Beginner's Luck (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 18) Read online

  BEGINNER’S LUCK

  BY

  CLAIRE SVENDSEN

  Copyright © 2015 Claire Svendsen

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, places or events is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “You said you’d come to the show and help me. You promised and you broke that promise. I want to know why.”

  I ended the call and slammed my phone down on the table. It had gone through to Jordan’s voicemail. Again.

  It was the day after the Easter show. The day when the barn was quiet and most of the horses got the day off. I’d woken up and looked at the silver cup that sat on my bedside table and felt a proud wave surge through my body. My pony had won his championship class. I couldn’t stop thinking about how awesome he was. We didn’t have a chance to prove ourselves in the mini Grand Prix and we hadn’t beaten Missy but she hadn’t won either. Competition had been fierce and I was almost glad that I’d ducked out of it at the last minute. Bluebird was good. Really good. But did he have what it took to jump against horses like that? I wasn’t so sure.

  I’d rolled over with a smile on my face and then suddenly remembered that Jordan had stood me up. He promised to come to the show and help me enter the mini Grand Prix. In fact he’d said that he would be riding. I’d been looking forward to seeing him ride but in all the excitement of the day, I’d forgotten that he hadn’t shown up at all. That was just rude.

  I pulled on my clothes feeling huffy. The happiness of the show day fading away, replaced by a lingering sour feeling. I didn’t like it when people went back on their word. When they promised to do something and they didn’t. Mickey was flakey. I sort of expected that kind of thing from her but even she’d had a legitimate reason for not going, a dentists appointment that she couldn’t get out of. What was Jordan’s excuse? He’d better be lying in a ditch somewhere because if he wasn’t then I was going to kill him.

  Bluebird nickered when he saw me coming. I slipped into his stall and unwrapped his legs. They were cool and tight. No swelling.

  “Good boy,” I said, patting him on the neck. “You were awesome yesterday. I’m so proud of you.”

  He nodded his head as if to say that of course he was awesome.

  I took him out into the bright morning sunshine and turned him loose in one of the big fields. As soon as he got inside the gate he dropped and rolled, scrubbing himself into the sand one way then flipping over to make sure he got the other side good and dirty too. When he was done he jumped up, shook himself sending clouds of sand into the air and then galloped off.

  “I guess you’re not as tired as I thought you were then,” I called after him.

  When he had settled down to graze I left him and wandered back into the barn. Arion was eating his hay. Popcorn and Ballycat were being brought in from the lesson horse turnouts which were in the back. Now that it was hot they spent the evenings outside and were brought in during the day so that they could be used for lessons. When Popcorn saw me she pinned her ears.

  “Nice to see you too,” I told her as the groom led her into her stall.

  I found myself outside Encore’s stall, looking at the beautiful bay horse. He was leaving later in the day. A trailer was coming to pick him up and take him to Tara’s barn and I’d never see him again. Only that wasn’t true. I’d see him at shows where Tara would be riding him. It made my heart hurt just thinking about it.

  “I’m going to miss you,” I told him.

  And then I walked away because it was too early in the morning to be crying about a horse leaving.

  Henry, the head groom, came out of the office and waved to get my attention.

  “There is a phone call for you,” he said.

  “What, here?” I asked, remembering that I’d left my phone on the table back at the house. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.” Henry shrugged.

  I went into the office where the smell of coffee hung thick on the air and picked up the sleek black phone, wondering who would be calling me on it.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Emily?” the voice on the other end said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Taylor. I was wondering if you’d seen Jordan?”

  Taylor owned the local tack store and also happened to be Jordan’s mother. She hadn’t seemed too happy that Jordan and I had been spending more time together and I was almost sure that she was the one who’d talked him into not going to the show but if she hadn’t seen him either then I didn’t know what was going on.

  “No, I haven’t,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the desk. “He promised he’d come to the show and he didn’t.”

  “Well that is strange,” she said. “I don’t know what has happened to him. He’s not answering his phone.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” I said. “I bet he met a cute girl or something.”

  The words stung in my throat. I was supposed to be Jordan’s cute girl but it was turning out that I wasn’t after all. He was older than me anyway. I should have known that he was never really interested in me in the first place.

  “Maybe,” Taylor said, sounding distracted. “Well if you hear from him, let me know.”

  “I doubt that I will,” I said. “But if I do, I’ll tell him that you’re looking for him.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  And I was hanging up the phone when Dad came in with my riding schedule for the week and I immediately forgot all about stupid Jordan, the boy who stood me up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I was beginning to realize that there was a secret to getting what you wanted and it wasn’t doing what you wanted either. It was weighing out the consequences of your actions and how they would affect both you and the people around you. Because if I’d done what I originally wanted, which was to enter the mini Grand Prix behind my father’s back, then I wouldn’t be sitting next to him in the truck going to try out new horses. I’d probably be grounded, stuck in my bedroom doing schoolwork and not even allowed anywhere near the barn until my punishment was over. This way seemed loads better.

  “How many horses are we trying out?” I asked my father.

  “Three at this farm and I think there are at least two tomorrow at a different place.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  I was wearing my breeches and boots. I had my helmet and crop and my spurs. I was ready to ride whatever my father asked me to because if we found something that we liked, he was going to buy it and bring it back to Fox Run.

  Missy hadn’t been too pleased with my father’s big idea.

  “We are going to flip horses,” he’d announced earlier that day in the office.

  “Is that like flipping houses?” Missy said. “What do you do, rip out their kitchen and replace it with a new one and then sell them on?”

  “In a way,” Dad said, the tone of his voice indicating that he didn’t appreciate her sarcasm. “We are going to buy promising prospects, put some training on them and sell them for a profit.”

  “You know that no horses sell for a profit, right?” Missy said, flopping down into the big leather chair with a sigh. “By the time you’ve fed them and shod them and paid for all the vet bills when they hurt themselves, they’ll have
eaten through any profit you might have made. And besides, we don’t even have the time.”

  School was going to be out in a few weeks. That meant that the lesson schedule at Fox Run was filling up fast. There were summer shows that people wanted to go to along with summer camps at the barn and not enough time to fit it all in.

  “Emily has time,” Dad said. “And you saw how good she was with Encore.”

  “Yes,” I saw,” Missy said. “But she already has two horses to work and the lesson ponies that need constant tune ups. And her school work.”

  “I have time,” I said brightly.

  I’d been lingering in the doorway, listening to my father’s mad plan and I knew it was mad because Missy was right. Horses were a gamble. Even if you happened to get lucky enough to buy a diamond in the rough it would still take time to polish them up and in that time they could easily do something stupid to hurt themselves and pretty much make them worthless, at least as a sale horse.

  “There you go then.” Dad clapped his hands together. “Meet me at the truck after lunch.”

  Now we were speeding along the highway and it almost felt like the old days. My childhood memories of my father were scarce considering he’d left when I was five. But we always had ponies on the property and horses that my father rode and I could remember my sister, Summer, crying after Dad sold her pony and made her ride a new one. Then as soon as she’d start doing well again, he’d sell the new one. Looking back I could see how hard that must have been for my sister and how awful. I couldn’t imagine selling Bluebird and replacing him with a new project, which was why I was so happy that I owned Bluebird and not my father. He always had a scheme or new idea up his sleeve, like the half renovated farm that now sat empty, waiting for him to make more money to finish it. And I suspected that this was part of the reason why we were driving out to try new horses, looking for a miracle. My father was trying to build up his name and his bank account, I just wasn’t sure he could do both successfully at the same time.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time we got to the farm, I’d built the horses up in my mind to be fantastic jumpers and then pulled them down to unbroken, untrained five year olds about three times. I knew it was silly to get my hopes up. The horses could be no good at all. After all, they couldn’t all be like Encore. I was just going to have to keep an open mind and at the end of the day I wouldn’t really have much say anyway. My father would be the one picking out which horse he would buy. All I was there to do was ride them.

  The farm was small and a bit dingy. The drive was pitted with pot holes and the fences that ran down either side of it were falling down. The boards lay in the long grass with rusty nails sticking up, waiting to impale any horse that came by.

  “How can people keep their horses like this?” I asked Dad as we pulled up next to a dented horse trailer.

  “It takes all sorts,” Dad said.

  I had my hand on the door ready to open it when he reached out and grabbed my arm.

  “We can’t rescue them all, you know that, right? We are running a business, not a home for broken down horses.”

  “I know,” I said. “But Arion turned out all right.”

  “That was luck,” Dad said.

  “It was fate.” I nodded. “But maybe these horses will turn out to be lucky too.”

  “We are not going to hope for luck though are we?” Dad said. “We are going to evaluate them objectively because that is how this business works.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s okay. I won’t embarrass you by clinging to their legs and crying my eyes out as you try and pull me off them.”

  “Good,” he said with a smile.

  But as I got out of the truck I had an uneasy feeling that I’d once done exactly that and wondered if Summer’s ponies weren’t the only ones that were sold for a profit and replaced with others that needed training.

  A thick set woman came striding towards us. She had on ripped jeans and a band t-shirt. Her brown hair was short and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She wiped her hand on her thigh and then reached out to shake my father’s.

  “Welcome,” she said. “I’m Tracy.”

  “Rob,” Dad said, shaking her hand. “And this is Emily, my daughter.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said.

  She smiled at me but her eyes gave me the once over, probably evaluating my clothes and age and whether or not she thought I was going to be able to ride her horses. I had the sinking feeling that they were going to be more like bucking broncos than jumpers and kind of wished I’d worn my chaps instead of my boots because they would have at least helped me stick to the saddle a little better.

  “Shall we get started then?” Tracy said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The horses were out in a back paddock that had been grazed down to dirt. There were five of them, two bays, a chestnut, a roan and a black pony. They were all dirty and unkempt and not at all how we presented sale horses all groomed from top to toe with shiny coats and gleaming muscles.

  “The pony isn’t for sale,” Tracy said. “That belongs to my kid. And the chestnut isn’t either. She’s my cutting horse.”

  I didn’t know much about cutting except that it involved cows and horses that were quick on their feet. The chestnut mare looked like she was pregnant or had been pregnant recently. Her sprung belly hung low and she didn’t look like she’d been fit enough to chase a cow in a very long time.

  “Where am I supposed to ride them?” I whispered to Dad as Tracy went into the paddock to get the horses.

  “In the field?” Dad said.

  “You mean the one with the nails and the broken boards? How can I concentrate on riding them if I’m too busy making sure they don’t get injured in the process?”

  “You’ll just have to make the best of it,” Dad said.

  But it turned out that there was a tiny arena on the other side of the falling down barn and it didn’t have any broken boards or nails sticking out of the fence so that was at least something.

  The barn only had one stall in it and Tracy shoved the roan inside.

  “He doesn’t tie,” she said. “But I’m sure you could teach him. I just haven’t had the time. But these two make up for it. They ground tie so you don’t even have to worry about them.”

  She had dropped the lead ropes of the two bay horses that now stood there with their heads hanging down. They were both skinny. Not to the point of malnourishment and calling animal control underweight but enough that you could see their ribs. I suspected that it was the fact that they had no energy that made them stand there and not the fact that they were well behaved. In fact I didn’t believe that they were well trained for a second.

  “Do you have a brush?” I asked Tracy as Dad went back to the truck to get my saddle.

  “I usually don’t bother with that,” she said. “The dirt will fly off when you ride them.”

  “Well do you at least have a hoof pick?” I asked, looking at their over grown hooves. “Or do you just wait for the dirt to fly out of those too?”

  Tracy glared at me. “No need to be sarcastic,” she said.

  She rummaged around in a box and finally pulled out a rusted hoof pick that had seen better days. It didn’t look like she had used it in months, maybe even years and I soon found out why. The bays were not too keen about having their feet picked up. In fact they wouldn’t do it at all. I tried every trick in the book, leaning into them, twisting their chestnuts. Nothing worked. These horses weren’t diamonds in the rough. They were rough in the rough. It was going to take forever just to teach them the basics let alone to do something like jump around a course of jumps. Missy was right. They were four legged money pits and I wanted to save them all but I could see that none of them had the resale value that my father was looking for, except maybe the roan. He was pretty underneath all that dirt and he had a kind eye. Pretty wasn’t as good as insane natural talent but at least it was a start. I went into the stall and asked him to pick u
p his foot, which he did. In fact he held them all up and let me pick out the packed dirt and manure without fussing at all.

  “Good boy,” I said, patting him on the neck.

  “You might think he’s good now but let me tell you, he’s the worst of the bunch,” Tracy said.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Four,” she said.

  “Four?”

  “Yeah, one, two, three, four.” She pointed to the bays, the chestnut that was still out in the paddock and then the roan.

  “And what about the pony?” I said, feeling exasperated. “Is he five?”

  “No,” she said like I was stupid or something. “He’s Randolph.”

  I literally couldn’t think of anything to say to a woman who numbered her horses instead of naming them. I wanted to get back in the truck and drive away, pretend that we’d never seen the skinny numbered horses but there was something about the roan. I liked him and I didn’t care that he wouldn’t tie but I had to play it cool because I wanted my father to like him too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My father wasn’t impressed with the fact that the bays wouldn’t pick up their feet but he was even less impressed with the fact that they couldn’t be bridled either. Just the mere sight of the bit heading towards their mouths and they forgot all about the fact that they were supposed to be good at ground tying, scuttling back like crabs until they were out of the barn and standing on the patchy grass. They had wide eyes and flared nostrils, snorting at the jangling bridles like they were going to melt their faces off.

  “When was the last time you rode these two?” Dad said.

  “You know, a little while ago,” Tracy said. “I really can’t remember.”

  I didn’t think she’d ever ridden them. They’d probably grown up in the bare field that she pulled them out of and lived wild their whole lives, never having been taught anything. I looked at my father desperately, hoping that he really wasn’t going to make me ride them because although I was up for riding pretty much anything, that didn’t include unbroken horses who had hardly ever been handled.