Hunter Derby: (Show Circuit Series -- Book 3) (12 page)

That’s when she heard the unmistakable voice of Donnie behind her.

“Lock up your tack trunks, people,” he said loud enough for everyone in the general vicinity of the in-gate, and probably the schooling area too, to hear. “Zoe Tramell’s back in town.”

Zoe felt all the air go out of her lungs. Leave it to Donnie to be the one person who could cut her to the core. The one person who would sharply remind her of where she’d come from and what she’d done.

For a short happy time, she’d thought she could move on from what had happened during circuit. She had thought that others were willing to let her move on.

Not Donnie.

He wanted to make her remember, and make everyone else remember too.

She racked her brain to think of a cutting comeback. Something she could say to neutralize the uncomfortable situation. She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it but she swore she heard a few chuckles behind her.

She had nothing. No smart comeback.

Her throat had that fuzzy feeling when tears are building up.

John came to stand next to Zoe, facing her, his hand on Gidget’s neck. “That guy’s an asshole and if you want me to fight him I will.”

She had been about to cry, but now she burst out laughing. The preposterous image of John fighting Donnie, here at the in-gate, flashed through her mind.

“You don’t think I can take him down?” John pretended to look hurt. “Because I can. Right here, right now.”

“He’s not worth it,” Zoe said, a few drops of moisture slipping from the corner of her eyes.

John made a fist and exaggerated a severe face. “You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure, but thank you,” she said.

She could have thrown her arms around him. She could have even kissed him. For saving her with a few joking words.

For making her see that Donnie wasn’t worth it.

“When do you want to go?” John asked her.

“First,” Zoe said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The second years wrapped up and the jump crew hustled out to hike the jumps and rake in front of them. Zoe and John headed out to the schooling area. John commandeered one of the jumps; Donnie had the other.

Now he was using his physical presence to intimidate her. Earlier it would have worked. She might have fallen to pieces.

But not now.

Not with John on her side.

Let him be a prick,
she thought to herself.
I’m not going to let him get to me.

Alison Raynes was riding for Donnie now. She was a good rider, not amazing, but solidly good. She was in her mid-thirties and had bounced around from barn to barn since she’d been a junior. She was probably sleeping with Donnie too, although Zoe didn’t know that for sure.

It was amazing Donnie got anyone to sleep with him but that was the horse show world for you. You could be crass, and not very attractive, and still get laid regularly. If more men knew what it was like they’d take up riding instead of golf.

“Where the hell did you come from?” Zoe heard him say to John. “East butt-fuck nowhere?”

“Bedford, New York,” John answered flatly.

“You know about this girl?” he stabbed a finger in Zoe’s direction where she was cantering Gidget around.

“You’re acting like a dick,” John said. “And we need to warm-up. So, let’s just agree to not talk and both focus on our jobs.”

“Do you know who I am?” Donnie said.

“I don’t really care who you are,” John replied.

Zoe was coming around the corner. She hadn’t planned to jump quite yet but she decided the best thing to shut Donnie up was to get jumping so she cantered down to the low ramp oxer John had set up. It was either that or run Donnie over, which did sound appealing. She maneuvered a half-turn and John put the back rail up a hole so she could jump it the other way. Mercifully, Donnie shut the hell up for the rest of the warm up.

“She looks ready,” John said after Zoe finished over a tall vertical.

“She feels good,” Zoe agreed.

Donnie finished right after her and trailed her to the in-gate.

The ring sat empty. The course ready. Zoe just hoped the judge hadn’t taken this moment to take a walk to the blue room.

“They ready for me, Kevin?” Zoe called out to the in-gate guy as John quickly wiped off her boots and Gidget’s mouth, and slapped on the hoof oil.

“Yup, head on in.”

John had barely finished taking off Gidget’s tail wrap as Zoe nudged her into the ring. She had to pass by the judge’s booth on her way to the first jump, a single coming home, and she smiled and said a polite hello.

Then she kicked Gidget into a canter and nailed the course. Not a distance one hair off. Not a jump that Gidget didn’t show endless scope over.

Zoe came out of the ring acting calm and composed when all she could think in her head was,
take that, Donnie
. John looked a little shell-shocked, like maybe he couldn’t believe that this was his horse or that a rider like Zoe was riding his horse.

“Wow,” he said.

“She went well, huh?” Zoe said.

“Yeah,” he said.

Her second round was just as breathtaking. She got the top call in both classes, beating out Donnie’s horse. Leading the jog, having her name announced—
Zoe Tramell up for the ride on John Bradstreet’s Girl Next Door
—being handed the blue ribbons, never felt so good.

Donnie glared at her as she came out of the ring, but didn’t say anything besides a few mumbled swears.

“I think you’ve got a really nice horse on your hands,” Zoe told John on the walk back to the tents.

“It wasn’t
just
the horse,” he said. “I thought you rode well at home but, well, I don’t know, it’s different in the ring. You’ve got this like, presence. It was pretty freaking awesome to be a part of, even if I’m a super small part of it.”

“First of all, you’re not just a small part of it. You’re a big part of it. What you said to Donnie Douchebag? You saved me.”

John blew out a forced breath. “That guy’s a total asshole.”

Outside their stalls, Zoe hopped off, ran up the stirrups, and loosened the girth. John took the reins over Gidget’s head. He was about to walk the mare into the aisle, when Zoe said, “What Donnie was saying . . . about the saddles. Did you know about all that already? Did you know that stuff about me?”

“I read something about it in
The Chronicle
, yeah, but I guess I don’t know the whole thing.”

“I’ll tell you everything sometime, okay?” Zoe said.

“Only if you want to,” he said.

Gidget won both over fences classes the next day and was third in the hack, making it quite the debut. Nearly immediately Zoe started fielding questions about her—where she’d come from, what had she done, was she for sale?

Zoe told John people were asking about her.

“For real?”

“For realsies,” she said. She could tell he was grateful that the mare was getting some exposure. But soon after that, he wasn’t happy with her at all. It started when he showed Cruz in the jumpers. Cruz was wild, running at the jumps, and seeming to not care the slightest if John took a hold of him.

“Looks like someone needs a little dental work,” Zoe joked to John. “A little floating action.”

“What are you talking about?” John said.

“I mean take him home and rip his teeth out over a few jumps,” Zoe said. “Get him to listen to you.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” John said, giving her a disapproving look.

“It’s not like it’s abuse or anything,” she said in her defense.

“Depends on who you ask,” John countered.

“You’re acting like it’s all terrible and I’m horrible for just saying the horse needs a bit of a school.”

“Your idea of a bit of a school and mine appear to be different.”

“That’s how things are done at big barns,” Zoe pointed out.

“I guess that’s why I’m not a big barn.”

“Okay,” Zoe said. “Whatever. It’s your horse.”

John brought Gidget home and Linda trucked Dakota’s horses in. It was their first time out since Florida and they were all fresh too. Zoe had to do some extra schooling sessions to get them quiet. The only exception, of course, was Midway, who was never not calm.

Zoe told Linda how John had been all natural horsemanship. “He acted all holier than thou when I was just saying the horse needed a good school.” Zoe couldn’t help but think about how John didn’t know the first thing about what it took to win on the circuit.

Linda had Dakota ride Dudley for her first time out since Florida and let a working student for Hugo Fines ride Plato. Hugo was pretty much the top equitation trainer in the country, and one of the winningest trainers, period. His farm, Autumn Ridge, was a huge operation with multiple trainers and multiple billion-dollar clients. Dakota got good ribbons with Dudley and Plato went well for the boy too.

Midway ended up champion in the younger large juniors since some of the fancier horses were fresh too, spooking at a shadow or playing in the corner of the ring.

The following week, John brought Gidget back again, this time with the plan of doing the derby. She was champion again in the high performance working hunters and John and Zoe talked about going out to celebrate. Linda said she would go but, later in the day, she said she was much too tired and her back killed and she’d have to take a rain check.

The restaurant was quiet and intimate, with only fifteen tables. The food was artistic-looking and delicious. It was definitely a place people came on dates. “I’m sure the waiter thinks we’re on a date,” Zoe said to John out of nervousness. She hadn’t thought she’d be here without Linda.

“Do you usually only date guys on the show circuit?” John asked.

“It’s kind of hard not to,” she said. “I don’t meet many people who aren’t show people. What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”

He hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend and there had been no telltale signs of one (lock screen photos of the two of them, hair elastics, and other female paraphernalia in his car). This seemed like a good moment to find out. Even if she was keeping it platonic, she still wanted to know.

“No, not now. I was dating someone for a while but it didn’t work out.”

“Horse girl?”

He nodded. “We met in college before I dropped out. We rode on the team together.”

“Is she still in horses?”

“No, she’s taking a break. She’s in law school in Boston.”

“Got it. So was it the long distance thing that killed it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. We were well matched, I would say, but there wasn’t ever, like, tons of passion.”

Zoe rearranged her fork and knife. “She wasn’t good in bed?”

John took a sip of his beer, looking like he was caught off guard. “I didn’t say that exactly.”

“It feels like that’s what you meant.”

“I just meant there wasn’t much chemistry between us. I think we were just better off being friends. What about you? Boyfriend?”

“No, not now. I’m not usually very good at relationships.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t want one. I guess I don’t pick guys that make good boyfriends. Like Donnie. You must think I’m like the worst person for having been involved with him.”

“I guess I just have to wonder why . . . like what was up with that?”

“I was working for him. We were winning a lot. That can be kind of intoxicating, I guess you’d say? I think I just got caught up in it all. One night it just sort of happened, and then, well, I guess this is where I tell you everything that happened . . .”

Zoe inhaled sharply and let it out. “Okay, I mean you probably know a lot of this already but Donnie treated me like shit, like really badly, abusively badly. But of course I didn’t leave him. At the same time I got involved with this other guy, who worked for Arouet, you know the custom saddle place.

“He was into drugs—using and selling. I helped him get the gate numbers to farms and numbers to tack room locks and he stole the saddles. I never went with him or got any of the money.”

Zoe realized she was avoiding taking responsibility—something she’d talked about with her counselor just last week.

“But I helped him do it by giving him the access so I was a participant in it. Finally, I went to the police and I turned him in. I got off with probation, court-ordered therapy, and community service—that’s why I’m at Narrow Lane.”

Zoe felt like she’d just got off her eighth ride of the day. Her arms and legs felt wobbly, even though she was sitting down. But she had said it. She had confessed everything. Well, everything except the part about her being bipolar. Maybe that would make what happened more understandable but she didn’t want to tell him just yet. She was still coming to terms with the label herself.

“Wow,” John said. “That’s some crazy stuff.”

“It’s worse than you thought, right? Like now you don’t want me to ride your horse? You’re scared I’m going to steal your stuff?”

“Of course not,” John said, but he looked away from her a little too quickly.

“I’m trying to do better now. To make better choices. I was in a really bad place back then and things are much better now.
I’m
much better now.”

“I have something I should tell you,” John said.

Zoe rubbed her hands together. “I hope it’s juicy.” She couldn’t for the life of her imagine what kind of secret John had to reveal to her, unless he was gay after all, which would be a real shame. But nothing about him seemed gay and he’d just confessed to having a girlfriend, although the sex hadn’t been great.

“You’re gay,” she blurted out.

John had been leaning in and he pulled back abruptly. “What? You think I’m gay? Do I seem gay to you?”

“I don’t know, I just figured . . .”

“I’m not gay,” John said. “Why does every guy who rides have to be accused of being gay? It’s like if you’re straight and you ride you have to spend half your life proving you’re not gay.”