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An elderly couple interrupted them. “You were marvelous!” the husband said to Lisa. “Just great!” the wife added. Lisa barely nodded.

  “It was tonight?” Tec asked.

  Lisa nodded.

  “Oh boy,” he said. But it wasn’t enough to take away the terrible feeling crushing Lisa’s heart.

  The other kids in the group were beginning to wonder what was going on, and there was no way Lisa wanted to be there for one second more. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “There’s a cast party.”

  “See you later,” Tec said. “And I’m sorry. I guess I blew it, huh?”

  Lisa didn’t answer. She just ran back to the comfort of her friends backstage.

  An hour later, Lisa was feeling a little better. In spite of her anger and hurt, the party was fun, and she was glad she’d chosen that for her escape. The juggler had showed everybody how to juggle, working with props. Lisa didn’t think she’d exactly mastered the skill. She had laughed, however, and that mattered because the simple act of laughing improved her mood.

  She also ate, talked, received compliments and gave them. It had been an exciting night, and she was totally accepted by all the adults as an equal. Lisa was proud of the whole show, and she was proud of what she’d done. The edge of her anger softened with the fun of the party and the crowd.

  By midnight the party was breaking up. Lisa knew she had some packing to do before morning, though she didn’t think it would take her long. She still wasn’t ready to go back to her room. She had to do some thinking, and her room was not the place for it.

  She headed for the beach. Once again, as it seemed was always the case on San Felipe, the moon was shining brightly and the stars were sparkling overhead. She walked along the edge of the water as she’d done so many of the previous nights, holding hands with Tec. How could he have missed the show? She’d told him about it enough times. He certainly knew she was in it. She’d been to so many rehearsals, and he knew every time. He also knew she was leaving the next day, didn’t he? Could he have forgotten? Could the slow pace of the tropical days and nights have confused him about what day it was and when things happened? Could he possibly have misunderstood what she’d meant when she told him she had something special for him and when she’d reminded him about the show? How could that be?

  She had to admit that she had never really told him outright that she had a solo, and she’d never told him directly that she’d planned to sing to him and for him. She took a deep breath of the fresh tropical night air. It seemed to clarify everything. It wasn’t really Tec’s fault. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He just didn’t realize how much this had mattered to her, and there were a dozen ways she could have made it clearer to him. So much went on at a place like this resort that it was easy for someone to lose track of time. That must be it. He just didn’t know when the show had been on, much less over.

  She’d overreacted. It was the way it was with her mother, always flying off the handle about something that wasn’t worth getting upset about. How could she do that? No wonder Tec had given her that weird look. She’d been overreacting to a little mistake he’d made, and it might have cost them their whole relationship.

  She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t leave the resort with Tec still confused about what she felt for him. That could be the worst mistake of her life. He was crazy about her—as crazy about her as she was about him. She must have nearly broken his heart by being so upset. She had to fix things, and there was no time to waste.

  Lisa picked up her sandals and ran along the beach, hurrying to get back to the lounge, where she hoped she would find him.

  She was running so fast that she almost didn’t see the couple standing in the surf about twenty yards in front of her.

  She paused, not wanting to embarrass them by running past them. Then they looked in her direction, toward the moon. It was Tec. And Shelley.

  He must have come looking for me and Shelley came along to help, Lisa thought for a fleeting moment. She waved to them.

  They didn’t see her. In fact, they never saw her. Because at that moment, they turned to each other and kissed passionately. Shelley melted into Tec’s arms as he drew the slender girl to him.

  Lisa stopped, ducked into the shadows, and ran back to her cabin.

  “HE KISSED THAT skinny little thing right in front of you?” Stevie wailed to Lisa as she finished telling her two best friends absolutely everything that had happened on San Felipe. They were having a sleepover at Stevie’s house, and it seemed there was an awful lot to catch up on.

  “I don’t think Tec ever saw me that night on the beach,” Lisa said.

  “It doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t have been kissing anyone else, whether you saw him or not,” Carole said.

  “Wait’ll I get my hands on that guy,” Stevie said. “I’ll punch his lights out.”

  “I’ll fill his dimples in!” Carole added.

  Lisa laughed. “You guys are the greatest,” she said. “You really know how to make me feel good. Without you, I got totally taken in by a real rat!”

  “We aren’t great enough to have been there when you needed us the most,” said Stevie.

  “Well, you would have set me straight early on, wouldn’t you?” Lisa asked.

  “The minute he forgot to meet you to go riding,” Carole said. “That was a sure sign that he was a rat.”

  “Almost as bad as when he couldn’t remember your last name, even after he’d kissed you,” Stevie said.

  “And when he forgot to go riding the second time,” Carole said. “Bad sign, for sure.”

  “And then when he skipped out on the auditions and rehearsals,” said Stevie.

  “But then when he didn’t stand up to Kiki about the smell of horses,” Carole said, “I’d have known he was nothing but bad news.”

  “You two know everything!” Lisa said. “I wish you’d been there, but even here, you’re making me feel a whole lot better.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” Stevie said, fluffing her pillow and reaching for another chocolate chip cookie.

  “And while you should have been down there, saving my heart, I should have been up here, painting.” Lisa poured herself a glass of milk.

  “We did okay without you,” Stevie said.

  “Sure you did, and I knew you would. I just feel like I let you down.”

  “You didn’t,” said Carole. “You didn’t have a choice.” She chewed on a cookie thoughtfully.

  “Unlike a certain P. Marsten,” said Stevie.

  “Maybe the only good males in this world are stallions,” said Lisa.

  “And geldings?” Carole asked. Starlight was a gelding.

  “Definitely. Any horse, actually—male, female, or neutered.”

  “Okay, so if I’ve got this straight, what we’ve just agreed to is that the only good men are horses, right?” Stevie asked.

  “Something like that,” Carole agreed.

  “Sounds good to me,” Lisa said. “Oh, can we add Max to that?”

  “Sometimes,” Stevie said. “Like today.”

  “He was really surprised with all the work we’d done, wasn’t he?” Carole asked.

  “Knocked his socks off,” Stevie said proudly.

  “And he didn’t believe Veronica for one half of one nanosecond when she tried to tell him she’d helped,” said Carole.

  “He’s no fool,” Lisa reminded them.

  “Okay, we can add Max,” Stevie conceded. “But that’s the limit.”

  There was a knock on Stevie’s door. It was Mrs. Lake. She asked Stevie to open the door for her because she couldn’t manage it with her hands full.

  “Of what?” Stevie asked, moving over to the door.

  “Open the door and I’ll show you,” she said. There was a funny, happy sound to her voice.

  Stevie opened the door. Her mother stood there with a very large arrangement of flowers, which she had to hold in both hands.

  “The florist just delivered this,” s
he said. “It’s for you.”

  “Me?” Stevie asked as if there were any other daughter of hers in the room at that moment.

  “You,” Mrs. Lake confirmed.

  Carole took the flowers. Stevie went for the card. She pulled the little greeting out of the very small envelope and read it.

  “Okay, guys, we’ve got a problem,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Carole asked, placing the flowers on Stevie’s desk.

  “The flowers are from Phil,” Stevie told her friends.

  “That’s a problem?” Lisa asked.

  “Well, here’s what the card says: ‘Stevie, I hope you can forgive me for letting you down about the painting. I was being foolish and selfish. You are far more important to me than some old skiing trip. Any day. Love, Phil.’ ”

  “What’s the problem?” Carole asked.

  Stevie grinned. “It means I’m going to have to ask you if we can include Phil on that list.”

  Lisa and Carole exchanged glances. Lisa shrugged.

  “Okay,” said Carole. “That means that the only good men are all horses, Max, and Phil.”

  “That’s enough,” said Stevie.

  “For now,” said Lisa.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BONNIE BRYANT is the author of more than a hundred books about horses, including The Saddle Club series, The Saddle Club Super Editions, the Pony Tails series, and Pine Hollow, which follows the Saddle Club girls into their teens. She has also written novels and movie novelizations under her married name, B. B. Hiller.

  Ms. Bryant began writing The Saddle Club in 1986. Although she had done some riding before that, she intensified her studies then and found herself learning right along with her characters Stevie, Carole, and Lisa. She claims that they are all much better riders than she is.

  Ms. Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She still lives there, in Greenwich Village, with her two sons.