Ambition: (The Eventing Series Book 1)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  Hardscrabble to the core, I could always think of a way to stretch pennies — stretching someone else’s dollars would be cake.

  And then I noticed the silence in my ear.

  Whoops.

  “Right, Jules?”

  “I didn’t quite — static —” There was no static on digital lines, was there? What the hell. “The connection out here can be so iffy.”

  “Oh, you live right out there in the country, don’t you! That’s so nice! Mickey will love the fresh air! His last barn was so close to the highway —” And she was off again.

  I forced myself to smile, bearing my teeth, so that my voice, when I made small agreements and mmhmms, would be cheerful and sympathetic. Someone once told me that expressions could be heard through the telephone, and that I sounded as sour as a lemon. That someone being my mother.

  “You understand, don’t you Jules? The way it feels to have him so far away? But this is his time to shine, I can’t get in his way —”

  “Oh, I understand completely! He’s your baby! And horses do take so much time and effort. He’s really doing quite well but,” — I took a deep breath — “You should know he gave himself a little haircut this morning.”

  “Haircut? I don’t —”

  “I’m sending you a picture right now.” I took the phone away from my ear and swiped back to my photos, looking for the one I’d taken of his head, fresh and shining with ointment, when I’d finished with all the clean-up work. I kept talking to the distant speaker, voice raised. Marcus sighed as my elocution interrupted his nap. “Scraped his head on the fence in the paddock,” I lied. “I was so surprised. You do have wooden fencing at your farm, don’t you?”

  “Um, no, actually we have wire mesh…” Her voice was tinny coming out of the speaker.

  “Well, actually, that might explain it.” I forced a hollow laugh and went on fabricating a story of equine bad luck. I wasn’t about to tell her my stall walls were being kicked apart by rampaging ponies. “Silly boy put his head under the top board to reach for the horse in the next paddock and then whipped it backwards again. Quite a scrape but nothing serious. Get the picture yet?”

  “Oh — oh God…”

  So she had it. “That’s Swat, all that pink, just fly repellent ointment…”

  “Is the vet worried?”

  I hesitated for just a moment. I only called the vet when I absolutely couldn’t treat something on my own, and I was confident that I’d done as much clean-up and dressing of Mickey’s scalping as necessary. But somehow I didn’t want to tell this nervous Nancy that I wasn’t seeking professional attention for her darling pet.

  Or that I couldn’t cover the bill.

  It was the worst situation, sitting at the crossroads where the owner decided whether or not to blame the trainer for the incident. She could either blame me for the accident, and expect me to cover the vet bill, or she could assume that the horse could have done something so idiotic anywhere, and that the vet bill was her responsibility. She already had the upper hand, since I wanted her business. Would she take advantage of that? Would she set the stage for the rest of our business relationship by telling me it was my fault? Sure, I had a boarding contract to protect me… but that wouldn’t help me in the trainer wars.

  The silence was roaring in my ears. Eileen was waiting, perhaps growing the tiniest bit impatient, perhaps wondering what the hell kind of hack she was dealing with here. I bit my lip, agonized, and then went for the simplest of lies. “The vet hasn’t actually gotten here yet —”

  “Let me know what the vet says. You can add the bill to my account, can’t you?”

  “Yes, certainly.” I smiled, genuinely this time, at the phone, and then pulled up the picture of Mickey grazing in the paddock and sent that to her, as a sort of reward. That had gone so well! No blame and a free vet visit. A couple of the horses needed their annual Coggins test pulled and I hadn’t felt like paying the sixty-dollar trip fee until I absolutely had to. Now I wouldn’t have to. I was actually coming out ahead on this.

  While Eileen squealed with pleasure over the sight of her four-legged son in the green Florida grass, I thought about calling my mom next, just to gloat a little.

  And this, Mother, is why I don’t need a college degree to run a horse farm.

  After that, the day seemed to plug along pretty smoothly. Days on a horse farm are often so full that early-morning events, like having a horse scalp himself, tend to fade into distant memory fairly quickly. By nightfall, Mickey’s incident would feel like something that had happened last week. Or last year.

  Lacey’s riding lesson on Margot went well, which put her into a sunny mood for the rest of the day. It was a very nice ride. First, she managed to get Margot warmed up, all by herself, without any bucking incidents at all, and then she got the stubborn mare through a complicated little gymnastic exercise of six cross-rails in a row, spaced two strides apart at first, and then whittling down to two bounces at the end. She finished the ride on such a high note that she actually didn’t say a word for the next two hours, just smiled and hummed.

  I took advantage of her high spirits by putting her on the older horses, telling her to give them twenty minutes each of walk, trot, and canter work while I caught up on the more pressing issues — and called the vet out to take a look at Mickey. Lacey smiled and nodded and got busy tacking up Virtuoso, a solid little Thoroughbred gelding who was for sale as an amateur eventer, and I got on my phone, reflecting that Lacey would have made the perfect working student.

  Shame she didn’t wander onto the farm until a month after I’d hired Becky.

  Dr. Em, my wonderful vet and the enabler in all my DIY veterinary fantasies, showed up about an hour later. It was another one of her wonderful qualities — she always seemed to be nearby when I needed her. Which, considering I lived in the Back of Beyond compared to most of the Ocala equestrian community, was just plain magic as far as I was concerned.

  “Show me the amazing scalped wonder-pony,” she said in her transatlantic drawl, climbing out of her big SUV. Dr. Em had grown up in Alabama and then went to university in England. Like every vet at the Phillips and Donovan Equine Hospital, she wore a bridle-leather belt with a brass nameplate, only her nameplate read “Dr. Emma Jackson, MRCVS” instead of the usual “DVM.” It looked very fancy, as I reminded her every opportunity I got. She usually grinned and told me to stuff it, sounding something like Scarlett O’Hara imitating a cockney maid.

  Along with Lacey, Dr. Em was one of my favorite people in the world, and without her “Oops, there are too many pills in that bottle! Save the extras for a rainy day” prescriptions and those “We won’t tell anyone about this, shall we” stitches, I would have been out of business a long time ago. I even had her personal cell number, with permission to call it instead of the official office number, if I was truly in trouble and out of cash. If a visit didn’t happen on the office call-sheet, it didn’t happen.

  There were times, usually while I was holding the lead of a horse while he had a gash sewn up, when I thought I owed Dr. Em everything. Vet bills had shattered the dreams of more solvent businesswomen than me.

  I went splashing through the steaming paddock to catch Mickey while she opened up the drawers in the complicated shelving unit that took up the interior of the SUV, filling a bucket with meds, latex gloves, and cotton balls and toting it all to the wash-rack.

  “I never need this stuff when I’m here,” she admitted a few minutes later, poking at Mickey’s pink scalp with a gloved finger. “You’ve done a lovely job. Plenty of other farms wouldn’t even have had his head washed up. But I better have a look-see.” Dr. Em scrubbed away at Mickey’s head, rubbing away all my morning’s hard work. The pink-coated cotton swabs grew into a little candy mountain behind her. Marcus investigated, suspecting sugar, then wrinkled his nose and moved on to clean up some manure in the dressage arena. “So what else is happening around here?”

  “Same old. Had a buyer call me about Vi
rtuoso, but she never showed up. The usual. Sunshine State Horse Park is a few weeks away. Taking Dyno Intermediate for the first time.”

  “That’s exciting! Those are big fences, girl!”

  Dr. Em had evented before vet school took away her free time. She often proclaimed that she would have time to ride again someday, but her work schedule was basically on-call, twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five, so I thought it was bit optimistic of her.

  “Yeah, it’s such a tiny step to Advanced after that. We’ll be ready to step up in no time. Get my name out there.” I glanced out the barn aisle towards the paddock where my chestnut Thoroughbred grazed. I was powerless against that urge that struck me a dozen times a day, to just make sure that he was still there, that I hadn’t dreamed him up, that he hadn’t disappeared into a puff of smoke. I took in his muscular lines hungrily, and felt safe again — for a few more minutes.

  “Dyno’s a nice sound horse. You take care of him and he’ll take care of you. I know you don’t think he’ll hold up at Advanced, but he’s a good start.” She added still more cotton to the pile. Dr. Em was a messy vet. It was perhaps her only fault. “You get out any like I suggested?”

  Messy, and her desire that I acquire a social life, two faults, then. A social life was not an option, I reminded her time and time again, but still she persisted. Once she had tried to fix me up with a racehorse trainer from Citra, clear on the other side of Marion County. Her argument was that I didn’t have to worry about running into him at the feed store after I chewed him up and spit him out. “Which you inevitably would,” she’d sighed. “You’re very bad-tempered.”

  “Um, no, I haven’t had time,” I replied warily. She didn’t have another no-chance guy lined up, did she?

  “I hear that. But come on, go out once and while. More to life than horses and all that. I had a date last weekend, believe it or not. It’s nice to have a guy buy you dinner and to wear clothes that don’t have horsehair all over them. You should try it.”

  It did sound nice. I tried to imagine getting my work done and getting cleaned up and driving to town for a date and staying awake past ten o’clock. Nope. I couldn’t see it happening. And anyway, there was one glaring fault with every man I might meet in Ocala — his job. “I’m not going to meet anyone in this town who doesn’t have horses.”

  “Nothing wrong with guys with horses,” Dr. Em said, grinning down at me from her ladder. “You run into Pete Morrison yet? He’s worth seeing.”

  “The one who kicked my ass at ACE?”

  “Oh right. Yeah, him. He just moved into the old Garner place in Reddick. I was out there a few days ago. Talk about a spread. Love to know how he can afford the rent. And him — delicious!” Dr. Em laughed and climbed down, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Wound looks good. I don’t foresee any problems. We’ll do a tetanus just because. And sorry about the Swat. I probably owe you a jar of the stuff now.”

  “No problem,” I brushed it off, even though she washed about ten bucks’ worth of ointment off of his head and it would all have to be replaced out of my own pocket. It hurt my wallet, for sure, but she would make up for it in other ways. She always did.

  Dr. Em doled out a few packets of SMZs, the current drug of choice for fighting infections, and then she doled out a few more — loosies that had broken out of a package. Good ol’ Dr. Em. “Mind if I have a Diet Coke?” she asked, scribbling quantities into her iPad. This visit was on the books. Mostly. “Only I didn’t have time for lunch today —”

  We adjourned to the tack room for caffeine and a quick rest, leaving the beatific Lacey to put away the horse.

  “So about Pete Morrison,” Dr. Em began, once we were seated and sipping from cans.

  “I’m pretty sure Pete Morrison isn’t going to ask me out,” I laughed. “Only partially because I don’t know him. And only partially because he oughta be scared of me, after cheating me out of that grant.”

  “Oh please! You both compete against each other in the same sport. Someone’s always going to have to beat the other one. This time he won. Next time, it could be you. Whatever the eventing gods want to happen. Anyway, I could introduce you. Properly.” She looked excited. Dr. Em had a formidable matchmaking side. She was a woman who got what she wanted, through sheer strength of character. “Jules, he’s absolutely gorgeous. You’ve seen him! His hair is dark red, like a liver chestnut, and he has this amazing tan and a great body…” she trailed off, clearly taken away by the very thought.

  “So… date him yourself?”

  She laughed. “Oh Jules, he’s like thirty years old. He’s too old for me.”

  “You’re five years older than me!”

  “Yeah, but I’m not dating anyone over twenty-nine.” She drained her Diet Coke and crumpled the can, tossing it into a feed bag I had designated as the recycling bin. “Actually, I’m not sure he’s any older than either of us. But he acts like it. And I like a little bit of a social life. Dancing, crazy stuff you don’t like. I go out whenever I can get rid of this damn work phone. Pete? He’s like you — he’d wedded to his horses. No life whatsoever. You’re perfect for each other. You could ride and muck out and order pizza and fall asleep on the couch and call it exciting.”

  That actually sounded fantastic. She was good. But I held firm. “I’m going to have to pass. I’m sticking with my no-life-whatsoever plan for a while — that includes dating.”

  I set down my Diet Coke can and stood up, indicating that I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Any of it. Dating. Social life. Someone to ride out with and to muck stalls with. Not that all of that didn’t sound very attractive. Who wouldn’t want a gorgeous redhead to fall asleep on the couch with? But Peter Morrison? That entitled son-of-a… no. I shook my head.

  Dr. Em got up and headed out the tack room door, effectively washing her hands of me. “You’re nuts. Now, what else needs doing? I have six more appointments this afternoon, and then I have twelve whole hours with my work phone turned off. I’m going to put on some dancing shoes tonight. So no emergencies from you, got it?”

  Lacey helped Dr. Em with the overdue Coggins tests, holding the halters of the horses who needed their blood pulled and finding their files in the office binder so that Dr. Em could fill out the identification information: age, markings, breed, and all the rest. I started throwing tack on one of the youngsters. Despite the messy barn, I had to get some riding in before the day disappeared. It was already clouding over — the afternoon thunderstorms waited for no man.

  “Lacey — I need you to finish stalls!” I called as I led the first horse out to the mounting block, not waiting to hear her gusty sigh from the office. I did hear Dr. Em laugh. “Thank you!” I added, knowing that the tack room was receiving an earful of how much I owed her. It was fine. We’d work it out later.

  Despite the approaching weather, with the western skies darkening and the thunder growling menacingly, I managed to get about twenty minutes each of decent work onto the Twins, as I had nicknamed the pair of Dutch Warmbloods in the barn. My only youngsters in the barn, the Twins had the same sire, but different mamas. Their breeder had sent them up from Myakka City for me to start under saddle. Aware of the considerable depth of her pockets, I had basically given away the farm to get the Twins in my barn, offering the breeder a break on board and taking extra-special care with their training. I was hoping she’d be so impressed she’d send other babies my way, and tell other breeders what a wonderful job I did with all her young-stock.

  Word-of-mouth was the only advertising I could afford, with my budget. If it didn’t work, I had sunk my time and money into horses that weren’t mine. Not the best, but I wasn’t working with a lot of options here.

  And they were nice enough to ride, anyway, so it wasn’t the worst thing to lose money on. The Twins were generally thoughtful and placid young citizens. Like so many warmbloods, bred for obedience and pretty gaits, they were pleasant to work with but not exactly challenging.

  Twin One, (real name: Avr
il), did have a nervous disorder when it came to butterflies — the sight of a fluttering insect batting its pastel wings past her nose was enough to send her into a quivering panic, and midway through our ride I had to sit deep in the saddle and try to calm her with my own steady breaths while she snorted and stared at one of the fluttering monsters making its unhurried way through the dressage arena.

  Twin Two, (real name: Sam), was slightly more complicated. He was unaffected by butterflies but was afflicted by such laziness that I was already forced to carry a dressage whip and give him a solid whack on the haunches to get him into a trot. It was astonishing to me that a four-year-old youngster who knew basic cues and understood leg and seat pressure was so completely uninterested in moving forward. I was actually growing concerned that Twin Two wasn’t going to amount to anything at all in life. Unless I could find something he was interested in, he was turning out to be a very expensive, very tiring trail horse.

  Riding the Twins first meant I might not get in a ride on any of my competition horses before the weather turned, another annoyance settling in the pit of my stomach as I swatted Twin Two around the dressage arena. But miraculously, the weather held off, and if the lightning was a little closer than I would have liked at times, I managed to get through both twins and was getting ready to ride Dynamo as Lacey was finishing up the stalls.

  She eyed me warily as I pulled out his tack — Dynamo did not share a bridle with anyone else, and he had his own saddle pads and girth cover, lest some vulgar sales horse give him cooties. “You’re going to ride Dynamo in this weather?” she asked, leaning the empty wheelbarrow against the wall in the alcove where I kept the tools. She picked up a broom to sweep up the shavings that littered the aisle, and a cool gust of air sent a whirlwind of old bedding spiraling past us.

  “I have to ride him,” I said impatiently. A little lightning wasn’t going to change the competition schedule. “We have a training plan to keep up with.”