Stable Vices (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 21)
Page 11
I gave my pony a kiss on the nose. He was pretty much back to normal and even though Dr. Brown said that he couldn’t go to any shows for a month, he had said that I could start hacking him out in a week and we could do some light jumping in three weeks. I was eager to get back on my pony but also kind of scared. Maybe taking him to the show was what had got him sick in the first place. Perhaps the best thing was just to keep him at home where he would be safe and secure. But he was a show jumper. He had a career. If he didn’t go to shows then what was the point? And I knew he’d be just as sad as I was if that didn’t happen.
Socks, Arion and Four had all got baths and were wearing scrim sheets to stay clean. I didn’t hold out much hope that the two grays would manage to survive the entire night without getting any manure stains on them but I had high hopes for Socks. I was also hoping we would win the class. We won the last speed class and this time the prize was more money. It would more than cover Bluebird’s deductible at the vet clinic which I was still going to insist on paying. I wasn’t about to have my father hold the fact that he had paid it over my head at some future date when we had an argument about something, which I knew would happen eventually.
As I walked back to the house in the dark I saw Jupiter standing by the gate. I went over and stretched out my hand and she licked it gently. I knew she wasn’t a bad horse and it wasn’t her fault that she’d rejected her foal. Maybe she’d had a bad experience in the past or maybe she just didn’t understand but either way it wasn’t fair to punish her because of it. I rubbed her dished face, remembering how I thought she was one of the most beautiful horses I’d ever seen when she was unloaded from that old trailer.
But Dad was right. She couldn’t have a job here. She was a halter horse. A mare who flaunted her beauty on the end of a lead rope made from spun gold. She didn’t know anything about trotting and cantering under saddle, jumping or dressage or any of that stuff and of course we could teach her that but we hardly had the time and it wasn’t where she belonged. She belonged in the ring, blazing around like fire, her tail flagged and head high. Like a desert horse of old who couldn’t be tamed but only deigned to be with people for a while before flaunting off across the sands to find a new purpose. She couldn’t be contained here. I knew that now.
“We’ll figure out what to do with you soon,” I told her. “I promise.”
But the next morning when I ran through the early morning mist I didn’t see the mare standing there and the gate to her field was open. I stood there for a second, wondering if the grooms had brought her in but deep down I knew they wouldn’t. They’d been under strict instructions from my father not to let her back in the barn in case she taught her vices to the client’s horses and besides, none of the grooms had even shown up yet.
I looked down the drive. Maybe she managed to get the gate open and ran out. But there were no hoof marks in the deep, wet sand, only tracks that hadn’t been there the night before. The half bald tires of a beaten up trailer that had backed up to the gate and then pulled away leaving deep gouges in the sand. It could only mean one thing. Sandy had come back to claim her mare but what about the foal?
CHAPTER FIFTY NINE
I ran into the barn screaming for the foal. After everything we’d been through, everything I’d done, I couldn’t bear the thought of him being ripped away from us and by someone as horrid as Sandy. Who knew what she’d do with him once she had him? She wouldn’t care for him the way we had because she didn’t care for things at all. If she had cared then she wouldn’t have dumped him and his mother on us.
I flipped on the lights and ran through the barn, horses nickering because they wanted their breakfast. Past Bluebird who was banging his bucket, a good sign that he was back to normal and past my show horses. I didn’t even look to see if they were clean. I just bolted to the stall where Chantilly was supposed to be. At first I didn’t see anything. The stall was empty. Then I heard a shuffling in the shavings and looked down. There lay the chestnut mare, her head stretched out and eyes closed with the foal lying next to her, his head on her belly and a peaceful look on his face and right beside him was Bandit, the little interloper who didn’t really belong and yet had pushed his way into the mismatched family anyway.
I stood there unable to stop the tears that were streaming down my face. The foal was safe. He belonged with us. He always had. And if Sandy had come looking for him after not finding him with Jupiter, she would have perhaps thought that this foal belonged to Chantilly. After all she still had a recently pregnant belly and milk and was nursing a foal. Who was to say that he wasn’t hers? He even looked like her. That same white blaze and socks. They could have passed for mother and child and even though they weren’t in the biological sense, they were in every other sense of the word. Our blended family all in one stall together. Maybe Sandy thought her foal was dead. If she knew anything about her mare she would have known that she would have killed it if we hadn’t intervened. Maybe she thought we were too late. Maybe she just didn’t care. But either way there was no way that Sandy would ever come back here looking for her foal because as far as she was probably concerned, he was dead and that was the end of it. She’d snuck in and out, a thief in the night too afraid to show her own face and now we were free of her once and for all. At least I hoped that we were.
CHAPTER SIXTY
I set about feeding the horses. The grooms were going to show up soon but I had horses to braid before we loaded up and went to the show. This one was closer and our classes later in the day so we hadn’t been forced to leave the horses overnight and I’d already vowed that if Bluebird ever had to stay overnight at a show again, I was staying with him in his stall so that I could make sure that nothing bad happened to him.
Tipping the feed into the buckets, I felt peaceful and happy. Usually on show mornings I was nervous, worried about my class and the pressure to win but since I wasn’t competing in the Talent Scout series anymore it was like this great weight had been lifted. I was just a girl going to a show with some horses to have fun. No pressure. And hopefully I was going to make another girl happy too. I was going to give Frankie Four and she wouldn’t be sad anymore. It was going to be a great day.
I was pushing the wheelbarrow down the aisle tossing hay into the stalls when I saw lights in the dark. I thought maybe it was Henry but the rumble of the truck sounded familiar. It sounded like my father’s truck and I hadn’t even realized that it wasn’t parked out the back. Where on earth had he been? Had he been gone all night? He was about to ruin my happy mood and that wasn’t fair. I carried on feeding the horses, tossing hay and pretending that I hadn’t seen him. Maybe it was an apparition. Perhaps I hadn’t seen anything at all. It was my mind playing tricks and in a minute Henry would come into the barn and start asking me why I was doing his job. But he didn’t.
Pushing the wheelbarrow back to the feed room I saw my dad get out of the truck. Then the passenger side door opened and two other people got out as well. Now I was really starting to get worried. Had my dad got into some kind of trouble? Had he been gambling and risked our horses on a stupid bet or something? Would these people break our ankles and steal all our stuff? I stood there frozen.
Dad glanced into the lit barn and I thought I saw his shoulders sag. If he’d thought he was going to get in unnoticed then he was out of luck. He motioned for the two people to stay by the truck and I stood there as he walked towards me. I wasn’t going to meet him halfway. He was the one who had all the explaining to do.
“Hey,” he said, trying to sound casual. “You’re up early.”
“It’s a show day,” I said. “Of course I am. And Jupiter has gone. I think Sandy must have come and got her in the middle of the night.”
My voice was high and strained. I was talking about things that didn’t really matter. All that mattered was what he had to tell me but I couldn’t stop talking. What if he’d found himself a new family and was going to leave me and Missy alone?
“And the
foal?” he said.
“He’s safe,” I replied.
“Good,” he said.
“I didn’t think you cared.”
“Of course I do.”
There was an awkward silence and suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore and the words all blurted out.
“Are you having an affair?” I said. “Are you going to leave me and Missy and Owen alone?”
“No,” he said. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“Hello, all the sneaking around. I’m not stupid you know.”
But as the sun started slowly spilling up over the horizon and the darkness turned to milky light I did feel like the stupidest person in the world because standing there by my father’s truck with two suitcases were my mother and my step sister.
THE END
COMING SOON
SHOW JUMPING DREAMS #22: JUMP OFF
Emily Dickenson has come to expect the unexpected in her unpredictable life because when it comes to horses, you never know what is going to happen. But the one thing she never expected was to see her mother and step sister again, especially not standing next to her father’s truck in the early morning light with two suitcases and hopeful faces. If they think they are moving in with Emily’s new family they have another thing coming. She likes Missy and Owen and the way things are at Fox Run and she is going to do everything in her power to make sure that doesn’t change.
She also has a show to focus on, a foal to raise and a friend who needs a horse. Only Frankie doesn’t seem willing to want to take on Emily’s project horse Four. In fact she is downright hostile about it and Emily needs to find out why if she can help to mend her new friend’s broken heart.
And she’s been invited to a training session with all the Talent Scout winners. The committee has decided to give her a second chance but some people don’t exactly think that is fair. People like Jess. And Emily wants to find out if Jess really poisoned her pony so she has to go but how can she stop her perfect family from getting ruined when she is not even there?
JUMP OFF: CHAPTER ONE
“I have a show to get ready for. I can’t deal with this right now,” I said.
I’d been happy and excited to go to the last Talent Scout show with no pressure because I couldn’t compete Bluebird in the one class that mattered. Instead I was taking Missy’s speed horse Socks, my green horse Arion and resale project Four, who I was hoping to give to Frankie, the girl who had lost her horse at the vet clinic. The whole day had been planned. It was going to be great and now my father had ruined it because there by his truck stood my mother and my step sister like two orphaned puppies.
“You have to deal with it,” Dad said. “They are your family too. She is your mother.”
“I don’t have a mother,” I said, my voice cold.
I pushed the wheelbarrow past him and into the feed room, loading up more hay.
“I have to feed the rest of the horses before they kick down their stalls,” I said.
“Henry can do that. Look, he’s pulling in now,” Dad said. “Please, we need to talk. All of us together.”
I looked at him and saw something that I hadn’t seen before. He still had feelings for my mother, despite all these years and everything they’d been through. The hatred. The not talking to each other. The way they hurt themselves and me in the process. And now what? Was Missy supposed to welcome my mother and step sister into our already crowded home? Was I? I didn’t think so.
“You can’t expect me to deal with this on the day of a show,” I said, trying to sound rational and calm when really I just wanted to scream in his face that he was an idiot.
“You’re right,” Dad said, rubbing the stubble on his face. “I’m sorry. I should have waited.”
“Yes you should have.”
“Alright then, we’ll talk about it tonight,” he said.
“Okay,” I said.
What I didn’t say was that I was never, ever going to be okay with this. Not in a million years and what did he think? That we were all going to live like one big happy family? A mixed up blended mess like Chantilly and Bandit and the foal. It may have worked for them but it wasn’t going to work for us. Anyone with any sense could see that.
I waited until my father had gone and then I stood there with my hand on the wall, holding myself up on weak legs while I tried to catch my breath. I’d tried to stay strong in front of him. To not let him see that really I wanted to burst into tears and yell and scream at him and tell him that he was an idiot for even thinking that any of this was going to work but instead I just willed my heart to stop pounding wildly in my chest.
“You okay?” Henry asked as he came into the feed room.
“Yes,” I said, standing up straight. “I fed all the horses. Can you hook up the trailer? We have a show to load up for.”
“Sure,” he said, looking at me kind of funny. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Perfectly fine, thanks,” I said.
The first lie of many.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire Svendsen fell in love with horses at age two when she got her first pony. The only trouble was that it wasn’t a real horse, it was a rocking horse. From that day on she begged, pleaded and bribed for lessons, riding clothes and a horse of her own. She had to wait and work really hard to finally get her first real horse but when she did, it was a dream come true. Over the years she has trained horses, given lessons and even run her own stable.
No longer able to ride due to injury, Claire lives vicariously through the characters in her books. When she’s not busy writing, you’ll find her hanging out at the barn with her retired Thoroughbred Merlin who loves carrots, apples and bowing on command.
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Other books in the Show Jumping Dreams Series by Claire Svendsen
#1 Secret Rider
#2 Pony Jumpers
#3 Winter Blues
#4 Star Pupil
#5 Sale Horse
#6 Last Chance
#7 Hunter Pace
#8 Turf Wars
#9 Beach Ride
#10 White Horses
#11 Trick Pony
#12 Off Course
#13 Winter Wonderland
#14 Gift Horse
#15 Half Halt
#16 Young Riders
#17 Show Time
#18 Beginner’s Luck
#19 Chasing Ribbons
#20 Double Standards
#21 Stable Vices
(COMING SOON) #22 Jump Off
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
COMING SOON
JUMP OFF: CHAPTER ONE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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