“Sheer luck and a prayer,” Rob said, looking down to the corner. “I don’t know, Trey. What if I fall off? That really might have just been luck.”
“She came off the rail too,” Trey said. “We’ll pull the feeds, and you’ll see what I mean.”
“She corrected brilliantly,” Lawrence said. “Maybe with one stride, if that.” He looked at Trey with wide eyes, almost begging him to let Lady do what she wanted.
Trey wished he could. He wanted everyone to be happy too, but if Beth wanted to win the Classic, it was his job to get the horse trained up the right way to do that.
“If there was any other horse on the track…” Trey shook his head. “We need her to practice with some training horses.”
“Not for a few days,” Rob said. “We ran her full-out tonight and last night. She needs a rest day tomorrow—not even any training from you. Not even a slow day. Then you can do slow, medium, and fast, and we’ll race her in five days.”
“Five days,” Beth said. “I want to be here.”
“Me too,” Lawrence said.
Rob grinned at Trey, his eyes equally lit with an excited kind of fire that spoke of his enthusiasm for how far they’d come with Somebody’s Lady. “Can you get two or three horses to race with her? Full racing?”
“I’ll work on it,” Trey said, wondering how he was going to do that. He knew all the trainers and boarders at Bluegrass, but the timing of their training would have to line up with theirs, and they’d have to actually be horses that could compete with Lady, not just leaders or one-ups.
He took a sandwich out of the bag. “Hungry, Rob?”
“Always.” He took the sandwich and settled on the tiny saddle on Lady’s back. “Good time tonight.”
“I’ll meet you in the stable,” Trey said, and Rob got Lady moving. He’d make her walk the track a couple of times to calm her, and then the two of them would make sure she was clean and comfortable for the night.
“I can’t believe this is what you’ve been doing,” Beth said. “You made it sound so boring.”
“It usually is,” he said, taking out a sandwich for himself finally. “We don’t race her full-out every night.”
“You should be working with the horses here,” Lawrence said.
Trey cut him a glance out of the corner of his eye and filled his mouth with peanut butter and Beth’s homemade peach jam. He loved the combination of salty, creamy peanut butter, and tart-yet-sweet peaches. A moan started somewhere in his chest and he leaned over and pressed his cheek to Beth’s.
She giggled and pushed against his chest without much effort to really keep him away from her.
“Tell him he should talk to Spur about training,” Lawrence said, looking at Beth now. She looked at Trey, and with Lawrence switching his gaze to him too, Trey started to squirm.
“Leave it, Lawrence,” he said once he’d swallowed. “I’m not talking to Spur about training.”
“It’s what you want to do.” Lawrence frowned at Trey. “I don’t know why you just won’t talk to him about it.”
“Conrad and Ian are the trainers,” he said simply. “Who else is going to make the schedule?”
“Duke,” Lawrence said. “He’s got that incredible notebook where he keeps track of all the mares and studs. He’s on the phone as much as you, and he could easily do what you do.”
“He already works a full-time job,” Trey said. “So do I. You think he can take on two full-time jobs because I’d rather train horses?” He shook his head. “I know my place on the ranch.”
“Trey,” Beth said, and he looked at her and took another bite of his sandwich. “Maybe you could talk to him.”
Trey shook his head as he chewed.
“He’s brilliant with them,” Lawrence said. “He has a real affinity for animals.”
“Children, too.” Beth smiled at Trey, but he wasn’t in the mood to stand around and listen to the two of them talk about how amazing he was.
“It’s one-thirty in the morning,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”
“Conrad wouldn’t evenconsiderletting a horse loose on the corner,” Lawrence called after him.