Which made the whole behavior problem rather harder to diagnose and train. I sighed and looked up at the blue sky, puffy white clouds sliding across it from west to east with the usual lack of urgency. Everyone was feeling easy-breezy except for me. I was worried, worried, worried. About bills, about clients, about Dynamo, about Mickey, about everything.
Then a car door slammed behind us. Mickey started a little as I whipped around in the saddle. Unexpected guests were unusual here. I didn’t have time to teach anyone besides Lacey, and most of my owners were out-of-towners. And Lord knew no one was walking up asking me to train.
A battered old Ford Explorer had pulled up in the parking lot and a tall figure was walking towards me. I saw Lacey come out of the barn, get a good look at the man, and back off a little. I assumed she didn’t know him, and picked up my stirrups, prepared to put on my professional face and send this guy packing. Every now and then we felt a little exposed, being two girls alone in the countryside. This was one of those times. I wondered if Manny had finished stalls and left already. He was tiny, but he was tough.
But there was something familiar about this guy’s walk…
“Morning, Jules,” the man called, and I realized, with that curious mixture of elation and panic I felt whenever I saw him, that it was Peter Morrison.
“Morning Peter!” I replied, keeping my voice steady with effort, but I didn’t bother to move Mickey. I let him come to me, picking his way around puddles and slopping through the deep wet sand of the arena. Mickey watched his approach with pricked ears, but didn’t move. I couldn’t help but be pleased to be sitting on the problem horse with loose reins and slumped shoulders, now that a rival trainer had come to gawk at him. And I had no doubt that was why Peter Morrison had driven all the way out to West of Nowhere, Florida, on a perfectly good morning for training.
“So this is Danger Mouse at rest!” Peter announced as he reached us. Mickey flicked an ear at him and sighed, so bored. I could have kissed the horse then and there.
“This is him! A bit different, yeah?” I smiled and gave Mickey a pat on the neck. “A few days off to settle, and now he’s begging to work.”
“Time off can work wonders,” he agreed, smiling at me. “Becky says hello, before I forget.”
“Becky?” I scowled, caught myself, and tried to just look enquiring. “How is Becky?”
“Oh, she’s fantastic,” Peter said eagerly, and I fought to keep my expression interested and not dissolve into skepticism. “Such a hard worker. And I can’t believe she’s managing to get her degree as well. Doing night classes, after working all day! More folks in the horse industry should consider that. We’re an uneducated bunch.” He laughed. I did not.
I did manage a smile, though. “Well, Peter, I was just hopping off Mickey here. It’s been his first day under saddle for a while, like I said — we gave him some time off to regroup. I’m afraid we’re not riding anyone else today. It’s getting hot.” I picked up the reins and gave Mickey a little nudge, and set off walking towards the barn.
“Taking it easy with this never-ending summer, then, eh?” Peter didn’t seem at all dismayed that we were done working; quite the contrary, he began walking alongside of us, swinging his ball-cap by his side, right into the barn. I slid off the horse in the shade of the barn aisle, and Lacey silently stripped the tack, giving me little sidelong glances all the while, before taking Mickey off for his bath and leaving me alone with Peter.
“Listen, Jules,” he said once she was gone, his voice low and earnest. “One of the reasons I came ‘round was to see how Mickey was doing, and he looks really good, I gotta tell ya — ”
“Thanks… well, yeah, we work really hard on our horses, Peter. It’s all we do, really, work in the barn…” I unbuckled my hard hat and shook out my sweaty ponytail. Peter did not look at all put off by my red face and drenched hair. I supposed he was used to sweaty horsewomen. He must spend most of his day being drenched in sweat, as well. We all did.
“That’s what you told me. But you ought to get out more,” he suggested, grinning. “Go have some fun without horses.”
“No such thing,” I laughed, shaking my finger in his face. “I know exactly what I want, and this is where I’m going to get it, not out at some country bar.”
He followed me into the tack room and leaned one hip on the big blanket box under the window. I moved around, hanging up tack, straightening straps and gear, but I could feel his gaze, regarding me silently, on the back of my head. Some instinct, dormant since high school, suddenly awoke, triggering a rusty alarm in my brain. “What are you getting at?” I asked suddenly, not turning around.
“I’d like to take you out to dinner,” Peter said bluntly, his smile crooked. “I’d like to get to know you better. I’ve told you that. You keep brushing me off. But I was talking to the doc and — ”
“Oh, Peter,” I began carefully, because this went exactly where I thought it was going, exactly where I didn’t want it to go. He was already such a distraction, I could barely think clearly, but if there was one thought in my brain that I could hang onto, it was that dating Mr. Big-Shot Trainer was the worst possible thing I could do. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I really appreciate it, but…”
“But what? Why not? We’re single, we’re in the same business, we live far enough apart that we’re not neighbors, and neither of us get out much. I’m pretty tired of eating alone with a novel or CNN. This is a nice chance to remedy that and have some dinner and conversation.”
“I don’t date horsemen,” I said, flat out. “I never ever date horsemen.”
He was taken aback. “Then who do you date? This is Ocala. Who else are you meeting around here? Truck drivers? Or — don’t tell me. You’re into the cowboys. Man. I never would have taken you for a cowboy type.”
I laughed despite myself, grimacing at the thought. “Eww, Peter, the cowboys?” Florida was surprisingly rife with genuine Old West style cowboys, in fringed chaps and white hats and snap-button plaid shirts. There were still massive cattle ranches here, and horses remained the only efficient way to move cattle around, which was something that cowboys seemed to do almost constantly. Apparently you couldn’t leave cattle in one place very long, because they were always being moved. It was weird. “No, not cowboys! They ride Western and their accents would knock me over. And they’d laugh at me for doing dressage. Seriously, I don’t date anyone. I just told you, Lacey and I spend all of our time on the horses. There’s no time for anything else. I don’t want anything else.” I paused, suddenly suspicious. “Becky didn’t tell you that?”
He lifted his eyebrow in that familiar angle. “Becky’s my groom, not my love coach.”
Becky has the hots for you. “Well, I’m telling you now. I don’t have time for anything but horses.”
“Sure you do.”
“No, really. I’m concentrating on my career.”
“All work and no play…”
“Horses can be play, too, Peter. If you do it right.”
“Having a lot of fun out here running a training barn with just two girls, are ya?” His voice was suddenly tight, as if I had offended him.
I wrinkled my brow, confused by his shifting attitude. “What’s with you? You come out here to see if my horse has killed me yet, then you ask me out, and when I say I’m too busy you get nasty with me? Maybe you should go.” I shoved past him, heading back into the mud-strewn aisle. Ten horses grumbled their hunger at me. “I have to throw lunch hay,” I announced, dismissing him, and walked away with my head high.
But he followed me, and leaned over my shoulder to hook a bale of hay by its orange twine binding, slinging it into the wheelbarrow for me.
“Thanks,” I ground out through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry I was rude,” he replied contritely.
“Thanks,” I said again, hunting for the steak knife I used for opening bales.
He handed me his pocket knife.
“Thanks.”<
br />
“Look, Jules —”
The hay bale split open. I handed back his pocket knife and pulled the baling twine out, looping it into a big knot and hanging it over a nail already festooned with loops and loops of orange twine, my emergency supply for fixing just about anything that broke around the farm. “What, Peter?”
“Pete.”
I gave in because it was easier than fighting him. He needed to leave before I gave in on something else. “Pete.”
“Is this about the Twins?”
I hefted the wheelbarrow and backed up. He moved aside quickly and followed me up the barn aisle.
“It’s about getting to the top, Pete,” I said shortly.
He held out hands for hay and I gave him two flakes, nodding to Dynamo’s stall.
“You’re already there,” I told him. “And I have years ahead of me. I just don’t have time for anything else.”
He threw Dynamo’s hay over the stall door, into a corner, and came back for more. “I’m where, exactly? The top? I’m no gold medalist, Jules. I’m riding at the exact same level as you, remember? And you’re younger than I am, by the way. So what are you jealous of?”
I handed him another flake of hay. “You’ve got the farm on the hill in Reddick. You’ve got the big horses, you’ve got a sponsor, you’re almost ready to run Advanced. You might not have made an Olympic team, yet, but you’re already a big name, and you know it. Give the pony a half-flake, please.”
He obliged, pushing Passion’s block-head out of the way so that he could get the hay into the stall.
“I want the farm on the hill, Pete,” I went on. I threw hay into Mickey’s empty stall. “And I can’t stop until I’ve got it.”
He was quiet, waiting for more. But I was done. There was more — that I had no interest in dating a horseman, for starters; that I could never date a man as privileged as he was while I was still struggling — but I wasn’t willing to get into that discussion with him. There was no reason, and no way I could make him understand the way I felt.
“Thanks for helping with the hay,” I said finally, and turned to put the wheelbarrow away.
But he still didn’t leave.
He stood in the barn aisle and watched me pick up the push-broom, to tackle the mess we’d made training, mucking, and feeding this morning.
“You’re going to burn yourself out, you know,” he said quietly.
“So I’ve been told,” I replied tranquilly. I swept in even strokes, pushing the shavings, hay, manure, and mud down the aisle. “Good-bye, Pete.”
Lacey waited until his truck was gone before she brought Mickey back into the barn.
“Becky says hello, apparently,” I told her.
“Ugh, this Becky thing is so awkward.” She put Mickey in his stall and emerged with his halter. “What else did he want?”
“He asked me out.”
“No he didn’t! Again? What’s with him?”
“He did.”
“He’s way too old for you. Probably.” She thought. “I have no idea how old he is, actually.”
“It’s not even that,” I said, leaning over the stall door. I rubbed Mickey on his damp neck, feeling the tautness of his skin beneath his gray coat. “It’s that guy trainers never think girls are good enough. He’d second-guess everything I did with a horse. I mean, really, he said one of the reasons he came over was to see how I was doing with this horse. Not just to ask me out — oh no, that wouldn’t be a good enough reason to drive out to Williston! No, to see if I could handle this horse or if I’d given up yet. And that would be all the time if we were dating. I can’t deal with that.”
“So, what, you’re never going to go out with a horseman?”
“God, no. When we have more time, I’ll find some nice accountant or something.”
“An accountant!” Lacey screamed with laughter. She clutched at her chest dramatically and flung herself around the barn aisle.
I watched her with my head tilted, arms crossed, until she subsided. “What’s so funny about that?”
“Look around you,” she gasped. “What accountant would ever put up with a horse trainer? You don’t even get much more than a fifty cent ribbon for winning a three day event that cost two hundred dollars just to enter! This is the most uneconomical job in the entire world. The only thing you could do to make yourself be less attractive to an accountant would be to literally burn dollar bills for a living.”
“You’re probably right. But you get my point, right?”
“Yeah. You don’t want anybody telling you you’re wrong.”
You don’t want anybody telling you you’re wrong. Lacey’s words stuck with me all day. She fell asleep on the couch, snoring, while I listened to the afternoon rain beat on the windows and thought about them. Well, of course I didn’t want anybody to tell me I was wrong, I reasoned. Nobody would, right? Who would want that? And what kind of relationship would two horse trainers have? I could just imagine our dinner conversations.
“Well, I had a little trouble with the chestnut mare today.”
“Did you try her in a pelham?”
“Yes, Peter.”
“Did you try longeing her with side reins first?”
“Yes, Peter.”
“Do you want me to get on her?”
“Go to hell, Peter.”
That’s the only way it could be. And who could stand to be questioned and second-guessed all the time?
There was only room in a relationship for one expert. That much, I was certain of.
What I was supposed to do with all those tingles and trembles and goosebumps whenever he came into my field of vision, that was an entirely different question.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The weather radio woke us both up from a fantastic afternoon nap, blaring through the doublewide like a harbinger of the end of the world. Lacey was up first, bounding into the kitchen to slap the message button. The robo-meteorologist we all called Igor for his mechanical-Scandinavian accent started droning; he was mid-message already. I looked out the window, bleary-eyed. The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky. I furrowed my brow.
“Marion County, Citrus County, Levy County,” Igor recited, like a chant.
“What’s he talking about?” I asked.
Lacey shook her head. “No idea. It looks like the storms passed us. Sky’s clear.”
That’s what I thought, too. I got up slowly and gave Marcus a rub on his belly. The beagle flapped his tail against the ground. He was thrilled that we’d joined him an afternoon nap. It was a beagle dream come true.
“A hurricane warning means that hurricane conditions are imminent and precautions should be taken to protect life and property.”
I jerked my head around to look at the radio. “A what now?”
Lacey looked at me with wide, frightened eyes.
And then my phone rang. I picked it up from the coffee table and looked at the incoming call. “Jesus Christ,” I said bleakly. “My mother.”
“I know you don’t pay attention to the weather,” my mother announced briskly, without greeting. “That’s why I’m calling you.”
“I don’t… what?”
“The weather, the weather. You know, rain and wind and bad things? There’s a hurricane watch, that’s what.”
My mother can be very tiresome. “I think it’s a warning,” I said.
“For Tampa,” she corrected. “It’s just a watch for your neck of the woods. But you’re next.”
I rubbed my face. The last time I’d seen the tropical forecast, some weak storm had been heading for Louisiana. That had been two days ago. We’d been so busy yesterday, with the farrier and the hay delivery, we’d passed out without seeing the evening news. “What happened to New Orleans getting this thing?”
“Low pressure. Change of plans. Act of God. Something. You better go get supplies. You have a plan for the horses?”
“The same as always, the same as we did when that storm came through in tenth
grade. Phone numbers on halters, luggage tags in their manes, turn them out — listen, Mom, how long do we have?” I was utterly shell-shocked, I had to be, or I wouldn’t be asking my mother to keep talking.
“Tomorrow night. Not long.”
“Oh… Okay. Fine.” I was not ready for this. That’s what I didn’t say. “Okay. We can handle it,” I said instead, because I had to.
“You going to stay there?”
“In the barn. It’s cinder-block… there are shutters… we can stay in the tack room.” I looked up at Lacey, who was still standing in the kitchen, watching me with big eyes. Poor northern girl. For me, having grown up with the summers of nerves and free hurricane tracking charts from Publix and the big storms that knocked out power for months on end and missing school for “hurricane days” (much cooler-sounding than snow days), I felt that familiar swirl of adrenalin and fear. It was not unlike reaching the top of a roller coaster’s highest tower. Something bad could happen! We could be in serious danger! Wow! Only the constant worry of having horses could dampen the thrill of an impending hurricane for me. Having my own farm sort of took all the fun out of bad weather.
“I’d tell you to get the hell out of town but it’s too late for that, 75 will be jammed.” My mom honestly sounded as if she was having a good time. She liked catastrophes — that must be where I got it from. They broke up the monotony of the workday, they gave her something to organize. She ought to have run the Red Cross or something. “Listen, call if you need anything. I’m going to go make sure our storm shutters work. Bring your weather radio out to the barn with you today. You’ll want to know if things change. And you better go to the feed store.”
She told me bye and that was the end of the conversation. I went to the kitchen and gave Lacey a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Well, this is interesting. Maybe a hurricane tomorrow night.”
Ambition: (The Eventing Series Book 1) Page 21