Penalty Points

by Bonnie Bryant

  Penalty Points

  Pine Hollow, Book Seven

  Bonnie Bryant

  My special thanks to Catherine Hapka for her help in the writing of this book.

  ONE

  “Hey there,” Lisa Atwood said softly as she opened the stall door and slipped inside. “How’s my favorite mommy-to-be?”

  The resident of the stall, a long-legged Thoroughbred mare, snorted and took a step toward her. Lisa smiled as the horse snuffled at her jeans pockets and then moved her big, velvety nose up and down the front of her shirt.

  “Sorry, Prancer. No treats today.” Lisa reached up to smooth back her hair as the horse ran her nose over it experimentally, obviously still hoping to discover a stray carrot or slice of apple. “Just wanted to come for a little visit with you and the babies.”

  She shook her head slightly as she said it, automatically running her eyes over the mare’s glossy bay flanks. Prancer was almost three months pregnant, but a stranger would have had trouble spotting the slight swelling of her belly. Even Lisa, who had ridden Prancer for years, had trouble seeing it.

  She also had a little trouble believing it. Lisa had fallen in love with Prancer, a former racehorse, when the mare had first come to Pine Hollow Stables years before. Since then she had rarely ridden another horse—at least until a few months earlier, when she had left her home in Willow Creek, Virginia, to spend the summer with her father in California. When she’d returned just before the start of her senior year, everything had changed. Prancer had been bred with the Pine hollow stallion, Geronimo, and was pregnant—with twins, no less. The mare couldn’t be ridden until her foals were weaned, by which time Lisa would have departed for college.

  Lisa had been trying to reconcile herself to that fact when she had found out that her father was planning a surprise for her: He wanted to buy Prancer for her once the foaling process was finished. That news had been almost as unsettling as the news about the pregnancy itself. Knowing that the sweet, willing, beautiful Thoroughbred would someday be hers had made it both easier and harder for Lisa to deal with the mare’s pregnancy. Easier because she knew that her days of riding Prancer wouldn’t be over, even if she went far away to college the next year. Harder because it made her worry more than ever about all the things that could go wrong in the coming months, especially since Prancer was carrying twins, which was very rare and risky in horses. In her seventeen years, Lisa had rarely felt as many conflicting emotions about anything—happiness, terror, anticipation, and worry tumbled through her every time she thought about the tiny foals growing inside Prancer.

  “It doesn’t seem to bother you one bit, though, does it, girl?” Lisa murmured, gazing at the mare’s calm, wise, gentle face. Without thinking, she stretched her arms around Prancer’s neck and stood on tiptoes to plant a kiss squarely on the horse’s smooth, soft cheek.

  At that moment she heard a shuffling sound nearby. Looking up quickly, she saw Carole Hanson standing in the aisle outside, peering at her over the half door of the stall. Lisa had met Carole and her other best friend, Stevie Lake, when she’d started riding at Pine Hollow four years earlier. Since then the three girls had been virtually inseparable, spending countless hours together talking, riding, and sharing their common love of horses. Back when they had first met, they had even formed their own club, The Saddle Club, as an excuse to spend even more time thinking and talking about their favorite subject. Now that they were all in high school, there never seemed to be enough time for the hours-long gab sessions and endless sleepovers of their middle-school days. But despite all the new distractions and pressures of their lives, they remained close.

  “Can’t a girl and her horse have a little privacy around here?” Lisa joked weakly, feeling her face turn red as she loosened her embrace. She felt slightly foolish that someone had caught her kissing a horse like an overenthusiastic new rider. Still, she knew that Carole would understand if anyone would. Carole loved horses so much that she had taken on a part-time job at Pine Hollow, turning her hobby into the beginning of what she planned to be her lifelong career. Max Regnery, the owner of Pine Hollow, often commented that Carole thought more like a horse than the horses themselves.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.” Carole smiled, but she seemed distracted.

  Lisa noticed that her friend’s expressive, deep brown eyes held an anxious look. “Hey, are you okay? Is something wrong?”

  “I hope not.” Carole tugged distractedly on the end of her shoulder-length black braid as she stared at Prancer. “But we won’t know for sure until Judy comes back.”

  “Judy?” Lisa felt a quick stab of worry, realizing that her friend was referring to Judy Barker, the veterinarian who treated the horses at Pine Hollow. “What do you mean? Is something wrong with Prancer?”

  “Well, Max isn’t sure, but he hasn’t been able to detect the second foal’s heartbeat for the last day or so, and—”

  Lisa gasped. “What?” Her heart started to beat faster and fear washed over her as she glanced at Prancer. “Are you sure? I mean, is he sure? I mean—”

  “Hold it.” Carole reached over the half door and took Lisa’s arm. “Let me finish, okay? We don’t know anything for sure right now. There’s no sense in panicking.”

  Easy for you to say, Lisa thought quickly. She’s not your horse.

  But she didn’t say it aloud, knowing immediately that she wasn’t being fair. Carole cared so much about horses—all horses—that if something were wrong with Prancer or either of her unborn foals, Carole would feel it as deeply as Lisa would.

  Taking a deep breath, Lisa did her best to stay calm. “Okay,” she said, gripping the edge of the stall door for support. “Now tell me. What exactly do you know?”

  “Practically nothing,” Carole admitted, lifting her hand to stroke Prancer’s neck as the mare stretched her head over the door to say hello. “It’s just as I told you. Max can only find one heartbeat, which could mean nothing. Or …”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but Lisa shuddered. Ever since she’d found out that Prancer was carrying twins, she had learned more than she’d ever wanted to know about the risks of such pregnancies in horses. She knew that it was rare for a mare to carry both foals to term, and that a lot of things could go wrong in the eleven long months of gestation. She knew the odds, but she still maintained her hope that Prancer and her babies would beat those odds and come through all right in the end.

  “So where’s Judy, then?” she asked, doing her best to quell the tide of panic that kept rising inside her. She put a hand on Prancer’s warm, smooth neck, trying to calm herself with the mare’s large, solid, living presence. “Why isn’t she here right now checking on her?”

  “She was on her way, but she got called off to another stable for a case of severe colic. She said she’ll try to stop by tonight if she can, but we probably shouldn’t hold our breath.” Carole shot Lisa a sympathetic look. “Seriously, though. I know it’s kind of scary, especially after all we’ve been hearing about everything that could happen. But Prancer obviously isn’t in any distress”—she waved a hand to indicate the mare, who had turned away from the girls to snuffle at her hayrack—“so we probably shouldn’t worry yet—not until we know there’s something to worry about.”

  Lisa shuffled her feet in the deep layer of straw covering the stall floor, trying to take Carole’s advice. But she knew herself. She knew that she’d go crazy if she stayed there with Prancer, worrying and wondering. The only way to retain even a few shreds of her sanity was to distract herself somehow. “You’re right,” she said, thinking aloud. “And I know the best way to keep our minds off this. What do you say to a nice long trail ride? Just you and me.”

  Glancing at her watch, Carole shook her he
ad slowly. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I’d better. I told Max I’d help him with some paperwork before I left today, and I want to allow plenty of time to work on Samson’s gait changes, and then I—”

  “Oh, come on.” Lisa tried not to sound as desperate as she felt. She needed help to have any hope of taking her mind off this new, unsettling news. If she had to sit around alone with nothing to do but think about it, she wouldn’t be able to stop imagining all the terrible things that could happen. Her mother was working, her boyfriend, Alex, was at soccer practice, and Stevie had a student government meeting that would probably last until dinnertime. That meant that Carole was her best hope for company. “Come on, please? I’m sure Max wouldn’t mind if you took a little break. I mean, how long has it been since we just went on a nice, long, relaxing ride in the woods? You’ve been training so hard for that horse show with Samson, poor Starlight’s probably forgotten what you look like by now.”

  Carole checked her watch again. Then she looked at Prancer and finally turned her gaze to Lisa. She still looked reluctant, but she nodded. “Well, all right,” she agreed. “Maybe I can make time for a quick ride. And you’re right, Starlight could use some exercise. So who do you want to ride?”

  “Who do you suggest?” Even though Prancer’s condition had kept her out of circulation for more than eight weeks now, it still felt strange for Lisa to have to consider which horse to take out on the trail.

  Carole pondered the question for a moment, and Lisa could tell she was running through her mental list of Pine Hollow’s horses. Lisa leaned on the half door and waited patiently, glad that she’d managed to talk Carole into the ride. It will probably be just as good for her as it’ll be for me, she thought. Carole works awfully hard at her job here, and lately, with preparations for that horse show eating up even more of her time, she’s been positively crazed.

  Max had recently invited Carole, Stevie, and several other riders to represent Pine Hollow at a prestigious horse show being held in the neighboring town of Colesford in a few weeks. Carole was to ride one of Max’s horses, Samson, in the show. Samson was talented, but he was also young and relatively inexperienced, at least compared to the other horses that would be competing in the Colesford show. Carole had been working like a fiend to get in as much training as possible before the show, which meant that she hadn’t had much time for anything else—including fun. Lisa was a big believer in the value of hard work—her steady stream of A’s in school were proof of that—but she also knew that it sometimes paid to take a break.

  “Well, there weren’t any group lessons today,” Carole said thoughtfully. “So you can pretty much take your pick. How about Eve? You got along well with her the last time you rode her.”

  “Sounds good.” Lisa nodded. Eve was an eager, gentle, silvery gray mare who was a favorite of many Pine Hollow riders. With one last pat for Prancer, Lisa reached for the stall door. “I’ll go tack her up. Meet you at the horseshoe in ten minutes.”

  Exactly ten minutes later Carole was in Starlight’s saddle, stretching her hand toward the good-luck horseshoe on the wall. The smooth old horseshoe had been nailed to the wall since long before any of the current riders could remember. Nobody even knew who had started the tradition that every rider should touch it before heading out, trusting in its power to keep them safe from accidents on the trail. After brushing the worn metal of the horseshoe with her fingers, Carole patted her horse and wondered how many times the two of them had stood there together, ready to enter the schooling ring for a riding lesson or to explore the miles of trails in the forests and fields that stretched off behind Pine Hollow.

  “Ready to go?” she asked Lisa.

  Lisa was bent over in Eve’s saddle, adjusting her left stirrup. “In a sec.”

  Hearing steady hoofbeats from somewhere nearby, Carole glanced outside. She nudged Starlight forward a few steps until she came within view of the main schooling ring, where a lone rider was cantering in a tight circle.

  Carole sat still in Starlight’s saddle and watched with admiration as Ben Marlow guided a spirited young dapple gray mare surely around and around, asking her to change leads on each rotation. The horse, Firefly, was new to the stable, and Max had asked Carole and Ben, one of his stable hands, to take over her training. With a pang of guilt, Carole realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worked with the feisty gray. I guess it’s a good thing Ben’s been holding up his end of the bargain, she thought ruefully. He’s lucky—he doesn’t have to deal with school on top of everything we have to do here.

  She shifted her gaze from the mare to her rider. Ben had graduated from high school the year before, and he’d been working full-time at Pine Hollow ever since. Carole had recently discovered that, like her, Ben harbored hopes of someday receiving a college degree in equine studies. In his case, however, that goal seemed all but hopeless. He didn’t have the money to pay for school, and a recent attempt at obtaining a scholarship to a local program had failed.

  Carole hadn’t talked much with Ben about any of it, though. He was an intensely private person, and even though Carole sometimes suspected she was as close a friend as he’d ever had, she still couldn’t quite bring herself to brave his brusque and sensitive temper to pry further into his thoughts and feelings, which all seemed to hide somewhere just behind his dark, brooding eyes.

  “Okay.” Lisa’s voice broke into Carole’s thoughts, and she started.

  “Huh?” she said. “Oh, um, okay. Ready.” She gathered up her reins and clucked to Starlight briskly, not wanting Lisa to notice how she’d been staring at Ben. She suspected that even her best friends didn’t really understand her interest in the young stable hand. Like most people, they’d been turned off long before by his silent ways and sullen attitude. But Carole couldn’t give up on him that easily. She’d seen his wonderful rapport with horses, who all responded to him as enthusiastically as people stayed away from him. To her, that alone made Ben worth knowing.

  Carole did her best to forget about Ben as she and Lisa rode across the fields behind the stable at a leisurely trot. It was a cool, brilliant October day, and every blade of grass seemed to gleam under the clear light of the afternoon sun. The leaves in the forest beyond the fields were starting to show their autumn colors, and even the horses seemed to breathe deeper as they moved through the clean, crisp air.

  Taking an extra-deep breath herself, Carole had to admit that she was glad she’d allowed Lisa to talk her into going for a ride. She’d only said yes because she had sensed that her friend really needed to relax after hearing the latest about Prancer. Some people were surprised to find that, beneath her mature, sensible, perfectionist exterior, Lisa could be quite emotional—especially concerning the people and horses she loved. Carole, however, wasn’t surprised at all that even a hint of trouble with Prancer’s pregnancy had set Lisa worrying. Some people might see Prancer as just another animal, but to Lisa she was practically a part of her family. Glancing at her friend’s back just ahead of her, Carole was glad she’d been there to help distract her. She clucked to Starlight, simultaneously giving him the signal to lengthen his stride. Soon she was riding beside Lisa at a steady trot. “This is nice,” she called to her.

  Lisa nodded, glancing over and smiling. “Thanks again for coming with me. I know you have a lot to do to get ready for Colesford—”

  “It’s okay.” Carole felt a brief thrill of anxiety at the thought of the show. She had hoped to spend at least an hour and a half with Samson that day, practicing some important basics like gait changes and turns to make sure they were ready for the intense competition of the show. She quickly shook off her worry, not wanting Lisa to notice it and feel bad. “You know what they say about all work and no fun.…”

  Lisa brought Eve to a walk, and Carole did likewise with Starlight. “Actually, I think the saying is ‘All work and no play,’” Lisa corrected with a smile. “But speaking of fun, have you talked to Stevie lately? I wonder how th
e party plans are going.”

  Carole realized that she’d almost forgotten about Saturday’s big bash. Stevie was throwing a party at her house, with some help from her longtime boyfriend, Phil Marsten, and her twin brother, Alex, who also happened to be Lisa’s boyfriend. It was going to be a good-bye party for another friend, Emily Williams, who was moving to Australia with her family the following week. Stevie didn’t take many things seriously, but planning a party was an exception. Carole was sure that with her friend in charge, Saturday night would be an evening to remember.

  “I haven’t spoken to her in a couple of days,” Carole told Lisa as the girls walked their horses side by side toward the woods. “But last I heard, she’d invited practically all of Willow Creek. She’s been promising everyone it will be the party of the century.”

  “Sounds like a true Stevie Lake production,” Lisa said with a laugh. “Emily will love it.” She sighed. “I just hope we’re not still worrying about Prancer by then so we can enjoy ourselves.”

  “Don’t worry,” Carole reassured her. “It’s only Wednesday, remember? I’m sure Judy will stop by tomorrow, if not sooner, and she’ll be able to tell us what’s going on.”

  “I certainly hope so.” Lisa pulled Eve’s head up as the mare paused to sniff at a patch of wildflowers. “I don’t think I can take much more suspense at this point.”

  Carole felt a flash of guilt, guessing that Lisa was remembering how she’d worried and wondered for weeks why Max wasn’t letting anyone ride Prancer. By the time he had finally admitted to her that the horse was pregnant with twins, Lisa had practically worried herself into a frenzy, imagining that her beloved mare had every fatal ailment known to man or beast. Carole had known the truth all along, but she hadn’t said anything to Lisa—she’d promised Max to keep the pregnancy a secret, and she took her promises seriously. When Lisa had discovered that Carole could have saved her all that anxiety, she had been furious with her. The two had made up since, but it was still a bit of a sore subject for both of them.