Chapter Forty Nine

By seven am the following morning, Jenn was happily working her way through feeding the barn of horses. Hooves impatiently banged stall doors and heads anxiously bobbed up and down snorting and blowing as she methodically worked her way down the aisle giving each animal its own personally assigned feed. Just as she was finishing Steph came breezing in the side door carrying two Styrofoam cups of Starbucks coffee.

“Morning! I picked these up on the way to warm us up!”

Turning from the trolley of feed she’d been pushing, Jenn gave her a grateful smile. “You absolute star! It’s freezing out there! Let me just feed this last guy and we’ll have them in the office. I turned on the heater in there when I came in so it should be nice and toasty by now.”

“Sure!”

Swinging back around to feed the last horse, Jenn nervously bit her lip. Jon had assured her that Steph was completely fine with their relationship but still this was the first time they’d met with it being out in the open. Emptying the bucket of feed into the grateful horse’s trough, she returned the feed trolley to the feed room and followed Steph into the office.

“I grabbed these as well, they looked too good to leave behind!” Steph shook some fresh croissants onto a plate from a paper bag and offered them to Jenn as she flopped into her chair behind the desk.

“Mmmnn thanks!” Sinking her teeth into the still warm pastry she groaned as the buttery flakes melted in her mouth. “These are so very bad but just so damn good, yummy!”

Leaning back in her chair, she cradled the steaming cup of coffee with her fingers, feeling the warmth seep into them. Blowing gently on the lid to cool it down she looked across at Steph who was happily devouring her own croissant.

“So how was your weekend?”

Tugging a piece off the pastry, Steph waved her head dismissively. “Pretty boring, sent off the application forms for the long distance course, hung out with the family, that kind of thing! How was yours?”

Jenn swallowed nervously, Steph wasn’t gonna make this easy on her. “Yeah good, got to see a bit of the city for the first time……” She trailed off unsure of whether to divulge more information on her exact whereabouts.

“Cool, did Dad show you around? We’ll have to go shopping together someday!” Steph sipped at her coffee innocently from her curled up position on the sofa. “Did you meet Richie, Dad said he was back in town?”

“Um yeah……” Jenn blushed and focused intently on chasing some crumbs around the table with her finger. “I did, he’s very nice.”

The sound of a small giggle coming from the corner snapped Jenn’s attention back up and she caught Steph trying to hide her laughter behind her coffee cup.

“Oh God I’m sorry Jenn!!” Trying to compose herself, Steph beamed across at her. “You’d be no good as an undercover cop!”

Jenn narrowed her eyes, looking suspiciously at the teenager. She chose to remain silent, her face impassive as she waited for her to continue.

“Dad finally came clean about you two – I’m fine with it, honestly!”

Jenn blew out a long breath, an embarrassed smile escaping her lips. “Good! I’m sorry if you thought we were sneaking around….”

“Don’t worry about it!” Shaking her head in amusement, Steph grinned across at her. “You should have seen Dad’s face when I told him I had already pretty much worked it out anyway – it was priceless!”

Jenn rolled her eyes as she set her coffee down and turned to power up the computer. “I should have known we wouldn’t be able to pull the wool over your eyes!” Pausing for a moment she turned back to Steph, her eyes brimming with relief and appreciation, “Thanks Steph, it means a lot to me that you’re okay with this.”

Rubbing her hands together briskly in an effort to nimble them up, she motioned for Steph to join her behind the desk. “Right! Back to business! We need to sort out accommodation of sorts for our Florida base; we’ll be down there in no time. Come and have a look at some of the places I found!”

Steph squealed with excitement as she pulled a chair up beside her. Her bright blue eyes sparkled as they travelled down the list of condos Jenn had pulled up on screen.

“Gosh, it’s really all starting to happen isn’t it?!”

Leaning back, Jenn watched thoughtfully as Steph scrolled down the pages of Palm Beach properties.

 

“Yeah…………it sure is!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Fuck!!”

Jon slammed the phone back in its cradle and pushed back off the desk on his leather exec chair. It wasn’t even gone ten in the morning yet, and he had pretty much been on the phone constantly for the last two hours. Nobody in the office could explain to him who had leaked the news but the media had been hounding them all morning. Dot had rung him first thing after she had dropped Steph off at the farm to inform him that there was a small army of cameras beginning to set up outside the gates of the house and had told him in no uncertain terms to stay away. He’d understood that but it was pissing him off royally that his family were practically being held hostage in their own home.

For the moment it seemed the reporters had nothing concrete to go on but his lawyers were advising him to make a statement about it as soon as possible. Groaning he leant forward in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose with his forefingers. His head was pulsing with an impending headache not helped by the litre of coffee he’d already consumed this morning.

“Hey man, how’s it goin?”

Richie padded barefoot into his office, blinking blearily at him. His hair heaped in a tousled mess on his head indicated to Jon that obviously he at least had no problem sleeping last night.

“Just fuckin great Rich.”

“Anything new come out since last night?”

“Not that I’ve heard but they’ve already camped outside the house in Jersey. Dot’s not too happy needless to say.”

Richie shoved his hands in his pockets and wandered over to the window to gaze down at the street below. “Anybody hanging out down there?”

“Dunno, not been down there.” Getting up to join his friend at the window, Jon stared grimly at the traffic. “I’d say it’s a fuckin good possibility though.”

“Whatcha gonna do now then?”

Without taking his eyes off the traffic, Jon set his jaw in a determined line and spoke with gritted teeth. “Try fix the whole damn mess.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Jenn was standing in the middle of the sand arena, a woolly hat and scarf wrapped around her head in an attempt to keep out the biting cold as she watched Steph canter around her on one of the horses. She nodded in approval as Steph deftly changed directions and performed a perfect flying change.

“Good! Now work him in around the corner and try some counter canter. Remember keep your weight to the inside and guide him with your legs.”

Her cell phone buzzed from her hip distracting her from watching her pupil perform the complicated movement. Swearing as she fought to pull off her glove to answer the phone she smiled when she saw Jon’s name flash across the screen.

“Morning handsome!”

The tone in Jon’s voice wiped the smile off her face as she listened.

“Hey baby, we’ve got a situation. Could Steph stay with you for a few days?”

“Well of course but what’s wrong?” She motioned to Steph for her to carry on as she turned to walk to the far corner of the ring. A rock of lead settled in the bottom of her stomach as Jon filled her in on what had happened. “Shit, how’d that get out?”  

“I dunno but it won’t be long before they manage to find out more, I just need to figure out how to stomp this out before it gets out of control.”

“Well, do you need me to do anything?” Jenn instantly felt stupid asking but she was at a loss as to what to say or do.

“Just try keep Steph under the radar until this blows over, Dot’s got the other kids under wraps but I don’t want Steph’s routine messed up because of this shit. Dot’s happy for her to stay with you until we sort it out.”

Jenn raised her eyebrows at the last part. Somehow she found it hard to believe that Dorothea would be happy about her daughter staying with her ex-husband’s new girlfriend.

“You’re sure she’s okay about that?”

Jon paused a moment before replying, “Well she’s not ecstatic about it but she agrees that for the moment it’s the wisest thing.”

“Jon are you okay?” She could feel the tension in his voice and wanted nothing more than to crawl into the phone and hug him.

He laughed drily, “I’ve been better baby but yeah I’m okay. I’ll call you later when I know more. Is Steph around?”

“Yeah hang on, she’s just riding, I’ll hand you over.” Walking over to Steph, she took the horse’s reins as she passed her cell up to her. “It’s your Dad; he needs to talk to you.”

She backed away to give her some privacy as Steph tucked the phone under her ear and nudged the horse forward on a loose rein.

“Hey Daddy, what’s up?”

Jenn bit her lip and watched from a small distance as Steph walked the horse in a large circle, her normally cheery face serious and worried looking as she listened to her father talk. Jenn felt a stab of anger hit her as she thought about the whole situation. The poor kid had only just come to terms with her parents splitting up and now it looked like the whole world knew about it. A few minutes later, she saw Steph hang up the call and walked back over to her.

“You okay?”

Steph nodded glumly as she handed the phone back down to her. “Yeah I’m alright.” Sighing she leaned forward over the horse’s neck to rub the top of his head.  “This is where you get to see the part of my life that really sucks.”