Gift Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 14) Read online

  GIFT HORSE

  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

  Missy and the baby came home the day after Christmas and I had to admit that he was kind of cute. A big fat bundle of joy they had named Owen, which Dad told me was after his great grandfather. Only when he wasn’t in the room, Missy told me that she’d wanted to name him that after the actor Owen Wilson. Poor kid. He was going to grow up so confused having those two as parents. And I liked him more than I thought was possible, though I would have liked him a lot more if he didn’t cry all the time.

  “Here,” Missy said. “Do you want to hold him?”

  She held out the baby whose face turned red. He started to wail and I took a step back.

  “Maybe later,” I said. “I think he’s hungry.”

  “He can’t be.” Missy sighed. “I’m out of milk.”

  She’d been breastfeeding but Owen seemed to want milk faster than she could produce it.

  “Maybe you should give him a bottle of formula?” I said.

  “But I want to do everything naturally,” Missy said, starting to look upset.

  Owen wasn’t the only one who’d been full of tears since they got home. Missy seemed to cry at the drop of a hat. I’d started to feel like I was living in an insane asylum. Dad said it was just her hormones and that everything would go back to normal eventually but I didn’t know how much longer I could take it.

  “I think I’m going to go and check on the horses,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” Missy said. “You could stay here with me.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said as I opened the door.

  Missy also seemed afraid to be left alone with the baby, which was kind of dumb. After all, it was her baby and he didn’t really need that much attention anyway. He ate and pooped and slept. That was about the extent of his daily activities.

  I stepped outside and breathed in the cold air, listening to the sound of the baby’s muffled crying. I pulled out my phone and googled how long babies cried for. The answer was not helpful. They cried for months. Possibly even a year. Maybe even until he started talking and then the crying just turned into tantrums. Perhaps I could talk my father into letting me sleep in the barn.

  I walked past Bluebird’s field and he stuck his head over the fence. I gave him a carrot and rubbed his face. Then I went into the barn. My father had given me the hurricane horse for Christmas. I hadn’t even known that he knew about him and yet there he was on Christmas Eve, standing in a stall waiting for me. It was the best gift I’d ever been given.

  I stood there looking at him. He had lifted his head up at my approaching footsteps but unlike Bluebird, he hadn’t nickered because he was happy to see me. Instead he snorted and backed into the corner of his stall.

  “It’s okay boy,” I said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

  But his eyes bugged out of his head as I slid open the door and held out a carrot. He snorted louder and stomped his foot. Then he charged at me with his ears pinned. I managed to close the stall door just before he bit me.

  I stood there with tears streaming down my face. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. I saved him. I loved him. It was supposed to be awesome. But the cold hard fact of the matter was that my new horse hated me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mickey and I spent the day after Christmas exchanging presents. Dad dropped me off at her house with my smaller than I would have liked bag of gifts and an overnight bag. He said I’d earned a night off. I didn’t argue. Usually I would have protested, saying that Bluebird and Socks needed me but I felt like a break, not only from the baby that screamed incessantly but from the hurricane horse. Dad said to cut him some slack. That he’d had a tough road and that he would come around but I’d tried everything I knew to get him to like me and so far nothing had worked. Not treats or buckets of grain or sitting in his stall so that he would accept me. And forget about trying to put a halter on him. I couldn’t get close enough for that and I felt like a failure. So far the only person he liked was Henry, the oldest Fox Run groom, who was calm and mellow and able to take my new horse outside so he could graze.

  I tried not to think about how I was going to train him when I couldn’t even get close to him because that was what he was, a horse in training and if he didn’t start getting trained soon then my father said he couldn’t stay. I knew he’d only bought the horse to keep me happy but I also knew that Fox Run was not the sort of barn where you could keep a horse that didn't work and if he didn’t belong there, then where did he belong?

  “So did you name him yet?” Mickey cried as she opened the door.

  She’d already known that I was getting the hurricane horse for Christmas because she was the one who helped arrange it so she hadn’t been surprised to find out that I got him. However, she had been surprised that he didn’t like me.

  “Yeah, Satan,” I said.

  I dropped my bags on the floor amid stray bits of wrapping paper and boxes. Mickey’s house looked like a war zone. They may have been Jewish but her family celebrated Christmas better than anyone I knew and she had a bunch of cousins, aunts and uncles who descended on their house during the holidays like a swarm of locusts.

  “Don’t be mean,” Mickey said. “I’m sure he’s scared. He’ll come around. Just give him some time.”

  “I don’t know how much time I have,” I said.

  “Well your dad is all distracted with the baby, isn’t he? He’s not going to know what day of the week it is for a long time, let alone realize how long your horse has been there."

  “True,” I said. “My ears are still ringing from all the crying. Babies are exhausting.”

  “But he is so cute,” Mickey said.

  I’d sent her a picture of Owen and ever since then she’d been going on and on about how adorable he was with those chubby cheeks and fat little arms and legs. She said he looked like my dad but I couldn't see it. I just thought he looked like a wrinkly old man and as far as I was concerned all babies looked the same anyway.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s put your stuff in my room. I can’t wait to show you what I got for Christmas.”

  If downstairs was bad, Mickey’s room was a hundred times worse. It looked like a tack store had exploded in it. There were saddle pads and wraps on the floor and brushes, ear bonnets and bridle parts strewn everywhere.

  “Wow,” I said. “You hit the jackpot.”

  “I know!” she cried, leaping onto her bed. “My mom is totally into the whole dressage thing. She says that she doesn’t know why I didn’t do it before. Look at this.”

  She tossed a browband at me. It had rainbow rhinestones trailing across the front of it and the middle part dipped down to a point where there was a tiny diamond heart.

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit too sparkly?” I said.

  “No. As far as dressage riders are concerned, the more bling the better. You can even show in it.”

  “Really?” I said. “I thought dressage was all about black and white and not standing out?”

  �
�I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But look at these.”

  She tossed a couple of bell boots at me that were white with fur around the top.

  “Miss. Fontain said Hampton needs these for when we go to shows.”

  “Fluffy,” I said.

  I sat on a pile of ripped up wrapping paper while Mickey showed me everything she got from Santa, her parents and her extended family. It felt ungrateful to complain that I only got a horse but that was almost how I felt. Bluebird needed a million new things too. Our saddle pads were threadbare and other than my saddle, his tack was old and last week the stitching on his girth started to come apart.

  Back when I first started competing on Bluebird, I’d been sponsored by Taylor's Tack Emporium but I hadn’t been there in ages. I didn’t even know if Taylor was still actually sponsoring me anymore. I guess I needed to go there and find out but I felt guilty over the fact that while Sand Hill was in the process of closing down, I hadn’t really been able to go to many shows. Taylor hadn’t exactly got her money’s worth out of me. What if she didn’t want to sponsor me anymore?

  “So?” Mickey threw a pillow at me. “Do you want your gifts now?”

  “No, let’s just save them for next year.” I grinned.

  “Fine, if you don’t want them,” she said, turning away and feigning hurt.

  “Of course I do.” I threw the pillow back at her.

  We spent the rest of the morning opening the gifts we’d got each other while Mickey’s mom kept coming in and trying to get us to eat food. She said she’d cooked and baked so much stuff that if we didn’t start helping to eat it all then it would go bad and she’d have to throw it out and then she’d feel guilty about all the starving kids in Africa.

  “Is your mom okay?” I asked Mickey after she left us with a plate of cookies and a tray of cheese straws. “She seems a little…”

  “Insane?” Mickey finished. “She gets like this every Christmas. Don’t worry. It wears off in the New Year.”

  Mickey got me a set of new brushes, which were so nice that I was almost afraid to use them, a pair of riding gloves, because I was always losing mine and a set of glitter lip glosses.

  “You’ll love them,” she said. “I swear they taste so good.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But don’t blame me when Bluebird gives you the evil eye because my kisses leave sparkles all over his nose.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” she said.

  But I loved the things she got me and she loved the ones I got her. She swore the braiding kit would come in handy because Miss. Fontain was teaching her how to do dressage braids and they were apparently nothing like hunter braids. I also got her a book called Dressage for Dummies, which she pretended to be offended by but later said that there were actually some really good schooling exercises in it. And lastly I found this braided cord bracelet with a snaffle bit that she put on and swore she was never taking off again. The presents were a hit.

  “So what did your mom send you?” Mickey asked, lying back on her bed.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The truth was that my mom hadn’t sent me anything. Not a package with home baked cookies or some of the candy that she always got me for Christmas. There was a time, before Derek and Cat, that we’d been best friends. She knew what I wanted before I even had to ask and she knew the same about me. When times were tight we made each other things like scarves from bits of leftover wool or jewelry out of scrap pieces of wire and we loved those gifts just as much as the ones who bought from the stores when we had money to spend.

  Since they left for Wisconsin she hadn’t been answering any of my calls. She was mad because I decided to stay behind in Florida with my father. She couldn’t really blame me. Here I had a chance at a career with horses and the truth was that I wanted to get to know the man who had been missing from my life for years. But she did blame me. I’d betrayed her and I knew it.

  She'd finally picked up the phone on Christmas Eve, probably because she didn’t know it was me. I’d used the phone in the barn office, sitting in the plush leather chair that no one ever used and doodling on the thick paper that sat on the polished table.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Mom, please don’t hang up,” I replied.

  I heard her breathing on the other end of the line so I knew that she hadn’t. She probably wanted to though.

  “Are you guys okay? Did you settle in alright?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said and didn’t elaborate. “Is your father feeding you?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “And you’re doing your homework?”

  “Of course.” Another lie.

  I hadn’t even been going to school. I’d been skipping classes to stay home and help out at Fox Run and I kind of got to like riding whenever I wanted and being at the barn all day. Only now I was really in trouble because I’d need a doctor’s note to go back and I didn’t know how I was going to get one. Mom would have a fit it she ever found out. I changed the subject.

  “Did you decorate our tree?” I asked.

  “We got a new one,” she said. “It has fake pine needles on it and lights that actually work.”

  Oh,” I said. “What did you do with the old one?”

  “Threw it out.”

  I thought about our silly fake tree that we’d decorated every year since I could remember and imagined it lying in a trash heap by the side of the road. It wasn’t just a tree, it was our memories. How could she toss it away so easily?

  “So have you had any snow?” I said.

  “Some.”

  “That’s cool,” I said.

  “It’s alright. A pain to shovel though and half the time the car won’t start.”

  The conversation was stilted and awkward and we talked about stupid stuff like the weather. We didn’t talk about any of the things I wanted to talk about like why she was still mad at me and why she couldn't just be happy for me and if Derek was yelling at her yet? And then we said goodbye and that was that. I didn’t know when or if I would get to talk to her again. She hadn’t asked about Bluebird or my riding, even though she knew it was a huge part of my life and that Bluebird wasn’t just a pony, he was family.

  Mickey told me that I wasn’t the only one. That all kids of divorced parents are put on the spot when they have to choose who they want to live with. One parent always gets hurt and the kid pays the price. It wasn’t my fault that they were divorced. I couldn’t live with both of them and besides, she was the one who had kept me from my father for all these years. He swore he’d sent letters and cards and stayed in touch but I never got any of them. I could only assume that Mom had thrown them in the trash instead of giving them to me. What kind of mother would do that?

  I thought about little baby Owen and my dad and Missy. They weren’t married. Would they stay together until he was older or would he be forced to choose between them just like I had been forced to choose between my parents?

  At least horses were easier to understand, except for the hurricane horse, who I didn’t understand at all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mickey’s house was fun. Everyone was always happy and even when there were disagreements, they were good natured ones, like when we all played Monopoly and her uncle got caught cheating. But I missed going out to say goodnight to Bluebird. I wondered if he was standing there by his gate looking for me. Whinnying into the dark sky for me to come and kiss his sweet nose goodnight or, more importantly, to feed him carrots. So I lay there on Mickey’s floor in my sleeping bag by the big pile of wrapping paper that hadn’t made it into the trash yet and I thought about my pony but my mind soon wandered off to my new horse.

  Was he standing in his stall looking for me too? Probably not. I bet he was glad that I wasn’t around to keep pestering him, acting all desperate because he didn’t like me. But maybe he didn’t need to like me. Maybe I was approaching it all wrong. Maybe the auction woman had b
een right after all. Could love not really get through to him? Would I have to use a firm hand and brute force to get his respect? And he needed a name but I was finding it hard to pick one out for a horse that didn’t even like me.

  It seemed like I’d only just drifted off to sleep when Mickey’s alarm blasted through the room.

  “It’s too early,” I groaned, stuffing my pillow over my ears. “Turn it off.”

  “No,” Mickey said. “Get up.”

  “But why? I thought I was staying here so that I could sleep in. If I knew I was going to have to get up this early, I could have just stayed home.”

  “Wow.” Mickey sat up, her face bright. “When did you get to be such a downer?”

  “Five seconds ago when you woke me up,” I said.

  “Well, if you don’t want the second half of your Christmas present,” she said sounding coy.

  “Wait, what?”

  “You heard me. Get dressed.”

  “Can you at least tell me where we are going?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Well how will I know what to wear?”

  “Just wear whatever you normally do.”

  I didn’t feel like going out. I wanted to stay in Mickey’s warm, comfortable house and eat all the food her mom had made. I wanted to lay there in my pajamas and watch cheesy movies all day. I didn’t want to go outside where a cold wind was blowing and do something that Mickey thought was going to cheer me up but almost certainly wouldn’t because her idea of fun when it came to anything but horses was usually nothing like my idea of fun. Like the time she made me go with her to the indoor rock climbing place and I got tangled in my ropes and the instructor actually had to cut me out of them. I’d never been so embarrassed in my whole life.

  Down in the kitchen, Mickey’s mom was making breakfast. There were piles of sausages and stacks of pancakes and Mickey’s family were sitting around in their pajamas with their eyes glistening and mouths watering.