Young Riders (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 16)

by Claire Svendsen

  We both munched thoughtfully for a while and I liked the fact that I didn’t have to talk to Andy. We could both just sit there and eat our breakfast and it wasn’t uncomfortable to be in silence.

  “So, are you going to wake them up?” he asked as we washed up our bowls.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  And we already had our horses tacked up and were making our way out to the ring when the others appeared. Encore had almost seemed like he was happy to see me and the bad mood I’d woken up in had lifted when he actually took a treat from my hand.

  “Told you it would work,” Andy said.

  He’d given me a selection of treats from his own grooming box and I’d been trying them out. It turned out that Encore didn’t like anything apple or peppermint flavored at all but the gross smelling ginger snaps? He pretty much thought those were the best things on earth.

  “Why didn’t you wake us up?” Tara snapped as she stomped past.

  “I didn’t know Emily was your personal alarm clock,” Andy said. “Are you paying her for that privilege?”

  “I’m just saying it would have been nice,” she grumbled.

  “But only nice people deserve nice things,” I said sweetly as I walked Encore out to the ring.

  “If they didn’t have it in for you before, they really will now.” Andy laughed.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “They hated me from the start so what difference does it make?”

  “None at all,” he replied.

  Hunter was already out there moving poles and cavalletti around the ring.

  “Good morning,” he said, brushing clay off his hands.

  “Good morning,” we replied.

  I felt less nervous than I had the day before and had come to the realization that Hunter was just a man. Sure he had super amazing riding talent and could make a horse do anything he wanted but even he had to teach them first. Watching him the night before, I’d seen that. I’d seen the part of him that had to work at things just like we did and it made me feel better about myself.

  “Where are the others?” he asked.

  “I think they are running a little behind,” Andy said, sending a sly wink in my direction.

  “Totally unprofessional.” Hunter shook his head. “The only person who is allowed to be late around here is me. Well, you snooze you lose.”

  He started without them, telling us to walk our horses on the rail and picking apart our positions and then putting them back together again. He said that Andy shoved the stirrups too far back on his feet, probably a nod to his old eventing days. He said I rounded my shoulders when I thought he wasn’t looking and he was probably right. I’d been lazy about stuff like that without someone like Esther to yell at me. She was always riding our tails about slouching in the saddle and had been known to make us ride with a broom handle through our elbows to keep our backs straight. We were already working at the trot when the others came out to the ring.

  “Chop. Chop,” Hunter yelled at them. “You’re late. Why aren’t you running your horses out here? Instead you are dragging your mounts behind you like they and you just rolled out of bed.”

  “That’s because they did just roll out of bed,” Andy whispered as he trotted past.

  The others mounted and got the same going over that we did, only Hunter seemed far more harsh on them due to their tardiness. He not only criticized their position but also their turn out, scolding Tara for her colorful belt and Alice for the bling on her spurs.

  “This isn’t a fashion show,” he yelled at them. “Smart and professional people, what is so hard to understand about that?”

  And for once I felt glad that I didn’t have any extra money to spend on all the blingy stuff that Mickey drooled over because Hunter Preston was old school and old school horse masters didn’t think you should be bedazzling your saddle pads or blingifying your helmet. He thought you should look neat and tidy and plain. Pretty much just like I did. And even though Encore was well groomed and fit, his dapples gleaming in the early morning sun, he was plain too. Just a plain bay with no white on him at all. We were plain and ordinary and yet we were killing it.

  “Very nice Emily,” Hunter called out as we executed a perfect flying change. “Tara, why can’t you be more like Emily?”

  Tara was struggling to force Paris into a change, running her into the corner and yanking on her mouth. Hunter got so mad at her that he told her to get off. Then he got on her mare and made her do a flying change perfectly. Tara’s face was red as she stood there watching the master ride her horse better than she could ever hope to.

  “It’s all your fault,” she sneered at me as I rode by. “I’d be riding better if I hadn’t overslept.”

  “I’m not your mother.” I shrugged. “Why don’t you take some responsibility for yourself?”

  “You’d better watch your back,” she snapped.

  But she didn’t know that I’d already been watching my back ever since I got there. I’d already had an education in girls like her and I wasn’t stupid enough to trust them one inch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Lunch was sandwiches and fruit, served out by the pool on a glass table by Mrs. Morrison. My guess was that she was supposed to have been around yesterday when we were all standing in the kitchen staring at the plate of baby carrots but that she had been delayed. I pulled off some grapes and munched on them while the others filled their plates.

  Tara and Becka had got the brunt of Hunter’s fury that morning but Alice had managed to stay on his good side by the sheer luck of having a horse that did whatever she asked with relative ease. Brookside was a nice horse and a good fit for Alice, even if he was huge and she looked like a tick up there in the saddle. It didn’t matter. He liked her style of riding and that made for a good partnership and so far Encore and I were getting along fine, which was to say that he was being the well behaved horse he always was and I was trying not to do anything stupid to muck it all up.

  “Did you make this?” I asked Mrs. Morrison, pointing to a wobbly looking cake with strawberries stuck to the sides with dollops of cream.

  “Yes, I did,” she said, sounding suspicious.

  “Well it looks lovely.”

  I gave her a smile, hoping to make it onto her good side. I had enough enemies in the house, I didn’t need another.

  “It’s Mr. Preston’s favorite,” she said.

  “His favorite isn’t very healthy, is it?” I asked her, thinking about how Hunter had scolded us the day before about our obvious lack of appreciation when it came to healthy food.

  “Well you can’t eat rabbit food all the time,” she replied.

  “Well, I can’t wait to try it,” I said.

  She smiled back at me. Mission accomplished. Well, one mission anyway, it was one small step at a time at Gray Gables. And to think, I thought that it was the riding that was going to give me trouble.

  “Suck up,” Andy whispered as he jammed five sandwiches onto his plate.

  “Hey, it never hurts to be nice,” I whispered back. “Watch this.”

  I walked over to where Becka and Tara were sitting huddled together. Alice was on a chair off to the side, trying to look like she was being included in their conversation when it was blatantly obvious that she wasn’t.

  “You can’t sit with us,” Tara snapped when she saw me.

  “I wasn’t going to,” I replied, looking at Alice. “Nice riding this morning,” I told her.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking suspiciously at me. She was probably wondering why I was being nice when she had been mean but I could already tell that allies had been formed and Alice wasn’t going to be part of the partnership that was Becka and Tara world.

  I didn’t say anything else, just went and sat with Andy by the edge of the pool. We took off our socks and rolled up our breeches, sticking our aching feet into the cold water.

  “That feels so good.” Andy sighed as he wiggled his toes. “You need to come in late
r. Trust me, your body will thank you for it.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  But I wasn’t too keen to parade around in a bathing suit in front of Becka and Tara. I may not have been fat but that still didn’t mean that I didn’t feel fat because I did. I felt like I had bulges in all the wrong places unlike Alice, who had the perfect stick figure.

  After lunch we had a couple of hours off with nothing to do so I searched for a secluded spot in the house, since the others had taken over our bedroom and were listening to music and talking loudly. There was a small desk by the window that overlooked the barn and I took my laptop because I figured that I might as well get my schoolwork done now instead of putting it off until later. Besides, if Hunter was going to ride again, I wanted to be there to see it. Just watching the master up close was like looking in on something privileged that you knew you weren’t meant to see.

  Besides, I’d set up a phone call with one of my teachers and she was due to call any minute for one of the discussion based assessments that they made us do so they could double check we were doing our own work and not cheating and getting someone else to do it for us. I’d originally scheduled it for the evening but I had texted him and asked to change it. Now seemed as good a time as any to get it out of the way and it was the only time I’d have to actually talk to a teacher all week. Other than that I was on my own, free to do my work whenever I saw fit.

  Luckily this was a short one. My science teacher was done with me in about ten minutes and I answered all of his questions, staring out at the barn and sort of distracted by the fact that Hunter was standing out there talking to Gus with his hands on his hips. It looked like Gus was getting an earful about something only I didn’t know what. But whatever it was, Gus wasn’t happy about it. In fact he looked really mad and I was relieved when I had satisfied my teacher that I’d done all the work and understood it and he hung up. I quickly stuffed my laptop back into my bag and shoved it under the desk, then I slipped out of the side door and made my way down the path to the barn.

  I could hear their raised voices before I even saw them. Hunter was accusing Gus of something and Gus didn’t like it very much. I heard him say that he’d quit if Hunter pushed the matter any further.

  “You wouldn’t have any place to go by the time I was done with your reputation,” Hunter snapped.

  “And what about all the things I’ve done for you?” Gus hissed back at him. “The things I’ve done to help you win? What about that?”

  “Who do you think people will believe?” Hunter said, his voice cold and calculating. “The Olympic medal winning rider or the slimy groom with a chip on his shoulder?”

  They stood there glaring at each other for a moment, obviously at a standstill until a squirrel ran through the bushes, making a huge noise.

  “What was that?” Hunter said.

  “Probably one of those annoying kids you’ve got staying here. I don’t know why you agreed to this in the first place.”

  “I couldn’t get out of it,” Hunter replied.

  “But that horse is here,” Gus said. “The one from Europe. And that girl. Her father is the one I warned you about. I told you what I saw.”

  “I know,” Hunter said. “I know.”

  “Well what are we going to do about it?”

  “Nothing. That’s what we are going to do about it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  I always knew the horse world was a shady place. I’d seen it firsthand more than once but my father said that there were things going on that I could only imagine in my worst nightmares. Things that would make me want to quit riding forever. And not just things that were happening in run down stables that were operating on a shoe string budget and trying to cut corners in a desperate attempt to get money or clients but things that happened at top show barns around the country. Probably around the whole world.

  Things that I imagined happened in the cut throat world of racing where big money was won and lost on the performance of a horse and the outcome of a race. Not in my own safe world of show jumping where you couldn’t bet on a round of jumping and stadiums weren’t filled with hundreds of thousands of screaming fans like the Kentucky Derby. But shady things did happen and there were rules in place to prevent people from doing bad things to horses in order to win. Rules like the ones my father was stuck battling as he tried to defend his good name. People would always try to bend the rules or break them but my father wasn’t one of them and I hadn’t thought that Hunter Preston was one of them either.

  I went back to the house feeling horrible. I didn’t want to believe that they were talking about Encore but what other horse could it be? He was the one with a mysterious background. The one that Hunter had asked me about. He hadn’t asked anyone else where their horse had come from, at least not that I knew of anyway. And he had to have been talking about my father but why would Gus have warned Hunter about him? What did he see? It couldn’t have been my father drugging a horse. There was no way. I refused to believe it.

  “What is wrong with you?” Andy asked as I stood there in the kitchen, wondering what to do next.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “Maybe nothing.” I sighed. “Or maybe something really bad.”

  “Well good luck with that then,” he said, grabbing a bottle of water off the counter.

  And I was glad that he was a boy who didn’t really care about things like other people’s problems because if he’d been a girl, he would have been riding my case until I told him all about it and I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell anyone. And I didn’t know why on earth my father had sent me here if Hunter Preston and his slimy groom had anything to do with the suspension hearing and the suspected drugging.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  That afternoon Hunter had us working on various cavalletti exercises. Cavalletti in a line. Cavalletti in a circle. And cavalletti that let up to a variety of small verticals.

  “This stuff is for babies,” Tara whispered to Becka under her breath. “Why is he making us do all these beginners exercises? I could do this blindfolded in my sleep.”

  Becka just shrugged. The exercises did seem kind of simple but that didn’t mean Hunter didn’t find plenty to criticize and correct. Our releases were wrong or we sat on the horses back too much. According to Hunter no one in the history of riding had ever ridden over cavalletti as badly as we had. We probably would have been okay if he’d thrown out a little nugget of praise every now and then. Anything to let us know that he noticed when we were trying but all he really seemed to pay attention to were our flaws. It sucked and I couldn’t even concentrate because all I could think about was what Hunter had said earlier and whether or not he was really talking about Encore.

  But Encore liked cavalletti and he liked the exercises Hunter made us do. In fact we got the only praise of the afternoon when we halted on a straight line after the smallest jump. It felt like I was being congratulated for jumping a cross rail. I hated to agree with Tara but she was right. We worked on all this stuff at home with our own instructors. Wasn’t Hunter supposed to be teaching us things that only he knew? Secrets that would help us in our quest for Olympic gold? Apparently not since he thought we were all incompetent beginners who didn’t know the first thing about riding.

  “You’re done for the day,” he said, finally waving us away with his hand. “Scram.”

  “I’m glad my parents aren’t here to see me going over baby jumps like that,” Andy said as he brought Mousse alongside Encore.

  “I’m not sure my father would approve either,” I said.

  “He’s a trainer, isn’t he? Your father I mean?” Andy asked.

  “Yes,” I said, hoping that he would just drop it but of course he didn’t.

  “That must be pretty sweet,” he carried on. “You must get free lessons every day. No wonder you’re so good.”

  “I haven’t actually been riding with him for very long,” I admitted
. “I used to live with my mom and she doesn’t like horses.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. My parents are divorced too. It sucks.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  But I bet that his mother still talked to him, unlike mine who had abandoned me for her new and improved family. People said that mothers didn’t do that. That they wouldn’t just give up on a child and move away. That the mothering instinct was too strong. But it had happened to me like a switch had just been flipped in my mother’s head and for some reason she didn’t want me anymore. But I didn’t have the energy to think about that now. I had enough on my plate as it was and I needed to call my father. I had to talk to him and find out what on earth was going on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  It took five tries to get hold of my father, sitting in the bathroom with the door locked and a towel stuffed under the crack at the bottom so that hopefully no one would hear me. When he finally answered he sounded out of breath and kind of mad.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Wow, what is wrong with you?” I said.

  “I’ve got a lot going on here,” he replied. “And I’m kind of busy.”

  “I know,” I said, feeling hurt. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

  “If you’re calling to find out how your horses are, they are fine,” he said.

  “No, it wasn’t that,” I said.

  But he didn’t sound like he was in the sort of mood to discuss sensitive, touchy subjects like how Hunter Preston might have had his groom sabotage my father and what I was supposed to do about it.

  “Well what was it then?” he said impatiently. “I have a group of beginner kids on their way out to the ring and they all look like they are in various stages of falling off. If I don’t get out there and shove them all back in the saddle I’ll have five angry parents on my hands.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have called. I’ll talk to you when I get back.”