Boot Camp (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 24) Read online

  BOOT CAMP

  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.

  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

  COMING SOON

  SECOND CHANCES: CHAPTER ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Dad had a blank look on his face. I probably had the same one on mine. He just told me that he’d been fired but it couldn’t be true. It had to be some kind of cruel joke. But it wasn’t.

  “How could they fire you?” I said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Dad said.

  “Well what did they say? How did they say it? Where are we supposed to go?” I spluttered.

  The reality had started to set in already. We lived at Fox Run. All our horses were boarded here. We couldn’t just pick up and leave. It would require a lot of effort and planning. And all my friends were here. Mickey and Faith and Ethan.

  I blinked back the tears. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Dad shook his head.

  “Goodnight,” Dakota said, sticking her head in the office. “Thanks for a great show.”

  I quickly wiped a tear away and went out to say goodbye.

  “I’m glad you had a good time,” I told her. “Four really likes you, I can tell.”

  “I like him too,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I said, forcing a smile. “Just tired, that’s all. It’s been a long day.”

  “It sure has,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  Because I knew that I would still be here tomorrow but what about the day after that and the week after that? We were about to be homeless and I didn’t know what we were going to do.

  Later, when everyone had gone home, I wandered through the barn. The horses and ponies were all quiet, munching their hay or standing there with a hind leg cocked and their heads down, sleeping. It was the best time of day, when the clients had gone home and the stalls were clean and everyone was tired and happy. It would have been the perfect end to the perfect day but now it turned out that it was the end of something more than that. It was the end of our time at Fox Run. I’d loved it here. From the very first moment I moved in, it was like a dream come true. Living on a working farm, going to shows, training with my father. It was the life I’d always wanted for myself. I just hadn’t thought that it would ever end.

  I sat down in front of Bluebird’s stall and rested my head on my knees. I knew things had to change. That was life. What I didn’t understand was why my things always seemed to be changing when everyone else’s always seemed the same. Mickey had lived in her house since she was four. Her parents were still together. She’d had a stable life while mine had been anything but. And it wasn’t fair for life to keep kicking the same person over and over again. Wasn’t it someone else’s turn?

  I sat there for ages, biting my lip and staring off into space. I knew it wouldn’t fix anything but I was numb. It was going to take time to process the fact that this wouldn’t be my home anymore but I didn’t know how much time we had.

  Dad finally came out of the office and saw me sitting there moping. He came and sat down next to me.

  “I must be asleep,” I said. “This is all just a bad dream, isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said.

  “But I don’t understand?” I said again. “Besides, I bet it will take them ages to find a replacement for you so we probably still have loads of time here, right?”

  “You will understand,” he said sadly. “When I tell you who my replacement is.”

  “Wait, they have one already?” I said. “Who?”

  “It’s Missy.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  When I woke up, my first thought was that it had to be a bad dream. My father couldn’t have been fired. He was a really great trainer and people came from miles around to take lessons with him. But Missy was a good trainer too. And she had better credentials. She’d ridden in the Olympics. That was really something to brag about. She could command a higher price for her lessons because of it and before she’d come here, she hosted clinics all over the country. She was in demand. And who knew what she’d told the owners. She’d probably told them all about my father's broken ankle and his over excessive drug use and how now he’d moved his ex-wife and her stepdaughter into our house. If Dad had just stuck with Missy and hadn’t got involved with my mother, none of this would have happened. It was all her fault. There she was, ruining my dreams again, just like she always did.

  I pulled the covers over my head and lay there for a while. Usually I was the first one up, creeping through the sleeping house and out into the dark morning to ride my horses but what was the point? And what about Socks? Missy said he could stay here but once she came back and we left it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to take him with me. I’d lose the ride on him and maybe even my place on the Junior Olympic team if my other horses didn’t step up to the plate. Bluebird was back jumping but he wasn’t the same. After the show I’d decided that maybe I should give him the winter off. He’d been working really hard ever since I got him and it was only fair to let him be a pony for a while. He deserved it and I knew that he needed it. That left Hashtag, who was only just coming back and Arion, who won his class but was still as green as an apple.

  “I can’t deal with this right now,” I said, my voice muffled by the covers.

  I rolled over and willed myself to go back to sleep and maybe when I woke back up I would find that it really had all been a dream and that today was the day of the Halloween show, not yesterday. But sleep wouldn’t come. It mocked me, laughing about
how I couldn’t force it to come whenever I felt like it and in the end I got up, feeling frustrated and grumpy.

  Dad was sitting in the kitchen. Cat was still asleep on the couch, snoring.

  “That wasn’t some kind of sick joke last night, was it?” I said.

  I poured a mug of coffee and gulped a mouthful of it black. The strong, hot liquid burned my mouth and made my stomach grumble in protest but I didn’t even care.

  “A joke?” Dad said, looking at me with bleary eyes.

  He looked like he’d been awake all night. Obviously it wasn’t a joke.

  “No,” I said. “I guess not. But you do have a plan, don’t you? I mean it's not just us, we have the horses to think of too.”

  “I know,” he said. “We’ll take them to my farm. We don’t have any other choice.”

  “You mean the one that is still half falling down because you ran out of money?” I said. “The one where the barn doesn’t even have any stalls?”

  My voice was getting loud and squeaky. Dad’s farm was a pipe dream and it would have been beautiful if he’d had the money to finish it but it had all gone on getting his suspension lifted and the rest had been spent on his medical bills, and there were still more that we hadn’t even paid. They arrived every day with big red FINAL NOTICE letters plastered across them. He didn’t have the money to finish the renovations. I wasn’t sure he ever would.

  “Where else do you expect us to go?” Dad said.

  “We could stay here,” I said hopefully. “I’m sure Missy would let us if you just talked to her.”

  “They want us out,” Dad said. “Gone. That is the point.”

  “You know she’s probably not going to let me keep Socks,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “And you know that he was my Junior Olympic horse,” I added.

  “I know Emily,” he said, his voice loud now. “What do you want me to do about it? I screwed up and I’m sorry but I can’t take any of it back so we are just going to have to make the best of it.”

  “That’s fine for you to say,” I yelled at him. “Your career is over. You teach lessons to beginners now. I’m the one who is supposed to be climbing the ranks. I’m the one who is aiming for the Olympics. Now you’ve just gone and ruined all of it so thanks a lot.”

  Cat was sitting up now, wiping the sleep out of her eyes and probably wondering why we were yelling at each other.

  “I thought you were here to support me,” I said. “Not ruin my life.”

  I stomped out of the house and slammed the door. My second day as a fifteen year old and still throwing a temper tantrum when things didn’t go my way. As soon as I got outside, I regretted everything I’d said and I wanted to go back in and apologize but I wasn’t that big of a person. Let my father think I was still mad for a little while longer.

  I stood there looking out across the property. The mist swirling over the damp grass. The horses grazing in the paddocks. The grooms as they bustled about, feeding breakfast and mucking stalls. It had been the perfect life on the perfect farm and I realized that I’d taken it all for granted and now it was too late. It was too late for a lot of things.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I tried to go about my day as normal and pretend that nothing was happening but there wasn’t really much point. There were no secrets in a barn. The grooms were already whispering behind my back and later in the day, Dad pulled Henry into the office and shut the door.

  I saddled Bluebird and took him out onto the trail. Just because I was going to give him the winter off, didn’t mean that I still couldn’t ride him. I just wasn’t going to jump him for a while. Besides, it didn’t feel like winter anyway. It was November now and still almost ninety degrees. Florida was messed up in so many ways, just like me.

  We walked through the short grass and despite the fact that it was hot, the warm breeze felt good on my face and I guess it was better than freezing to death anyway. Bluebird picked his way across some deep sand and then through the woods. Eventually we came to the bear trail and I turned down the dead end. If my father being fired seemed like a bad dream then facing off against Mr. Eastford and saving the bears seemed like a good one. At least I’d done something right for a change. I was hoping to see them one last time but when we got to the hollow and the tree, the bears weren’t there.

  I got off Bluebird and walked over to the tree, running my fingers over the bark. The bullet wasn’t there anymore. The police had taken pictures and then gouged it out and put it in an evidence bag. The grass was trampled and crushed and I picked up a cigarette butt and put it in my pocket. The place probably reeked of humans and bad things and the bears wouldn’t be back and in a way I was glad. I wouldn’t be there to protect them anymore. They needed to hide away. I felt like I needed to hide away too. Maybe I could stay out on the trail. Pitch a tent. Live in the woods and survive on berries and nuts. Drink water out of one of the streams. Bluebird could live wild, roaming the woods and returning to me at night where he could sleep in my tent like a Bedouin horse. I probably wouldn’t be missed and I loved nature. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to live in it full time.

  We turned back down the trail and spent a couple of hours exploring. It had seemed like the trails would always be there for us, full of adventures just waiting to happen but now they wouldn’t be. My father’s farm didn’t have access to any trails and it was right next door to Jess’s farm. My heart sank as I realized that we’d be neighbors. What kind of a cruel punishment was that? And Mr. Eastford would blame me for shooting himself in the foot. So would Jess. But in a way it was a kind of justice for the fact that she poisoned my pony so maybe we could call a truce? But who was I kidding. A truce with Jess? That was never going to happen. Not in a million years.

  When I got back to the barn, hours later, Mickey was there. As soon as my boots hit the ground, she pulled me into a big hug.

  “I heard the news,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I thought maybe it was a bad dream and that I’d wake up soon.” I looked around the property at the boarders riding and kids taking lessons. “Does everyone know?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Mickey said as we walked into the barn.

  “Great.” I took my helmet off and tossed it into my tack trunk. “So we are a laughing stock now, are we?”

  “No,” Mickey said. “Everyone feels sorry for you. They can’t believe that Missy would do this.”

  “Believe it,” I said.

  “Maybe she would let you stay here?” Mickey said, sounding hopeful. “Just because your dad is being kicked out, doesn’t mean that you have to go with him.”

  I thought about it for a moment. Staying here with Missy. Training with her instead of my father. It wouldn’t be all bad. But Missy wasn’t related to me. She wasn’t even married to my father. I couldn’t call her my stepmother. I couldn’t call her anything.

  “She probably wouldn’t want me,” I said.

  “You could try?” Mickey said. “Just talk to her.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  But the truth was that I wasn’t even sure I really wanted to stay in a place where I obviously wasn’t wanted.

  “If you leave,” Mickey said. “I’ll never see you again.” Then she burst into tears.

  I spent ten minutes comforting her and supplying her with tissues that she blew her nose loudly on. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Wasn’t she the one who was supposed to be comforting me?

  “You’ll just have to get your mom to bring you over to my farm instead,” I said.

  And I couldn’t help thinking that it had a nice ring to it. My farm. It may have been falling down but it would be a space to call my own. No sharing jumps with the boarders or having students kick me out of the ring because paying customers came first. I’d be able to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it was time we had our own place. No more running around managing other people’s horses. It would j
ust be our own and I kind of liked the sound of that.

  “Just promise me you’ll talk to Missy,” Mickey said.

  “If she wanted to talk to me, she would have called,” I said. “She would have told me what was happening. She didn’t. She wants us gone.”

  And I thought to myself that maybe I wanted to be gone too and a private farm to call our own suddenly didn’t sound so bad after all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Can I come with you to the farm?” I asked Dad later that day. “I’d like to see it.”

  I was starting to get excited. We’d be able to make our farm whatever we wanted. We wouldn’t have to worry about getting permission from the owners to do anything. We could set it up in a way that worked for our horses and for us and it was sounding better and better the more I thought about it.

  “Well I am going over later,” Dad said. “But maybe you should wait a few days.”

  “Why?” I said, sitting on the edge of the desk. “We need to start figuring stuff out. I’d like to see where Bluebird and the other horses will be living. What is the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Dad said. “You can come. Just don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Thanks Dad,” I said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek and bounding out of the office.

  I didn’t know what he was so depressed about. It was like we were being given a fresh start. A do-over. A chance to do things right this time. And besides, we didn’t need Fox Run. We could start our own business. Dad could teach lessons. I could train the horses. We’d be able to go to shows without worrying about taking clients with us and putting their needs before our own. It sounded pretty cool and I was still hyped up about it later as I sat in the truck next to my father. I’d worked it all out in my head. Things were going to be fine.

  But as we got to the farm and pulled down the rutted drive, I got the feeling that maybe things weren’t going to be as fine as I thought they were. The stone farmhouse was still as decrepit and falling down as I remembered. Broken boards from the fences were lying in the overgrown grass and the barn was in shambles.