And then a shadow fell over my plate. It was already dark, the fashionably inefficient Edison lightbulbs scarcely lighting the table, but the sudden change was noticeable enough to make me look up from my food-crush.
I dropped my fork.
It was Mary Archer.
She grinned, enjoying my startled expression, and I mentally cursed myself and scrambled to pick up my fork. When I came back up from under the table, I made an attempt at appearing composed. “Mary, what a surprise,” I said stiffly.
“I guess it is,” Mary said, and hitched her denim hobo bag over her shoulder, graceless as ever. She was dressed in Stall-Mucking Casual: a shapeless red shirt over sagging blue jeans and paddock boots, easily the most slovenly person in the trendy bistro, a generous spritz of eau de equine wafting unmistakably from her person. I ran my hands over my khakis and Cotswold green polo shirt to reassure myself that I was still neat and tidy and presentable in public. “Dennis just sent me up this week. We got a barn at Oklahoma, real pretty setup.”
Dennis Perry sent his baby trainer to Saratoga? How the hell did she pull that off? I smiled to hide my confusion. “We went with a private barn a few blocks off Nelson,” I said brightly. “Peace, quiet, and grass. It seemed like a no-brainer.”
Kerri dropped her fork with a clatter on her plate. I glanced at her — don’t give away the truth, you fool! — and she smiled. “Whoops! Sorry about that. I’m so clumsy. Always dropping things—” She realized she was nattering and shut her mouth.
Mary stared. “And who’s this?”
“Mary Archer, meet Kerri Pearce, my assistant trainer. Mary has been a leading trainer at Tampa,” I parroted, leaving out the crucial words female and fifteen years ago. Time enough for that revelation later. Look how polite I can be, Mary Archer! I thought.
Mary nodded at Kerri with a thin smile. “Charmed,” she said, the word sounding false in her southern-Appalachian accent. “I’m sure you two are just having a ball together.”
“I’m thrilled to be here,” Kerri said earnestly. “Alex is a great horsewoman.”
“Is that so?” Mary dusted her hands together, as if she was through with us. “Well, I certainly wish y’all luck. I’ve got to be goin’, meetin’ an owner for dinner and I think I see him … yup, that’s him over there. Bye, girls!” And Mary Archer departed, leaving the odor of manure and horse sweat in her wake.
“That was awkward,” Kerri said cheerfully. “She doesn’t like me one bit.”
“Or me,” I said. “It’s only going to get worse.”
“Why?”
“I’m not going to get into why she doesn’t like me, or you, at the moment. But the man she works for? Dennis Perry? I just remembered something. He’s Roddy Ellis’s uncle.” I shook my head. “Damn.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Neighbors
I came around the corner of the shedrow and watched their faces pop out of their stalls. One, two, three, four, five, six, ears pricked, eyes bright, nudging aside hay nets as deflated as balloons the morning after the prom. The kids were ready for breakfast.
“Good morning!” I sang, jingling my keys in my hand. “Good morning, good morning, good morning!”
I had a chorus of whinnies and neighs to fill in my song. I loved my children in the morning. There was only one thing in the world strong enough to roust me from my bed at four a.m., especially after a night like the one I had just spent, tossing in a strange place on a strange mattress, alone when I should have had a partner to curl up around, the pillow too soft and the blanket too heavy, the window air conditioner making squeaks and growls that made me as homesick for my silent climate control as for my own bed. But no matter how awful the night, the horses were always thrilled to see me in the morning, and I had to admit, I was thrilled to see them. The straw in their forelocks, the hay dangling from their lips, the eagerness in their eyes. The realization, fresh with every dawn arrival that I was working with horses. How on earth could I have gotten so lucky? I didn’t always feel like that at night, dirty and exhausted and faced with the unsavory knowledge that I’d be doing it all again in just a few hours, but in the morning, seeing their lovely faces, the excitement was renewed. I was Julie freaking Andrews, and these hungry ponies were my Alps.
“What the hell?”
I whirled around. He’d come out of nowhere, I thought crossly. How nice to have men sneaking up behind me on pre-dawn mornings. I needed a dog. Or Kerri; she’d ducked back to the car for something. At least he looked more amused than angry, despite the outburst, standing with folded arms and a raised eyebrow, quizzically taking in the sight of the amazing singing horse trainer. The overhead lights hadn’t been switched on yet, and in the pumpkin gleam of the security lamp at the barn’s corner, I had an impression of chiseled features, skin unnaturally tan, hair unnaturally pale. The collar on his polo shirt standing up preppy, his jeans fitted and clean; clearly I had upset Racetrack Ken’s morning routine with my sunrise song.
He took his time looking me up and down, from my scarred brown paddock boots to my purple cotton tank top, taking in my ripped denim cutoffs and my untidy ponytail before slowly nodding. He smiled as if he liked what he saw. I was creeped out to the very core. Mike Weston, of the fondling handshakes, was a puppy dog compared to this roving-eyed asshole.
“You must be Alex,” the man drawled in a Dixie accent, dripping with low-country prejudice and male chauvinism. “I’m Roddy Ellis.” He held out a smooth brown hand and I accepted it, reluctant to let him touch me, and was startled to feel the calluses on his palms. Roddy Ellis was unnaturally clean and freshly pressed for a shedrow, but it was only five a.m. He hadn’t had a lot of time to get dirty yet, and the calluses implied that he was actually capable of hard work. I decided to cut him a break. A very small break.
“Nice to meet you.” I granted him a thin smile.
“Morning!” Kerri appeared behind Roddy, ducking under the shedrow railing. “Alex, you forgot the bag with the raincoats in it, that’s where I went. And who’ve we got here?”
“This is Roddy Ellis, our barn neighbor.” I stepped aside to let Kerri have a go at Roddy’s tanned paw; she shouldered the duffle bag I’d left in the backseat of the car and flashed Roddy such a brilliant smile I thought we’d all need sunglasses.
“It’s so nice to meet you!” she exclaimed, voice sweet as honey. “I’m so looking forward to spending the summer at this lovely barn!”
Roddy clasped his other hand over hers. He looked utterly charmed. “I’m looking forward to it now, too,” he vowed. “Now you’re here to brighten the place up some.” He glanced back over at me, standing with my back to the wall, one of his own horses peering over the stall webbing in hopes of breakfast. I could feel the horse lipping at my ponytail and hoped he didn’t take hold of it, pull me over and make me look like an idiot. “Breezie, you leave that nice lady alone!” Roddy chided, and I heard the horse back up, hooves sliding through straw. He smiled again. “Ladies, I know you have to feed your horses, and mine are looking for their breakfast too, so I will let you go, but you all should most certainly come over after training and have some coffee and donuts on me.”
“Thank you! We will!” Kerri surrendered her hand from his grip with some hesitation, and watched him walk around the corner, sighing audibly when he turned and threw her a wink just before he disappeared.
I shook my head and went on down the shedrow toward the tack room, where we’d stored the steel trash cans full of feed. My horses went on neighing and calling out as I walked past them, but the morning had lost its magic, somehow, with that smarmy good ol’ boy accent and that obvious flirtation with my assistant. Roddy Ellis was going to be a problem.
***
The hot-walker arrived at five-thirty, a half-asleep nineteen-year-old from Puerto Rico who came recommended by a friend of Alexander’s over on the Oklahoma track, his jeans hanging past his ass and pooling around his shoes as if he was walking around in two permanent puddles. I order
ed him to pull them up and tighten his belt and he scowled at me as if I had asked him to strangle a puppy.
“And what are you going to do when a horse steps on your jeans and pulls you down?” I made no attempt to hide the contempt in my voice; might as well let the kid know I was not some pushover because I had tits and a ponytail. Be a bitch right off the bat, then surprise him with donuts—that was the management style I was going for. Kerri, standing behind him, looked utterly shocked that I could sound so nasty.
“Man, that ain’t gonna happen,” he whined, pulling his jeans up nonetheless.
“Don’t tell me what isn’t going to happen. Walk the horses, hold them for their baths, do as you’re told, get a paycheck. Got it?”
Kerri looked positively terrified of me.
The kid nodded sullenly. “I got it. I got it.”
“We good?”
“We good.”
I inclined my head towards the office. “Go get yourself some coffee and a donut and I’ll let you know when the first horse is back.”
His face lightened by a few fractions and he hurried into the office, pace significantly quicker now that he wasn’t hampered by yards of fabric around his sneakers.
I turned back to Kerri, shaking my head. “What a winner.”
“You were mean to him!”
I tossed her a lead shank, leather doubled through the chain’s dee ring, and she reached without thinking and grasped it neatly. “Good catch. Shit’s going to get real, Kerri. We’re going to be rushed, we’re going to be tired, we’re going to yell at each other. Might as well make sure he can handle that before we’re in the middle of the morning with hot horses coming out our ears and he decides to hit the road.”
She nodded uncertainly, eyes trailing down the shedrow, where the saddle towels sat neatly folded over each open Dutch door. Taking in the scope of the work ahead, I thought.
“Let’s go,” I told her, and my assistant trainer went dutifully to the last stall before the center aisle, where horse number one, Personal Best, was watching her intently. The exercise rider, another recommendation, was due any minute. I could only hope that he turned out to be more professional than the hot-walker, because there was no more time to waste. It was time to get horses onto the track.
***
We got through it.
Six horses wasn’t a lot. Six horses was nothing. But the logistics of getting six horses down the street to the racetrack, of getting me to the racetrack each time— never expecting such a long commute, I hadn’t arranged to bring a pony, and Parker was taking a vacation in an oak-scattered paddock back in Ocala—had gotten more complicated with the distance to the track. And, concerned with how the horses might behave on the streets, I had walked over next to the horse and rider on foot, always a dicey proposition. Since none of my horses had ever strolled down a suburban street, they were not reacting well to the sort of things one saw in the average residential neighborhood: mailboxes, newspapers lying in driveways, even trash cans set out by the curb.
Those trash cans, with their implied heralding of an impending trash truck, especially worried me. I had a horrible image in my head of how some of the horses, especially Virtue And Vice or Bonnie Chance, both of whom had a tendency to lose their cool in very explosive manners, would respond if the phantom trash truck did come rumbling down the street at the same time as one of our marches down the street. But it didn’t happen. I walked horse number one, Personal Best, relatively sedately to the track, putting out a hand by the bit to settle him whenever he was being too antsy for Manny to really stay safe, and when we walked back, the trash cans were empty already.
Manny turned out to be a gem, as wonderful and experienced as the hot-walker was not. For that matter, the hot-walker wasn’t awful at his job, he just wasn’t the most social being. I wasn’t either, so I was happy enough to have someone who showed up, walked his horses, and ate his damn donut without trying to make me crazy with constant conversation. I didn’t want to be distracted from the horses for a second. For three hours each morning, I needed to watch their every move and twitch and shiver. I had been taught by the best, and I was determined never to miss a thing, and to eventually be the best.
It was that determination that kept me from getting on Personal Best. I had intended to, certainly; we were partners, and it would have felt so right to get on his back and take him down to the oval on the very first morning, as the golden sunlight came streaming through the trees and all the world revolved around fast horses. But when the time came, I put Manny on his back. I couldn’t ride him every day; I had to see him as well as feel him. My feet stayed on the ground all morning.
Every time I came back from the track, hot horse dancing behind me, I found Kerri, red-faced and panting, hanging up the stuffed ball of a hay net, the stall piled high with fresh straw, and Gabe the hot-walker scuffing the dirt with his steel-toed boots as he dragged the preceding horse around the barn. Manny rode his horse into its stall and Kerri went rushing in with a halter and lead shank to take the horse from him after he dismounted and stripped the saddle. I went to the next horse, saddled and ready, tethered in the stall to a short length of chain, and took him out to stretch his legs. Kerri started walking her horse, Gabe took his horse out and hosed the shedrow dirt off his hooves before putting him away, and I walked my horse one turn before pausing to give Manny a leg up. And off we went again. The gears were clicking neatly in place, the machine was moving smoothly. I was tired and worried and very, very pleased.
***
Three days.
Three days, and things were going so well. Enormously well. Frighteningly well. The horses went to the track and jogged and galloped, Kerri and I caught a few races in the afternoon, came back and fed dinner, went into town and ate dinner so as to avoid the sauna nightmare kitchen that our rental house came equipped with at no additional charge, and watched TV until the ten o’clock news came on to tell us it was time to take ourselves to our beds.
Roddy Ellis was the fly in my ointment.
Roddy Ellis and the play he was making for Kerri.
It didn’t matter that I had warned Kerri to mind her own business; after that first meeting it seemed like she was always slipping over to the other side of the barn to talk to Roddy Ellis. And Roddy Ellis, contrary to most horse trainers, didn’t seem to mind the neighbor’s assistant trainer always hanging around his shedrow. Probably because he recognized that she was silly enough to tell him my secrets, but not savvy enough to tell me his. And probably because she was cute in her tiny shorts and her tank top and her little brunette ponytail.
She’d be a hell of a steal, if all he wanted was to put her on the payroll. I sighed, surveying the perfectly kept shedrow. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and the barn was pristine, as if there had never been an unruly racehorse throwing up dirt with his heels, as if there had never been a spilled bucket of grain or umpteen piles of manure or dumped cups of cold coffee scattered across the red clay of the shed. The horses gnawed at tightly packed, perfectly round hay nets secured to the right side of their door frames, looking like white and green soccer balls hung there to amuse the ponies. A lone tabby left tiny paw prints through the crisscrossed rake lines in the clay, only adding to its ambience.
She was a hell of a barn manager.
But he had one already. His barn was just as spotless as mine. That wasn’t what he wanted. It must be the little shorts and the pixie face that was getting all the attention.
I hoped it wasn’t his connection to Mary Archer that was spurring all of this interest in Kerri. I hadn’t seen her again, and as far as I knew, Roddy didn’t do any business with his uncle anyway. But I thought that if she wanted to make things difficult for me (and she almost certainly did), she would be well positioned with Roddy right here under the same roof, with my assistant trainer practically sitting in his lap whenever she could get a spare moment.
I walked down the shed, ignoring the nudging feeling of guilt as I laid boo
t prints down in the perfectly zigzagged lines, and looked under each stall webbing at the forelegs beneath. Beautifully wrapped, every single leg on every single horse uniformly perfect and precise, twenty-four pillow wraps under twenty-four stable bandages, bleached white beneath Cotswold green, rusty streaks of cayenne pepper spray dousing the top layer of Personal Best’s bandages, since of course he liked to eat his wraps.
It was all done exactly was I would do it. And that was really saying something.
I cut through the center aisle of the barn and walked over to Roddy’s side of the barn.
They were sitting on a stack of straw bales pushed up against the wall of the end stall, giggling over someone’s phone. Roddy was holding the phone out at arm’s length, as if they were watching a video. As I approached, both burst into uproarious laughter again, and then Kerri playfully punched Roddy’s shoulder. He smiled down at her, and I felt a burst of jealousy and anger at the warmth in that smile. No, I didn’t want bloody Roddy Ellis’s attention, but I wanted attention, I wanted someone to smile down at me, I wanted Alexander to smile down at me, but he was down under, on the other side of the world, helping Polly… I shook my head. I didn’t know where those fears about Alexander and Polly came from, but they cropped up at the most inopportune times. I didn’t have time to be a jealous wife. I had too much trouble here in this hemisphere.
They both saw me at the same time. Kerri’s smile faded; she knew she wasn’t supposed to be here. Roddy’s only widened. He thought no one could resist his sun-tanned good looks, his mop of straw-colored hair, his impish green eyes. I wanted to give him a good smack upside the head, just to let him know that he wasn’t God’s gift to the backside, just because it was so evident that his mother had never told him anything so truthful.
Other People's Horses (Alex and Alexander Book 2) Page 10