Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  Tiger nearly skidded into a crashing halt, responding immediately to the pressure of my seat. His head came up, his hindquarters came under him, and I immediately brought my legs back beneath me and lightly touched his ribs.

  Spring! Tiger’s motion poured upwards and he was floating forward in a correct trot once more, his mouth finding my firm hands and softening to them.

  We trotted like a pair of dressage queens up to the cross-rail. Tiger popped over the cross-rail, trotted away, and, when I asked, halted with all the aplomb of a veteran school horse. Fence number one, complete. Now to trot through five more with the same gravity and presence of mind.

  There was a ripple of applause around the arena when we completed the course, the soft polite claps of equestrians who do not wish to disturb a green horse, especially when said green horse has just given the performance of life.

  I should have saluted the judge, but instead, I fell forward on Tiger’s neck and gave him a hug, tears pricking at my eyes. There were some things more important than protocol.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Kerri met me at the in-gate, her eyes huge. “I saw,” she said before I could ask. “He did everything right.”

  “I have to go now. Can you untack him?” I was already slipping from the saddle, bunching the reins to pull over his neck and hand off to her.

  “You can’t,” Kerri breathed. “There’s going to be a tie-breaker. You have the same score as Cassidy Lehigh.”

  I didn’t notice the name. I was running through my timeline in my head. Did I have time for the tie-breaker? It wouldn’t take long—just like a jump-off in a regular show-jumping competition, but this would be a little more simple for the green off-track Thoroughbreds. Another, slightly more elaborate dressage-style test, plus a half-volte, backing five strides, and a little triple combination added to a short jumping course. I’d studied the course tacked up in the stables just as avidly as everyone else who dreamed of winning the Thoroughbred Makeover. I took a long look at my watch, counting off the hour in ten-minute blocks, then shook my head sadly; there wasn’t time now. “I have to go run Personal Best. I have an hour—I can just make it if I leave right now.”

  Kerri took Tiger’s reins, but her face was unbelieving. “Did you hear me? It’s Cassidy Lehigh. You can’t just let her win. There’s literally no one else here you need to beat, and this is your only shot.”

  My heart sank to my toes. “Who else is leading?”

  Kerri pointed at the scoreboard behind me, where the top five horse and rider teams were illuminated in shining lights. I turned and looked. With 72.5 points each, Cassidy Lehigh and I were three points ahead of the next rider in line.

  It was her or it was me, to win the Thoroughbred Makeover.

  But Personal Best…

  “You have to win this,” Kerri insisted. “Beating Cassidy is everything. It’s why you came! To prove her wrong, to prove all of them wrong—”

  “It was,” I admitted. I put a hand on Tiger’s warm neck; he was sweating gently, hot in the humid south Florida air, but not distressed. He was fit enough to handle the heat and then some. Perhaps he wasn’t racing fit anymore, but he was fit enough to go out and jump a course of fences, to trot and canter through a dressage test, to show the world that he was more than some one-trick pony. So was I. So were all of us, the horsewomen and horsemen who had devoted ourselves to all horses, not just racehorses, not just show horses, but every single horse on the earth who deserved a home and deserved a job and deserved a life.

  We’d done good things today, but he wasn’t the only horse who deserved a shot at being the best. As far as I was concerned, Tiger had already done that, tie-breaker or no tie-breaker.

  But this afternoon was Personal Best’s last chance.

  “I have to go the track,” I said. “Personal Best has to run his race, and he won’t do that unless I’m there to hold his bridle.” I looked into Kerri’s eyes, willing her to understand. “I’m not abandoning what we did here today, or all the work we’ve put into this. I’ve put it out there that every horse matters, and now I’m going to go prove that.”

  Kerri worked Tiger’s reins in her hands, taking them into the perfect butterfly loop she’d been shown by some riding instructor years ago, taking the lead-rope of a pony in her soft little hands and learning how to hold the cotton lead so that it never looped around her hand, in case the pony should spook or run away. The horses changed, but the basics stayed the same. She nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll cool him out.” She smiled tremulously. “Show Personal Best the way home.”

  I gave Tiger one last hug, his wet neck hot on my cheek, and then I was speed-walking from the warm-up area while onlookers gawked and pointed at the runaway competitor. By the time the announcer was calling for me to appear at the in-gate, my name echoing from the loudspeakers, I was in the parking lot, running across the gravel, my dress boots scuffing through white shells.

  Personal Best was waiting.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  He was standing up in the paddock, standing on his two hind legs and reaching for the heavens with his forelegs, pawing at the air like a wild stallion, like a calendar photo, like a child’s idea of what a racehorse should look like. But I was a trainer, and I knew better than that—a racehorse waving his legs in the air was a racehorse distressed and wasting precious energy.

  Alexander, looking dashing in gray coat and cerulean tie, was at the end of the lead-shank, his gnarled hand against the knot in the end, waiting for Personal Best to come down. As I hurried across the green grass of the paddock’s center, I admired his quiet, the way he stood patiently and gave Personal Best all the time he needed. Others might shout and berate, upsetting the colt’s high-strung nerves and sending him into a frenzy from which he would not recover, but not Alexander—he would wait all day, if he needed to, while Personal Best hung up there in the atmosphere, daring all and sundry to try and make him come down again.

  As I got closer, though, the gravity of the situation grew more apparent—the looks of despair on the faces of Luz and Hector, the pallor beneath Alexander’s deep tan. Personal Best had been playing up for some time. This wasn’t his first time in the air.

  Luz saw me first, and gave Hector a punch. The groom rubbed his shoulder and scowled at her, then followed the direction of her finger as she pointed at me. His face burst into a relieved smile. “Ai, Alex, you get here at last!” he shouted across the paddock.

  Everyone turned then: the grooms with a neighboring colt, who was watching Personal Best’s antics with some interest, the nearby trainers and owners, even Personal Best. Only Alexander did not turn, his attention firm on the rearing colt, who seemed to have been in the heavens forever.

  “Personal Best, you get down!” I shouted.

  Right on cue, the colt’s swiveling ears found me, and he came back to the earth.

  Alexander slid a cautious hand up the lead and took Personal Best by the bridle, then laid his other hand on the colt’s neck. “Settling down, there, lad?” he asked gently. He then turned to me. “Alex,” he said, none too warmly. “You gave up on the other then.” He wasn’t so worried about P.B. that he couldn’t find some time to be annoyed with me. “You should have finished what you started.”

  “I won the other,” I snapped. “Or close enough. I told you I’d be here.” I put my own hand on Personal Best’s hot neck, just below Alexander’s. The colt rumbled a welcoming whicker from deep within his chest, and turned his head to nip at my sleeve. Alexander’s hand fell away from his bridle at the quick motion; he was always careful not to jerk on the colt’s head for any purpose. I slid my other hand up under his forelock and rubbed the white blaze, bringing away a flurry of snowy hairs. “You’re going bald, man,” I laughed. “We better win you a race before you get old on us.”

  “He glad you here,” Hector said approvingly. “Luz, you get the bucket and we go. It’s almost time for the call, man.”

  “Talk to the rider,” I told
Alexander, who was still trying to decide if he was angry with me or proud of me. It was probably a constant struggle for him. I didn’t mind. “I’ll walk him.”

  He nodded and turned away. Across the paddock, I saw a little man in our green silks break away from a circle of media and raise a hand to Alexander. I fixed my attention back on Personal Best. Alexander could tell the jock how to ride this race. It was my job to settle the horse and put his mind on his race. It feels good to know what your job is, I thought suddenly, rubbing Personal Best between his fuzzy-tipped ears. No wonder Tiger has settled down so much now that he knows what he’s supposed to be doing. We all just want a job we’re good at.

  To be part of the team, that was my job. Not Alex the trainer, not Alex the boss, not Alex the underling either. Alex and Alexander, the team.

  I let him go at the gate, although in that moment I wished I had a pony, that I was on the smiling, laughing crew out there on the track, that I could take him out to the gate myself. In the ten minutes since I’d arrived, Personal Best had gone from wild mustang to professional racehorse, stepping up to the pony with the quite aplomb of a horse with many successful races under his girth strap. For Personal Best, it hadn’t been long enough. He’d been without me for so long, causing trouble and terrorizing grooms and dumping riders while I had been wrapped up in retraining Tiger. Was it going to be enough that I was here by his side before a race? Would it make a difference to him that I shown up for his race? Or would he go back to his old criminal ways by the time he made it to the starting gate? “Hang in there, P.B.,” I muttered, bellying up to the railing by the winner’s circle where I’d wait for him to come galloping home. “Be cool, be cool.”

  “Maybe he should stay hot,” Alexander suggested, coming up to join me. He had loosened his bright blue tie and unbuttoned his white shirt collar; his sleeves were rolled up. The south Florida sun was brutally hot this afternoon. It had seemed cooler than this back at the show-grounds, but the covered arena had surely helped. Sometimes I daydreamed about a covered racetrack. Why did the show horses get to work in the shade while we toiled in the blazing sun? It was a pleasant fantasy. “Cool him down too much and he’ll be one of your nice quiet show horses.”

  I sighed. Would he never stop?

  Alexander put a hand on my elbow. “I was only joking,” he said contritely. “It’s just become a habit, that joke.”

  I nodded stiffly, though I appreciated the apology more than I was willing to let on. At the moment, my nerves were strung far too tight to deal with anything approaching emotions. I had to stay stone-faced and stoic to see this thing through. “Let’s see how he does, and then we’ll joke about show horses.”

  The starting gate was on the far side of the infield, and I squinted across the heat waves shimmering above the baking hot track, across the glittering lake with its population of egrets wading through the reeds, across the tight turns of the turf course. Far, far away, beneath the towering sentinels of oceanfront condominiums, my chestnut colt from Ocala was loading into the starting gate.

  “Just look, you can see on the screen, there—” Alexander pointed to the tote board off to our left, but I shook my head. I didn’t want an HD picture on an enormous screen. I didn’t want anything to be so crystal-clear. I just wanted it to be over.

  Luz and Hector came strolling over, buckets and halter and chain rattling together. Hector gave me a resounding slap on the back that had horseplayers and owners nearby staring. “I put money on him,” Hector stage-whispered, a grin playing on his lips. “Today, P.B. and J win his race! Right Luz?”

  “Oh, si,” Luz sighed, taking in my white face and set lips. She shoved Hector out of her way and put her arm around my shoulders, squeezing me tight. I bore it because she meant well. “He do just fine,” Luz proclaimed. “And tomorrow I bring you my grandmother’s flan. She make for you. It’ll build you up after all this worry.”

  I managed a sickly smile. Suddenly, the bell rang and the starting gate doors flew back, and I forgot about everything but Personal Best.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Kerri waving the blue ribbon in my face didn’t make things any more clear to me.

  “What did you do?”

  She laughed and hugged me instead of answering. I’ve never been big on human contact, but in this case her enthusiasm was contagious, and I found my arms wrapping around her back, squeezing her tight, although I didn’t have any idea what was going on.

  Finally she pulled back and grinned at me. “I rode,” she announced proudly. “And helped Tiger win it for you.”

  “What?” I sat down on a handy straw bale and gaped up at her. “What now?”

  Alexander looked over from his perch against Personal Best’s stall, where he’d been watching the big horse work at his hay-net. He was still feeling fresh after his third-place finish in the race. I supposed we all were. We weren’t going to Kentucky—at least, not for the Kentucky Derby—but he’d run a good race and he’d come back sound and happy. That was all any of us could ever hope for.

  Alexander looked stern. “Kerri, you didn’t cheat, I hope.”

  “Only a little.” Kerri winked. “I just counted on the judges not knowing what you looked like—remember how we were looking them up and saw they were from every business but racing? And two of them were from big cattle ranches. I figured they weren’t paying any attention to CASH either—cowboys and cowgirls don’t have time for all that animal rights crap, they’re too busy taking actual care of their actual animals, you know? But my show gear was in the trailer from when I brought out the tack trunk. So… I just ran back to the trailer, pulled out my jacket and hat from the tack room, and mounted up. I rode back to the ring, told the steward I was ready, they said ‘The Tiger Prince is next in the arena,’ and in I went.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe she’d gotten away with it. Neither could I. “It was really too easy,” she admitted. “Everyone from Roundtree were quiet as mice. Even Jean.”

  “But at the end—someone must have known something. What about Cassidy? She knows me well enough.”

  “Well, Cassidy did give the game away,” Kerri admitted, and she held out the ribbon flat against her palm so that I could read the gold letters printed on the blue satin. Thoroughbred Makeover ~ Versatility. “So it’s not the whole competition. But we were the only ones who put two different riders on a horse, and remember that was the versatility category they cancelled?”

  “What happened to versatility?” Alexander demanded.

  “They cut it out of the program because everyone complained they couldn’t get an off-track horse to go so nicely for two different riders with only a few weeks of training,” I recalled, rolling my eyes.

  “Which is nonsense,” Alexander replied, his gaze never leaving Personal Best, “considering how many different riders a racehorse is used to carrying.”

  “Right,” Kerri agreed. “And we were going to try it—”

  “We were going to try it, until everyone thought it was a bad idea, because it would give us an extra chance to win a division. But apparently you can’t put more than one person on a Thoroughbred?”

  “Even though I’d ridden him twice with no problems at all,” Kerri confirmed. “But we’d already entered it, and we were the only ones with two riders, so… they gave us the first place ribbon. And said not to do it again.” She laughed.

  Now I reached out and she put the satin ribbon in my hand. It wasn’t a huge ribbon, as the rosette awarded to Cassidy had no doubt been. But it was something. It was a blue ribbon for Tiger, and not just any blue ribbon, but one that no one else could have won. No one else believed that their horse was good enough for that phase of competition. Three months ago, I didn’t even think Tiger would be ready for any of it, let alone a class so scary to trainers they protested its very offering. Tiger had proved everyone wrong… including me.

  “I’m a terrible mother,” I sighed, putting the ribbon back in Kerri’s hands. “I didn’t beli
eve in my own child.”

  “Children love proving their parents wrong,” Kerri said cheerfully. “Does this mean I can start calling you Mom?”

  I kicked shed-row dirt onto her already-smudged show breeches for that one. “I meant my horse.”

  “Whom you should probably go visit,” Alexander interjected. “I have a feeling he’s waiting for you and a bag of mints.”

  “What about P.B.?”

  Personal Best shoved at his hay-net with his white-tipped nose and then snorted all over Alexander’s beige blazer. Alexander jumped backwards into the shed-row, but the damage was done. “I think this one is done with our company for the night,” he said ruefully, looking down at the black specks that had rained over his jacket. “And I am ready to head home for a hot shower and a change of clothes, besides.”

  “Oh, you have to come with me.” I stood up and took Alexander’s hands in mine. “You have to see him too.”

  “I’m no horse show dad, Alex.” He grinned at me, his eyes laughing. “Don’t think you can convert me just because you’ve fallen back in love with horse showing. I will have all I can do to hold down the racing string while you and Tiger are out jumping colored poles.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly.” I stood on my toes and planted a kiss on his tanned cheek. “I can do both. I’ve done both this long, I can keep it up. And I think we have a few more races to look forward to with this big bad child of ours.”

  We both turned back to Personal Best then, and the colt threw his head up and down, his forelock obscuring his eyes, and showed us his little yellow teeth, still baby teeth despite all of his accomplishments on the racetrack. He had a long career ahead of him, our Personal Best, and things were only just heating up.