Claiming Christmas (Alex and Alexander Book 3)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  When we were done touring the shed row, she asked if she could get on a horse.

  I looked apprehensively at her aunt, who was sitting on a straw bale scrolling through her phone. Every few moments she reached down and scratched at the back of her thighs, where the straw was irritating all the skin exposed by her very short skirt. “I don’t have anyone for you to ride here,” I explained, turning back to the girl. “These are all racehorses, and they’re not safe for you to ride. Plus we have to get ready to take Personal Best to the racetrack now.”

  Her face fell again. “I thought I could ride a horse.”

  I had told Linda specifically to tell them I didn’t have a pony to put her on, and Linda had said that was all taken care of. Obviously, that hadn’t been communicated. “Today’s for watching horses,” I said desperately. “I’m not even riding a horse today.”

  “Alex?” Alexander was standing at the top of the shed row with Brian, a bucket in hand and a cooler over his arm. “The van is going to be here any minute. Are you ready?”

  I turned; Personal Best was leaning out, nosing around for any stray bits of hay leftover from the hay-net the grooms had taken away from him earlier. There was a big manure stain on his hip — he’d taken a nap while we’d been looking around the barn. I should have told a groom to tie him. “Um,” I said.

  “What?” Alexander came down the shed and looked. “I need a groom!” he called to Brian. “Some alcohol and a rag!”

  Brian came himself, casting me a baleful glance as he ducked into the stall and started rubbing at the manure stain with a towel, spraying on rubbing alcohol to draw the greenish-brown mark out of the colt’s shining red coat. I shrugged helplessly; Alexander, holding the colt’s halter, shook his head at me: ignore it. I nodded, but I was starting to feel irritated again at having to drag this kid around with me on a racing day. Any other day might have been fine, but today I needed my wits about me, not distracted by amusing little miss Wendy.

  “I need you to go back with your aunt for a while,” I told her.

  Wendy fixed me with a fierce expression. “I want to go with you.”

  “I have to get Personal Best ready for his race, Wendy. I can’t think about anything but him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to watch every step he takes to make sure he’s perfectly sound. I have to see every time he sneezes or coughs or shakes his head. If I don’t send him out to the track one hundred percent perfect, he could get hurt.”

  That got her attention. Evidently, Wendy was no stranger to racing tragedy caught on camera. “Like fall down and get hurt?” Her voice was thinner, worried.

  “Maybe.”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay. I understand.”

  It hurt to watch her walk slowly across the shed row to where her bored aunt was sitting on the straw bale, tugging at her arm to get the young woman’s attention. It was obvious she was used to being left on the sidelines, but that she didn’t like it, for all that it was part of her life. I wanted more for her, so much that it hurt. I felt an ache in my stomach as her aunt nodded and went back to her phone, and it did a little flip-flop when she settled herself on the straw bale and looked at me, her face resigned.

  But I had a job to do. I waggled my fingers at her and went over to Personal Best’s stall, trying to get my head together and my game face on. A groom came over with wraps and handed them over, and I ducked under the webbing, Alexander still at his head, so that I could do up his shipping bandages myself.

  It was a soothing process, a ritual really, that put me in tune with my horse. I did up his legs one by one, thick pillow wraps covered by stiffer nylon bandages, safety-pinned into place, to keep him protected from hock and knee right down to the hoof. I took a horsehair brush from the groom and ran it over his coat slowly, almost reverently, knocking away the dust from the straw as I checked his entire body for any sort of swelling, any source of heat, any touch of soreness that we might have missed somehow in a hundred similar groomings and inspections. And then I took the chain shank, ran it over his nose, and waited for Alexander to drop the webbing so that we could go marching out of the stall, down the shed row, and to the loading dock, where we’d walk up an earthen ramp and into the belly of the waiting horse van.

  I did all that and felt calmer, restored to myself, close to Personal Best. He breathed his hot breath on my fingers in the van while I leaned against the half-door, looking out at the south Florida traffic, watching the surprised faces on tourists and locals alike as they saw a human and a horse in the tractor trailer next to them. One arm hooked around the bar in front of Personal Best’s chest so that I couldn’t fall in the start-and-stop interstate motion, the constant red lights as we neared the racetrack, the bumps and grinds of Florida’s always-crumbling roads. Sometimes Alexander pulled up alongside us in the farm SUV and I would wave to him and blow kisses and act generally ridiculous, and he would shake his head and smile at me, while appreciative drivers from nearby cars blew their horns and cat-called with typical Floridian chivalry. It was all part of the ritual, this drive from Sunshine South’s pastoral quiet out amongst the Everglades to the hustle and bustle of the city track, the bright white tropical light bathing the beachside condominiums in a shimmering glow, while inside the truck it was still country, sawdust on the floor and hot sweet horse breath in my ear.

  And when we pulled up at the loading dock on the backside, I was ready, and so was Personal Best.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  All through the paddock and the strut out to the racetrack I was trying not to notice her, but Wendy was always there, as close as she could manage before either Alexander or Brian would grab at her and send her back to stand by her aunt. She shouldn’t have been anywhere near the saddling stalls at all; we had invited her into the paddock to watch with the understanding that she stay near the center of the enclosure with all the other guests who didn’t know enough not to get trampled by a horse; the syndicate owners with their cigars and their wives in stilettos, the families dressed up as if it was Easter Sunday, the sullen teenage daughter dragged along and hunched over in a frumpy dress bought special for the occasion while she wished she were anywhere but amidst all the glitz and glitter of these wealthy (mostly older) celebrants here to celebrate their tax shelters on four legs.

  But of course that wasn’t good enough for Wendy, who was probably used to taking what she wanted since no one was ever going to give it to her, and she would dart away from her bored aunt at every occasion, taking advantage of the young woman’s total preoccupation with her phone, and I’d step backwards only to trip over Wendy, who hadn’t been there a moment before. Then Brian or Alexander would step forward and pull her away so that I could go on with whatever I had been doing: talking to the jockey, tightening the over-girth, having a heart-to-heart with Personal Best.

  But honestly, the kid was so underfoot it was a wonder I didn’t boost her into the saddle instead of the jockey.

  And trust me, she would have loved that.

  I pulled her close after I came back from walking Personal Best to the racetrack. “Come on, kid,” I told her, snatching her hand. “Let’s go to the track.”

  When I pushed through the crowd along the rail, nudging aside a cigar-smoking gent who was blocking the opening to the track, she stayed gamely close to me, her eyes wide as she saw where we were going. Right out onto the racetrack, our feet in the dirt where her heroes galloped, to lean against the railing and look casual along with the grooms waiting to catch their horses after the race.

  A security guard glanced over at her. “You can’t have a kid out here,” he said disapprovingly. “No one under eighteen, come on now.”

  I put her right in the gap and pushed her a little bit, until she was standing just behind the railing. “How’s that?”

  He didn’t look happy with me, but he let it slide.

  “If a racehorse goes out of control and starts running this way, go all the way behind the rail, okay?” />
  Wendy nodded, eyes like saucers. But her skinny face was excited anyway; she wasn’t really that afraid of being run over by a horse, I could tell. The kid thought she was an expert when she arrived this morning; now that she had fed a racehorse a peppermint and survived the paddock, she probably thought she was ready for her trainer’s license.

  I liked that. I remembered that. Confidence for absolutely no reason, that was something I missed about my pre-equestrian childhood. Before I found out that falling off hurts and that someone always knows more than you.

  I squeezed her hand and then, on an impulse, hung Personal Best’s halter off her shoulder. “Now you look like a real groom,” I told her. “I’d make you carry the bucket, too, but it’ll just make your arm tired.”

  And pinch-faced little Wendy beamed.

  ***

  “The horses are in the gate for the Loxahatchee Stakes!”

  I stiffened. Wendy stiffened. I could see it in her shoulders when I looked back to check on her, the way her fingers were gripping the bucket — she had taken it from me after all, to really feel like a groom — and the hard line of her jaw. She was scared. I reached back and took her free hand, giving it a good squeeze. “We got this, honey,” I told her, and then wondered why I would say such a ridiculous thing; before a horse race, no one had anything. It was the most helpless moment in a trainer’s life, waiting for their horse to come home safe.

  But it made Wendy feel better, anyway; she nodded resolutely and shifted her weight a little, the tension dropping out of her shoulders. We looked down the track to where the horses were about to burst out and run past us; when they came around a second time, they’d be pulling up, their races run.

  The bell rang and the doors flew backwards; the horses came charging out of the gate with the slapping of leather and the shouting of jockeys that you didn’t hear on most television broadcasts. It was a raw, rare thing, and Wendy leaned forward, craning her head to see around me, though I kept her safely behind the the railing. The ground rumbled as the hooves came pounding down the track towards us, and I strained to see Personal Best’s white face in the pack of horses as they approached. Then they were racing past us, tightly bunched along the rail, the dirt flying up in a cloud behind them, and heading into the clubhouse turn almost before we could register what we were seeing.

  “Where is he?” Wendy asked urgently, her voice high and nervous.

  The loudspeaker was echoing terribly where we were standing, so I checked the giant LED screen that dominated the infield. Finally I saw him, tucked well back in fifth or sixth on the rail, running steadily in tight company. “He’s there in the middle,” I told her, pointing. “And it’s a slow steady pace, so he’ll have to find room and close like a madman, or he won’t be able to get to the front in time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It mean the horse in front is purposely going slowly so that he can take off really fast in the homestretch and trick everyone.” I watched the screen anxiously now; they were deep in the backstretch and no one was shifting position, but if for some reason the any one of the three horses running in front of Personal Best were to slow down dramatically, he’d be in a pretty bad position, having to either look for room to get around the horse in very tight quarters, or slow down himself and lose valuable momentum and rhythm.

  “Does he get scared with all those other horses so close?” Wendy asked, squinting at the screen.

  “No baby,” I said thoughtlessly. “Just the humans do.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “No,” I lied. “Everything is fine.”

  The horses swept into the final turn with very little change, and then the two horses on the lead launched into high gear, their jockeys rocking on their backs and swinging their sticks frantically, each one trying to draw clear of the other. But the two leaders were either very evenly matched or very into one another; they ran neck and neck, heads bobbing in unison, with no one challenging them from behind, for a very long time. Or what seemed like a very long time. Personal Best was still trapped behind a laboring horse in third, with another horse’s saddle-cloth just right of his nose; he was utterly trapped until the horse on his right either made a move or stopped.

  They were in the final furlong now, they were nearing the sixteenth pole. The horse in front of Personal Best seemed to be falling into slow motion; he was stopping; Personal Best would be stopped too. “We’re not even going to make it into the money, for fuck’s sake!”

  I’d forgotten Wendy was there.

  But I wasn’t the only one. All around me the grooms, the fans on the apron, the players in the stands were in full cry, drowning out the echoing race call, the cries of the ever-present seagulls, the drumming of the horses’ hooves as they came to the final sixteenth of the race. They were screaming, they were cursing, they were urging their horses on and damning their horses to hell, men and women and gamblers and socialites alike, clamoring to make their horse come home first.

  And that was when Personal Best put his white face around the doddering horse to his right, turned nearly ninety degrees by his desperate rider, and started his charge.

  “Goddammit get a move on Personal Best!” I shrieked, lending my voice to the masses, adding my obscenity-laced prayers to the thousands of others being thrown up to heaven as the horses thundered towards the final pole. “Fucking run, goddammit, get him up there! Get on!”

  And beside me, I heard a shrill piping voice rising up to join the chorus: “Fucking run, goddammit! Fucking run! You got this Personal Best! RUN!”

  And when he put his face in front in the final strides and won the Loxahatchee Stakes by the barest whisker, I leaned down and gave that little cuss a big kiss on her forehead.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I was too swept up in watching Personal Best walking back to the barn to remember to tell Wendy to watch her mouth, but she was a quick study of audiences, and by the time I got to her, standing near the wash area outside the barn where she’d been watching me hose the sweat and track dirt off of the colt, squeezing a sponge over his poll and whipping the water out of his tail, she had already been trying out her new words with one of Brian’s grooms, who thought she was hysterical.

  “He fucking ran them down,” she was explaining to the groom, a round-faced Puerto Rican man of about sixty who was slapping his knee and telling her to go on, go on, go on. “He ran like a fucking freight train.”

  “Wendy!” I called, running over to the pair. I looked around for her aunt; but as usual the so-called chaperone was deeply involved with some text conversation. The chick lived in her phone, I swore. And speaking of swearing: “You have to stop talking like that. You’re going to get me into trouble.”

  The groom just laughed, his shoulders shaking. Wendy scowled. “I want to be a racetracker,” she announced. “Like you.”

  I couldn’t help but be touched by that, I admit. And for a moment, I savored the words. After all, who doesn’t want to be a role model, a hero even? I had very few female heroines as a racehorse-obsessed child: Julie Krone was the most visible woman in the industry, and she was a jockey — a job I knew wasn’t for me from a fairly young age. Female trainers? If there were any when I was a kid, I certainly didn’t know about them. And so here was a little girl, looking up and saying she wanted to be like me… I felt, for a few moments anyway, like I was somebody.

  Just, somebody who swore a lot. I shook my head and pulled myself together. This kid’s grandmother probably wasn’t going to think much of her granddaughter’s new role model if the most noticeable change I created was a potty-mouth. “I would love for you to be a racetracker,” I said carefully. “But maybe you could be a new kind of racetracker, who doesn’t cuss quite as much as we do.”

  The groom wiped tears out of his eyes. “You can’t be talkin’ that way,” he told her. “You make people laugh, they can’t do their work. We got a lotta work to do, you know? Can’t be distracted by some cute little princess who tal
ks like a man.”

  Wendy was not impressed. “She’s a woman and she talks like that,” she informed the groom. “It’s not talking like a man.”

  “She do talk like a man,” the groom said with a shrug. “But it ain’t funny.”

  I had a feeling my femininity was being assaulted here, but I also wasn’t sure I had any femininity to assault, at least nothing that I put on display. I didn’t own any skirts, heels, or make-up, and if a man tried to take a straw bale or a feed bag from me I generally had a fit and told him to mind his own damned business. “It’s talking like a grown-up,” I corrected, and took Wendy’s hand. “And that’s just going to have to wait until you’re grown-up.”

  We went into the barn, considering the case closed, and Wendy immediately went to see Luna, who was looking over her webbing, waiting for Personal Best to come back to his stall so that she could squeal and kick the wall between them. The filly took one look at the girl and ducked back into her stall, swishing her tail irritably. Wendy looked forlorn. “She doesn’t like me.”

  “She doesn’t like strangers,” I lied. It was interesting, I thought, leaning over the webbing and clucking my tongue at Luna, who flicked an ear in response and then stamped her hind leg with evident irritation. Personal Best had treated Wendy like family from the get-go, but Luna didn’t want anything to do with her. What had initially looked like a natural knack with horses was apparently a more selective thing. Some people seemed to have an aura that just attracted all horses, but evidently Wendy didn’t.