The Challenge Read online

  The Challenge is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by Danielle Steel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Hardback ISBN 9781984821614

  Ebook ISBN 9781984821621

  randomhousebooks.com

  Cover design: Derek Walls

  Cover images: © Christoph Wagner/Getty Images (lake and mountain in foreground), © Ascent Xmedia/Getty Images (man and woman together), © Zing Images/Getty Images (man at far left), © Thomas Söllner/EyeEm/Getty Images (man second from right), © Lilkin/Getty Images (man far right), © Peter Paterson/Arcangel (sky and mountains in background)

  ep_prh_6.0_140767282_c0_r2

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Dedication

  By Danielle Steel

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The day after his fourteenth birthday in July, Peter Pollock still had to do all his usual morning chores on his parents’ ranch in Fishtail, Montana. Fishtail was in Stillwater County, in the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains, an hour from Billings, Montana. The closest mountain to them was Granite Peak, with an elevation of 12,807 feet, the highest mountain in Montana and the most challenging to climb. The town itself was at 4,466 feet and had a population of 478 people. Peter had grown up in Fishtail and loved his life there, except for his morning chores.

  He was a good-looking boy, tall for his age. He looked like his father, Pitt, with straight blond hair and sky-blue eyes. His mother, Anne, was blond too, petite and fine-featured, and a stunning rider. She had won blue ribbons at all the local horse shows and rodeos in her teens. She and Pitt had been high school sweethearts since freshman year, when they were Peter’s age. They’d gone to the University of Montana together, and got married in June after they’d graduated. Peter was born in July of the following year, when his parents were twenty-three years old. They were thirty-seven now, and had always said they wanted five or six children. Anne was an only child and had wanted a big family, but she had never gotten pregnant again. They’d gone to see a specialist in Billings, and another one in Denver. The doctors they saw marveled at the fact that they’d even managed to have Peter. A defect in Anne’s fallopian tubes made it almost impossible to conceive, and she never had again, so they focused all their love and attention on Peter, and were grateful for the miracle of their only child.

  Pitt’s paternal grandfather had founded the Pollock ranch. They bred and sold the finest horses in the state, and it was the largest ranch in the area, well known and respected throughout the western states. People came from as far south as Texas to buy their horses, and as far east as Kentucky. The bloodlines of their horses were legendary. Pitt’s father had run the ranch when his father died, and as an only child himself, Pitt had inherited it from his father when he died in an accident ten years before. Pitt Pollock was one of the youngest, most successful ranchers in Montana. Anne had never even thought about that when she fell in love with him at fourteen. Her father had been everyone’s favorite local vet, and he had taken Anne with him many times when he tended to the horses on the ranch. It had never dawned on either father that their children would fall in love, and when they did, their parents figured it wouldn’t last. They were just kids when it all started. Twenty-three years later, they were more in love than ever.

  Anne worked side by side with Pitt in the office and was the chief financial officer. She had majored in business and economics, and had a great head for finance. Pitt knew everything there was to know about horses. He’d been taught by his father and grandfather, and had learned his lessons well. Peter knew that one day he would run the ranch. He was a serious, responsible boy and had never caused his parents any trouble. He got decent grades in school, but liked to have fun too. He planned to follow in his parents’ footsteps and go to the University of Montana. His mother thought he should go to business school afterwards, to learn everything he could about running a venture as large as theirs. The world had changed since Pitt’s grandfather’s day. Now it was essential to know everything about the economics involved, not just about horses. It was a flourishing business. Peter was nowhere near thinking about graduate school yet, although his parents talked about it more than he wanted them to. He was starting high school at the end of August, which was as far as he wanted to look for now. He was excited about it.

  He had grown up with a carefree life on the ranch, and rode some of the finest horses in the country whenever he wanted to. He had ridden in his first rodeo when he was five, his parents bursting with pride while they watched him. Their open adoration of him was embarrassing at times. For Peter, parents who were crazy about him, and madly in love with each other, was a given. All he wanted to do was ride, have fun, and spend as much time as he could with his three best friends.

  The boys had grown up together, and they spent all the time they could with each other, riding their bikes to each other’s homes and exploring. Anne and Pitt always made the boys feel welcome at the ranch. They had set up a bunk room where they could stay whenever they wanted. They didn’t want Peter to suffer from not having siblings, and the four boys spent every possible moment together, although Pitt kept Peter busy doing chores on the ranch. He wanted his son to learn ranching from the bottom up, and didn’t hesitate to assign him menial tasks, like the ones Pitt had done as a boy. Peter never thought about how successful they were, or what all this would mean to him one day. It was where they lived and what they did. His friends paid no attention to it either. They had no regard for the thousands of acres the Pollocks owned, or the volume of business they did, breeding and selling valuable horses. None of them understood how lucrative the ranch was, which Anne and Pitt thought was just as well.

  Bill and Pattie Brown owned a smaller neighboring ranch. Bill’s father had bought the land for it from Pitt’s father when Bill was a boy. They had cattle as well as horses and sheep. They owned a successful dairy, and though their operation was smaller than the Pollocks’, they did well. They were Anne and Pitt’s closest friends. Pitt, Anne, and Pattie had gone to high school together. Bill and Pitt were best friends. And once the two couples were married, they were ecstatic when they got pregnant at the same time. Anne and Pattie talked about how their babies would become best friends one day, or marry. Their sons were born three weeks apart, with Matt Brown arriving before Peter. Anne and Pitt were Matt’s godparents. And their wish had come true when the two boys were best friends by the time they went to nursery school together. Anne had been graciously happy for Bill and Pattie when they had a second child eight years later, although the Pollocks knew that a brother or sister for Peter was not in the cards for them. They had made their peace with it. The Browns’ second child was another boy, Benjie. He was now six years old, and his older brother’s adoring shadow, much to Matt’s irritation most of the time. Matt grudgingly took Benjie with him whenever his parents insisted, but he loved escaping to the Pollocks’ ranch to hang out with Peter and, whenever possible, he would leave Benjie at home.

  Pattie had gone to nursing school while Anne and Pitt were in college. Bill was three years older and already working on the ranch. He and Pattie got married a year before Anne and Pitt. They had broken up for a while before that, and dated other people, but they married each other in the end. Pattie worked as a nurse for two years until Matt was born, and then became a stay-at-home mom after that. Her life with Bill was secure. Her family hadn’t had the means that Bill’s did, so she was grateful for the life he provided her and their two boys. She was the envy of her sisters, with a husband who owned a successful ranch, and she didn’t have to work. Her sisters’ husbands were ranch hands elsewhere in the state, as Pattie’s father had been. Both Pattie’s sisters had jobs, one as a teacher and the other as a secretary. Pattie was the success story in the family, married to a rancher.

  Bill and Pattie’s relationship was occasionally stormy, unlike Anne and Pitt’s still-romantic relationship. Bill had a hot temper, and she had a fiery nature, but despite the occasional fights, Pattie and Bill considered themselves happily married. Pattie thought about having a third baby at times, and would have liked to have a girl, but the prospect of ending up with three boys made the idea less appealing. She had her hands full with the two she had. Matt had been much more mischievous and adventuresome than Peter when they were
younger, and Pattie was constantly chasing after Benjie to make sure that he didn’t get hurt in the cattle barn, or chasing after the sheep, or hanging around the bullpen. He wanted to do everything his older brother did, and she spent a good part of her day checking up on him, worried about what he was up to, and often scolding him when she found him.

  The two families went on vacations together every year. One of their favorite pastimes was camping, and the boys loved it. They provided an extended family for each other. Peter and Matt were always at one home or the other, with a slight preference for the Pollocks’ place, because Benjie wasn’t there.

  Matt’s ambitions were very different from Peter Pollock’s. Peter’s future was set as the sole heir to the ranch. He would be the fourth generation to run it one day. He loved where they lived and the life of a rancher, and he watched his father carefully to learn from him.

  Matt dreamed of city life. He was considered a computer wiz at school and wanted a job in the tech world one day. He knew who all the big players in tech were, and he was desperate to work for one of them when he graduated from college. He wanted to go to Stanford if he could keep his grades up, and then stay in California to work in Silicon Valley. It sounded abysmal to Peter, who loved the mountains and open spaces of Montana, and wanted to stay in the place where he was born. Matt couldn’t wait for high school to be over so he could leave.

  Benjie said he was going to be a rodeo clown and ride the broncos when he grew up. He’d had a narrow escape from one of the bullpens the last time they all went to the rodeo. At five, he had once followed a clown into the arena, with a bull pawing the ground twenty feet away from him, all in the two seconds his mother hadn’t been watching him. She never let go of his hand at the rodeo after that. It was easy to believe he’d be a rodeo clown one day. That was not his parents’ aspiration for him, but at six, it was all Benjie dreamed of.

  * * *

  —

  Tim Taylor was the third musketeer in Peter and Matt’s group of inseparable friends. He had faced greater challenges than Matt and Peter. His homelife had been less idyllic, and he was happiest when he was at either the Pollock ranch, or the Browns’. He was warmly welcomed at both. His parents were both natives of Montana from modest homes. His parents’ fathers were both ranch hands too, like the men in Pattie’s family.

  His mother, June, had suffered a case of bacterial meningitis when she was pregnant with him, and survived it without losing the baby. But he was born partially deaf as a result of the high fever she’d had for several days. He wore two hearing aids, which helped. He had had extensive speech therapy, and although he still spoke with a marked speech defect, he managed well with the hearing aids, and lip-read and signed when necessary. After his mother’s diligent work with him, and a good speech therapist, he was at the top of his class at school and nothing slowed him down. He read voraciously, and had a passion for horses, as well as great instincts about them. He wanted to go to veterinary school, then come back to Fishtail and work with horses.

  He was extremely adept at rock climbing, like a mountain goat, his mother said about him. She was proud of the progress he’d made. He’d finished eighth grade at the top of his class as usual, and wanted to take advanced placement classes in high school, to get into a good college. His friends were indifferent to his hearing impairment. He managed so well in spite of it, and he had a great sense of humor.

  After working closely with him on his speech therapy in his early years, June had gone back to school and become a licensed speech therapist. She worked in the nearby town of Red Lodge, and was recommended by several doctors in the area and Saint Vincent Healthcare hospital in Billings. She thoroughly enjoyed her practice.

  Her marriage to Ted Taylor rapidly became a casualty of Tim’s affliction. It had put a huge strain on their relationship, which had been on a bumpy road anyway. Ted was a proud man, who had grown up in intense poverty as a young man. His father had been an alcoholic ranch worker who’d died young, leaving Ted’s mother to struggle to make ends meet.

  Ted had been unable to accept the fact that his son was less than perfect. He had kept away from Tim at first, then had gone through a period of heavy drinking, which was how he handled most problems, like his father had. He had finally conquered his problem with alcohol through AA, but sought a “geographic” solution to their marital problems. He had left June and Tim, and taken a job in Oklahoma, working in the oil fields. He had done well, but came home seldom, unable to face the problems there. Then he took a job in Texas, which included working on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and later traveled in the Middle East. After four years of it, and his seeming inability to remember that he had a wife and son in Montana, June finally divorced Ted when Tim was five. He no longer remembered a time when his parents were together. He saw his father once or twice a year now. Ted sent him postcards from exotic places and called him once in a while, but rarely saw him. He still couldn’t handle Tim’s handicap, no matter how well Tim had mastered it with his mother’s help. Ted never told people that he had a deaf son, except in AA meetings when he blamed his drinking on the divorce, rather than the reverse. He ignored the fact that he had run away from his wife and son to work halfway around the world, so he didn’t have to face them. He could afford to send them enough child support so they could live comfortably in a house at the edge of town that June rented. He never stayed longer than a day when he came to visit, and he couldn’t leave fast enough. He still couldn’t face what he perceived to be Tim’s imperfections. He felt guilty for having run out on them, but had never been able to turn it around. He never even tried. He had run away from his problems all his life, just like his father.

  June tried not to be bitter about it, and refrained from making disparaging comments to Tim about his dad, but she felt cheated by Ted nonetheless. She’d had a few brief affairs in the nine years since her divorce from Ted, but her only real love was her son. Ted had turned out to be someone they couldn’t count on, and Tim had in effect grown up without a father. The life Ted led sounded glamorous, working in foreign places, and Tim made him sound like a hero when he talked about him, but he and June knew he wasn’t. Tim had had more fathering from Bill Brown and Pitt Pollock than he had ever had from his own father.

  Matt and Peter were like his brothers. He and Peter were only children with devoted mothers. The main difference being that, other than in name and occasional brief annual visits, Tim had no father. Tim tried to impress his father with his grades and his athletic accomplishments, none of which seemed to interest Ted in his distant life on the oil rigs. June was well aware that if there were ever an emergency, she wouldn’t even know where to reach Ted, but fortunately there had never been one. Tim was not a wild child, or prone to high-risk activities, other than his rock climbing, which he was responsible about, as he was in all things, unlike his father. The Browns and Pollocks often included him on their vacations, and they were well aware that he needed a stand-in father. They provided it as best they could, for which June was deeply grateful. Tim needed a man in his life, in lieu of the fantasy father he had, who was more of an illusion than a reality, and had disappointed Tim all his life. His mother was the person who never let him down. He wanted to be a speech therapist like her when he grew up, so he could help kids like him.

  * * *

  —

  The fourth member of their gang lived at the edge of Fishtail too, near Tim’s house. Noel Wylie had gone to school with the other three boys since kindergarten. His parents, Marlene and Bob, had moved to Montana from Denver right after Noel was born, and were Fishtail’s two very respected attorneys. They opened a joint practice, and the Pollocks were clients. Living in Fishtail was a choice they had made, not an accident of birth, and they loved it. They had wanted to bring up their two sons in a healthy, wholesome, rural atmosphere, and to get away from cutthroat city lawyering. It had been the answer to their prayers. Fishtail had met all their expectations, and they had a busy, booming practice. They thought Fishtail was the most beautiful place on earth.