“Did you know he is looking to buy a dressage horse?”
“That can’t be right. Charles is a jumper.”
“No!” Angel put his finger in the air as one making a point. “Charles was a jumper. No more. Now he is doing dressage. And . . . he is looking for a good dressage horse.”
Hannah lifted one shoulder in slight irritation. “Dressage, jumping, what does it matter? The skies are about to open up. Can we talk horses later?”
“It is important now because . . .” Angel paused, then said in a rush, “Because I have decided I am going to sell him Butterhead.”
Hannah gaped at Angel in disbelief. She wasn’t sure she’d understood his accented English correctly. “Sell Butterhead?”
“Sí. Yes.”
“B-but . . .” she stammered. “You love Butterhead.”
“Yes, I do. Of course.”
“I don’t understand. How could you sell her?”
“Hannah, you know why. I can’t ride her for Grand Prix. Butterhead can’t jump the one-point-five meters anymore. She makes too many mistakes. She want to and it make her feel bad. In her heart, you know? Butterhead, she has great heart.”
“Then retire her.”
He shook his head. “She is still too young. And she can still jump lower levels. But you know how it is,” he said with exasperation. “I need another horse. A great horse. And Mr. Charles, he is looking for a great horse. He is lucky to have such a horse as her. But”—he lifted his hand to stop the argument at Hannah’s lips—“it is also good for Butterhead. She will have good life at his farm. Not so hard.”
“But . . .” Hannah put her palm on her forehead. “I’m sorry, but I’m trying to make sense of this. And it’s hard when we’ve got a hurricane riding our asses.”
“Don’t get mad,” Angel said, bringing his hands to her shoulders and staring into her eyes. “I need a horse for the Olympics. I need to train now. There is no time to wait. No time for mistakes, eh? I know what I have to do.”
“But, Javi, Butterhead is a jumper. Not a dressage horse.”
Angel released his hold and waved his hand dismissively. “But of course, Butterhead is trained in dressage. It is discipline, no? She will be good enough for a novice like Charles.”
He turned to look at Butterhead, and in that fleeting glance Hannah saw pain flicker across his expression, even longing, that contradicted his enthusiasm.
“She still is a magnificent horse. The best.”
“Don’t do it,” Hannah told him. “You’ll regret it.”
A groom, short and athletic, came to Angel’s side. “Excuse me, Mr. Angel, sir. We’re ready to load up Rogue’s Fancy. What do you want us to pack?”
Angel’s tanned, chiseled face shifted to reflect his hard-won decision. “Pack everything. She won’t be coming back.”
He turned and began walking out of the barn. Max lunged after him, his leash trailing on the ground. Hannah took a final look at the beautiful golden mare. The horse’s dark eyes were fixed on the departing figure of Angel, full of longing and devotion. And sadness.
“I know how you feel,” she said to the horse, then hurried to catch up.
In the circular drive, Angel opened the back door of the car and whistled for Max, then walked over to open the passenger-side door for Hannah. This done, he quickly skirted around the front and hopped into the driver’s seat. Before Hannah could get in, however, Max bolted into the front passenger seat and sat staring straight ahead.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Hannah said to Max. “Get out. Go on, get out, you rangy mutt.”
“Is okay if he rides there, no?”
“Dogs in the back. Family rule.”
“Come on, hop in back.”
“Who in this scenario is a dog? And you’d better think carefully about your answer.”
“Hannah,” he said pleadingly, “let’s just go. It’ll take too much time to make him move.”
Hannah looked up at the sky. An army of clouds was moving in, dark and menacing. The wind gusted, sending dust into the air, stinging her skin and making her squint. Finally, eager to be off, she slammed the front passenger door shut and climbed into the narrow backseat of the sport sedan. Her long legs folded tightly, putting her knees practically under her chin. In front, Angel moved the driver’s seat forward, adjusted the mirrors, opened a bottle of water, and took a long drink. Then he slipped on his sunglasses and looked into the rearview mirror at Hannah, a boyish smile on his face.
“We are on a road trip, right? You buckled? Okay. This is good. I love you!” Angel stepped on the gas and the car lurched forward. “Hannah!” he called over his shoulder as they exited the Medici. “You have directions, no?”
* * *
August 20, 7:50 a.m.
Wellington, Florida
The early morning sky was a melancholy steel gray. Elise Klug’s gloved hands clenched and unclenched at her sides as she approached the barn. She was dressed in a button-down shirt, jeans, and paddock boots, and her blond hair was bound in a long braid that fell down her back.
She could hear the low chatter of the grooms and the occasional, higher-pitched whinny of a horse as she approached. It was a large, airy facility with high ceilings and glass cupolas and open-style stalls that allowed the horses to see and interact with each other. Her mother, Gerta, had spared no expense in the building of it, and light usually filled every corner of the space. Today, however, the light was as gray as the sky outside.
The air inside the barn was heavy with the sweet smell of leather, feed, and pine shavings, the stalls full of horses. The stalls had already been mucked out. The feed buckets were clean; the water buckets brimming full and fresh. Elise greeted the two additional grooms that her mother had hired to help board the seven Klug horses onto trailers for evacuation. It was a dangerous business to load and unload horses, and the Klug horses represented an investment of multiple millions of dollars. This morning they were restless, aware that something was different today. They hung their heads out of their palatial abodes.
Pausing to pet a few of the horses’ noses or give them a reassuring whisper, Elise headed toward her horse: Whirlwind, a nine-year-old Trakehner stallion. Whirlwind was in a special stall, separate from the mares, at the far end of the stable. He watched her approach, head erect and ears pricked forward. At nearly seventeen hands in height, with a velvety coat as black as night, he was a formidable horse. And he had always been that way.
Her mother had first heard about him—a young horse with exceptional potential—in the World Breeding Championships for Young Horses. Without a word to Elise, she had made the trip to Europe to see him for herself and had returned soon after with the proud, spirited animal. His German name was Wirbelwind. The deal had been whispered about; word eventually reached Elise that Gerta had preempted the auction with a record purchase price of 1.2 million euros for a two-year-old horse. She’d presented the horse to Elise as a birthday gift at a grand affair, more to promote her stables than to celebrate her daughter. Elise had never been consulted, nor asked what type of horse she’d prefer. What was understood between mother and daughter, beneath the fanfare of the magnificent acquisition, was that the gift meant that Gerta had great hopes for her daughter. The bar had been set high. Whirlwind had a reputation for being spirited and difficult to handle, but Gerta knew that this horse could carry her daughter to Olympic gold.