Ambition: (The Eventing Series Book 1)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  I leaned against the wobbly paneling of the stall, making sure that Dynamo settled down to eat his hay and relax, but I couldn’t help but watch Becky’s orderly procedure from afar: the mirthless methodology in which she took down the big double-wheeled wheelbarrow, dragged my tack trunk from the truck bed, then carefully stacked the four hay bales on top of it, two longways, two sideways, before wheeling it over and settling it in place in front of the stall. Her movements were spare, her eyes never left her work, and if she spoke a word, I would have jumped in surprise. She had a ruthless efficiency which was borne of many years working with horses, but she did it without any sense of fun. Like me, she had never done anything in her life but work with horses. Unlike me, her parents had a small farm and she had ridden in her own yard, and done her own chores every day. When she’d come to work for me, it was her first time working for a commercial stable. It was a dream come true for her, the beginning of her life as a professional horsewoman, or so she had said.

  And now, this stick-in-the-mud, this bad-tempered robot?

  She regrets it all.

  I realized it with sickening suddenness, watching her labor to muck out the trailer, wiping sweat from her brow from inside the broiling hot metal box.

  She came to work for me, and changed her mind, entirely, about being a professional trainer. About her life’s ambition. All the plans she had ever made — I had made her rethink her entire life.

  The drudgery, the long days, the endless work, the empty bank account — she’d lived my life for a few months and changed her mind. She’d decided to go to college. She was going to leave me and get a real job, with hours, and a paycheck, and air conditioning.

  God, I thought. That’s the effect I have on people?

  And then, that’s what she thinks of my life choices?

  That’s when I started to get angry.

  Was she judging me? She was! That was the root of all those withering looks when I gave her instructions, that was the reason behind the gusty sighs, the terse nods, the silent efficiency. She thought I was an idiot for living this life. She thought I didn’t have the brains to go get a real job. She thought she could manage my stable and my horses for me with her hands tied behind her back, and so she went out of her way to make sure she never had to ask a question or wait for an instruction.

  I set my jaw, grinding my molars dangerously. What a bitch! Who did she think she was, anyway? Why did she think she was better than me — better than us? Better than the horsewomen and horsemen who were all around us, giving their all to the sport?

  Couldn’t she pause for a minute, look around the activity of the shed-row, crack a few jokes with me about the woman across the driveway who was raking up straw in nothing but a pink sports bra, a pair of low-rise riding breeches, and beaded flip-flops? Couldn’t she offer to walk the cross-country course with me, so that we could stand in the ditch under the massive trakehner and laugh and pretend it was all in a day’s work and there was no chance I’d be killed out there tomorrow? Couldn’t she look around and see the gorgeous horses, the dedicated people, the accomplishment of all that hard work out there in the arenas and the fields?

  Couldn’t she just talk to me once in a while?

  I mean, I was all about work, of course, but one of the pleasures of stable life was having friends to talk to. I knew this for a fact. When I was a kid, I used to hear the other girls talking all the time. While I was mucking their horses’ stalls.

  And now I wanted that for myself. I deserved it, for all the years of hard work and sacrifice that I’d given to this life, and all the years of hard work and sacrifice yet to come. Couldn’t I at least have a friend to talk to that didn’t walk on four legs, and possibly spoke English?

  I watched Becky, eyes narrowed, while Dynamo tore into his hay-net and other competitors arrived, horses in hand, bringing their own working students, their own wheelbarrows full of tack trunks and hay bales.

  She just kept working. She brought over the wash buckets. The Rubbermaid container of sweet feed, the baggies of pre-mixed supplements, one for each meal. I didn’t make a move to help her, new and rude behavior for me, but she didn’t say a word, didn’t bat an eyelash. And I thought I understood.

  She didn’t care what I did or what I thought. She was doing her job because she had agreed to do it, and she still liked getting riding lessons from me for free, but she didn’t give a damn about me.

  I felt like the working student at Laurie’s barn all over again, beneath the other girls’ notice.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  And that was the rest of my day. Rankling bad temper on my part, model of robot servitude on hers. She moved the truck and trailer to the distant parking field. She went to Publix and brought me back a Cuban sandwich, a bag of jalapeño potato chips, and a case of Diet Coke for the cooler. She sat with me while I ate the sandwich, the chips, and drank two Diet Cokes and listened while I shared as much gossip as I had on the arriving competitors, marching by with their wheelbarrows and their hay bales and their prancing bandaged horses pulling at the lead shanks. She announced her plans to return to the farm at three o’clock so that she could start evening chores, leaving me here to baby-sit Dynamo until I finally got up the courage to leave him for the night. She didn’t even offer to walk the cross-country course with me.

  She did her job.

  But I resented her for every decision that she made, for every silent moment when she could have replied to some anecdote I’d told, and chose not to. For not coming along with me on the course walk for moral support, to squeeze my arm when I looked at some terrifying ditch-and-wall or the legendary Horse Park water complex, to tell me I was great, and that Dynamo was the best, and that we could do it.

  Lacey would have come, I thought. I should have called her and told her to get her butt out here.

  I had to admit it, I didn’t just want more than a hardworking groom; I needed it. I needed a friend as well — the human kind, this time. I looked down at the dirt of the shed-row and kicked up an old horseshoe nail, feeling utterly embarrassed for myself. Me, need a friend? Please. I was self-sufficient. Dynamo and I were an army of two. I had never needed anyone else, because when I was a kid, there hadn’t been anyone else.

  Dynamo ran his muzzle through my pony-tail, and his short-cropped whiskers pricked at my neck. I remembered sitting like this in the paddock those first early months we had been together, back when he refused to let me catch him, before he learned to trust me, to come to me. These had been his first daring touches, the beginning of our friendship. He was my first and only partner, and it had started with his warm grass-scented breath on my shoulder. And it still gave me the same sense of wonder, the shiver of goosebumps, that it had that first night.

  It had been lonely growing up, the only working student at a barn full of girls my own age who didn’t have to work for a thing. They were always chattering as they went riding together, or cleaning their tack (when Laurie absolutely forced them to) in big communal circles, while I scrubbed buckets and mucked stalls and rode the problem horses before riding lessons began. They had all sounded so happy, having such fun together, and when I had been alone on my knees in the wash-racks, elbow-deep in the drain pulling out clumps of horsehair and hay and manure, I’d thought that when I was an adult and had my own barn, I’d finally have a friend to sit and chatter with as we cleaned tack or set up jumps or hacked out together. Or sure, cleaned out the drains in the wash-racks. It wouldn’t be so bad if you had a friend, I figured.

  The only person I’d had any sort of relationship with was Laurie. Twenty years older than me, she had worked me like a dog and had taken advantage of me, that much was for sure. But even so, we’d had a closeness that the paying boarders and students had never been able to approach. Early mornings, long days, and late nights in the barn can bring two people together, especially when they feel united against clients who are forever complaining, forever demanding, forever trying to get something for nothing. We�
�d shared triumphs when we’d overcome some training problem, teaching a sales horse that a liverpool wasn’t going to kill him, or some lesson pony that if he bucked off a student again, we were going to kill him. High fives, a Diet Coke at Laurie’s kitchen table (that was where the Diet Coke habit started), an occasional McDonald’s run in the gleaming farm truck, these were the markers that proved Laurie was my friend, not just my boss, or the woman who boarded my horse and yelled at me to keep my shoulders back and my hands quiet in riding lessons.

  I’d assumed that I’d have that closeness with my working students, as well. I didn’t expect it to turn into contempt.

  I shoved up from the tack trunk. Time to get over it. That cross-country course wasn’t going to walk itself. But somehow, I didn’t think inspecting my first-ever Intermediate course was going to cheer me up much. It felt more like a mission to inspect my impending suicide attempt. I looked down at the crumpled course map in my hands. There were a lot of scary jumps out there. Not many people would be looking at them alone. They’d have coaches, friends, students. Moral support.

  “Do you want me to walk Dynamo?”

  I looked up. Becky was standing in front of me, one hand on hip, eyebrow cocked as she looked down at me.

  “That would be nice.” I managed to make my voice polite, almost warm. But inside I was seething. Stop looking at me like that, stop acting like you’re better than I am. “Take him out for an hour and give him a look at the arenas, and then you can head back to the barn. I’m going to go walk the cross-county course.”

  Becky gave me a short nod and snatched the lead-shank from the hook on the wall, threading its chain over Dynamo’s nose before she unhooked his stall chain. It was those little things that made a good working student, the precautions that they knew by heart, the ability to make decisions about a horse’s handling and care without constantly asking for guidance or being told what to do.

  And so despite my hurt feelings, I watched them walk away with pleasure. There goes my groom, there goes my Intermediate horse. Here comes my future. I leaned down and pulled on my green Wellington boots. There was a substantial water hazard out on the course, and I would have to go wading to see how deep the drop was. I put my game face on. There was an event to win.

  I’d figure out the Becky thing later.

  An hour later, brushing sticky-wet hair out of my face, I leaned against a massive log and peered over its other side.

  The water glowered back at me, brackish and dark, barely bothering to reflect the blue skies overhead. I knew what was on the bottom — packed gravel, lined with plastic to keep the pond filled throughout the event. But I couldn’t see it. The towering slash pines in this highland section of the course dropped their needles into the water, staining it a dark opaque brown.

  And it was a long way down.

  I turned around and looked back at the skinny before the log — a narrow little rowboat, oars stashed inside, with a red flag on the right and a white flag on the left. The poles that held up the flag looked to be no more than three feet apart — just enough room for a horse to jump through, if the horse was going dead straight and true. A feat in and of itself, before the three-stride gap to the looming log and its drop on the other side.

  Of course, I didn’t have to take it. I could take the long way around, canter off to the right, jump through a keyhole and swing wide to splash into the water complex over a lower drop. It would be easier, and safer. But it would also take time. And I didn’t want the penalties that would come with going over the allotted time limit. Every second counted, literally, and if I was to have a chance at winning this thing, I needed to be as clean as possible. Losing a ribbon over time penalties would be brutal, if we managed to get around this man-eating course alive.

  A team of several riders came up to the skinny, shook their heads, and walked over to the second option. Go on, I thought, leaning as casually on the log as I could. Take the long option. You’ve got all the time in the world.

  I shoved off the log and tread carefully through the close-cropped grass to the skinny, walking the three strides between the two fences slowly, pacing off the distance, feeling the ground. It wasn’t too wet up here on the highlands, even though we were already a month into rainy season, but it would still be chopped up plenty by hooves before Dynamo and I approached this complex.

  I nodded. Short option it was. Dynamo had never been a fast horse — I wasn’t going to be able to waste time.

  Time for the next fence. I pressed my hands together, to stop them from shaking, and went on through the field.

  I was coming back into the stabling area, mind full of distances and speeds and take-offs and landings, when Peter Morrison stepped away from the catering tent and took me by the arm. I stopped short and glared up at him, too astonished by his touch to even say anything. He took his hand away, looking apologetic. But when he spoke, there was an urgency to his voice that matched the concern in his eyes.

  “Listen,” he hissed, trying to keep from being overheard. “You want to watch the skinny before the water complex. I don’t think many people are going to get through the left-hand approach without wiping out. It’s just set up for failure.”

  I felt a hot flush rising up across my sweaty cheeks. Had he been out there watching me? And why was he trying to warn me? What was with this guy? I didn’t even really know him, but he’d been making me crazy for weeks now. Always on my mind, and now always in my way. I met his eyes, trying not to notice the way that seemed to set my heart to pounding, and concentrated on how much I didn’t like him. “I disagree,” I said, and shrugged, as if his intense delivery meant nothing at all to me. “And why would you be telling me, anyway? You planning on taking the left-hand route, don’t want to give up the half-second advantage you’ll have over me?”

  Peter stepped back, looking confused, and I felt a stab of guilt that was equally confusing. “No, that’s not it at all. I just thought — I thought it would be sporting, I don’t know. From one competitor to another. We can get along and still be competitors, right? That’s one of the things that makes eventing great. We’re all in this together.”

  “You’re not telling everyone, though,” I pointed out. “You didn’t exactly go stand up on the jump and announce to everyone that it was a terrible combination.”

  He blushed beneath his tan. “I just thought… Look, you got me. Ever since we were at Longacres — I just — you’re very talented. And you care about your horses. I like that. I like you. Maybe some night we could grab a beer together.”

  “Oh no,” I said, shaking my head, tamping down the surging feeling of joy in my chest. Joy that had no place being there. This man was my rival. And I had already sworn off the distractions of dating. No men for me — especially men who rode horses, and would always think they knew better than me. Even so, it took a moment for me to get the words of refusal past my lips. “I don’t… No… I don’t think so. Thank you. That’s very flattering. Thanks. But — no.”

  “Why not?” Peter looked perplexed. “Is it because of the ACE thing? You were riding beautifully, if that’s what this is about. I felt terrible about the whole thing.”

  “It isn’t,” I admitted, although I would have liked for it to be. The truth was, I didn’t really mind that he’d beat me for the grant — not at this moment, when he was standing so close to me, anyway. “I just don’t do this sort of thing,” I said weakly. Maybe you should, my demon whispered in my ear, and I nearly swatted my shoulder to shoo temptation away.

  “What sort of thing — socialize with other humans?” He cocked his head to one side, like a horse who has heard a candy wrapper crinkle and can’t figure out where it’s coming from. “Drink refreshing beverages in the company of friends? Eat delicious food someone else pays for while they tell you what a lovely rider you are?”

  That all sounded very nice. “Well — I mean…” I blinked, searching for words. “I work. I work hard. And I’m tired at night. I don’t go out and d
rink. Or hang out with people. I just sort of fall asleep. Sometimes I don’t even make it off the couch,” I went on, hoping to give him a very vivid picture of just how non-social my life was. I didn’t want him to think it was him I objected to.

  “That’s too bad,” Peter said. “Maybe sometime you won’t be so busy, you can give me a call, then.”

  Wait a minute. I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Peter actually took a step backwards. “What’s what supposed to mean?”

  “You wish I wasn’t so busy? Busy is good. Busy means I have business. I have sound horses in my barn who need to be trained. If I’m not busy, doesn’t that mean I’m out of business?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Peter held out his hands in an I surrender gesture. He gave me a lopsided smile and I almost liked him for it. “I don’t mean anything like that at all, Miss Feisty. I see you riding straight to the top — you’re a born competitor, aren’t you? I just meant…” He softened his expression, and the little blush returned to his cheeks. I swallowed and ignored the extra thump in my heartbeat. “I just meant, if you ever have an evening free, and you’d like to talk more… just give me a call.”

  I didn’t have a ready response for that. What was I supposed to do? I had invested a lot of energy into disliking Peter Morrison. Him and his ACE win! Him and his new sponsorship! Winning things over me because he was a guy. And because he was luckier than I am.

  But so is everyone, I reminded myself. The trick is to succeed in spite of that. And you won’t do it by getting distracted by some rich kid who looks good in breeches.

  “Juliet?” He was looking down at me quizzically, and I realized I had been quiet for a few moments too long.