Course of Action

by Bonnie Bryant

  She knew the answer to that without having to put it into words, even in her own mind. She had loved Samson even before his return to Pine Hollow. And with every day that she worked with him, rode him, and took care of him, her feelings for him grew stronger and stronger.…

  Just then a starling darted past right in front of the horses’ noses, and Samson shied violently. Carole managed to keep her balance despite her distraction and moved with the horse as he nearly careened into a tree. Setting to work with her legs, voice, and reins, Carole did her best to soothe Samson.

  When she was back in control and Samson was walking along calmly again, Carole heaved a sigh of relief. “That was close,” she told Stevie; who had been carefully keeping Belle back to prevent Samson’s sudden panic from infecting her as well.

  “Nice work.” Stevie urged Belle forward, quickly catching up to Carole again on the wide, smooth trail. “He really trusts you.”

  Carole nodded, feeling uncomfortable as Stevie’s previous comment popped into her mind again. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. She was just joking about that. Getting all worked up about a silly joke makes about as much sense as—as freaking out because a bird flies by. You’re allowed to love Starlight and Samson. No one is forcing you to choose between them.

  “Can we trot?” she asked Stevie, doing her best to keep her voice normal. She didn’t want Stevie to guess what she’d been thinking—she felt stupid enough about it as it was. “I promised Max I’d help out with the Halloween party after the intermediate riding class lets out, and it’s getting late.”

  “Sure.” Stevie clucked to Belle, sending her into a brisk trot. “Catch us if you can!”

  Carole smiled and urged Samson forward after her.

  TWO

  “Stop looking at your watch,” Alex Lake pleaded, grabbing Lisa Atwood’s hand across the Formica tabletop. “It reminds me that I have to go back to prison soon.”

  “Sorry.” Lisa squeezed her boyfriend’s hand. “I just don’t want you to be late. Your parents might decide not to let you go to soccer, either, and then I’d never see you at all.”

  Alex sighed and dropped her hand, picking up his spoon and scooping up a bite of ice cream from the dish in the middle of the table. “I know,” he muttered. “You’re right. It just really sucks, you know?”

  “I know.” Lisa watched her boyfriend sympathetically, wishing there were something she could do to smooth his furrowed brow and banish the depressed expression in his hazel eyes. But his parents had grounded him for the foreseeable future, and she and Alex were just going to have to deal with it. “Look on the bright side,” she told him as cheerfully as she could manage. “At least you are still allowed to be on the soccer team, so we can hang out after your games like this, right?”

  Alex tugged at the grass-stained jersey he was wearing. “Right,” he agreed ruefully. “I guess it pays sometimes to have lawyers for parents.” He shrugged and managed a weak grin. “It means we can at least try to plea-bargain.”

  Lisa was glad to see that his sense of humor hadn’t been totally crushed by everything that had happened lately. Until just a week or so earlier, Lisa would have believed that nothing could ever come between her and Alex. Ever since the day some nine months before, when Alex had suddenly gone from being Stevie’s cute, slightly goofy twin brother to being the love of Lisa’s life, Lisa had been certain that they would be together forever.

  But now she realized that things had started to change between them as early as the previous summer. Lisa’s parents were divorced, and her father had invited her to spend her summer vacation in California with him and his new family. Alex had never really understood her decision to go, mostly because he was upset at the thought of spending so much time apart.

  That was the first thing that came between us, Lisa thought as she watched her boyfriend scoop out another spoonful of ice cream. And the second thing was Skye.

  Alex had always been jealous of her friendship with Skye Ransom, a handsome actor whom Lisa, Stevie, and Carole had met years earlier. It had been hard enough for Lisa to tell her boyfriend that she had landed a summer job working behind the scenes on Skye’s new TV series. How could she tell him about what Skye had said to her a few days before she’d returned home? How could she admit that Alex’s worst fears were true—that Skye wished that he and Lisa could be more than friends?

  Carole had saved her the trouble, accidentally spilling the secret at the party on Saturday night. Alex hadn’t bothered to listen when Lisa had tried to explain that she didn’t return Skye’s interest—that she loved only Alex. They’d had a terrible fight and broken up, and even though they’d patched up their relationship by the end of the party, things still weren’t the same between them. Lisa knew they had a lot of work to do if they ever wanted to go back to normal.

  That was why they were sitting at a private corner booth at TD’s, the ice cream parlor in the sleepy little shopping center on the edge of town, while Alex’s soccer teammates were celebrating their victory at a pizza place across the street from Fenton Hall. Lisa and Alex were trying to spend as much time as possible alone together these days, though it wasn’t easy. There was no time for leisurely trail rides at Pine Hollow or for long, romantic dinners on Saturday night—or for much of anything else, for that matter. The only exception Mr. and Mrs. Lake had been willing to make was for soccer practice, though Lisa suspected they might not even have allowed that if they hadn’t already promised Stevie that she could continue practicing for the Colesford Horse Show.

  “I wish you could have plea-bargained your way to homecoming this weekend,” Lisa commented, thinking wistfully of the romantic evening she had expected to share with him at her school’s big dance.

  Alex snorted. “Fat chance,” he muttered. He glanced at her. “I’m sorry, Lisa. I know you were looking forward to the dance.” He rubbed the back of his neck wearily. “I was, too. And I was looking forward to that Halloween party we were supposed to go to tonight, and to that new movie we’d talked about catching tomorrow night, and to just getting together with you whenever we felt like it instead of rushing around like this …”

  “I know.” Lisa picked up her napkin and reached across the table to gently wipe a spot of chocolate syrup off his chin. “It doesn’t matter. There will be other dances and parties and movies. We’ll make it through this.”

  Alex nodded glumly and stirred his rapidly melting sundae. “I guess.”

  Lisa sneaked another quick glance at her watch. They didn’t have much time left before Alex would have to head home. But she knew she couldn’t let him go until she’d brought up the topic that had been gnawing at her since the party. She couldn’t put it off one more day. Her stomach clenched when she imagined how he would react to what she needed to tell him, but she couldn’t let her nervousness stop her. She had learned her lesson from the Skye fiasco—she wasn’t going to put off the hard news too long this time. That could only make things worse.

  She took a deep breath, steeling her nerves as best she could. “Alex,” she began. “Um, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  He looked up from his dish quickly, clearly recognizing the serious tone in her voice. “What is it?” he asked, looking a bit apprehensive.

  Lisa cleared her throat. “It’s about Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh.” Alex looked relieved. “Is that all? Listen, don’t worry about that. Mom and Dad said you and your mother can still come over for dinner, even though Stevie and I are grounded. In fact, Mom said something just this morning about calling your mom and, you know, officially inviting her.”

  Lisa gulped, realizing that once again she’d waited almost too long. “That’s not it,” she said, feeling her throat tighten with anxiety. “It’s just—well, I was pretty mad at you. You know. On Saturday night. I—I wasn’t sure if we would ever—well, you know. If we were going to …” She cleared her throat again, searching for the right words. “Um, the point is, I didn’t think our Than
ksgiving plans were going to happen after all. So I kind of—well—I called Dad.”

  Alex’s expression darkened slightly; he took on a wary, suspicious look. “Yes?”

  “He wanted me to come to California for Thanksgiving,” Lisa explained. “I called him from your house after our fight and told him I was coming. I tried to back out the next day,” she added hurriedly. “I mean, by then we’d made up, and I had already promised you before the party that I’d come to your house …” She shrugged helplessly, avoiding his eyes. “But Dad had already bought my airline tickets over the Internet. Nonrefundable.”

  Alex didn’t speak for a long moment. His expression shifted from shock to sadness to anger. But when he finally answered her, his voice was calm. “That’s, um, too bad,” he said carefully.

  Lisa saw that he was gripping the edge of the table so hard that his knuckles were white. She could tell he was fighting against his own feelings, trying not to freak out at her news, and she appreciated the effort. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t been so impulsive about it. It’s really not like me to just change my mind on the spur of the moment, you know that. But I was so angry and upset …”

  “I know.” Alex forced a small smile. “Um, have you told your mother yet?”

  Lisa nodded. “She took it surprisingly well,” she said ruefully. “I mean, I’m sure she still hates the fact that I’m going to be with Dad on what’s supposed to be a big family-togetherness-type holiday. But I guess she realized that this means she and Rafe will have a whole week to be together without worrying about me walking in on them.” She shuddered at the thought of her mother’s new boyfriend, a coworker some twenty years her junior. But she quickly pushed the thought aside. Her main concern just then was her own relationship with Alex, not her mother’s romance—if you could call it that—with Rafe. “So, uh, what do you think?”

  “I wish you weren’t going,” Alex said frankly. He ran one hand through his short-cropped brown hair and sighed. “But I guess what’s done is done, right?”

  “I guess so.” Lisa opened her mouth to tell him what she knew he wanted to hear: that she wished she weren’t going, either. But then she stopped herself. She didn’t want to lie to him. She had to trust their relationship to be strong enough to handle the truth, no matter how messy or confusing it was. “I’ll miss you, you know that. But I think it might be good for me to go out there for a little while. I miss Dad and Lily a lot.” She smiled slightly as she thought about her baby half sister, who had just begun crawling when she’d left at the end of the summer. “And it will give me some time to think about things.”

  Alex bit his lip. “Like about whether you still want to be with me?” he asked quietly.

  “Of course not!” Lisa reached over and grabbed both his hands in her own. “I already know the answer to that. I love you, remember? No matter what happened, or what happens from now on.”

  “I love you, too.” Alex squeezed her hands, but his eyes still looked anxious. “I just wish you could stay here with me, instead of running off to California all the time.”

  Lisa did her best not to feel annoyed at the comment. Try to see his point of view. He’s just feeling insecure, that’s all, she told herself. He wants to spend as much time with me as possible. That’s a good thing, right? Besides, he’s probably not thinking about how much I miss my family out there. He’s probably just thinking about Skye …

  She couldn’t help resenting that, just a little. After all that had happened, hadn’t she managed to convince Alex yet that he was the only one she loved? What more did she have to do to prove it to him?

  “Anyway,” she said, “I hope you can understand how I feel. It isn’t easy for me having my family split in two like this.”

  “I know.” Alex gazed at her somberly. “It isn’t easy for me, either. I want to be with you all the time, but it feels as though something is always trying to keep us apart. Or someone.”

  Lisa sighed, saved from responding because the waitress came over to deposit the check for their ice cream. Lisa was glad that she and Alex were talking again. But was having an honest, open relationship supposed to be so hard?

  At that moment, Callie Forester was sitting in her living room, frowning over her chemistry notebook and trying to figure out why she couldn’t seem to come up with the right answer to the problem she was working on, no matter how many times she went through it. As she erased yet another set of incorrect calculations, she heard the front door swing open and glanced up automatically.

  “Hey, Callie,” her brother, Scott, greeted her cheerfully, bounding into the room without bothering to remove his windbreaker. “Guess what?”

  “Hmmm, let me think,” Callie said, more sarcastically than she’d meant to, still irritated by her own inability to comprehend chemistry. “Did your little meeting with the principals go well?”

  Scott ignored her sharp tone. “It sure did,” he said, rubbing his hands together. His blue eyes were bright with excitement and his broad, handsome face was slightly flushed. “Mr. Price—he’s the principal over at Willow Creek High—absolutely loved the idea of putting the schools together. Miss Fenton was a little more cautious at first—you know, because of the timing—but as soon as we managed to convince her we could really make it happen, she jumped on board. She’ll be making an announcement tomorrow morning inviting everyone at Fenton who wants to go to the dance to buy their tickets immediately.”

  Callie couldn’t help smiling at her older brother’s enthusiasm. She knew there was nothing Scott loved more than a successful campaign—it was a trait he had inherited from their father, a congressman. “Congrats,” she told him.

  “I know it’s pretty short notice, but I think we’ll still get a good turnout.” Scott shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over a chair, then perched on the end of the couch where Callie was sitting. “Veronica and her friends have been talking up the possibility of the dance all week, so I doubt anyone will be totally surprised.”

  “It doesn’t leave people much time to go dress shopping, though,” Callie pointed out.

  Scott grinned. “I thought of that, too,” he said. “But Ronnie has been asked to the Willow Creek homecoming dance every year since she was in eighth grade. She says it’s always pretty informal—not like at our old school, where people treated it almost like the prom.”

  “That’s good.” Callie felt a pang as she remembered the prom she’d attended the previous spring in their old hometown on the West Coast, just a couple of months before the family had moved to Willow Creek to be closer to Congressman Forester’s office in nearby Washington, D.C. One of the coolest seniors in school had asked her, even though she’d only been a sophomore at the time—being the daughter of an influential politician could do that—and she’d had a fantastic time, dressing to the nines, dancing until her feet hurt, then going to a party on the beach after the dance and staying out until dawn.…

  But she pushed aside the memory. Scott’s mention of Veronica had reminded her of something that had been bothering her for the past few days. “Listen, Scott,” she said. “I don’t want to be a downer on your big triumphant day or whatever. But I was just wondering if you’d noticed that Veronica is totally into you. She wants you in a big way, and she doesn’t care who knows it.”

  Scott laughed self-consciously. “I don’t know if I’d go that far.…”

  Callie snorted. She had never lacked for male attention—her good looks, as well as her last name, had ensured that—but Scott had always had an almost preternatural ability to make girls swoon wherever he went. He had broken more than a few hearts back in their old hometown, mostly through sheer ignorance of his own charisma.

  “Look,” she said bluntly. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not especially worried about Veronica’s feelings—she strikes me as the type who can take care of herself, you know? And I know you’ve been so wrapped up in this campaign that you probably haven’t stopped to think about any of this. But y
ou should be careful. If you aren’t interested in her and you end up blowing her off after the election, well, some people might think you’re only using her for her connections.” She paused to let her words sink in, knowing there weren’t many things more important to Scott than his reputation. “That’s not going to make you any friends, no matter how people feel about Veronica herself.”

  Scott frowned. “Hmmm,” he said. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that. I mean, I sort of like Ronnie. She’s sorta cool. But I’m really not looking for anything serious right now.…”

  “That’s what I thought,” Callie said, secretly relieved that he didn’t return Veronica’s feelings. She hadn’t relished even the slight possibility of having to spend time with the other girl if Scott started dating her seriously. “So maybe you’d better let her in on the secret soon, okay?”

  “I don’t know about that.” Scott looked reluctant. “I mean, it’s not like we’ve actually been out or anything.”

  Callie rolled her eyes, amazed as always at her brother’s ability to sidestep thorny situations. “Get real,” she told him sharply. “As far as most people are concerned, you two are already a couple. If you don’t want them to think you’re using her, you’d better either sit her down for a little talk right away or just bite the bullet and ask her to the dance.”

  “Well …,” Scott said slowly, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re—”

  The phone cut him off, ringing shrilly from its position on an end table. Callie leaned over to answer it. “Hello, Forester residence,” she said automatically.

  “Callie?” a tentative male voice replied from the other end of the line. “Um, hi. It’s George. George Wheeler.”

  Callie gulped. “Oh, hi, George,” she replied as her brother winked and headed out of the room. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” George said. “Um, so, Callie, about this weekend. Can you—I mean, have you made up your mind yet about Saturday? I don’t want to bother you, but, well …”