Pride (The Eventing Series Book 2) Read online

  Pete’s hand fell away from my arm. “Don’t go stomping away mad,” he warned, his voice tense. “This isn’t worth fighting over. We both know it’s only because I have an Advanced Level horse, and you don’t.”

  “I don’t yet.”

  “You don’t yet. You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know what you’re capable of? Jules, honey, sit down and let’s be rational.”

  The r word. Didn’t he know me by now? Didn’t he know that word didn’t apply to me? I couldn’t be rational, I wouldn’t be rational. I needed some time alone so I could nurse my disappointment in peace. I needed some space where I could let the tears overflow and no one would try to comfort me. Dammit, I just needed to be allowed to wallow in my misery for a little bit.

  “Jules,” Pete said pleadingly. “You have to believe that they’ve got a plan for you. You’re going to get your invitation. They’re going to take us both on this fall. They told me there was going to be an offer. We just have to wait and see what it is.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’ve been telling you so. Maybe they just had to work out the logistics. Maybe you’re going to come along—”

  “With you?” I turned and looked at him. “You think so?”

  He bit his lip for a moment, uncertain.

  I laughed. “I don’t think so either.”

  “It could be—”

  “There’s no point in speculating,” I snapped caustically, losing control of my be-nice button at last. “Can we just not talk about it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Pete said, and his voice was genuine. “I just really, really want to know.”

  “You and me both,” I said flippantly, but inside of me, something had suddenly begun to soften. Pete, I realized, was just as worried about my future as I was. Here he was at a moment of personal triumph, and he was waiting anxiously to find out what was happening to me. Outside of that one shining moment when he’d gotten the offer, he hadn’t spent another second celebrating his good fortune. He’d sat on his happiness and waited to see if mine would match it.

  “Thank you for worrying about me,” I said, my voice a little bit ragged with emotion—me, feeling emotional in front of someone! Pigs must be breaking from the bonds of the earth and sailing through the heavens—“Don’t think you can’t be excited for yourself, though.”

  Pete gave me a half-smile, a dimple appearing on one tanned cheek. “You know I’m scared to death to do this without you, don’t you?”

  My jaw dropped. “Scared? Why? You’re going to train in England! What’s better than that? You can’t be scared to go to England… that’s the dream, Pete!”

  He cocked his head, quirked his eyebrow, and regarded me with that quizzical gaze of his before replying. “It was the ‘without you’ part that I’ve been worrying about, Jules.”

  Evening chores went by at a snail’s pace, the sun blazing down as if a storm had never blotted out its face. By the time we were finished cleaning up, Lacey was muttering something about throwing herself into the pool fully clothed. I stayed in the barn alone, putting away some laundry on the tack room shelves, trying to work up the courage to go back to the house and face Pete after the way I’d treated him earlier. I knew he’d be tired after showing horses to Amanda the Hunter Princess (my name for a contact of his who was always showing up looking for hunter prospects from his revolving door of off-track Thoroughbreds). I knew he didn’t need any attitude from me when I came back. I needed a cool-down period to get over myself.

  “I was the worst, Kitty,” I told the tabby, who was watching me through hooded eyes from her perch atop the washing machine. “He basically told me he couldn’t imagine going away without me, and I asked him why. I didn’t even recognize that he was saying he needed me. I was only thinking about training. Horses and training. That’s all I ever think about. Why does he even want me around? Why does he put up with my crazy?”

  Kitty yawned.

  “I deserved that.”

  The last of the saddle towels placed on their shelf, I flipped out the lights, made sure that the cat-flap was unlocked for Kitty’s nocturnal hunting, and stepped out of the tack room. I looked up and down the barn aisle, swept clean after evening turn-out.

  There was a man in a black suit standing in the aisle, a silhouette with the setting sun behind him.

  I TOOK AN involuntary step back and nearly toppled backwards over the concrete sill of the tack room. Ah, my catlike grace.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, hoping my voice didn’t sound as much like a twelve-year-old’s to the stranger’s ears as it did to mine. I got squeaky when I was nervous, and being startled by a stranger dressed like one of the Men in Black did nothing for my composure. Sometimes being a girl alone in a barn was not the best thing.

  The man ignored any squeaking. “Jules Thornton?” he asked. “I’m Carl Rockwell.”

  The breath went out of me. I clung to the door-frame like a deflating balloon stuck in a tree branch, just a few sturdy pieces of wood all that was left between me and the ground.

  Carl Rockwell cocked his head. He was waiting for me to reply. Oh shit, words! I didn’t know any words! I managed to draw a shaky breath and my lungs seemed to remember their job. Good start, Jules. Now to find my tongue. “Mr. Rockwell,” I managed, forgetting Pete called him Carl. “What a surprise.”

  An unwelcome surprise. What about the phone call? Why was he showing up in person? I couldn’t imagine anything that required a face-to-face conversation. Hell, they’d only called Pete for news as awesome as England. Rockwell must be here to let me down politely.

  Or maybe my news was so good, so much better than expected, that they had to tell me in person? Maybe they were buying me an advanced horse? I craned my neck a little to see past Carl and into the barn lane. Maybe there was a horse van pulling up right now.

  There wasn’t. Still plenty of time, though. I dragged my attention back to Carl, who was looking bemused by my lack of focus.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Long hot day. Let me get you a water. Or a Diet Coke? Do you want to sit down? The tack room is hot but—” I inclined my head towards the dark room, thanking the eventing gods that Lacey had cleaned it out a few days ago. I couldn’t have borne showing a Rockwell a cobwebby tack room. These were the people who produced magazine spreads on Country Lifestyle, after all, and believe me, that did not extend to spiders and mud. I wasn’t sure what sort of country they lived in, but it sure wasn’t mine.

  Carl Rockwell didn’t seem interested in real country, though. “I only need a few moments.” He looked around at the empty stalls. “I was hoping to see your upper-level horses?”

  “Everyone’s outside.”

  “That’s fine. Lead the way.”

  We marched out of the barn, crossed the barn lane, and up to the black-board fence on the other side. I gazed down the slope of the big pasture, hoping the herd hadn’t chosen this evening to roam down to the clump of oak trees at the bottom of the hill. There was no way the man in shiny black loafers next to me was going to pick his way down this mini-mountain to get a look at my horses.

  Luck was with me—the geldings were grazing just a few hundred feet away, clumped closely together so that they could join forces in the ongoing fight against biting flies. These summer evenings were swarming with vicious bugs—the horses needed all the tails and manes they could get.

  I found Dynamo’s shining red rump amongst the herd and pointed him out. “The red chestnut—but he’s not really going at Advanced. He’s been at Intermediate all this past season. We’ve had two wins, a third, and a couple of fifths and sixths.”

  “When will he go Advanced?” Carl asked.

  I hesitated. Dynamo was giving his all over the Intermediate fences. The jump to Advanced wasn’t huge, but I was afraid it was beyond him. That wasn’t the right answer, though. A good trainer would figure out his fitness issues and get him over the damned jumps. I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t managed that yet. “In Oc
tober,” I decided. “He deserves an easy summer, then we’re aiming for October at Sunshine State.”

  He nodded and pursed his lips, eyes roving over Dynamo’s muscled form. He wasn’t a big horse, but he was built strong and tough. Anyone could see he’d hold up to the rigors of several more seasons with a little luck and a lot of good care.

  “My real up-and-comer, now,” I said hastily, pointing at Mickey, “is that tall gray horse. He can jump the moon. I see big things for him. So do his owners. They’re very supportive. I’m sure you’ve heard of Carrie Donnelly? She’s a part-owner.”

  Rockwell shifted on his feet and gazed impassively at Mickey. “Ah yes,” he said after a moment. “Danger Mouse, isn’t it? Only at Training, though.”

  “Training’s in the bag,” I said quickly. “He’s ready for Prelim.”

  “Advanced in two years, barring injury.” Carl Rockwell grinned, the first sign of human feelings to cross his face since he’d arrived. “I know this song.”

  “You know it’s a solid plan, then.”

  “With the right training and the right person on his back.”

  I tilted my head and bit back about twelve inadvisable retorts. Deep breath, Jules. “He’s getting excellent training. I think you’ll find that as a trainer I’m—”

  “A solid jumper,” Carl interrupted. “With a rough-and-ready style that would have gotten you to the Olympics in the eighties. But this is the twenty-first century. The Military is history. Endurance day is gone. The long format is never coming back. You need precision. You need obedience. You need hair-trigger responses—and that’s just on the cross-country.”

  Carl turned to me, his dark eyes calculating. I stiffened beneath that appraising gaze. He was going to tell me I wasn’t good enough, there was no deal, no ambassadorship, no sponsorship, no training program. My house of cards began to topple, and I began to mentally calculate which horse had to go by the time the money from Virtuous ran out.

  “It’s all about the dressage, Ms Thornton,” Carl said finally. He pronounced it DRESS-age, like the British. Like Pete. Like I was starting to do when I wasn’t paying attention. “Of course, you need to go clean on the cross-country and show jumping, and your courage and sense of pace are outstanding. Time penalties are not your problem, that’s for sure.”

  He looked back out at the grazing horses, leaving me to stare at the white skin along the edges of his precisely manicured sideburns. The lines of his haircut, along with the lines of his suit, the lines of his carefully motionless face, were as regimented as the movements of a dressage test. It left me wondering what on earth the Rockwell requirements for my dressage might actually be. Something horrible, I thought. Something outrageous. I couldn’t do it. If he wanted some kind of dressage commitment, I would send him on his way. That wasn’t why I was in this game.

  Dynamo picked up his head and looked back at me for a moment, his jaw still, grass poking out from either side of his mouth. All of the hopes and dreams that had been tied up for years in that horse came flooding into my mind. This was our chance! I had to do what they wanted. No matter how awful. I nodded at Carl, and he cleared his throat before he went on.

  “Additionally, there are a few members of the board who have concerns about your business acumen. You need clients with big horses if you’re going to show off our products. Or you need to be able to attract fans to buy into a syndicate. That takes people skills.”

  I was silent. If this was a rejection, he was making it particularly painful by doing it in person—but it certainly didn’t sound like an offer.

  “I would like to see a few more horses with upper-level potential in your barn,” Carl said. “Still, the general opinion is you’re a rider with promise.”

  His tone made it clear he deeply regretted the general opinion.

  “And so we are prepared to consider you as a Rockwell rider in the upcoming season—with a few improvements.”

  There was a moment when the world was spinning and there were spots in front of my eyes, and then I was back.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked, wetting my dry lips with my tongue. “To improve, I mean.”

  “A summer training program.”

  In England, I thought. In England. He would’ve said, though. If you’re offering England, you lead with England. “Where?”

  “Seabreeze Equestrian Center, near Orlando,” Carl Rockwell announced, still watching the horses instead of me. “For three months.”

  The spinning sensation came back, but this time it wasn’t out of excitement.

  “You will take two horses. I expect one to be Dynamo, the other can be one of your young prospects. The gray is fine, since he’s a Donnelly horse. We’ve worked with her before. We’ve made arrangements with Grace Carter, the trainer there. She’ll take you on as an apprentice. You’ll do dressage and learn to apply it to your jumping, get more effective in both. She’ll also give you a course in client relationships. You’ll perform an exemplary Second Level dressage test on the older horse. Then we’ll evaluate… and we’ll see.”

  I stared at his profile. He didn’t turn, didn’t bother to meet my gaze. He was the money, he didn’t have to. He was accustomed to giving orders. I was the beggar. I was accustomed to following them.

  Still, he was asking too much. To be a working student again? No. Absolutely not. No goddamned way was I backtracking to the life I had left behind. I was a trainer now. I had my own working students, not the other way around. Angry words rose to my tongue, and I took a breath to even things out before I said something regrettable and Jules-like. There was no point in getting mad, but surely he could be made to understand: what he was asking was impossible.

  “I’m not an apprentice,” I said evenly, using his fancy word for working student, or barn slave, depending on who you asked and who you worked for. “I’m a trainer. I have clients, I have my own—apprentice. What you’re asking me to do is a little inappropriate considering my current standing and what I’ve already accomplished.”

  Carl shook his head gently, a ghost of a smile crossing his grim jowls. “What you’ve already accomplished? Are you saying you’ve learned everything you need to know? If you’re planning on staying what you are—a passably acceptable local trainer—then you’re probably right. You’ve had a good run with the horse you’ve had since you were a teenager, and he’s a good horse who’s probably capable of greatness. You’ve sold some nice amateur packers. And you can continue to do that, but you’re not going international if you don’t take any steps to improve your dressage. You’ll be successful enough, but you’ll never be the professional that you want to be, or that you seem to think you already are.”

  He finished his speech and then looked at his watch, sighing over the time. “I have to be on the road to Tampa. Have you decided against the offer?”

  I bit my lip and looked down at the horses. Mickey got a little too close to Jim Dear and received a small nip on his rump in response; he shook his head and trotted away a few steps to safety. Even in those few steps his beauty and grace were apparent, while his foolish youth was all too obvious in the way he looked back at Jim in mournful astonishment, not sure why he’d gotten a bite. He was a talented horse with unlimited potential, and his owners had entrusted him to me—for as long as I could prove myself worth that trust.

  Meanwhile, everything that Carl had said to me rang true.

  I was nobody. A few good finishes at Intermediate, but I hadn’t even been able to make the regional championships on a horse as good as Mickey. That was saying something, wasn’t it?

  Still, to give up my independence and go work for another trainer, someone I’d never even heard of… that was asking too much.

  Carl was done waiting. He turned to me with undisguised impatience. “This is the offer, Ms Thornton, and then I’ll leave you to think about it. You study and ride under Grace this summer, prove that you’ve improved upon your dressage, prove you have the skills to run a successful busine
ss, and you’ll be one of our ambassadors. A custom saddle, financial consideration… I’ll have the offer emailed to you.” He paused, considered his next words, as if he wasn’t sure he ought to share them. Then he went on. “We considered sending you with Peter, but it wasn’t the right program for you. His is for seasoning on cross-country, to prep him for a four-star. But you don’t lack for daring. We have no doubt you can get a horse over any fence. We do doubt you can always do it safely or effectively on these technical courses you’ll be facing at the four-star level. We need to be assured you’re in perfect control of your horses before we make you an offer.

  “So… you have our number. Let us know.”

  I bit my lip as Carl got into his car, slammed the door, and drove away.

  I stood there in the gloaming for a long, long time, watching the horses fade into shadows, scared as hell.

  Then I went to the house to tell Pete I’d gotten the offer, and I hadn’t accepted it… but I hadn’t turned it down, either.

  THE NEWS WAS not taken particularly well.

  “So you’ll go,” Pete said, slathering pancakes with butter. “You’ll go, and I’ll go, and we’ll come back this fall and have an actual shot at life without bankruptcy.”

  “So go? Just go to wherever this barn is and muck this woman’s stalls?”

  “And get a nice refresher in dressage, and get saved from financial devastation.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Jules, I know we don’t talk about finances much, but can I be really honest with you?”

  I wished he wouldn’t. “Sure.”

  Pete set a plate of pancakes in front of me. “I’m broke.”

  “Join the club.” I drowned the pancakes in syrup. Pools of sugar, just what I needed for supper.

  “No, I mean seriously.” Pete settled into the chair across from me and made healthier choices with his syrup-to-pancake ratio. “I was kind of waiting to see what Rockwell offered. It’s not a lot, but if both of us get a similar package, it will cover event fees for a couple of our horses and save us on equipment costs. You’ll be able to bring in some clients based on the good PR and I’ll be able to cover costs on my sales horses. Plus the name recognition will help with sales. And thank God, because otherwise…” he trailed off, and looked at me with bleak eyes. “I’m this close to having to give up the farm and find a job riding for someone else.”