A Stable Relationship

Authors Note: This story has been posted in "Romance" because I consider that to be the primary theme. However, it contains several lesbian scenes and some voyeurism. If those things turn you off, I suggest you not read further. Thanks. -cw

*****

I had fielded variations of the proposition countless times. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a pervasive myth throughout the business, that a girl could muck out a few stalls a week and get free lessons. What was most amazing to me is who would ask. I had been approached by parents of girls as young as 7. First of all, how much real work is a 7 year old going to do? Secondly, hasn't anyone heard of child labor laws? Thirdly, there was the matter of liability...well, suffice it to say it was ludicrous.

I had also been approached by families I knew were wealthy. Families for whom the lesson costs were a pittance.

I suppose in theory, the basic concept could work, assuming the girl was actually old enough to work. After all, we paid employees to work at the farm, and customers paid us to give them lessons. The money from one could go to the other. It really came down to a matter of proportions. The math just made it a losing proposition. We charged $60 for an hour lesson and I paid my entry level stable hands $10 an hour. Six hours of labor was way more work than any of these kids were willing to put in to get an hour on the horse. We do 20 lessons a day, 7 days a week. If I started accepting this proposition, we would have the cleanest stalls in the world, hell, the horse manure wouldn't even reach the floor before it would be carted away, but we would be broke.

So when the girl came to me that Saturday talking about wanting to ride and mentioning a willingness to work around the barn, I gave her my standard response: I don't hire anyone under 18, if I have any openings they are posted on the bulletin board along with instructions on how to apply and if you want lessons, employees pay the same as anyone else. That last part wasn't actually true, I gave my employees a $10 discount, but I chose not to reveal that until someone was actually working for me.

The difference in this case is that the girl didn't just walk away disappointed, or at least not visibly so. Actually, to be more accurate, she didn't really show any emotion throughout the conversation, she just asked where she could find the aforementioned bulletin board. It was hard to guess her age, but I had to assume based on her response she was at least 18. I was a cold day and she had just come in from outside and was bundled up in warm clothing, including a wool cap. That and the fact that she had a tendency to look down at her feet while she talked to me gave me few visual clues. She headed off to the bulletin board and I turned my attention to other business.

As it happened, I did need another person to clean stalls, as another worker had quit last week, the second this month. She gave an innocuous reason, something about needing more time to focus on her studies at the community college. I had my suspicion that poor treatment by the customers was really to blame. By customers, I really mean one customer in particular, Madison Reynolds.

As soon as her name came to mind, Madison came around the corner, flanked by the two most prominent members of her posse, Chloe and Jenna. All three were affluent 18 year old high school seniors with indulgent daddies. Madison exuded wealth and confidence, wearing only the best riding clothes money could buy. And if you know anything about riding clothes, you know that takes quite a bit of money. She strode around with her head held high like she owned the place, which I found mildly annoying because I owned the place.

The other thing she exuded was sex appeal. She was well aware of it. She had a classically beautiful face and just about perfect body, if you liked your girls on the athletic side (and I did).

Madison was one of our biggest assets...and one of our biggest problems. I wasn't sure which outweighed which right now. She and her horse Caesar had captured many prominent show jumping titles in the region and even a few at the national level. As the star of our show team, her successes brought attention to the barn, and that attention brought business. My rates for boarding and lessons were the highest in the area, but I was pretty much at capacity. Madison was a big reason for this success.

Unfortunately, Madison treated my crew like shit. She was demanding, condescending and rude. If anything went wrong she always made sure someone took the blame, usually someone on my staff. She wasn't much nicer to the other customers, either, except for those in her inner circle of friends. She reserved her worst treatment for any girls who dared to join the show team without bowing down to her. She and her inner circle would bully them mercilessly as only teen girls can. I knew I needed to do something, but I wasn't sure what.

I know what you're thinking, why didn't you just throw her out. In retrospect, that would have been the right thing to do.

As Madison strolled by me, she said, "Hi, Mr. B. Can you make sure Caesar's stall gets cleaned tonight? It's looking pretty nasty."

"If we can get to it. It's already been cleaned once today. You know it wouldn't hurt you to pick up a shovel yourself if it bothers you."

She chose to ignore that comment. After she passed me, I fought an inner battle. "Don't look, don't look, don't look." I looked. I turned and looked at her shapely ass in her form fitting riding pants. I noted that there was no sign of any panties under those pants. Of course she knew exactly when to turn her head over her shoulder and catch me looking. Dammit, that didn't help things. She smirked at me.

Later that day I found an application and resume in the mail slot at my office door. Sarah Perez, age 19, it said. I figured that must have been the girl I had met earlier. She had passed my first test. She had followed my written instructions to the letter on how to apply. She completely filled out the application, provided references and a resume and had put everything in the slot by my door. Sounds like a pretty low standard, but 50% of the applicants didn't even get that far.

There wasn't much on the resume, but it did say she had worked at a barn in Kentucky for a few months. She used the owner as a reference. I gave him a call.

"She didn't say much, but she worked hard and had a way with the horses. I was sorry to lose her, but after her dad died, I guess she had to move. I felt bad for the kid, she has had it rough. Her dad was a drinker. Violent too, if you can believe the stories. Then he hung himself, leaving her and her mom with nothing."

I thought to myself, "That's got to mess a kid up. Here's someone that needs a break." I decided to give her a shot.

The loss of Sarah's father struck a chord with me, having lost my wife three years ago to a car accident. I still missed her, badly sometimes. We weren't a perfect couple, nor was she a perfect wife, but we did love each other, in our own fashion.

High Ridge Farm had been Meghan's, passed down through her family. She was raised in this world; privileged, old money families who chose to spend their leisure time and money on horses. Her parents had wanted one of her two older brothers to take over the farm, but Jake turned out to be completely irresponsible and William opted for a career in the oil industry. Meghan was infatuated with horses when she was young, like so many little girls, and she never grew out of it. She was an accomplished and decorated rider, and as it turned out, had a knack for teaching her skills to young girls. On the other hand, she was a lousy business-woman, and the farm was failing when I met her.

In contrast, I came from a working class family. Cars were my passion, and I was working as a mechanic when I met Meghan. When she came to the garage one day to have work done on her Mercedes, our eyes locked and we instantly knew we were soul-mates...OK, that's total bullshit. Her ass looked great in riding pants and I was horny. For her part it was the stereotypical thrill of a fling with someone from "the other side of the tracks."

Meghan's parents were not amused when our fling became something serious and led to marriage. They grudgingly accepted me when it turned out that I actually had a good head for business (who knew?) and the farm retreated from the brink of bankruptcy and began to turn a profit. Her parents and I leaned on each other for support when Meghan died, but since then, our relationship had soured again.

Apparently, they thought I would turn the farm back over to them, walk away with nothing and go back to turning wrenches. After all, it was the "Winthrop family farm." What right did I have to take that from them? Never-mind that if I hadn't come along, it would have been long since sold to a developer to pay off the mounting debt.

I found this jaw dropping in its presumptuousness, but it just outlined how differently the "privileged families" thought compared to the rest of us. It was their "right" to keep their family land forever, regardless of the financial or legal situation. Conversely, as I was a "laborer," that was all I ever had a right to be. I told them I would listen if they came to me with an offer to buy the farm back. That didn't go over well.

While I found that to be amazing, I didn't let that bother me anymore. One thing that I did still struggle with was a secret that was revealed to me a week after Meghan's death. She had been on her way to a secret meeting with her lover when she got in the fatal accident. While she had confided in her best friend that she was having an affair, as far as I knew, she hadn't shared her reasons with anyone. That I would never get to know why was difficult for me.

I shook my head. I knew it was not good for me to dwell on it.

Sarah came in to work her first shift the next day. She came dressed in baggy sweatpants, oversized flannel shirt, wool hat and steel toe construction boots. It was definitely suitable attire for the work at hand, but it still surprised me a little. Most girls her age that I hired would show up on the first day with clothing that at least hinted of their interest in riding. Quite a few had shown up in full riding attire, I guess just in case I changed my mind and put them on a horse at the end of the day. Usually those girls didn't last more than a week.

Somehow, I got the sense that Sarah was trying to hide in her baggy clothes. The first time she finally lifted her head up enough for me to see her face, I was a little surprised to register that she was actually quite pretty, with big, dark, sad eyes. What was clear was that she was painfully shy and reserved. I remembered again that she was going through some rough times and I felt some compassion for her. I worried though, because some of the horses required a firm hand and some of the customers (OK, mostly just one), even firmer.

I showed her around the farm, introducing her to the other employees and explained what was expected of her. It was mostly just cleaning stalls, with some direct handling of the horses as well. It became immediately apparent that her shy reserve with people was not extended to the horses. She seemed completely at ease with them, even when Kona tried his usual greeting of newcomers. She easily anticipated and dodged his teeth and quickly found his favorite spot to be scratched. She had made her first friend.

The last thing I did was warn her about Madison and Caesar. Madison you have already heard about, but truthfully, Caesar wasn't much better. He was a regal as his name implied in the show ring. In his stall, he was flat out mean. He would bite, kick or plow you over, whichever struck his fancy at the time. You had to be completely on your guard if you were going to handle him. He had one particular spot on the right side of his abdomen that he did not like anyone touching. Nobody knew why, he had been thoroughly checked by the vet and there didn't seem to be any issue there. Still, if he was touched there he would invariably raise his hind leg on that side, as if threatening to kick you. Sometimes he would follow through with a kick, though thankfully it was not delivered with any great force. Madison herself had been kicked several times while grooming him and had come away without any real injuries.

As far as Madison was concerned, I told Sarah, "If she gives you any shit, come to me and let me know." I was pretty sure Madison would indeed give her shit; she gave all my employees shit. I was also pretty sure that Sarah would take it quietly and not tell me, but I had to try, and at least she was warned.

A few weeks went by and all the other employees reported that Sarah was working hard, took direction well and could handle even the most difficult horses, including Caesar. Madison made a few offhand comments to me, implying that the "new girl" wasn't quite up to her standards, but then, nobody ever was.

My office was in the second floor loft of the barn. It had four walls and a door, but the walls were more like partitions, as they simply stopped at the height of a standard 8' stud, there was no actual ceiling to the room. The rest of the loft was just used as storage space.

Something about the way the building was constructed and the placement of my office created an unusual acoustic phenomenon. Even the slightest sounds from down below travelled up the inside of the angled corrugated steel roof and made their way into my office. It was like those speaking tubes that most playground structures had. This could be beneficial, as it tended to alert me if one of the horses was distressed, but it also channeled a lot of distracting and mostly tedious discussions to my ears.

Many times, I kept a radio playing in the office to block out the noise so that I could concentrate on the business I needed to conduct. Still, I ended up hearing a lot of things that I really didn't care to. I knew way too much about Mrs. Johnson's colonoscopy and Mrs. Anderson's affair with the pool boy.

The barn also had a video monitoring system, with a camera in every stall. It allowed me to monitor the horses throughout the day from my office, but also allowed me to provide a service to the boarders that most of them took advantage of and seemed to appreciate. For an extra fee, we gave them 24 hour access to the video feed from their stall, so they could check up on their horse any time it was in the stall. It also provided a level of transparency for us that I felt was important. Any boarder could verify that we were caring for their horse properly. The system automatically saved the last 24 hours of footage, constantly overwriting the oldest data. That way, if something did go wrong, as long as it was reported in a timely manner, we could go back and determine the circumstances. My insurance company gave us a significant break for installing the system.

Oddly, Madison's dad was one of the few customers that refused to pay for the video monitoring feed. I soon found out that Madison thought that meant I wouldn't turn on the camera in Caesar's stall. For what it's worth, it was very clear in the contract they signed that 24 hour video monitoring was part of the deal, even if they didn't choose to pay for access to the feed. Between Madison's propensity to blame the staff for everything short of the weather and Caesar's bad behavior, I figured there was no way I could afford not to monitor Caesar's stall.

A few days after Sarah started, I heard Madison in what she presumed to be a private conversation with one of her friends. "Did you see the new trailer trash that Mr. B hired? I know shoveling shit is a dirty job, but the fucking girl is dressed like a fucking homeless wino. I couldn't even tell she was a girl the first time I saw her." Sadly, it was exactly the sort of assessment I expected out of her. As a point of fact, I recalled the address on Sarah's resume and realized that she did actually live in a trailer park.

After working for a month, I saw Sarah's name pop up on the lesson schedule for the next week. I was happy that she was going to be able to fulfill her wishes. Three days later, she cancelled. I called her up to my office and asked her about it.

She looked upset and mumbled, "I'm sorry, something came up."

"You don't need to apologize; there is nothing wrong with cancelling if you need to, I just want you to know that we can work with your schedule to arrange something else." Then I added gently, "You seem upset, are you sure everything is OK?"

She hesitated, the said, "Well, I wanted to start taking lessons and thought I would have the money, but now mom lost her job and we need to make rent on the mobile home. I know that's not your problem, but that's the situation."

I felt bad for her. She was turning out to be a great employee and she had things so rough, through no fault of her own. I decided to cut her a break. "Look, we are running a special this month to bring in new customers, where we give out four free lessons," I lied through my teeth. "Why don't I sign you up for that and we will go from there. After that, if you like the program we can work something out. I will give you a discount on the lessons and maybe we can find some time when you can work some extra hours. I know I told you when we first met that I don't do that, but I think in this case we can make an exception. You are a very good worker, and I want you to be happy here."

Eyes downcast as usual, she said quietly, "OK."

"Sarah, look at me."

She cautiously raised her eyes.

"I know about your dad. I lost my wife three years ago and it still hurts. I really do mean it when I say I want you to be happy here. We all do. We care about you. Now, just once can I get a smile?"

Apparently I couldn't. Instead, she flung her arms around me and started crying. Stunned, I stood there holding her. A second later, she pulled away with a look of horror on her face.

"Oh my god, I can't believe I just did that. I am so sorry, I know that was inappropriate, please don't fire me, I need this job...it's just...it's just that..." the words kept tumbling out along with the tears.

"Sarah, stop. It's OK." I grabbed her wrist firmly and pulled her back into my arms. I knew I was taking a huge risk. "Forget about what's 'appropriate.' We are people first, then boss and employee second. If you need a hug and a shoulder to cry on, I'm here."

She held on for a few seconds, then let go. She backed off a step then looked me firmly in the eye for the first time and said, "Thank you. That simple kindness means so much to me. I have felt so isolated since we moved up here. I guess I kind of built my own wall."

"You know, if you just let us get past that wall, I think you will find that we are all pretty nice people here. Except Madison, she's a cold-hearted bitch. Stay away from her." I hadn't meant that last part to come out sounding quite so bitter, but it just came out.

Sarah looked a little bit shocked, but then said, "Yeah, she hasn't exactly been welcoming to me."

"Has she given you shit? I told you to tell me if she does."

"No, I'm not going to start trouble. She's just been...well, it's like you said, she's kind of...a little bit of a bitch."

Suddenly, anger swept over me. Sarah wasn't going to tattle, but I could read between the lines that Madison had been picking on her. Months of frustration bubbled over. "No, that's not what I said at all. I'm tired of all of us tiptoeing around this. There is no 'kind of' and 'little bit' about it. She's a total bitch. A spoiled, rotten, black-hearted, fucking bitch. If I ever catch her treating you like shit, I am going to throw her out on her fucking ass. Her and that nasty fucking beast of hers. I have put up with her for way too fucking long."