High Hurdles Collection Two (61 page)

“Thank you.” Only as he finished speaking did DJ put a face to the memory. The man who'd said she needed a decent horse.

Joe winked at her.

“I plan to keep on working hard.” DJ watched him walk away. She sure did plan on continuing to work hard. They'd clicked; she'd gotten it. She finally understood what Bridget and John and Jackie had been talking about.

Wait until Bridget heard this story. If only she'd been here today. But more of the Academy kids were showing at another show, and she'd felt she needed to be there. Brad had missed it, too. What a story she had to tell.

“Joe, I've been thinking.” They had unloaded the horses back at Briones and finished the evening chores. DJ slammed the truck door behind her. She and Joe ambled up the curved front walk to DJ's house, where all the others had gathered for a barbecue.

“Uh-oh, I know that tone of voice. What now?”

“You know, now that Shawna and her mom and dad are moved in …”

Shawna was DJ's nine-year-old cousin, daughter of Joe's younger son, Andy. They had bought DJ's old house.

“What do you think of me giving Major to Shawna? She's lighter and has no dream of showing and for sure not jumping. She needs a horse and Major needs …”

“Major needs to be needed. I think that's a fine idea. You can pasture him either here or at my house so you have him, too.”

“I thought of that.”

Joe put an arm around her shoulders. “Darla Jean Randall, you are one amazing kid—er, young woman, and I am proud to know you.”

“Thanks, same to you.”

“You've been letting go of a lot these last months.”

“Yeah, right. Letting go of school, letting go of free time …”

“Smart aleck.” He opened the door and ushered her in. “Hey, everybody, we're home.”

“Billy, what happened to you?” DJ gasped at the sight of one of the twins.

“I let go too soon and fell off General.” He put his hand to the goose egg on his forehead. “Daddy says I gots to hang on better.”

DJ scooped him up in her arms and kissed his forehead. “So you've got to hang on longer, and I've got to let go sooner. Let's eat, I'm starved.”

“And then we have fireworks.” Billy put his palms on either side of DJ's face.

“I guess. What's the Fourth of July without sparklers? But you have to be careful.”

Billy nodded. “We's always careful.”

DJ shook her head and let him slide to the ground. “Yeah, right. And I'm Ronald McDonald.” The three of them laughed their way into the house.

 

To Lee Roddy,
mentor and friend.
You have influenced so many writers lives
and thereby untold millions.
Thanks for the challenge, the push,
and the encouragement.
I thank our God that I met you
when I did—
in the beginning
.

Chapter • 1

I hate chewing dirt
.

Darla Jean Randall brushed the dust off her jeans and glared at Herndon, her Thoroughbred/warmblood jumper. The 16.2-hand bay, so dark brown he was nearly black except for the few white hairs that formed a whorl between his eyes, looked down at her as if to shrug. She could read “Not my fault” in every line of his classy body. He reached forward to sniff her shoulder.

“No, it doesn't hurt—right now, anyway—thank you very much.” DJ, as everyone but her mother and grandmother called her, felt like pushing him away or smacking him, but she knew neither would do any good. The fall was her own fault, plain and simple. Riding Herndon took every ounce of her concentration and then some. She'd been so careful to keep him from running out that when he quit, she catapulted over the jump without him. And here she'd been patting herself on the back for finally working well with him.

As Gran often quoted,
“Pridegoeth before a fall.”

And, as of right now, her pride was definitely smarting. Her shoulder should have been used to the permanent bruise by now.

“Whenever you are ready.” Bridget Sommersby, former member of the French Equestrian Team and DJ's coach, mentor, employer, and friend, called from the center of the jumping ring, where she waited patiently.

DJ nodded, straightened her helmet, and gathering her reins, mounted again. “Now, get this straight, big horse: We, that is you and me together,
we are
going to jump this next round with no running out, no halts, and no hesitation. You got that?”

Herndon shook his head, sending his short mane fluffing in the breeze. Ears pricked, he trotted forward at her signal. As DJ had already learned, Herndon didn't hold a grudge for her mistakes. But he wasn't the forgiving horse Major had been, either. Jackie described Major as push-button because he was so willing.

Herndon was anything but push-button, and Major … well, after that accident in the show-ring, Major would never jump again. Sometimes DJ missed riding her first horse so much she could taste the tears that she refused to let fall. Major was healing faster than the vet had predicted, but his show days were over. DJ's biological father, Brad Atwood, and his wife, Jackie, had given DJ Herndon in Major's place.

DJ signaled a canter and headed straight for the fence she'd just sailed over by herself.
Three, two, one, lift-off
. The thrill of being airborne for that brief instant never failed her. After a perfect touchdown, they aimed for the in and out.
“Look to the base of the next jump, keep him between your hands and legs …”
She could hear Bridget as if she said the words right in her ear.

DJ felt the big horse hesitate at the approach, but she drove him forward.
You have to ride him aggressively. When you learn to do that consistently, your jumping career will really be under way
. Since DJ planned a long and illustrious jumping career, including becoming a member of the United States Equestrian Team—or USET, as the horse world called the team—she took Bridget's advice to heart.

DJ's hands followed up Herndon's neck as he thrust off for the brush jump. He cleared it with air to spare and when he landed, snorted as if to say, “See, I knew we could do it.” DJ could feel the grin stretch her cheeks. Man, oh man, flying like this was better than anything else in the entire world.

“All right, now repeat the round again just like this one, and then you can put him away.”

DJ nodded to Bridget and did as she was told.
Three, two, one, liftoff
. Seven times they repeated the sequence, and at the end of the round, DJ patted Herndon's sweaty neck. “Good job, fella. I get the feeling you thought those weren't big enough to bother with, but we don't get the big ones until we get over our mistakes—before they become bad habits.” DJ could feel the sweat trickling down her back and from her armpits. She'd switched her jumping time until after dinner to be out of the heat of the July days. Late July in Pleasant Hill, California, could be hot in the daytime, but it usually cooled off at night. Today, however, she'd gone back to a late-afternoon lesson so she could get home early.

DJ glanced at her watch. “Thanks, Bridget. I gotta run. We're having the Double Bs' birthday tonight. They think turning six is almost as good as ice cream.”

“How are their riding lessons coming?” Bridget wiped a trickle of moisture from her forehead.

“ ‘No fear' is their middle name. They love to ride, and General is one cool pony. He's their real teacher, not me. I just give instructions.” DJ wished she could deal with her own fear as well as her stepbrothers did with theirs. She and Gran had contracted to pray about DJ's fear of fire, but so far she hadn't noticed any change.

DJ dismounted and walked beside Bridget back to the barn.

“Are you all ready for the USET camp?”

“I guess.”

“You do not sound too sure.”

“I know.” DJ nibbled on her bottom lip. Should she fess up?

“Something is bothering you?”

“It's just that … well, Herndon and I … we …”

“Are not a team yet?”

“I guess. I don't want to look like an idiot, you know? What if he acts crazy or something?”

“ ‘Something' meaning running out on you?”

“Uh-huh.” Now she did feel like an idiot. “Or quitting like he did today.”

“DJ, jumping horses is not an exact science. That is part of the thrill of it—so many variables. You do your best and keep on learning. That is all anyone can ask of you, including yourself.”

DJ heard the warning behind the mild words. Learning not to beat up on herself was one of her hardest lessons.

“You will do fine.” Bridget patted her student's shoulder. “Remember, you can ride the school horses any time you want. The more horses you ride and the more time you spend in the saddle, the better. That will always sharpen your skills.”

“Thanks, Bridget.” Such simple words, and yet DJ meant them for much more than the offer of other mounts. No one had to remind her how fortunate she was to have started out with a teacher the quality of Bridget Sommersby.

DJ brushed Herndon down and led him out to the hot walker to cool down while she forked the fresh manure out of his stall, dumped in another wheelbarrow of clean shavings, and measured his grain.

On her way out to get her horse, DJ swung by Ranger's stall to check on him since GJ—short for Grandpa Joe—was at her house helping get ready for the big birthday party. Ranger nickered at DJ's approach, but the horse in the pen next to him only looked at her with little or no interest. Her heart clenched. The white horse that now occupied Major's old stall looked totally out of place. Her best friend should be there in the stall where he belonged instead of grazing contentedly in Joe's pasture.

DJ stroked Ranger's sorrel face before getting the fork and tossing out the dirty shavings. When the horses were taken care of, she waved good-bye to several of the riders in the covered arena and picked up her bike from where it leaned against the barn wall. She flung her leg over the seat and pumped up the rise to Reliez Valley Road. She pumped hard, knowing that her mother would be getting impatient. And DJ still had the boys' presents to wrap.

DJ could hear the twins shrieking with laughter in the backyard when she parked her bike in the three-car garage. “I'm home,” she called, taking the stairs to her room three at a time. “Oh, fiddle.” Her room wore the transformed look that said Maria had been busy. While DJ usually kept up her own room, this morning she'd been running behind schedule and was barely ready herself when Gran came to pick her up for summer school. The two of them were taking a ceramics class at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, not far from where they lived. Maria had been the boys' nanny before DJ's mother, Lindy, and Robert Crowder were married. Now the young Hispanic woman was their housekeeper, cook, nanny, and whatever-needs-doing person. But cleaning DJ's room was
not
on her list of responsibilities.

DJ and her mother were getting along better than they had in their entire lives, but since Lindy had become pregnant, sometimes things got a little bit tense. Maria doing DJ's work could cause definite tension.