Heart Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 27) Read online

  HEART HORSE

  BY

  CLAIRE SVENDSEN

  Copyright © 2016 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

  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

  COMING SOON

  CATCH RIDER: CHAPTER ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  CHAPTER ONE

  My sleep wasn’t restful. I flitted in and out of nightmares like a hummingbird looking for nectar and finding only poison. There was Wizard before me in the rain, standing proud with his head high and ears pricked. Rearing up he lashed out at me, hit me with his steel hooves and pummeled me into the ground before galloping away.

  In another he was a foal, all fluffy with bandy legs and a bottle brush mane. He nuzzled my hand and then trotted away. I followed, calling after him to come back. He turned to look at me and stumbled into a swamp. It sucked him down into the murky waters and the more he struggled, the more it pulled him in until there was nothing more than the tip of a nose and then he was gone and I was left screaming for help. Only no one came. No one ever came.

  I woke up shaking, drenched with sweat and shivering cold beneath the blankets but I wasn’t in the barn anymore. I was safe in my bed. But Wizard wasn’t safe at all. He was out there alone and scared and possibly even hurt. And Jordan had brought him to our farm so that I would take care of him. I’d let him down. I’d let everyone down.

  I remembered being shoved into a hot shower by Cat. Her helping me pull on clean pajamas and tucking me into bed like my mother should have done, had she known or even cared. The time on my phone told me that it was nearly lunch. There were no messages from Dad. He’d promised that he would call me if he found Wizard but there was always the chance that he didn’t want to wake me. That Wizard was standing down in the barn like the storm had never even happened.

  Pulling on a semi clean pair of jeans and a sweater, I rushed down the stairs and out into the cold day. I felt like I was burning up from the inside out and I’d started to cough, a hacking cough that made it so that I couldn’t catch air. Even now, breathing in the coldness caused a coughing fit that had me bending over just so that I could breathe. I clutched the frame of the door until I could catch my breath again. It scared me but not as much as the fact that Wizard had vanished.

  Bluebird and the others were out grazing. I hadn’t even checked my pony to make sure that he was okay but somehow I knew that he was. It was Wizard who wasn’t. I found Cat in the barn grooming Phoenix. She looked up when I came in.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I shouldn’t have slept so long.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cat said.

  “Is he okay?” I asked, leaning on the panels that we’d set up in the barn last night. “He’s not sick, is he?”

  “He’s fine,” she said, patting the foal. “And the others are too. You don’t look so hot though.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, choking back a cough.

  “You don’t sound fine,” she said.

  “Where is Dad?” I asked.

  “He’s still out looking,” she said, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “I heard from him about an hour ago and he still hadn’t found the horse.”

  I sat down on a bale of hay feeling like I was going to puke. Cat came out of the pen and sat down next to me.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll find him. Wizard will be okay.”

  “I don’t think he will be,” I said and burst into tears.

  Cat sat there with her arm around me. It was like the old Cat all over again. She’d left mean, cool Cat whose friends nearly killed me and Rose behind at school and now she was the Cat I knew and was starting to love like a sister. She helped out around the farm and liked playing with the foal and might even start to ride if we could find the right horse for her. I knew that she was battling her own demons just like I was, trying to decide whether to grow up cool and hip or stay a nerdy outcast. I knew that she still hadn’t made up her mind but for now I didn’t care because for now she was here with me and that meant a lot. I didn’t have many people in my life but Cat was becoming an important one.

  We sat there for a while until I stopped crying and started shivering again. Cat touched my forehead like my father had done.

  “You have a fever,” she said, shaking her head. “You should go back to bed. I can make you some soup if you like. I can’t make it from scratch but I know how to use a microwave.” She grinned.

  I was about to say that some chicken soup didn’t sound so bad after all when there was a crunch of tires outside and the rumble of a truck and trailer.

  “It’s Dad,” I cried. “He must have found him otherwise he wouldn’t be back so soon.”

  I jumped up and ran outside, Cat following close behind me.

  The truck was splashed with mud and it was streaked all down the sides of the trailer. I don’t know where Dad had been but obviously he’d been looking in places where trucks and trailers weren’t meant to go. He got out of the truck looking weary.

  “You found him, right?” I said, bouncing on my heels and trying to see into the trailer. “Is he okay?”

  Dad shook his head. “I di
dn’t find him,” he said.

  “That’s a joke,” I said. “You’re just messing with me, aren't you? You found him down the lane or out on the fields by the trail. He was probably just grazing on a lush patch of grass. Right?” My voice wobbled and I suddenly realized that Cat was holding my hand, a gesture so sweet and touching that I wanted to cry again.

  “I’m sorry Emily,” he said. “But I haven’t given up. I’m going back out again and I won’t stop until we find him but I really think you need to let Jordan know.”

  “I can’t,” I whispered. “He’ll hate me forever.”

  “He has a right to know that his horse is missing,” Dad said. “And he can help us look. It’s only fair. You’d want to know if your horse was missing, wouldn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “And the longer we don’t tell him, the more guilty we look,” Dad said.

  “But we didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “It was the storm.”

  “I know,” Dad said. “But I don’t think Taylor will see it that way.”

  “We’ll find him,” Cat said. “I’ll help look too.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  But I felt defeated. Looking for a loose horse on your property was one thing. Looking for a horse that had escaped and was loose out in the big wide world was something else entirely. I felt a black wave of hopelessness wash over me and I started to cough. It caught in my throat and I couldn’t catch any air. Dad rushed to my side, patting me on the back but I wasn’t choking on food or water. It was the feeling of guilt, lodged in my throat and the fact that I was sick. Really sick.

  “We should get her inside,” I heard Cat say and then everything went black.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I drifted in and out of consciousness, sick and delirious. Cat brought me soup but I could barely swallow any because my throat felt like it had a thousand razor blades lodged in it. She encouraged me to take sips of water or tea but I couldn’t really eat or drink and I didn’t want to anyway. I wanted to be out there looking for Wizard.

  Dad had carried me up the stairs and plonked me down on my bed and Cat had strict instructions not to let me out of my room. I’d been forced to swallow a sticky sweet medicine that tasted of moldy cherries and after that I slept for a while but I didn't want to sleep. That was where the nightmares waited for me. I wanted to be out there looking for Wizard and I wanted to tell Jordan. I just didn’t know how.

  It was later in the day when I heard a soft knock at the door. I’d been drifting in and out of a dream where Bluebird and I were chasing after Wizard. He was fast, a black streak galloping over the fields and leaping streams but we were faster. We’d almost caught him when the knock woke me up.

  “Yes?” I said through a coughing fit.

  I thought it was my mother, maybe coming to show me some sympathy or bring me some more soup. I hadn’t seen her since I’d been banished to my room and I thought that at least maybe she would have come to check on me but she probably believed that I’d brought this on myself and therefore deserved no pity from her. I was used to it by now but it didn’t make it hurt any less.

  But it wasn’t my mother, or Cat or my father for that matter. It was Jordan, his hair ruffled and a worried look on his face.

  “Hey,” he said softly, sticking his head around the door. “I heard you were sick. Can I come in?”

  “Do you know?” I whispered, my voice scratchy and thin. “Do you know about Wizard?”

  “Yes,” he said, coming into the room. “I know.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I gulped and then burst into tears.

  I hated myself for crying in front of him but I was tired and weak. I couldn’t hold it back and I felt like a fool for being confined to my bed when all I really wanted was to be out there looking for Wizard. I told Jordan so through three coughing fits. He sat on the edge of the bed and let me get it all off my chest and then he handed me a tissue.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said gently. “You didn’t know what was going to happen.”

  “I should have made my father give him a stall,” I said. “Or sat down in the barn and held him.”

  “It’s really my fault,” Jordan said, looking at his feet. “I should have looked at the weather. I could have brought him today instead, after the storm.”

  “I called you,” I said, vaguely remembering that I’d tried to get hold of Jordan. “I tried to get you to come and pick him back up but you didn’t answer. You didn’t return my calls.”

  “I was in the middle of a giant fight with my mother. She wasn’t too happy that I’d brought Wizard here in the first place and there was no way I was going to be able to come and get him and bring him back there.”

  “Well she’ll kill us now that we’ve gone and lost him,” I said.

  “She doesn’t know.” Jordan shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Please don’t tell her,” I begged him. “We’ll find Wizard. He can’t have gone far. I know we will get him back.”

  “I know you will.” Jordan said but he didn’t sound like he believed me.

  The world was a dangerous place for a loose horse full of roads and cars, strange places and poisonous plants. Plus shady people who might just see a wild horse and decide to claim him for their own and not bother and report that they had found him.

  “I need to get out there and start looking again,” I said.

  I pushed off the covers and jumped out of bed but the room started to spin and I lost my balance. Jordan caught me in his arms. For a moment we stood there, me holding onto him so that I wouldn’t fall, feeling for the first time how safe I felt in his arms.

  “You need to stay in bed,” he said. “I’m going back out to look. Your father is out there with Cat. Between the three of us we’ll find him. He can’t have gone far. I’m sure he’s probably just grazing in someone’s front yard.”

  “Do you really think so?” I said.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  He tucked me back into bed and made me take more of the gross medicine. My eyes were already closing as he started to leave and I realized that he’d just seen me at my worst. My hair was like a bird’s nest, all tangles and knots. I was wearing mismatched pajamas that Cat had found in the back of my closet because they were the only clean ones I had left and I was pale and sick and disgusting. Jordan would probably never want to see me again and he definitely wouldn’t want to see me again if we didn’t find his horse.

  “I’ll be back later,” he said.

  Then he leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. I wasn’t sure if his visit had been a dream or not.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Later I got up, wrapped my big puffy dressing gown around my still shivering body and went downstairs. I’d hoped that Dad and Cat would be back. That they’d tell me they’d found Wizard but the only person in the kitchen was my mother, looking more lost and confused than usual.

  “Are they back?” I asked her.

  “What?” she said, looking at me with a blank expression.

  “Are Dad and Cat back,” I said again, this time slower and a little more annoyed.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  I went to the window and looked outside. The truck and trailer weren’t there. They weren’t back yet and that meant the horses needed their dinner. I left my mother staring out the window and went back up to change into jeans and a sweatshirt. Just because I was sick, didn’t mean that there wasn’t work to be done. Horses didn’t care if you had a cough or a fever or were possibly dying. All they knew was that it was time for their grain and hay and that they needed their water buckets filled and stalls cleaned. I got to work doing all of that but it took five times as long because my arms and legs felt all weak and rubbery and every now and then the world would start to spin and I'd have to sit down. Plus the coughing fits didn’t exactly help.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I told Bluebird as I tipped his grain into his bucket.

&nb
sp; I examined my horses as they ate, scanning their legs for cuts or swelling, their sides for lumps or bumps but they all seemed to have made it through the storm unscathed except for some rather tangled manes and tails that would need a lot of work to get back up to show quality. When I tossed the hay over the fence they all trotted off, fighting over the piles until they settled down. It gave me a chance to watch and see if they were lame. They weren’t. At least that was something to be grateful for.

  I had cleaned all the stalls and was picking out the makeshift pen when I heard the truck pull in. It was almost dark. Chantilly and Bandit were bored. They wanted out of the pen and back into their paddock. Phoenix didn’t seem to care. He’d probably been traumatized by his night of adventure and would grow into one of those horses that hated thunder storms. But for now they had to stay inside anyway because no one had been around to fix their paddock. Maybe I should have asked Jordan to do it, if he’d really been here at all.

  I climbed out of the pen and stood there, trying to catch my breath. The coughing made it feel like my lungs were full of water. I didn’t know why I’d got so sick when the others were fine. I listened to them get out of the truck. One door closed with a bang, then the second one. I waited for the ramp to be let down on the trailer and for Wizard to skitter down it and let out a whinny. I willed it so hard that I almost believed that it happened but it didn’t. Instead Cat and my father walked into the barn looking defeated.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” Dad said.

  “I’m better,” I lied. “You didn’t find him?”

  “We really tried,” Cat said. “We looked everywhere.”

  “Well he can’t have just vanished off the face of the earth,” I said, starting to get annoyed. “How hard can it be to find a loose horse?”

  “There are trails and fields and woods all around,” Dad said. “He could be anywhere.”

  “Well what if someone stole him?” I said. “What then?”

  “We don’t know that,” Dad said. “We just have to keep looking.”

  “And if we never find him?” I said.

  “Things like that don’t happen,” Dad said. “Horses don’t just disappear.”