Dream On (Dare to Dream Book 2), page 27
Kris put her arm around her and gave her a hug. Gigi scrambled to her feet and shook wildly, sand and dust flying in a cloud around her. The little mare turned her head and looked at them with her ears pricked, her dark coat filled with sand.
“I’m sorry,” Kris told her sister. “If I’d known how attached he’d get, I would’ve discouraged Mike from bringing him around in the first place.”
Marley shook her head as Gigi walked up to them, snorting sand out of her nostrils. “He loves it here, he tells me that all the time. Says it’s more like having a home than anywhere else he’s ever been.” She turned her eyes towards her sister. “How can I take that away from him?”
“I don’t know. But I know that I don’t want you to sacrifice your happiness for someone else.”
“Isn’t that being selfish?”
“You’re my baby sister,” Kris replied. “I get to be selfish about you.”
They both turned at the sound of voices, and saw Cassie riding up to the arena on her dun pony Shindig. “Sorry we’re late!” she called, and Kris waved in response.
“I’d better get Gigi out of here.”
Kris followed her to the gate as Marley picked up her bridle and looped the reins around Gigi’s neck, then slung the saddle over her arm. She greeted Cassie, chatting with her for a moment as Kris finished setting the jumps at the lower height that would suit Shindig, then led Gigi out of the arena. Kris directed Cassie to go out onto the rail and pick up a working trot, and then watched her sister walk away, wondering if she’d given the right advice.
Marley was grooming Gigi in the barn when Jake walked up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the side of her neck.
“Hey there beautiful.”
“Hey.” She felt herself blush as she scraped the body brush against the currycomb to clean it, and she turned to face him, forcing him to relinquish his hold. “How’s life?”
“Better now that you’re in it. How ‘bout you?”
She forced herself to smile. “I’m good. Gigi schooled really well today, so she’s all set for Tauranga. We leave tomorrow,” she reminded him, and he looked downcast.
“Yeah. I wish I could come with you, but Mike won’t let me miss school. Said he might be able to drive me up on the weekend though, if he can swap shifts with someone. Or I’ll get a bus.”
“It’s okay,” Marley assured him quickly. “We can cope without you.” Inwardly she wondered if that was true, thinking of how indispensable he’d made himself at the last few shows. And with Van’s arm still broken and Maggie entered in all the big classes, he would be useful to have around. Maybe she should let him come. Maybe she should just let things carry on as they were. After all, it wasn’t hurting anyone…
“D’you want some help here?”
Marley turned to look at him as he rummaged through her grooming bucket and pulled out a rubber currycomb, then set to work on Gigi, working it against her coat in a steady rhythm. The pony closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of being groomed by two people at once.
“I think she likes being pampered,” Marley said with a smile.
“She definitely appreciates getting the royal treatment,” Jake agreed. “She’s such a princess, isn’t she?”
He smiled at her over Gigi’s back, and Marley felt as though her lungs were being squeezed in a vice. Dropping her hands to her sides, she stepped away from the pony.
“Jake, I can’t do this.”
Tears sprang to her eyes and almost without warning, started flowing down her cheeks. She so rarely gave herself permission to cry in front of people that it felt foreign and strange, and she rubbed at the tears with the back of her hand.
“Can’t do what?” He came around to the other side of Gigi, his expression deeply concerned. He reached out and touched her cheek, his fingers gentle against her face, and she had to force herself to turn away.
“I can’t let you love me the way you do.”
He stared at her as his hand fell to his side. “What?”
Marley sniffed, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry. I feel like the worst person in the world, but I just…I’m worried, because it’s too much, Jake. It’s not fair.”
His voice choked on the words. “Not fair?”
That wasn’t what she’d meant to say, but she grasped after it. “It’s not fair on you, loving me more than I love you back.”
He was frowning, looking pained as he grasped frantically at straws. “I can love you enough for us both,” he insisted, but Marley shook her head.
“I’m so sorry. It’s not that I don’t like you, I do. I like you so much, but I…”
“But you don’t love me.” As he spoke, Marley watched his face change, shifting back into the empty mask that it had been when she first met him. He disappeared back behind the wall he had built, and she knew she couldn’t reach him anymore.
Fresh tears ran down her face. “Please don’t hate me,” she begged.
“I could never hate you,” Jake said slowly. “But I can’t look at you right now.”
And he turned and walked away as Marley sobbed into Gigi’s short mane.
CHAPTER 16
One week later, Kris was stirring chocolate chips into a large bowl of biscuit mixture when Marley walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table with a grim expression.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you think that I’m a terrible person?”
Kris looked at her sister with concern. “Of course not. Why?”
“Van thinks I am. Apparently Mike went to see Jake the other day, and he said he’s gone back to being all surly and rude again, and won’t talk to anyone. And Van says that it’s all my fault.”
Kris set the bowl down on the table with a bang that Dash thought was someone knocking on the door. In an explosion of sudden barking, she shot out of the room with Tucker on her heels, while Kermit cowered in the corner. When the din had subsided, Kris spoke.
“It’s not your fault, Marley. You made a tough decision but it was the right one.” Marley still looked miserable, so Kris heaped a spoonful of biscuit mix and handed it to her sister to eat. “Besides, when do we ever pay attention to what Van thinks?”
Marley gave a half-hearted smile as she picked chocolate chips from the batter and ate them. “True.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Kris suggested as she placed dollops of mixture onto a greased baking tray. “The biggest show of the season is just over a week away. Are you ready for HOY?”
Kris had intended to cheer her sister up, but at the mention of the Horse of the Year show, Marley groaned and dropped her head onto the table. “Don’t remind me.” She continued talking, but her voice was muffled and Kris leaned across the table and slapped her gently on the side of the head.
“Hey. Speak up.”
Marley lifted her head slightly, resting her chin on the table. “I said, that reminds me that Stacey rang last night. She’s got me and Maggie entered in the Championship Stakes, to try and earn a wild card ticket into Pony of the Year.”
Kris raised her eyebrows. “That’s ambitious.”
“I know. I tried to talk her out of it. I told her that HOY is a huge show with a massive atmosphere and I don’t know how Maggie’s going to cope with it. Stacey’s argument of course was that Mags has jumped at bigger shows overseas, which is true but also beside the point. I don’t see why she has to push it. She has the whole winter to get her going and rebuild their partnership. If we put too much pressure on Maggie and blow her brains out at HOY, she’ll be frazzled out of her mind when Stacey brings her back out next season.”
The thought of Stacey riding the pony again made Marley very uneasy, and she could see from the look on Kris’s face that she harboured the same concern.
“What’d she say to that?”
Marley rolled her eyes. “Said she’d talk it over with her dad. So we all know what that means. The entry’s probably signed, sealed and delivered by now.” She licked the last of the batter from the wooden spoon. “It’s not going to go well,” she said forebodingly.
Maggie had regressed back to her bad behaviour since Jake had left, giving Kris a nasty bite when she’d tried to change her rug, and barely missing kicking Seamus soundly in the thigh for simply walking behind her in the barn aisle. Van had only avoided injury by virtue of the fact that Maggie wouldn’t let her within three metres of her, so she was never close enough to have any harm done. With the way the pony had been behaving lately, and without Jake to keep her calm between classes, trying to compete her seriously at HOY was a disaster just waiting to happen.
“You could refuse to ride her. What can they do? You’re the only one mad enough to get on that pony.”
“True.” Marley pulled her bare feet up onto the chair and hooked her toes over the edge. “I wish I didn’t have to give her back.”
“I thought by now you’d be glad to see the back of her,” Kris commented as she slid the tray of biscuits into the hot oven.
“Only because she finds everything so stressful. She’s amazing to jump, but she doesn’t love it. She just does it because I ask her to – but if I gave her a way out, she’d take it in a heartbeat. And I don’t know if she’ll ever go well for Stacey.” She sighed heavily. “I wish I could swap her for one of the other ponies. Stacey can have Seattle, he almost bucked me off twice today, the little brat.”
“Somehow I doubt you’ll talk her into that.”
“At least she’d fall off him less,” Marley pointed out as Van walked into the room. Kris’s jaw dropped, and Marley looked over her shoulder at their sister. “Oh my god, she’s wearing a dress!”
“Shut up.” Off her sisters’ inquisitive looks, Van was forced to explain. “Mike’s got this vet school reunion shindig that he invited me to ages ago. Now that we’re friends again, he asked me to go.”
“Where’d the dress come from?” Kris asked curiously. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Van in anything other than jeans, breeches or shorts, but it looked good on her.
“It was Mum’s. I found it in the attic.”
Marley grinned. “Classy. I hope you shook the spiders off before you put it on.”
Van shot her a dirty look. “Don’t you have homework to do or something?”
“Yeah, but I want to see Mike’s face when he sees you dressed like a girl.”
Kris leaned across the table and flicked the side of Marley’s head with a tea towel. “Go on, get that History assignment finished. Isn’t it due tomorrow?”
Marley pouted at her. “How’d you know about that?”
“I know everything. Have you started it yet?”
“It’s like, half done.”
“So go do the other half.”
Marley groaned and got to her feet, passing Van on her way out of the room, then doing a double take and backing up. “Are you wearing makeup?”
Van gave her a firm punch in the arm, hard enough to leave a bruise but not hard enough to wipe the grin off Marley’s face as she left the room. Van perched on the edge of the table and looked at Kris, who was suddenly frowning in concern.
“Where’s your cast?”
“It didn’t go with the outfit.” Kris just stared at her, and Van shrugged. “I cut it off.”
“That was smart.”
“You know me.” Van stared at her fingernails, wondering if she should’ve attempted to paint them, then concluded that they would only look worse with attention drawn to them. “Seamus not home yet?”
“He’s running late. Had a whole hillside of broodmares to trim and apparently they were all horrors to catch. He’s still at least an hour away.”
“I see you’ve been baking for him again,” Van commented, swiping a finger around the edge of the mixing bowl and licking it as Kris blushed. “If I tell you that peanut brownies are my favourite, will you make me a fresh batch of them every week?”
“Shut up.” Kris whisked the bowl away from her sister and set it in the sink. “He pays board, he gets fed. That’s part of the deal.”
“I’m pretty sure that deal just included dinner, not weekly home baking,” Van countered, but before she could expand on that, the crunch of tyres on gravel outside turned both their heads. “I’ll see you later,” Van said as she got to her feet.
“Enjoy your date.”
“It’s not a date.”
Kris laughed. “If you say so. You look amazing, by the way.” Van turned to look at her sister, and Kris smiled at her. “Really. You’re gonna knock his socks off.”
Van rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. “Thanks.” She cast her eyes briefly over her sister’s baggy trackpants and faded t-shirt. “You look…like crap, if I’m being honest. Lucky that Seamus obviously doesn’t care.”
“Shut up and get out of here,” Kris told her as the phone started to ring.
Van grabbed the cordless handset off its cradle in the hall and tossed it to her sister before leaving. Kris heard the front door slam as the phone bounced on the table and disappeared onto the floor. She crouched down to retrieve it, hushing Dash who was yapping frantically at the excitement of a visitor outside and the phone ringing all at once. Kris grabbed the phone and managed to answer it before the caller gave up.
“Hello? Shut UP Dash!” The little dog scuttled into the hallway apologetically, and Kris straightened up. “Sorry. Are you there?”
There was a slight delay, then a woman’s voice with an Irish accent spoke. “I’m looking for Seamus O’Leary.”
“He’s not here right now. Can I take a message?” Kris replied automatically, half of her mind following Dash as she skittered up and down the hallway, still yelping.
The woman sounded irritated. “Do you know when he’ll be back?” Her accent was heavy, and it took Kris a moment to translate her words in her head.
“Sorry, I don’t,” she apologised. “He’s out late on a job, but he should be home in an hour or so. Have you tried his cell phone?”
“It’s going straight to voicemail,” the woman said, her frustration clear. “Well when he bothers to get in, let him know that his sister Mary called, and tell him Ashleen’s been rushed to hospital and he needs to get himself back over here right away.”
“Ashley?” Kris repeated as she scrawled out the message. It sounded serious, whoever Ashley was, but she also knew that Seamus hadn’t been home in years, and would struggle to find sufficient funds to be able to leap on the next plane to Dublin.
His sister’s voice was sharp, impatient. “No, Ash-leen. His daughter. She’s in a bad way and he needs to get over here and act like a feckin’ parent for once.”
Kris’s heart plummeted into her stomach, and for a moment all she could hear was an empty ringing in her ears as Mary scolded on. His daughter. Since when did Seamus have a daughter? There had to be some kind of mistake. In a haze, she managed to write down Mary’s number so Seamus could be sure to call her back, then the phone went dead in her hand. Kris sat stock still and stared at the wall, completely blindsided by this sudden revelation.
“Evening all,” Seamus said cheerfully as he came into the kitchen. Kris was sitting at the table alone, a lukewarm mug of tea sitting in front of her. “Not all,” Seamus corrected himself. “Just us. Even better.” He walked over to Kris’s chair and leaned over to give her a kiss, but she pulled away.
“What’s the matter?”
Kris pushed the note she’d taken towards him, her hand shaking. Seamus took it from her and scanned it, then paled visibly.
“Oh hell.”
Kris’s heart sank again. She’d been hanging onto a thread of possibility that this was all a misunderstanding, or some kind of bizarre joke, but the look on Seamus’s face confirmed that it was all true. She handed him the phone wordlessly, and he shot her a pained look as he dialled.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry, I know I didn’t tell you and I… Hello? It’s Seamus. I got your message, what’s happened?”
He wandered out of the room, talking in an even broader accent than usual and sounding agitated. Kris listened nervously, wondering what was going on. She had so many questions. How old was Ashleen? How sick was she? Why hadn’t he ever mentioned her, in all the months they’d been living together, in all the weeks they’d been… Kris closed her eyes and tried to contain her emotions, but the questions kept burning in her brain. Why had he left his child behind? Why was he pretending she didn’t exist?
She heard his conversation end, and the beep of the phone as he hung up. There was a pause as she waited for him to return to the room, and prepared herself to ask the necessary questions, to get the necessary answers. But he didn’t return, and after a moment, she heard him dialling again. There was a pause, then his voice, carrying down the hall.
“Hello. I need a seat on your next available flight to Dublin.”
“As the clock struck twelve,” Mike declared as he pulled into their driveway several hours later.
Van looked at the dashboard clock with a wry smile. “That clock says five past twelve.”
“That clock’s fast,” Mike countered. “Otherwise you would’ve turned back into a pumpkin by now.”
Van quirked an eyebrow at him as they bumped down the rutted drive. “I think you’re a bit confused about how that fairy tale works. We’d be sitting inside the pumpkin, if there was one.”
“And we’re not, so clearly we’re not late,” he replied.
“Okay,” Van said agreeably, leaning down to pick up her discarded shoes from the floor as he pulled up in front of the house. She saw that the light had been left on in the living room, and she rolled her eyes, thinking of the power bill.
Mike switched the engine off, and silence filled the cab until he spoke. “Thanks for coming. Even though it’s not your scene.”
Van shrugged. “It wasn’t bad, as fancy parties go. Although they had nowhere near enough food. I’m starving.”
Mike laughed. “You’d better get some strapping on that arm,” he told her, and Van glanced down at her swollen forearm.
