one who was just a bit delusional.

  Of course, we were all deluded to keep Lacey, I had to admit, as the full assault of her shrill whistling and the ridiculously loud radio met me at the wide-open barn doors.

  “Good morning, kids!” I called down the aisle, but the horses were eating their grain and didn’t have time for me. Also they couldn’t hear me, because Lacey had decided on the radio station specializing in eighties pop, evidently because she knew all the words to every song, even though they were older than she was.

  I considered going back to bed, if only to escape her singing. The horses would probably come with me. We could all run away together, and save our eardrums.

  Lacey, her back to me as she raked the aisle, decided to really go for it, announcing to the world at large her devotion to expensive jewelry and designer clothes.

  The words were pretty funny when you considered Lacey was wearing ripped khaki shorts, a pink tank-top so stretched-out and worn it was hardly a shirt anymore, and a pair of canvas sneakers from Wal-Mart which had taken on the color and texture of the dirt beneath her feet.

  “MATERI-AL-HUL!” Lacey wailed, in very loose synchronization with the radio.

  I turned off the radio. “Hey, Spirit of the Eighties, you’re going to colic my horses.”

  Lacey didn’t even blush. She just looked at me over her sunburned shoulder and stuck out her tongue. “Oh good, the boss is here.” She turned back to her raking. “Did you hear that horses, the boss is here! Everyone be super-good or you’ll get in trouble!”

  I switched the radio back on and went into the tack room to escape her.


  Lacey got back to her singing.

  “Hello there, coffee,” I greeted the dusty Mr. Coffee, which was rumbling away industriously from atop its perch on the ancient mini-fridge. The machine reached the end of its cycle and cheeped a welcome to me. “Now that’s the kind of sound I want to hear in my barn first thing in the morning.” I popped the lid off my mug, nearly empty from the thirsty walk from the house, and topped off. In the weak light from the room’s cell-like window, the coffee glowered an inky black. Ah, mother’s milk, I thought, and gave it a tentative slurp. Caffeine give me strength.

  While I was building up the mental capacity to begin the day, I took thorough stock of the feed room. It wasn’t much to see, just a twelve-by-twelve concrete cube doing double-duty at holding everything my tiny string of sales and sport horses needed. A pair of trash cans in one corner held the sweet feed and beet pulp, a set of wobbly plastic shelves next to the windows was piled with tubs of electrolytes, vitamins, and joint supplements. The fridge and coffeemaker were wedged into the back right corner, and above them I’d driven scavenged nails to hang my collection of bridles. My motley collection of hand-me-down tack trunks, their colored vinyl covers peeling and their hardware rusting, along with a couple of saddle stands, took up the rest of the space, with just a little corner for the cat food dishes where Barn Kitty (hey, she came with the name) came to snack when she wasn’t feasting on fresh meat from the ever-present supply of barn mice. Marcus settled down to sleep on an old saddle pad near the door, where he would spend the rest of the day.

  Where the practical storage ended, my ambition took over. I had a big wall calendar hanging on the door, just as I had at the old farm. The days were marked with upcoming shows, galloping days, farrier visits, dewormer due dates, and all the other fun little things that break up the monotony of training barn life. Day in and day out, we performed the same tasks so often that if you really gave it any thought, you’d go slightly insane—had I really just meticulously cleaned that stall in order to put a horse back inside and watch him destroy it again? Was this really all going to happen again tomorrow, in the same order, in the same way? Office drones leaned their chins on their fists and dreamed of a brilliant life with horses, but, with only these few disruptions—a tube of wormer here, a shot of Legend there—our days were surprisingly similar. Only the big personalities in those stalls out there saved us from total boredom.