Pride (The Eventing Series Book 2) Read online

  In the morning I pretended to feel a burning urge to be at the barn so quickly I didn’t have time to linger over toast and coffee, but had to take both with me as I tossed an apologetic wave over my shoulder. I managed to race out of the house and hoof it down the driveway to the annex barn before Pete had properly rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

  It was five thirty in the morning, and Ocala was dark as night.

  I rarely got up this early, and I never went to the barn this early, barring a horse show that required extensive early morning prep, but there were some things more important than sleep, and one of those things was not discussing what had happened, or what hadn’t happened, last night. Or, for that matter, what was going to happen.

  Namely, that Pete was going to England, and I was not.

  The horses, who had spent the night thinking up new, devious ways to make my life impossible, were overjoyed to see that I’d gotten out of bed early so they could get cracking on their life-ruining. There was a chorus of whinnies from the pasture gates as my boots crunched on the gravel outside the barn. I stood under the orange glow of the streetlight outside the barn door and listened to them sing out their good mornings into the pre-dawn silence. Down the hillside at the next farm, a few broodmares returned the favor, and then a ghostly choir of ever-more-distant neighs rippled through the damp morning air. We were waking up the neighborhood.

  I fumbled in the darkness for the light switch and flung the shadowy barn into fluorescent daylight. The barn cat flicked her tail and rushed into the hay-stall, surprised by my early-morning interruption of her important mousing duties. “Sorry,” I called to Barn Kitty. “I should have told you I was coming to work early today.”

  Since I was alone, I made the executive decision to behave badly, and brought in all the horses in two big groups, lead ropes and horses trailing behind me like a Central Park dog-walker out with her charges. The horses nibbled at each other, squealing when they liked it and squealing more when they didn’t, spooked at the shadows cast by the orange streetlight, and generally acted as if they had never been handled in the dark before.

  It was nice to have something to concentrate on, keeping all of them straight and behaving themselves. The only thing that mattered was bringing in the horses. I wasn’t going to think about anything more than five minutes in the future. Not even that. I wasn’t interested in anything in the future at all, I told myself, hanging up the last lead-rope. Until I got my own phone call from Rockwell, there was no future. I was standing on the edge of the precipice. I was gazing out into the darkness, squinting as I searched for a glimmer of light. I was…

  …being licked by a barn cat.

  I shook Kitty off. “You’re insane,” I told her. “What cat does that? That’s not a cat thing.” Barn Kitty, deaf to my silly human talk, ran ahead of me and stood outside the tack room door, black-striped tail twitching with Meow Mix anticipation. “You’re right,” I conceded. “Breakfast time.”

  It was nice of Barn Kitty to bring me back to reality. Whether Rockwell extended the love to me or not, I still had horses to feed. That in itself was a reassuring thought. I loitered along the way to the feed room, dishing out smooches and ear-rubs to the horses, their affection made loud by their greedy hunger.

  “Good morning, my love,” I told Mickey, pausing by his stall. The big gray gelding shoved his muzzle against my chest, happiness trumping good manners, and rumbled a low nicker which all the other horses picked up in unison. Food! Food? Food, please!

  With the feed dumped and the horses tearing through the hay I’d thrown in the night before, there wasn’t much to do for the next hour. So I settled down on the stoop of the feed room and listened to the sounds of horses chewing, snorting, and stamping their hooves. Maybe I fell back asleep for a little while, I couldn’t say. It might be the closest to meditation I’d ever get, dozing off while horses lived their quiet lives around me.

  When Lacey appeared with the rising sun, she didn’t ask why I’d started chores so early. She just said good morning, grabbed a brush box, and got on with the day. I didn’t know how much she knew, and I didn’t bother asking. I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

  Training went on as regularly scheduled. The Big Horses first, then the client horses, then, in the heat of midday, I would take out the greenies who were just taking their first steps on their sport-horse journey. I saved babies for later because high temperatures tended to take the spring out of their Spanish steps when they felt rambunctious. You have to work with the weather, or it will always work against you.

  I took Mickey out early because I thought he’d cheer me up, but the idea backfired. His lead changes were sloppy, and I was having a hard time holding him together through his transitions. He felt completely strung out around turns, collapsing out of the corners instead of rounding his body through them.

  “He keeps wanting to drag his hindquarters behind him,” I complained to Lacey, who was trotting around the dressage ring on Maybelline, warming up the mare for me to school next. “You think he’s off?”

  Lacey had been my working student long enough to know what was expected of her at such crisis points. She obligingly pulled up Maybelline and held the fussy mare in check while I trotted, then cantered, Mickey away from her. He wallowed through the arena on his forehand as if he was pulling a plow.

  Lacey shrugged when I pulled the horse up and looked for her opinion. “He looks even in both directions,” she said, seesawing at Maybelline’s mouth as the huffy mare sidestepped towards Mickey, her nostrils fluttering a saucy greeting. “But he sure is strung out behind,” Lacey went on. “Just like you said. He could barely drag himself onto the left lead just now.”

  I nodded grimly. “Well, it could be…” I trailed off, mind wandering through all the potential lamenesses and body issues which might be troubling Mickey until I found one that I could live with, at least as a temporary not-the-end-of-the-world diagnosis. “Maybe he’s just tired. He’s been showing most of the year.”

  Lacey nodded eagerly. She knew all about the best-case-scenario approach. “He deserves some time off. I’m sure that’s it.” Maybelline took advantage of her optimism and half-reared, white socks and red legs lifting a few inches off the ground. “You stop that,” Lacey snapped, kicking the mare in the ribs. “He’s not a stud, you stupid old cow!”

  “Get her going again.” I waved Lacey and her hot-for-Mickey mare away. “She won’t be normal until she’s back on her happy juice. I’ll take this guy home and walk back up.”

  Lacey kicked the mare away. Maybelline broke into a reluctant trot while I turned Mickey for home, trying to think if I had any hook-ups for cheap meds. ReguMate cost a fortune. The mare was in hot, raging heat three hundred and sixty-five days a year without it, and thought every gelding, goat, and green shrub within a quarter-mile radius had what it took to scratch her itch.

  There was just no money.

  I didn’t even make enough money to keep my horses sane.

  Mickey, being a lovely quiet gelding with no hormones to worry about, ambled out of the dressage arena without a backwards glance at the Red Terror he left behind. We turned left towards the annex barn. He didn’t feel particularly tired, despite my expert diagnosis. I pushed away the nagging notion that I was completely wrong.

  As we rounded a bend in the drive, he picked up his head suddenly, ears pricked, and neighed a greeting. I followed his gaze, and saw Pete riding up the road on Regina.

  I didn’t want to talk to him.

  He smiled sheepishly as we neared, wiping sweat from his face with the tail of his polo shirt.

  I turned Mickey off on the side-path that ran up to one of the cross-country gates, as if we’d meant to go hacking in the fields all along.

  None of this was his fault, but right now I didn’t care. He was a better rider than me, he was a better gamble than me, he had better horses than me, and he was going to get further than me this year. That should have been all right—after all, th
ere was that awful bargain his grandmother had forced on him. It was more urgent, for both of us, that Pete succeed as soon as possible. If he lost the farm, I’d be right back at square one. Pete’s success was integral to my own.

  That was all good and well, but it didn’t make it any easier for me to watch him soar ahead without me. I didn’t want to follow him. I wanted to ride alongside him.

  There were trotting hoofbeats behind me, and then Pete was bringing Regina back to a walk alongside Mickey, who slowed his pace appreciatively and turned his big gray head to admire the regal bay mare.

  I looked at Pete and he smiled tentatively, not sure of how mare-ish I’d be. I felt a wave of disappointment in myself. He was a thousand times nicer than I was, and we both knew it.

  I moved Mickey closer to Regina, ignoring the bay mare as she reversed her prior positive opinion of Mickey and pinned her ears, and put my hand on Pete’s thigh. His muscles were hard beneath the stretchy material of his riding breeches, and I wanted to sigh aloud. When was the last time I’d really let myself focus on Pete, and the way he made me feel, rather than Pete, the business partner I rode horses alongside? When would I stop making everything a competition?

  Maybe never. Could a person change their nature?

  “I’m really trying, though,” I told him. “I really am.”

  “I know,” he said gently.

  AMANDA THE HUNTER Princess came over late the next afternoon. I was idling in the kitchen, still relishing the short-lived feeling of cool air on my clean skin, the smell of shampoo on my wet hair, flipping through a copy of Dressage Today (Pete’s subscription) and thinking about how much I disliked dressage. Well, not very basic dressage, which was simply asking your horse to move nicely and listen to you. I liked that, because who wouldn’t prefer to ride on a horse who moved correctly and obeyed your instructions?

  The upper-level stuff, though, that these top-hatted, bun-coiffed dressage queens pirouetted through in the pages of Dressage Today, looked like a total nightmare. Who wanted to work so hard in an arena, day after day? I’d go insane. I’d burst wide open. I’d send my horse jumping over those little white chains and we’d go galloping off into the sunset after a week of that life. I was an event rider, and the sandbox was something to survive, not seek out.

  Still, Pete was right, always repeating we needed to win our dressage if we wanted to win events, and so I dutifully looked through dressage magazines and books, seeking out hints and tips I could use in my riding. I hadn’t actually won the dressage in months. Pete took dressage lessons from time to time, and he actually won the dressage. Think there was a lesson to be learned there, Jules? That was what this whole Rockwell nonsense was about. Maybe once I landed this client of Amanda’s and proved I didn’t have to go to sandbox summer school, I’d take a few lessons myself.

  I inspected a four-photo set illustrating a canter pirouette and thought about Pete’s riding lessons. I was starting to wonder if he could afford them. He’d been looking more stressed lately, his jaw was more tight when he looked through his bills, and that whole thing with the half-chaps…

  I hadn’t known he was tapped out. We didn’t talk about each other’s finances. He ran his barn; I ran mine. Pete’s grandmother owned the farm, and she had an ultimatum on his head: make the United States Equestrian Team in the next year, or find a new place to train so she could auction the farm off and move on with her life. She was bitter after a lifetime as an eventing widow—if her chronically absentee husband had died doing what he loved, such a noble death hadn’t done her any favors—but she’d held off on selling the place for just a little while, hoping Pete would fail and go do something more sane and safe, like law school.

  It wasn’t fair for her to make Pete’s life a nightmare just because her husband had made things tough for her, but I was starting to figure out that life wasn’t fair.

  Amanda the Hunter Princess, for example—why was she so loaded while we were so broke? That certainly wasn’t fair, and her questionable equitation (to my eyes) didn’t make it easy for me to just overlook the inequity going on here. She’d started hanging around the place in the past couple months, ostensibly looking for deals on horses to resell in her own barn, but she hadn’t really taken a shine to any of them until he’d shown her Mercury.

  I glanced out the kitchen window, where the late afternoon sun was shining yellow on the departing storm clouds. Just a short distance away, I could see Amanda flouncing around astride Mercury, her cornsilk pony-tail bouncing on her round little shoulders as he cantered effortlessly around the arena. Mercury was a light-boned Thoroughbred with elegance to spare, but not a lot of brains. He jumped with his knees to his chin and his fetlocks perfectly aligned, though, so if a rider was clever enough to hold him together through an entire course, he’d clean up in the hunters. He was the right color, too—a blood bay with three flashy socks and a perfect, not-too-thin and not-too-wide stripe running from forelock to nostrils. You couldn’t get much more Textbook Hunter than Mercury, even if he wasn’t an imported warmblood.

  Amanda was fully capable of holding Mercury together, I had to admit, even if over fences she threw herself up on his neck and pinched her knees with a blasé disregard for classical equitation that would leave George Morris himself at a loss for words. Someone had tried to explain the current equitation style as “staying out of the horse’s way to show off his form,” but to me, throwing out everything good about one’s own riding really wasn’t necessary in order to make a horse look good. Two halves made a whole, after all, and if you couldn’t stay out of your horse’s way with a nice automatic release and a firm lower leg, what exactly were you doing jumping fences over three feet, anyway?

  Pete told me to look the other way when Amanda came over. She was a good contact, he said. She could sell his horses to a whole new market, he said.

  She was incredibly skinny and still managed to have a nice ass in a pair of riding breeches, which was quite an accomplishment, I said.

  Pete shook his head at me and the conversation was over.

  I mostly stayed out of the way when Amanda was on the property.

  Amanda cantered Mercury in a round circle, changed his leads at the top of the arena, and continued around the course. Outside-inside-inside-outside, I chanted to myself, the boring rhythm of childhood riding lessons. Even when I was ten, I’d known there was more to life than the hunters, but Amanda had made her career out of slow, careful courses. “Boring,” I told her from inside the kitchen. “You’re boring, even if you’re pretty.”

  “You’re mean, even if you’re pretty.” Lacey slammed the kitchen door behind her, in case I wasn’t sure she’d just entered the room. “And I’m not sure you’re all that pretty.”

  “You’re nothing but a nag,” I said airily, and went back to my Dressage Today as if I’d been studying it the whole time, instead of gazing out the window at the Hunter Princess as she sashayed around the arena in front of my man. “A broke-down nag with a weedy mane that needs pulling.”

  “I’ll show you a mane-pulling.” Lacey gave my wet hair a tug as she threw herself down at the table next to me. “What’s next? We have anything to do this afternoon?”

  “Besides dreaming of bigger things? Not really. Everyone’s ridden. The tack is clean enough. The barn is done. We can kick back until dinner and pretend we’re on vacation.”

  “God… we need more horses.”

  “No kidding. Maybe when Rockwell Brothers picks up Pete we’ll have more horses.”

  “You too?”

  “Maybe,” I said cagily. She didn’t know about the terms Rockwell had offered me.

  “Rockwell Brothers would be good,” Lacey said. “Would you get new saddles?”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” I flipped through the magazine until I found a full-page ad for Rockwell Brothers Saddlery. A grand prix dressage star sat pretty in an elegant black saddle, its lines somehow both classically English and space-age modern. “Even I couldn’t b
omb the dressage in something this nice.”

  Lacey looked like she had her doubts. I changed the subject. “I’m going to go out and bother Pete while he’s flirting with Amanda. Wanna come?”

  Lacey rolled her eyes. “You offered me an afternoon in the AC, I’m taking it.”

  “Suit yourself.” I got up and slid my bare feet into my jodhpur boots, leaving the zippers down, and surveyed my messy pony-tail look in the mirror next to the kitchen door. I didn’t actively go for a messy pony-tail look, it was just how I came. I was blessed with tangled, dirty-blonde hair that never stayed put, no matter how many elastic bands I tortured it with. The dirt smeared on one cheek was a Jules-glamour bonus. I rubbed at it with the front of my tank top, making things incrementally better for my cheek and much worse for my shirt.

  “Don’t go out there,” Lacey sighed tiredly. “She’s going to look like a prom queen and you’re going to regret it. Which means I’m going to regret it, too.”

  “Isn’t that exactly why I need to go out there?”

  “And do what, look like you fell out of a hayloft this morning and then rolled in the dirt for extra effect? If you’re going for dirty waif, you’ve got the look, but I don’t think it’s going to show up well next to Miss Equestrian Centerfold out there. And,” she added, pulling the magazine towards her, “I don’t think Pete is interested in Amanda. I mean, Jules. You’re terrible. You’re literally the worst. If he’s into you, that’s not going to change, because that means he’s certifiably insane.”

  I considered the truth in these words. Two people in this world seemed to genuinely like me: Lacey and Pete. It had become apparent to me that the rest of the world was adamantly anti-Jules (if they were thinking about me at all) because I had been carefully nurturing a chip on my shoulder the size of a redwood tree. I was trying to be nicer. Or, if not nicer, to at least be neutral. Neutral was good. Neutral got zero attention on the blogs.