Claiming Christmas (Alex and Alexander Book 3)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  Personal Best, on the other hand, nickered a greeting to Wendy as he was led past, making his rounds of the shed row as he was being walked dry. Wendy’s face lit up again at the horse’s obvious affection for her. “Why does he do that? Does he know I love him?”

  “That must be it,” I said, but I really didn’t know either.

  Suddenly Luna was back at her webbing and looking out of the barn, her head high and her ears pricked. I turned around to see what had grabbed her attention and saw a dark little horse being led into the barn.

  “Who’s that?” Wendy asked.

  “Must be for another trainer in the barn,” I said, watching the horse, who was unimpressive. As the pair neared us, I saw the slightly dished profile and wide eyes that often marked a filly, the dainty ankles and dished hooves of a horse who had spent a lot of time in sand, and a slender chest that didn’t say a lot for her power or strength. Just another Thoroughbred, probably Florida-bred, running in claiming races before she went back to some little backyard in Florida to be a broodmare, I figured. Categorized and dismissed, I nodded at the groom as he went by and went back to playing with Luna’s mane.

  But then the groom stopped. The filly on his lead-shank stopped too, blinked at me, and then turned her nervous gaze on Wendy, who smiled at the attention. The brass name plate on her halter read Christmasfordee. The groom, a tiny middle-aged Hispanic man with broad cheeks and a bristling mustache, just looked at me with unblinking eyes.

  “You looking for someone?” I asked finally.

  He shifted on his feet before speaking in heavily accented English. “You know Cotswold? I look for trainer.”

  I cocked my head. What the hell was this? “I’m their trainer,” I said, even though he was probably looking for Brian.

  “Okay, I got horse for you.” He made to hand me the shank, but I put my hands up instead.

  “What do you mean? I don’t have any horses coming in.”

  The groom’s expression didn’t change. “My boss sell this horse, guy say, take to Cotswold in barn three. He say that he trainer.”

  Oh jeez. Oh hell. Oh sweet baby Jesus. “Wendy!” I snapped, suddenly noticing that the kid was reaching up to touch the dark filly’s nose. The filly was reaching towards her, ears pricked and mouth working, as if she was anticipating a treat. “Don’t touch strange horses. That’s a great way to lose your fingers.” Wendy, her face darkening, put her hands behind her back, but she stayed close to the filly. I turned back to the groom. “Look, I know you’re just doing what you’re told, but I need some paperwork or something on this. I can’t just accept a horse without even knowing who she belongs to. You’re going to have to call your boss or go get him before I can take this horse.”

  “Listen, lady — ” the groom started, his bland expression starting to fold into anger, but he was interrupted from a shout at the other end of the shed. We both turned and saw a tall, almost hilariously thin figure coming down the aisle towards us.

  I shook my head. I should’ve known.

  “That him,” the groom muttered. “Owner.”

  “Of course it is. Joey!” I called in a more civil tone. “Joey, what did you do?” I smiled, as if it was all in good fun, and I wasn’t utterly seething with rage at seeing that he’d done it again.

  “I’m sorry, Alex,” he laughed, spreading his hands as he came near. Bumbling Joey Armstrong, his gesture said, the silly fool you can’t help but love. He thought he was living in a sitcom from the fifties. “I just fell in love with her cute little face. I had to have her! You have a stall for her, don’t you?”

  Joey Armstrong, who owned a car dealership empire, frequently fell in love with horses and their cute little faces. He was less attracted to things like bullet works or race records or clean vet charts, unfortunately. I wondered how many problems his current heartthrob had, and how long it would be before we instructed Brian to drop her into a claimer and get her out of our barn. Or, even worse, find that she was fundamentally unsound and have to tell Joey that his little sweetheart was a breakdown waiting to happen and needed to be retired immediately. That was what had happened with his last horse, a five year old maiden named Chippewasintrouble, a name that was nearly impossible to pronounce correctly without patient instruction, and who was definitely not worth the time that instruction took. His new owner, a teenager who was training him to barrel race, wisely lengthened it to Chippewa’s In Trouble and seemed to be happy with its western connotations.

  “Joey,” I said carefully, trying not to sound as angry as I was. “Didn’t we talk about checking with your trainer before you buy another horse?”

  Joey didn’t even blink, let alone drop his smile. “Yes,” he said in a mischievous voice, like a toddler who is pretty sure he’s not actually in trouble. “But I knew once you saw her, you wouldn’t be mad. She’s too sweet.”

  I glanced back at the filly and her big troubled eyes. She had a broad, oversized nasal bone which gave her profile a coarse look. I was missing the sweetness, apparently. I must be too cynical to see it. Wendy on the other hand… Wendy was watching the mare like she’d just spotted her soul-mate across the room and was too shy to introduce herself. “I don’t even know if there are any stalls,” I went on. “I don’t know if the one next to Luna’s is ours or the other trainer’s.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll find room,” Joey said confidently. “You always find room for me.”

  And that might be the problem, I thought.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Problem might be solved.

  Alexander came around the corner with Brian and Personal Best, the colt still working at some grass from his special bonus grazing session. “Joey Armstrong, is that you?”

  Joey was pretty recognizable, since he was probably six and a half feet tall and had the physique of a grasshopper. Even so, he behaved as if Alexander was a clairvoyant from a freak show. “Alexander! How did you guess? It’s getting so dark — you should really turn the lights on,” he told me in an aside, before turning back to the advancing Alexander.

  It might have been getting dark, but I could still see Alexander’s face, and it was not pleased. I had a feeling I was about to see an owner get fired. “Hey Wendy?” She dragged fascinated eyes away from the filly and looked at me with obvious irritation. This filly was trouble; she had everyone in a bad mood. Everyone but Joey. “Why don’t we go find your aunt? We’re going to be headed out soon and she’d probably like to get back to her hotel before dark. That way you guys can see the beach. Sounds nice, right?”

  Wendy obviously didn’t think the beach sounded nice at all, because she rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. But I didn’t care; she didn’t need to be here for Alexander’s inevitable meltdown with Joey, nor the things he was going to say about the filly she was apparently head-over-heels in love with.

  I started to take her hand and lead her away, but the filly took a step after her, nickering. That was odd, I thought, but I didn’t have much time to ponder the move, because the groom’s over-the-top reaction, yanking down on the chain shank over her nose and letting lose a string of Spanish obscenities, caused Wendy to shriek and shove the man in the gut, knocking him right over. He rolled in the dirt of the shed row, though thankfully not under the filly, who responded to the debacle by rearing straight up, her lead shank dangling between her legs. I lunged forward to try and get at the shank, but the groom was in my way; I tripped and went to my knees, and when I looked up, Wendy had the shank in her hands and was talking soothingly to the filly, who was crab stepping nervously away from the pair of us in the dirt. Behind it all, Alexander had his arms out, as if to shield Personal Best and Brian should the filly spin and take off down the shed row, and Joey was just standing there with his mouth hanging open.

  Like so many equine accidents, everything happened so quickly there was scarcely time to react until after the fact. I picked myself up slowly, brushing the dirt from my slacks, and made my way towards Wendy, eyes on
the filly’s wide eyes, rolling whitely in her homely head. “Honey, hand me the shank, okay?”

  “No,” Wendy said gently, and continued talking to the filly in the same soft tone she’d been using before. “That’s a good girl, stand still now, don’t worry — ”

  “Wendy, come on, you could get hurt.” I put my hand out; Wendy moved the shank out of my reach. Her total attention was on the horse, but just as the wary filly was keeping one ear trained on me, Wendy was definitely aware of me — and apparently saw me as a threat.

  “She’s scared,” Wendy said. “She likes me; we’ll be fine.”

  “Come on, little girl,” Joey said. “Give Alex the lead shank. That’s a racehorse. She might take off and then what will happen to you?”

  “She won’t,” Wendy insisted.

  I shook my head in irritation and darted my hand forward, snatching the shank before Wendy could stop me. “That’s enough, kid,” I snapped. “Go find your aunt like I said.”

  Wendy gave me a sorrowful look, as if I’d betrayed her and run over her dog in the bargain. Then she stepped up and gave the filly a long, careful stroke down her trembling dark neck, running her hands beneath the black mane where it spilled over her sharp withers. And without a word, she turned and walked out of the shed row, off to find her texting aunt, just as I’d told her.

  I sighed and gave the filly a pat. “Let’s walk,” I told her, still sensing that a loud argument was brewing behind me, and took her for a stroll around the barn while her groom sat in the dirt and her owner started pleading his case with Alexander.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We went back to our condo that night, the old beachfront job that Alexander had been using for south Florida racing since the nineties. It had been old then, and now its comfortingly outdated furnishings and fittings were some of my favorite things. I loved the marble windowsills and the plastic and chrome bathroom fixtures, the louvered windows and the white Formica kitchen cabinets. It all reminded me of friends’ houses when I was a kid. Chrome and white, plastic and nickel: mid-century Florida definitely had its own look.

  The carpet was always damp and the linoleum in the kitchen was starting to peel, too. Those parts, I didn’t love, although they were still an undeniable part of Florida.

  Alexander was sitting with a glass of wine on the balcony, watching the Atlantic Ocean come crashing ashore in the moonlight. There was a cruise ship on the horizon, lit up like a Christmas tree. I came out and shut the sliding glass door behind me, letting the humid salty air rise up to meet me, and watched the ship for a moment. “We should go on a cruise,” I suggested. “I’ve never done that.”

  Alexander shrugged. “Who has the time?”

  “True.” I sat down next to him. “Did you call Jackson?” Jackson Hicks was a trainer friend; Alexander had suggested, after the shouting had ended and things were more civil, that Joey should take the filly to his barn. He was adamant that we weren’t taking the horse into our string; she was a four-year-old maiden who was unplaced in three starts and had needed a lengthy break between each race, for reasons unknown to us. Jackson had both open stalls and a remarkable capacity for dealing with delusional owners, so we figured she’d be safe with him. In a few months, with any luck, the filly would be heading for retirement. Hopefully not as a broodmare, I thought, remembering her dished hooves and narrow chest. She wasn’t exactly the face of future champions. With careful shoeing, though, she could probably make a decent show horse.

  “I left him a voicemail.” He took a sip of wine and then picked up an empty glass he’d had waiting. “Sit a while?”

  I sat down next to him, settling into the rickety plastic chair that had been on this balcony for the past twenty years, and accepted the glass. Alexander poured with an artistic flourish, topping off the glass with a bob of his hand, and then raised his own glass for a toast. “To Personal Best, and his beautiful trainer,” he said with a smile that crinkled his face into a thousand sun-darkened lines. “May you always find the finish line first, my love.”

  I sniffed and blinked away a suspicious burning in my eyes. “Thank you, Alexander,” I said throatily. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” We clinked glasses, the little crystal ping echoing around the three walls of the balcony, and drank. I watched the ocean in silence for a little while, wondering what sort of creatures were just below the surface. Sharks, probably, and crabs, and jellyfish. But maybe pretty things, as well, tropical fish and coral reefs, dolphins and seahorses. “Do dolphins sleep at night?” I asked, and Alexander laughed and said he genuinely had no idea and had never wondered about such a thing in his life.

  “I would have thought you’d be thinking about your horses,” he went on. “What you want to do next with Personal Best.”

  “I still plan on bringing him home.”

  “And next year?”

  “We’ll see how he does after a month off.”

  “Are you thinking about it?”

  I was silent for a moment. I knew what he was getting at — it was what everyone was always thinking about, in this business, anyway. And anytime you had a two-year-old with guts and speed and a couple stakes wins under his belt, you had to think about it. “Yes,” I admitted.

  He nodded. The waves roared. “I won’t be mad,” he said finally.

  “You won’t be mad?”

  “If you win a Derby before I do.”

  I burst out laughing and leaned over to kiss him.

  ***

  Later that evening, past the time that anyone should have been calling anyone — okay, I was watching the ten o’clock news — my phone buzzed, skidding its way across the glass coffee table and hitting the beige carpet with a clunk. I picked it up and looked at the number and then just shook my head. It was Wendy’s aunt’s phone, but all bets were that it was Wendy calling.

  I went out onto the balcony before answering. Sure enough, it was Wendy. “Alex?” she said in a hushed voice.

  “What’s up, Wendy?” The cruise ship had moved well out into the ocean; it was nearly gone, just a faint glimmer of light on the horizon now.

  “I was worried about Christmas.”

  “Christmas?” Christmas was more than six weeks away. And I didn’t recall any promises to be part of her Christmas, or even part of her life after today. The Rodeo Queens were taking care of her riding lessons. It was up to Wendy to learn how to ride, maybe even show, and then when she was an adult she could start thinking about being a racetracker, if that was what she still wanted.

  “The filly,” Wendy explained impatiently. “The one you don’t want.”

  “Oh. Wait — Christmas?” I thought for a moment, trying to remember when anyone had called the filly by name. Then I remembered: the dull glint of brass on her leather halter, the Roman letters proclaimed her Christmasfordee. “That might not even be her name,” I said. “That could be an old halter. We reuse halters all the time.”

  “No, that’s her name,” Wendy asserted. “I asked that fat man. When you walked her away. He said they called her Christmas. In the barn. When she races her name is Christmasfordee.”

  I didn’t know if what she did could accurately be called racing. “She’ll be fine,” I said instead. “She’ll go to a friend of ours and he’ll do the right thing for her.”

  “I want you to keep her,” Wendy insisted, her voice fretful. “I want to be able to see her. Can you bring her back to your farm and keep her there? I can work to help pay for her. I can do whatever you need.”

  What on earth? “No, I can’t do that. She isn’t my horse, Wendy. She has an owner. He just wants a trainer for her, you know? She has to stay at the racetrack until he changes his mind.”

  “But — ” Wendy’s voice was trembling and I was afraid she was going to cry. If Wendy cried, I cried; it was that simple. “But she’s special. She has my name, and it’s almost Christmas, and —”

  “She has your name?”

  “My granny calls me Dee.”

 
“Oh.” Well this was really, really unfortunate. I saw now what had happened. Girl on Christmas wish trip is suddenly presented with a horse whose name literally implies the horse is her Christmas present. Girl falls in love with horse. That was always an unfortunate and expensive plot twist. “Wendy, honey, you’re not ready to own a horse yet, okay? I know you want one but you have to take lessons and learn to ride and take care of them. That’s your next step — learning everything you can. I know this horse had a name that sounded like she was for you, but — ”

  “No,” Wendy interrupted. “That’s not what I meant. I know I can’t have her. But she’s special. I could see she was special. And she’s scared. And we have the same name — that has to mean something.”

  I stared out at the sea. The cruise ship had disappeared; the ocean was dark at last. Down on the beach, ten stories below, a couple were walking hand-in-hand, not a care in the world. Up here on the balcony, I had a phone call with an eleven-year-old having a New Age moment with a slow racehorse. I wished, very hard, to be anywhere but here, with any other problem. Nothing changed. “Wendy,” I said slowly. “Listen. You have to go to bed. It’s late, you had a long day, you have a long trip home tomorrow. Don’t worry about the horse. I’ll make sure she goes to a good home.”

  Wendy was silent for a moment. I could hear her sniffling, trying not to cry — or not to let me know she was crying. When she spoke again, her voice was watery. “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “You promise Christmas will be okay?”

  “I promise.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Kerri was riding a broodmare around the pasture bareback again.

  “She has a problem,” Alexander observed, watching her from the kitchen window.