Ambition: (The Eventing Series Book 1)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  Going forward, after all, was the one thing they were all pretty damn proficient at.

  I met Lacey on the drive, halfway back to the barn. She was riding Dynamo, who looked surprised and delighted to see Mickey. Mickey, sedated with a gram of Ace borrowed from Peter’s tack room, picked up his head slightly and regarded Dynamo with a woozy, drunken expression. Lacey looked the horse to me, horrified. “What the hell happened?”

  “He had another fit,” I said with a shrug. “He’s not right.” I led the swaying horse past Dynamo. “You can take Dynamo up to the ring and jog him around on a loose rein,” I said over my shoulder. “Loosen him up a little. I’m going to call the vet and see what we can do about this guy.”

  “You want me to… Okay. Okay. Be careful with him.”

  I smiled grimly as I heard Dynamo’s hooves pick up the tempo again on the gravel of the drive. Lacey had been shocked that I was allowing her to hack Dynamo, but not so shocked that she hadn’t jumped at the chance. It was a big deal, the day your trainer let you hack the big horse. And with Mickey a psychopathic mess, Dynamo’s spot as my big horse seemed pretty secure.

  Damn.

  I rubbed my hand cautiously along his sweaty neck, feeling the salt prickle the myriad cuts and fissures in my work-roughened hands. He didn’t react, just plodded along with heavy-lidded eyes. His nostrils, still pink around the flared edges, dangled close to his hooves. I watched them, chewing at my lip. They were flat and wide — were they worse than when he had come to Florida, more than three months ago now? Had the farrier somehow overlooked the way the hooves were flaring out? I liked my farrier — Ronny was fast, and reliable, and didn’t charge me very much. Using an old racehorse blacksmith from way back was one of my How To Stay In Business tricks. You found one of the old guard that still charged forty bucks for two shoes and got the job done in fifteen minutes, and you clung to them tight. I couldn’t possibly afford one of these guys who charged two hundred dollars and spent an hour and a half on each horse. Why did four hooves require the same amount of time as an action movie with these sporthorse guys, that was my question.

  Mickey stumbled, picking up his fore-hooves delicately as he stepped on a rough patch of large paving stones, and his eyes widened for a few moments.

  And so did mine.

  That was it, then. Peter was right. The words were bitter as poison. Peter was right. The horse’s hooves were a mess, he was in pain, my cheapskate farrier was making things worse, and the horse was having a reaction to the prospect of working on painful hooves. Every time he faced a new situation, he remembered that going to a new place, with new horses, meant going out to gallop. And he just couldn’t face the pain.

  “You poor thing,” I told him, and his left ear flicked in my direction. “You poor bad-luck horse. To get sent across the country to some schmuck like me, who can’t even figure out that your feet hurt without having some guy she hardly knows explain it all. She should have sent you to someone who knew what the hell they were doing. I’m just going to ruin you. On accident, you know, but still. After I fix your feet, I’ll probably mess up something else.”

  “That’s not true.”

  I jumped and turned around. Mickey came to an obedient halt next to me.

  “Everyone needs a second pair of eyes, Jules.”

  I kicked at the gravel, not even thinking about the scuffs I was leaving on my show boots. Peter would have to follow me, wouldn’t he? “I should have seen that his hooves were flaring out so far,” I muttered. “Look at them. The quarters look like duck bills.”

  Peter came up to me, his own scuffed boots dusty with sand from the arena. He’d left his horse with Becky, then, to come after me. To check up on me. He was probably scared that having some know-nothing chick like me on his property was going to end up bad for his reputation. He reached out his hand and gripped my shoulder, and the sensation of his touch rippled through my body like electricity. “Sometimes things happen beneath our nose, and we’re too close to the problem to really see it happening,” he said gently. “It’s happened to all of us.”

  I was standing a little too close to him to think clearly, or I might have asked him for an example, challenged him to come up with some way in which he wasn’t perfect. Instead, I just drew a shuddering breath, looked longingly at his lips, and kept my own mouth shut.

  Peter gazed down at me with those shimmering blue eyes, and I felt like I was melting into a pool at his feet. Next to me, Mickey stood quietly, eyes blinking, waiting to continue his walk to the barn. The September sun shone down cruelly, and we stood in its golden glow, not speaking, for longer than we should have.

  Peter reached up and brushed a drop of sweat from his brow. “It’s hot,” he said huskily.

  “I have Diet Coke in the barn,” I offered, my voice thin and wispy, a ghost of myself. “If you want to cool off.”

  “I’d like that,” he said, and when I turned and started walking, tugging gently at Mickey’s lead-shank to bring the horse along, he came up next to me, his hand brushing my side. I closed my eyes momentarily, to stave off the vertiginous dizzy excitement his touch aroused in me, and in doing so, stumbled into a deep puddle left over from the hurricane. He grabbed my elbow before I could go to my knees in the brackish water, and when he pulled me upright, I was up against his chest, my eyes glued to his just a few inches away. Mickey, God bless him, stood still again.

  “Hello,” he murmured, his voice rumbling against my chest. He crinkled his eyes with pleasure. “Jules, I know that you said you don’t date horse trainers, but…” He trailed off, his eyes looking into mine searchingly.

  I thought I would explode. “But what?” I whispered desperately.

  “Just let me see if I can change your mind,” he growled, and with that his lips were on mine, his hand pressing my body hard against his, and with a sigh of pleasure that came all the way from the soles of my boots, I slipped my hand into his damp hair and pulled him closer still.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The world outside was no more orderly than the world inside my head — or inside my horse’s head.

  While I was sitting in the cobwebby tack room of the annex, hoping to God that Eileen wasn’t going to flip out over the four-hundred-dollar blacksmith bill I had just sent her for Mickey’s reconstructed hooves, Ocala remained locked in a tailspin. There were no working traffic lights in town. There were entire highways shut down due to downed trees. There were lines at suburban gas stations, where shellshocked residents slowly shuffled to Red Cross tents to pick up their MRE rations. The tornado that ripped apart my farm was not the only funnel cloud to spin down to earth during the hurricane. Other sections of the region had been hit just as badly — and even far worse — as my isolated land in the west.

  I didn’t see much of it. With my horses and my remaining possessions finally recovered and stored safe in the barn around me, I had no reason to go back to my farm. I couldn’t fix it up on my own. There was no one available from the insurance company to authorize a contractor to begin clearing the wreckage. And for weeks, there were no contractors available to do it.

  So I stayed at Briar Hill, amongst my horses. I didn’t leave unless I absolutely had to buy groceries. Or toothpaste, or deodorant. The horses’ supplies were delivered — this close to town, you could have luxuries like free feed delivery. It was a different kind of world from life on the fringes of horse country. It was nice, really. A girl could get used to this, especially if she was interested in becoming a shut-in.

  And I had decided this was the best course of action.

  After all, my life had gotten out of control, I reflected, shifting on the tack trunk lid where I had perched. I still had no desk, no chair, in the dark little tack room. No calendar with show dates circled. My old desk and chair were flattened beneath a section of roofing. My old wall calendar, with all my ambition written across it in slanting marker, was scattered across the fields, sodden and muddy. I could have gone to the office supply sto
re and bought another of each, adding an inconsequential amount to already daunting credit card bills. I could have put them in the back of the truck next to the grocery bags, and driven them up here to the annex barn, and put them in the tack room, and admit that I had to start my life anew.

  But I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  Mickey’s hooves were fixed, although patched here and there with yellow chunks of plastic filler, and I could ride him lightly around the arena now, if I avoided the hard gravel of the driveway on the way there and back. Pete’s farrier had looked at his hooves and then me with cold eyes, as if I had purposely been letting them grow so wide. “Who’s your farrier?” he’d growled, and when I told him he grunted and shook his head. “Let him touch your horses again,” he’d warned, “And I won’t clean it up for you next time. This horse has been in pain for a long, long time.”

  I hadn’t known, and the enormity of that kept me awake at night for weeks afterwards. How could I not have known? Wasn’t I a trainer? Wasn’t I a horsewoman?

  We learned from our mistakes, though, and I wouldn’t make this one again. Meanwhile, Mickey went back into work. I could trot him in twenty-meter circles, riding the swing of his stride, and try to concentrate on pushing him into the bridle and the bend of his spine around curves. And sometimes, I succeeded.

  Until Peter came into the ring.

  Pete — he made me call him Pete, and I’d given in. I’d given in to his kiss, and his affection, and admitting that I was capable of feeling something for another human, and after all that, why not capitulate and just call him Pete, even though I thought it sounded like a pony’s name? I told him that and he laughed at me, and then he kissed me again.

  I didn’t mind it when he kissed me — of course I didn’t mind it. But I didn’t let it go any further than that. And whenever I was away from him, whenever my mind could turn over rationally and cooly, the way that I liked it, I knew that playing around with Pete was a fool’s errand. And so I avoided him whenever possible.

  I crossed my legs on the tack trunk lid, put my hands under my thighs, sighed. I was wearing jeans — it was a cool night, the very first one of fall. Cool to me — I doubted it was cooler than seventy-five degrees outside. But still — the weather was changing, the seasons were turning, and it looked as if I would go on living at Briar Hill forever. Which made the whole situation with Pete rather worrisome. What if we had a fight? A lover’s quarrel? I’d be out on my ass, up shit creek and without a paddle, that’s what.

  Lacey said that was ridiculous, because Pete was obviously in love with me and would do anything for me. I told her, good-naturedly but seriously, that she was an idiot. In love with me? Prickly hateful chip-on-her-shoulder Jules Thornton? Even I knew how awful I was. Even if Pete claimed that he was initially attracted to me because of the way I adored my horses (and the way I looked in breeches, he always added), no one could ever claim that I was good company. The sort of person a man would fall in love with, generous and affectionate? Hardly.

  And I wasn’t in love with him. Because that would be ridiculous.

  And no matter how much I enjoyed his company — or the thrill in my spine every time I rounded the bend in the barn drive and saw him riding in the arena, or the electric effect his touch had on my tired limbs — he was still stupid rich Peter Morrison, who had beat me for the ACE grant when God knew he didn’t even need it. Had he had this place all along? This Shangri-La for sport horses, this farm of wonders? Sure it was old — look at this dingy old barn, built like a Cold War bunker and just as attractive to the eye. But some of the best land in Ocala had old barns from the fifties and sixties. That was when they’d discovered there was gold in the grass here. The ACE grant was supposed to be for equestrians who needed financial assistance… and it certainly wouldn’t have covered this place. So how had he gotten here?

  I hadn’t asked him.

  He knew I had nothing but the horses. I didn’t want to continue to bring it up. It was hard enough to make sure we were always on equal ground, when I stayed in his guest suite rent-free and kept my horses in his barn board-free.

  The tree frogs in the lower paddocks began to chirp their night-song. It had gotten dark while I was sitting in here, trying to avoid going back to the house. I got up and wandered aimlessly around the darkening tack room, unwilling to flip on the light and startle the spiders I knew had already begun to climb from their hiding places. The letter I’d thrown down earlier was still in the doorway, pages luminescent blue in the dusk-light outside the barn.

  While we appreciate the extraordinary circumstances you’ve found yourself in, we will be removing our horses Saturday morning. Please have their files in order to send along with the van driver. We hope we can work together in the future when your facilities are repaired. Sincerely, David and Maggie Wilkins.

  I stepped on the paper, leaving a boot-tread across the typed letters. In the pasture beyond the barn, Maggie and Dave’s Hanoverians grazed with my other horses. In a few nights they’d be grazing in Orlando. I hoped they liked fireworks every night. It was a shame. They’d been fun to ride, and I didn’t say that about every horse I got on.

  I scuffed the letter with my foot, sliding it back into the tack room, and pulled the door closed behind me.

  I considered whether or not there was tequila in the kitchen of the guest suite. I thought perhaps there was. And so I started the long walk home.

  A few margaritas later, I was ready to get some answers.

  I got up from the chair where I’d been for the past hour and started looking around for my flip-flops.

  Lacey was eyeing me nervously from the other side of the sitting area, where she was curled up on the sofa with a riding magazine. “Where are you going?” she asked, voice suspicious. As well she should be. Neither of us went anywhere after seven o’clock at night.

  “Talk to Pete,” I muttered. Where were those flip-flops? I knocked over a cluster of old umbrellas leaning drunkenly in the hall closet and found a bridle, two riding crops, and, beneath it all, my flip-flops. “Gotta talk to Pete. It’s time.”

  “Time for what?” Lacey put down the magazine and got up. She was wearing her usual evening attire, a pair of gym shorts and a tank top. The shorts were riding just a bit high; she tugged them down her leg with a sigh. “You can’t go bother him now. It’s late. And what would he think, you getting drunk and then banging on his front door?”

  “He’d think I want him,” I slurred, laughing. “He’d think booty call!”

  Lacey crossed her arms. “Unless you want him to think that.” She lifted an eyebrow suspiciously.

  I stared at her, delighted. I’d never seen her do that before. “You look exactly like him!” I declared joyously. “That’s his move!”

  Lacey’s jaw dropped. She looked down and I followed her line of sight to the empty pitcher next to my chair. “You drank all that?”

  I nodded. The room nodded with me, furniture wiggling and waving.

  “Oh, no,” Lacey said, and just like that she had darted past me and was blocking the door, using her slim body as a blockade. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Yes I am,” I giggled, and put on my flip-flops. I shuffled towards her, arms out. I’m a zombie! “Grrrrrr!” I told her.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lacey said, obviously not as amused as I was. Or maybe she was afraid of me. Maybe I made a very convincing zombie. “You’re wasted.”

  “I am,” I growled. “I’m wasted. Move or I’ll eat your brains.” I plucked at the straps of her tank top.

  “You know what? Fine.” Lacey ducked under my outstretched arms, shaking her head as she went. “You want to get us kicked out of here? You want to be homeless? Fine. I don’t understand you anymore. I don’t know what’s coming next, but I’m not sure I’m going to be here to see it.”

  I remembered her words later, improbably enough. But at the time, all I knew was that I was free to march over to Peter’s door and bang on it.

 
Or come as close to marching as one could, wearing flip-flops.

  The fall night was scented with jasmine or some other tropical plant that had been enjoying the long summer. I’d never had the time or patience to find out what flowers were what, although we lived in a state of eternal blooms here. I crossed the little courtyard between the guest suite and the side door of the main house, noticing that the kitchen light was on, the light shining yellow on the pebbles beside the path-stones. Instead of going around to the front door, I just waltzed up to the kitchen window and peered in.

  Pete was sitting at the kitchen table, a thick book open in front of him, finger marking a spot on the page as he reached for a glass of red wine.

  Wine. How sophisticated. My mother drank wine.

  I rapped on the window and he started, nearly dropping the wine-glass. He looked up at the window, his eyes widening when he saw me. And then he flipped the book over and got up, holding up his finger to let me know wait one moment. I looked at the book title. The Elements of Classical Dressage.

  We had the same taste in books, anyway.

  “Jules?” I looked to my left and saw him standing in the pool of light from the open kitchen door. He grinned. “Have you given in to your raging desire for me at last?”

  “I need to talk to you,” I said, admiring how steady my voice was.

  “Did something happen?”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe. A while ago.”

  Pete cocked his head, and a lock of his red-brown hair fell over his shadowed eyes. I felt my stomach turn over — God he was a sexy thing. The rich bastard. Maybe I should just marry him for his millions. “Come in,” he said, stepping back and holding open the door. “Before the mosquitoes eat you alive.”

  I settled into the couch in the big living room and declined the offer of a glass of wine. I might have been wasted, but I knew enough to not pour wine on top of tequila. Plenty of other bad decisions to make tonight, without giving myself a hangover in the morning. “I have to ask you something,” I slurred, lying my head back on a plush cushion. Such a nice couch. “I need to know why you went for the ACE grant.”