Hunter Derby: (Show Circuit Series -- Book 3) (17 page)

Zoe scanned back through the article to reread the quotations about her, especially the one where Arnie said she rode Gidget great and that she was talented. It felt like he was speaking to her through the magazine, encouraging her.

Like so many of the judges on the circuit, he had known her forever, and he’d always liked her. He’d judged several big classes she’d won as a junior, including Junior Hunter Finals and one year at Washington when she was named Best Child Rider.

Too often she felt like the horse show world was against her, like people even wanted her to fail. Maybe that was just her projecting her own fears on them, her own worries about her self-worth—something her counselor had brought up to her—but it was reassuring to know that at least Arnie was rooting for.

And then there was what John had said about her. She glanced back over his words and let herself bask in them.

“Well?” Linda said.

Zoe had nearly forgotten Linda was still standing there, waiting for her to finish reading.

Linda readjusted her sunglasses on her head. “Pretty good, huh?”

“Really nice,” Zoe said. “I’m almost teary. What Arnie said? And John?”

“Did you want them to write about the saddle stuff?” Linda asked.

“Yeah, I told the reporter it was fine. I guess I’ve decided I’d rather own up to things than try to hide them, you know?”

Linda gritted her teeth. “Yeah, I wish I could take a lesson from you . . .”

“You still haven’t told him?”

“I’m going to. In Lake Placid. I’m telling him like first thing.” Linda motioned to the magazine. “That was the right thing to do.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said. “That means a lot to me coming from you.”

“Coming from the woman who won’t tell her boyfriend she’s pregnant with his child?” Linda joked.

“Well, there is that . . ..”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

And then there were the shows everyone looked forward to each year. Lake Placid was one of those shows.

You had the sheer beauty of the mountains surrounding you and there was also the charming town full of stores selling carved moose and bear decorations, maple syrup and maple syrup candy, chocolates in the shape of moose and bears, and red flannel pajamas.

Horse show people didn’t tend to vacation much, so shows like Lake Placid took on double duty. They were busman’s holidays.

Even if you didn’t ever walk around Mirror Lake, hike the trails on Whiteface Mountain, or take the elevator to the top of the Olympic ski jump, you still felt as if you benefitted subliminally from those activities. You knew you could have done those things, and maybe would next year.

Restaurants abounded, as did bars. It wasn’t just the horse show people that were in the bars either; hockey teams came to train at the Olympic Center. Bars and other athletes letting loose were often a dangerous combination, for junior riders especially.
Lake Plastered
, people had taken to calling the show years ago. As Zoe drove behind John pulling the trailer, she thought back to a crazy night with a hotshot young hockey player from Toronto.

John had never been to Lake Placid and Zoe felt like she was showing him a national monument. She hoped he’d think it was as great as she did, that he’d see it the same way she did. After they’d gotten the horses unloaded and settled in, she flooded him with information, rattling off restaurant names and things to do as if she was a tour guide.

She’d only done half of the things she mentioned herself but the way she said them made it seem like all anyone ever did in Lake Placid was go on excursions. She pointed out the ski jumps, which were visible from the show grounds on a clear day.

John seemed suitably impressed but at the same time more concerned with the show schedule, eager to map out what Gidget, Cruz, and Dibs would do each day. They had the use of Linda’s golf cart when she didn’t need it and Zoe had also picked up an old mountain bike with a free sign on it she’d seen on the side of the road back home so she wouldn’t have to hoof it between the barn and the rings. Her bike wasn’t glamorous but it beat walking.

Once the horses had all been ridden and the following day’s schedule mapped out on the whiteboard, John and Zoe drove over to the hotel in their separate cars. John had made the hotel arrangements. Linda had told John the Pearces would pay half of Zoe’s room since she was also working for them. Linda and Dakota were sharing a condo with a friend of Dakota’s. Linda had said if they hadn’t arranged the condo so far ahead of time they would have definitely planned for an extra room for Zoe. Most years she had stayed in condos with families that rode with Jamie.

Zoe worried all John could afford would be a super low budget motor lodge by the side of the road with crusty carpets and hair in the tub, but it was a Hampton Inn. Nothing amazing, but hopefully it would be sanitary.

She pulled her two bags out of the backseat and they headed into the lobby. There was a line at the counter, including a mom with a pony rider in breeches. Zoe stood slightly off to the side so no one might mistake her and John for a couple.

A few minutes passed as the people in front of them checked in. Zoe noticed packs of men and women in casual business attire flowing through the lobby. Zoe recalled that there was a big conference center in Lake Placid. One year there had been tons of people from a conference on STDs. That had provided fodder for lots of jokes at the horse show.

John was now talking to the person behind the desk.

“We have you down for one room,” Zoe heard the young man, probably recently graduated from college with a degree in hotel management, say.

“No, two rooms. Bradstreet. Two rooms.”

Zoe pivoted back to look at the front desk.

“Let me check again for you, Mr. Bradstreet,” the man said, leaning close to the computer. His nametag pinned to his cheap suit jacket said Travis. “I’m sorry but I only have the one room.”

“Okay, well, that doesn’t matter,” John told Travis. “Can you just get us another room so we have two rooms?”

Zoe could hear John’s voice turning tense. He was probably feeling badly. He wasn’t paying her to ride—the least he could do was not screw up the room arrangements.

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re all booked. We have a dental association here for the next several days and then a teacher’s group coming in for continuing education.”

“You’re all booked, totally full, not one other room available?” John said, his voice now somewhere between suspicious and angry.

“Not one room. You can call around to other hotels in the area . . .”

Zoe stepped forward. “It’s fine, really,” she said to John. “Does the room have two beds?” she asked Travis.

“Yes, two beds,” Travis replied. He looked happy Zoe had intervened but also like he was trying to figure out the relationship between them.

Zoe said, “It has two beds. What’s the big deal? Think of all the money you’ll save. We can go out to a nice dinner one night instead.”

Zoe didn’t even care about a nice dinner. She just wanted to make John less stressed.

“I can call around to other hotels,” John told her.

“Why bother? I’m fine with it so unless you’re not . . .”

It was a game of chicken now. He would have to be the one to say that it made him feel uncomfortable to sleep in the same room with her.

“It’s fine with me, too,” he said.

Travis was following their conversation with a hopeful expression. “So we’re all good?” he chanced to say.

Both Zoe and John said at the same time, “Yes.”

They rode the elevator with two women attending the dental conference. One held a three-ring binder with a photo on the front of smiling teeth without a face, an image that was meant to be whimsical yet looked slightly creepy. Zoe thought how strange the world was. You could go into the dental profession and spend your whole life looking into people’s mouths, or you could go into riding and spend your life on the back of a horse. Each world had its own in-crowd, its own lingo, its own culture.

The women stepped off at the second floor. At the fourth floor, Zoe pulled her rolling bag out with her other, smaller bag slung over her shoulder. “We can stay up late and do each other’s nails, watch chick-flicks, it’ll be a regular slumber party,” she joked.

“Are you really sure you’re okay with this?” John said as they arrived at the room and he was about to slide the credit card key through the slot.

“Should I not be? Are you going to have a hard time keeping your hands off me?” She meant to diffuse what was an awkward situation, but she realized as she said it, that it just made her feel more uncomfortable because she had come on to him that one night and he’d plainly turned her down.

“Yeah, it’s going to be brutal,” he said. “I’m gonna be walking around the room the whole time trying to hide my boner.”

She laughed, out of even more discomfort and because it was a slightly raunchy kind of humor she hadn’t expected from him. Maybe there was a whole other side to him she’d be coming to know.

She worried it might just make her like him even more.

“Yeah, right,” she said, laughing it off.

He slid the key through and the light blinked green. The door opened on a not terribly large room with, as promised, the two beds. Why did the beds seem so close to each other?

She deposited her shoulder bag on a chair and wheeled her bigger bag against the wall. She and Jed had stayed together in hotel rooms plenty of times before but he was gay and that made it different. They
had
painted each other’s nails and watched chick-flicks. The only other men she’d been in hotel rooms with were the ones she slept with.

This was going to be different, but she would do her damnedest to act like it was the no big deal she claimed it was. Maybe it wouldn’t have been a big deal if she hadn’t come on to him that night, if there wasn’t a part of her that still wondered whether there could be something between them.

“I’m starving,” John said. “How about dinner? Or do you have people you want to catch up with?”

A few of the people she’d seen had casually told her, “Let’s grab dinner,” but so far the texts weren’t flying in.

“I’m up for dinner. I’ll just take a quick shower.”

“Cool. I’ll meet you in the lobby. I’m going to go check out the gym.”

Maybe he actually was going to work out while they were there, or he was just trying to make things more comfortable by getting out of the room while Zoe showered. She put on real clothes (nothing too nice—this wasn’t a date, after all) and met him back in the lobby. They took his truck and settled on a casual restaurant. Afterward Zoe took John to the popcorn place and they looked at all the crazy flavors and shared a bag of kettle corn.

As they walked out of the store, John said, “I just don’t get who buys beer-flavored popcorn.”

“Or dill pickle,” Zoe added, offering John the bag.

“I like beer but I don’t want beer popcorn.”

“I know,” Zoe said. “I like pickles but I don’t want pickle popcorn.”

They stopped in at the show after dinner to check on the horses. Zoe loved the quiet of the tent at night—the horses munching hay or resting with their heads low. Gidget had her butt to the door and didn’t make any movements to turn and face them, or even acknowledge their existence when they said hello to her.

“I like the horses that want to curl up in your lap,” John said. “I know she’s talented and I’m the one who bought her but I wish she’d be a little less prickly.”

“Don’t listen to him, Girl,” Zoe said to the mare. “You just keep doing your thing because it’s totally working for you.”

Zoe opened the stall door and confidently moved to stand closer to Gidget’s neck. Gidget trusted her now—she seemed to understand Zoe was on her side and would never punish her for being ornery.

Gidget pinned her ears back and gave Zoe a sidelong glare.

“There’s my girl,” Zoe said. “Just wanted to make sure you were still alive in there.”

She held out a few mints she’d pocketed from the hostess stand at the restaurant. Gidget gobbled them greedily, but wouldn’t offer any extra thanks—not a nudge with her nose, or a single lick of her tongue. They picked out the stalls, checked water buckets levels, and tossed each horse an extra flake of hay.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Zoe said to her. “Get your beauty sleep.”

Back at the hotel, she used the bathroom first. She took her medicine and made sure to stash the bottle deep in her toiletry kit so he wouldn’t see it. She wished she’d brought real pajamas instead of just a T-shirt and old leggings. She hadn’t thought she’d be sharing a room with him.

She and John passed on his way into the bathroom and her way to get into bed. The space between the foot of the beds and the dresser was narrow and Zoe had to turn sideways, just barely brushing up against him. They exchanged a quick, charged glance.

“Sorry,” John said. “Tight quarters.”

“You’re fine,” Zoe said, feeling heat rise up her cheeks.

She was looking at her phone, scrolling through her Instagram feed, when John came out of the bathroom.

She wished he didn’t look so good in his boxers and T-shirt. Right before he climbed into bed he pulled off his shirt. She glimpsed his chest, and a sprinkling of dark hair. She had to make herself stare at her phone.

How hard would it be to crawl into his bed? How could he possibly turn her down if she slipped off her own shirt and pressed herself against him?

No, she wouldn’t. No way.

“Good-night,” he said, turning off the one remaining light.

“Good-night. Hope your perpetual boner doesn’t keep you awake all night!”

It felt like a risky thing to say, like it might fall flat and reveal her as being totally inappropriate. But she went for it. Was it an invitation? Maybe.

But he didn’t seem tempted.

“I think I’ll be okay,” he replied.

She put down her phone, the ringer off, and turned on her side so she was facing the opposite direction of his bed. She stared at the dark room for a while, her eyes wide open, not sleepy in the slightest. She could hear him breathing and then his sheets rustle as he repositioned himself.