Danielle
Steel

THE CHALLENGE

Contents

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

To my wonderful children,

Trevor, Todd, Beatrix, Nicky,

Victoria, Vanessa, Samantha,

Maxx, and Zara,

May you conquer all your challenges

and be forever safe.

You are my greatest blessings

every moment of every day.

I love you with all my heart,

                                        Mom / ds

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