Heart Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 27)

by Claire Svendsen

  “Everyone deserves a second chance Emily,” he said before going back to the bedding he was working on.

  But I knew that Jess didn’t care about second chances. All she cared about was revenge. That was her big plan. Bring Harlow to compete against Arion and me but it would never work. It couldn’t. Harlow was old and stiff and even if he wasn’t lame, he still wasn’t the best jumper in the world. Not anymore. He’d been good in his day back when Esther rode him but those days were over now.

  Arion was fast and young and eager. He’d go for broke in the jump off and he wouldn’t hold back. I couldn’t imagine Harlow even placing in the ribbons. I hoped that he would because I loved him and I wanted him to do well but not with Jess. There was no way he would win for her. It was impossible.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  I wandered around the show grounds, saying hello to people that I knew and handing out flyers. No one had seen Wizard, although some of them said that they’d heard he’d been lost in the storm. That meant people knew we couldn’t keep our horses safe, which was bad for business. I didn’t see how we were going to get any more boarders after this and as for lessons, we couldn’t afford the lesson horse that Dad kept talking about getting. I knew if we didn’t dig ourselves out of the hole we were in pretty soon we wouldn’t have a business at all and I could kiss my career plan goodbye.

  Horses were expensive and showing them was doubly so. I couldn’t compete without money and even though being on the team helped because it was sort of like a scholarship program for up and coming riders with free lessons and subsidized show fees, it still cost money. So when a girl approached me with her arm in a blue cast, leading a horse all tacked up and ready to show with a quarter sheet over his rump, I almost knew what she was going to ask me before she even got the words out.

  “You’re Emily, aren’t you?” she asked me. “Emily Dickenson?”

  “Yes,” I said, handing her a flyer. “You haven’t seen this horse, have you?”

  She looked at it and shook her head. “No, sorry, I haven’t.”

  “What did you do to your arm?” I said.

  “I broke it skiing,” she replied with a sad sort of laugh. “My mother said it would be fun to get away from the horses for a while over Christmas.”

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t as fun as she thought it was going to be,” I replied.

  We both smiled awkwardly. I wished she’d just get to the point. I needed to warm Arion up before the schooling session so I could get on him afterwards and compete without having to worry about him being too silly and fresh.

  “I’m Fiola and this is Valentine.” She patted the chestnut gelding on the neck. He was flashy with four white stockings up to his knees and a blaze down his pretty face that ended in a sort of upside down heart on his nose.

  “That’s an appropriate name,” I said. “Considering the weekend.”

  “He’s the only Valentine I’m ever likely to have,” she said with a sigh. “Boys don’t get me or I don’t get them. I’m not sure which. My mother says I’m blinded by horses and when I grow out of loving them then I’ll fall in love with a boy.”

  “My mother used to think the same thing,” I said. “But then she gave up.”

  I didn’t add that she also gave up loving me as well in the process. It seemed unnatural to say that your own mother didn’t love you anymore, even if it was the truth. And as for Jordan? Well I hadn’t even got a card. How could you love someone who lost your horse? I didn’t think you really could.

  “So are you riding him?” I said. “With your arm in a cast? A girl at our barn broke her wrist over Christmas and I got her back in the saddle but she had to ride one handed for a while. If you are jumping one handed then I’m impressed.”

  “No,” she said. “Actually I was hoping that you would ride him for me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  I’d thought about catch riding a lot in the past. For a while it was going to be something that I was going to do to make money and get experience. Then I ended up with more horses of my own we got into training and selling, which hadn’t really worked out so well. Maybe it was worth getting back into after all and the more horses I had to ride today, the less I would think about killing Jess and stealing Harlow.

  Valentine was entered in the mini Grand Prix that afternoon.

  “Can you get on him now so that you can see if he likes you or not?” Fiola said. “He can be fussy.”

  I looked at my watch. My pony was groomed and braided ready for the schooling session but I still hadn’t worked Arion yet. If I rode Valentine I wouldn’t have much time left to get on him before the lesson. But Fiola was offering a flat fee plus a percentage of the winnings, if there were any. And it would be good exposure. Maybe other people would want me to ride their horse at the next show too.

  “I’d have to ask our coach,” I said, thinking of Duncan. “I don’t want to break any team rules or anything.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I have to get my helmet anyway. I’ll be right back.”

  I ran to the barn in time to see Sam pulling in with Jess’s trailer. I tried not to look. I didn’t want to see Harlow. I had to harden my heart to the fact that Jess would be riding him and I hadn’t done that yet. Duncan was standing there watching.

  “Do you have any objections to me catch riding today?” I said, clutching the stitch in my side and trying not to cough. “It’s not against team rules, is it?”

  “Someone wants you to catch ride?” he asked, sounding distracted.

  “A girl who broke her arm,” I said.

  “Fine,” he told me. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with team training sessions or our class then I don’t care.”

  “Alright.” I grabbed my helmet. “Thanks.”

  “And Emily,” he called after me. “Good work. It means you’re getting noticed.”

  I wasn’t sure that a girl with a broken arm who wanted me to ride her horse was technically getting noticed by anybody but when I got back to the warm up ring Fiola was standing there with her trainer and he was definitely someone that you wanted to notice you. I recognized him from the rated show that I went to. He ran a big fancy barn up north and trailered his horses and students down south for the winter. It cost thousands of dollars a month to have a horse in training with him and I was surprised that there wasn’t an eager horseless kid that had come with them, just waiting to snatch up the ride on Valentine.

  “This is Emily,” Fiola said. “And this is Walter Grey.”

  “I know who you are,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “And I know who you are,” he said.

  I blushed under my helmet. Having Walter Grey say that he knew who you were was sort of like the President or the Queen saying, oh yes, Emily Dickenson? I know her.

  “When Fiola said you were here and that she wanted you to ride for her, I thought it was an excellent idea,” he carried on.

  “You did?” I said.

  “Valentine is fussy. Difficult. I hear you get on well with difficult horses,” he looked at me and frowned.

  “Some of them,” I said, wondering if Valentine was going to explode and toss me into the crowd.

  “Shall we get on with it then?” he said.

  Before I knew what was happening, he’d given me a leg up and I was riding the chestnut around the ring as the sun came up, bathing the sky in pink and red and for a moment I couldn't really believe my life because sometimes it seemed like a fairy tale that was too good to be true, even if it was a nightmare at others. But those bad times faded away as I rode the pretty horse around the ring and Walter Grey gave me pointers, basically gave me a lesson, a several hundred dollar lesson for free. And I really couldn’t believe that this was my life but it was and it was amazing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  Valentine was a nervous horse and I could understand why Walter Grey didn’t want to put just anyone up on his back but I still figured that he probably had loads
of soft handed riders in his barn who could handle a nervous and rather flighty horse. Still, I wasn’t about to question his methods, not when riding for him was a huge deal.

  “Trot the cross rail please,” he called out.

  I circled Valentine and then trotted him over the small fence. The horse liked to back off as he approached the jump but if you used too much leg he just shut down. I was sure it was going to take a pretty detailed combination of give and take to get him around a jumper course in one piece and I thought that maybe he should have been more suited to the hunters but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Now over the vertical and three strides to the oxer,” Walter said. “A nice steady canter and then back to the cross rail again.”

  Valentine had a canter that was sort of choppy and uncomfortable. I was used to riding horses that flowed beneath me but Valentine didn’t seem to know where all his legs were supposed to go. It was kind of like riding a washing machine. Still, he jumped the vertical, we got the three strides, he scrambled over the oxer and then back to the small cross rail again. I felt like I hadn’t done a very good job. Valentine had been all over the place and the jump over the oxer hadn’t been pretty.

  “You’ll do,” Walter said as I walked the horse over to the gate. “Meet us at the ring at three thirty and don’t be late.”

  “Are you sure it was okay? You don’t want me to ride him some more? He felt sort of disjointed.” I handed the horse back to Fiola and stood there feeling like I’d only just passed their test by the skin of my teeth.

  “I told you he’s fussy,” Walter said. “You’ll do fine.”

  As they walked off with the horse I heard Fiola whisper that Valentine had never jumped for anyone else like that before. My heart sank. I knew that I’d jumped him badly. I should have done better. Even though they still wanted me to ride him it must have been because no one else was available. Walter nodded, taking his baseball cap off and ruffling his hair before putting it back on.

  “I told you she was good,” he said. “No one can jump that horse except you.”

  And suddenly I felt on top of the world again. It was funny how a few simple words could bring you down and then raise you back up again in just a few seconds.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  I felt like I’d been on a roller coaster already and it wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning. I stopped by the concession stand and bought a cup of hot, black coffee and half a bagel. It was weird. I’d been so nervous about the show, wondering if I would feel well enough to ride. Hoping that Bluebird and I would be ready but now it was like all that stress had just melted away.

  I doubted myself. I knew that I probably always would. I wasn’t one of those riders who thought I was God’s gift to riding. I didn’t assume that I was always going to win. I just sort of hoped that my talent and luck would get me through. So far it seemed to be working out okay. I just had to trust my instincts and my instincts were that the show was not the place to get into another fight with Jess.

  I’d embarrassed myself last time. It had been unprofessional and if Walter Grey had been at that show there was no way he would be advocating that one of his students ask me to catch ride their horse. And if I fought with Jess today, there was a good chance that the ride on Valentine would be taken away from me and the horse would be scratched from the show altogether. Reputation was everything and I didn’t want the sort of reputation that I was starting to get. I had to play nice with Jess, at least for today. I couldn’t let her get to me and I wished that I’d never asked Duncan to put her horses next to mine.

  It didn’t matter in the end though because Jess had thrown a fit when Duncan tried to stable her horses next to me and as a result she was now at the complete opposite end of the barn. I was kind of glad. As I walked past I caught a glimpse of Harlow. As he saw me pass by he stuck out his head and nickered.

  “Hey boy,” I said under my breath but I didn’t dare reach out and touch him. Jess would fly into orbit.

  Instead I kept on walking, my head down and eyes on the ground so that I wouldn’t look at the horse I used to love with all my heart any more than I had to.

  “You should have been here,” Andy said, greeting me with a smile. “I thought Jess was going to get kicked off the team for good this time.”

  “It was my fault,” I said, sitting down on a tack trunk. “I asked Duncan to stable her next to me.”

  “But why on earth would you want her next to you?” Andy said.

  “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” Rose asked, coming out of Noelle’s stall with a smile.

  “Something like that,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

  I didn’t tell them about Harlow. I didn’t want them to know and I didn’t think I could get the words out without bawling my eyes out and I didn’t have time for tears. I had to get Bluebird tacked up and ready for our schooling session, Arion had his class and then we had the team event. Later I’d be up on the back of a fussy difficult horse that I’d only ever ridden for about ten minutes and I’d have the eyes of everyone on me, wondering if I’d fail and more importantly I’d have Walter Grey’s eyes on me and I really didn’t want to fail in front of him and I wasn’t going to. Not today.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  Sitting on Bluebird in the warm up ring, I felt pretty confident. Duncan had us run through a flatwork session and then he had us jump the same three fences that I’d already done on Valentine. Bluebird felt fresh and eager beneath me, his chestnut ears pricked as we jumped. He was a lot smoother than Valentine had been and even when he got his flying change late, it still didn’t feel like his legs were all over the place like Valentine’s had done.

  Jess was sitting on her Cremello, Blue Morning Mist. They obviously hadn’t let her switch horses again so she was stuck with the one that had pretty much flipped out at the last show. But I could tell that he’d been thrust into training in the sixty days since the last show and he now jumped like a normal horse and didn’t flip out all the time. I wondered if Jess had him on drugs too. Drugs to keep her horses calm. Drugs to keep them sound. She probably had drugs for everything, even if she wasn’t the one who administered them.

  Sam had unloaded the trailer with the two horses and then hung around to watch. I caught her out of the corner of my eye, watching our lesson, draped lazily over the fence, her eyes on me instead of Jess. I wondered if she’d told her about the day my father and I snuck over there and whether or not Jess had told her about Harlow and how I used to ride him.

  He was back at the barn now. Two grays at opposite ends of the row of stalls like book ends. One old. One young. Both loved by me.

  “Hey, he’s talking to you genius,” Andy said, breaking me out of my daydream.

  Duncan was standing there with his hands on his hips and Jess was snickering.

  “I said do the line again please,” Duncan said. “Or would you like to share with the group what you are thinking about if it is so important.”

  “No.” I shook my head and gathered up my reins. “Sorry.”

  I couldn’t afford to get on Duncan’s bad side. I needed him to think that I was a good member of the team. Jess was playing by the rules. Other than her blow out over the stalls, she hadn’t done anything else to draw negative attention to herself and I needed to make sure I did the same. Neither of us wanted to be downgraded to alternate status, even if it meant we had to pretend to like each other.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  After thirty minutes, Duncan told us that we were as ready as we’d ever been. He didn’t sound very encouraging. Then he told us that we’d better not screw up because today it was just the four of us and we didn’t have an alternate if anything went wrong.

  Jess’s friend had apparently quit the team and the other guy’s horse was lame and so he hadn’t even shown up. Duncan said that the team members were going to be trimmed down to four at this show anyway, a fact that none of us had known about. I think if I’d known that there
was a chance I could have been chopped from the team I might have been more nervous but since I didn’t know then I hadn’t been stressed about it.

  Besides, I had other things to worry about. Things like riding Arion in his class and beating Jess and Harlow. Poor Harlow. I didn’t want to beat him. I wanted him to win. One more blue ribbon for him. A sort of nod to his old days with Esther. I could still remember the first time I rode him, wearing second hand breeches and a t-shirt with a hole in it, all nervous and sweaty. And then at our one and only show. How we cleared all the jumps like they were nothing because he took care of me. Basically took over and did everything himself because I hadn’t a clue about striding or adjusting him. I was just along for the ride and because he knew how to take care of his rider I’d felt safe.

  He’d take care of Jess too. I was sure of it. He was a sweet, kind horse and he wouldn’t act out or do anything stupid like all Jess’s other horses because he’d taught beginners to jump and he knew how to forgive every bad jab in the mouth or kick in the ribs and do his job despite all of that.

  I tried not to look as Jess tacked him up. I had Arion to worry about. Arion who was pumped up because of the cool breeze and the fact that he’d just figured out he was at a show.

  “Knock it off,” I told him as I sprang into the saddle and he leapt sideways, nearly unseating me.

  Harlow stood quiet as a lamb as Jess pulled on her gloves and stood there like a saint as she got herself situated in the saddle. She saw me watching her and I quickly looked away, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of knowing that I was watching her even though it was too late.

  They made their way to the warm up ring and so I walked Arion in the opposite direction and found a flat piece of grass over by the trailer parking. I worked my silly Thoroughbred in circles as the sun warmed the grass beneath us and his breath came out in puffs of white, trying to forget everything except the horse beneath me and the fact that he was both stiff and resistant at the same time.