Reining Her In

by Katie Ashley

  Reining Her In

  Katie Ashley

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  The squeaky soles of my Crocs echoed down the hallway. With my head down, my eyes scanned over the electronic chart of the patient who awaited me in the operating room. After presenting the familiar symptoms of a bowel obstruction, an x-ray had revealed a round foreign object in the stomach. The mystery object was too large for a laparoscopic removal procedure. Instead, I would be scrubbing up and going in surgically to remove it.

  I’d just come back from briefing the family, which was never easy. I tried to put them at ease by assuring them I had done the procedure countless times. After taking their hands in mine, I stared reassuringly into their anxious eyes.

  As I entered the anteroom off the OR, I stepped in front of the sink. After lathering up my hands and forearms with the medicinal soap, I rinsed them thoroughly. Once they were dry, I slid a surgical mask over my face before donning the surgical cap.

  When I entered the OR, I found my nurse, Tasha, preparing the instruments. “Hey girl, how’s it going?” she asked, her dark eyes twinkling behind her mask.

  “It’s going. Besides Barney, it’s been a pretty noneventful day.”

  Waving a pair of surgical scissors at me, Tasha said, “I wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s a full moon tonight, and you know the crazies always come out of the woodwork.”

  I laughed and moved to the operating table. “That’s true.”

  Lying on his back, my patient’s limbs were strapped down to the table, leaving his abdomen exposed. A symphony of machines echoed around me as they registered the patient’s oxygen intake and blood pressure.

  At the sight of a set of low-hanging balls between his legs, I rolled my eyes in disgust. I was tempted to lop his sac off right then and there. At his age, it wasn’t like he was going to get any use out of them. Considering he was a mutt, he didn’t need to be procreating for breeding or any other reason frankly. Why the male species obsess over their sacs is beyond me.

  What? Did you think Barney was a human patient I had plans to castrate? I didn’t mean to mislead you. Maybe it’s because I take my job so seriously it might seem I’m a physician, rather than veterinarian. Turning away from Barney, I picked up the remote to the radio. Within seconds, an old-school Whitney Houston tune was piped in through the speakers.

  Because I listened to music during surgery, one of my ex boyfriends loved to call me a wannabe Meredith Grey at Fur’s Anatomy. I liked to call him a micro peen. Well, at least I did in my head. I wasn’t bitchy enough to actually voice it. Instead, I quickly ended the relationship and vowed to never date anyone again who didn’t respect my career or who had a moderately sized dick.

  For those who are slightly squeamish, I’ll skip the descriptions of the blood, guts, and gore that occur when you do internal surgery. We’ll just move right on through that like you’re fast forwarding on a DVR. To get you up to speed, my fingers had just enclosed around something that felt like a hard, round ball.

  “What the hell?” I asked as I pulled the object out. As I turned it around in my fingers, I noticed it was larger than a marble but slightly smaller than a golf ball. The surface was smooth, and it gleamed silver in the light.

  “Let me see that,” Tasha said.

  When I handed it over, Tasha widened her eyes before dissolving into laughter. “I-I can’t b-believe it!” she sputtered.

  “What?”

  “You seriously don’t know what this is?”

  “If I did, would I be asking?” I replied.

  “It’s a Ben-Wa ball.”

  I furrowed my brows at her. “Hold the phone. Ben-Wa as in the sex balls?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Are you telling me I’m going to have to go out there and tell the family that Barney ate one of their coochie balls?”

  Tasha started laughing again. “Better you than me.”

  Sure, it wasn’t the first time I’d dug slightly unmentionables out of a canine’s stomach or intestines. Over the years, there had been a plethora of chewed up thongs, not to mention parts of a veiny dildo. There’d also been several condoms. Thankfully, the condoms had been eaten directly from the box.

  Part of my apprehension came from the fact Barney’s owners were a sixty something woman and her forty-something daughter. While the odds seemed to favor the ball belonging to the daughter, I didn’t even want to fathom it belonging to the mother. Shaking my head, I muttered, “Fucking full moon.”

  “You can say that again,” Tasha snickered.

  With the cause of Barney’s blockage taken care of, I began suturing him back up. Once I was finished, Tasha and I wheeled him next door to the recovery room. As I was making post-surgical notes in his chart, a beep came over the intercom. “Dr. Beasley, your mother is on line two,” a secretary related. Inwardly, I groaned. While I might’ve been knocking on thirty’s door, my mother still treated me like I was teenager. She insisted on almost daily texts or calls. She claimed it was because I lived so far away in the “big city”.

  With a roll of my eyes, I said, “I better go take this. Keep an eye on Barney for me?”

  Tasha nodded. “Of course.”

  “Can you also have one of the floor nurses tell the family he came through fine, and I’ll be out to talk with them in the next ten minutes.”

  A wicked grin flashed on her face. “Want me to have her tell them the happy news that their Ben Wa ball has been located safe?”

  “Um, no. I’ll take care of telling them the source of the blockage as well as the fact they don’t have to search any of their orifices for the missing ball.”

  Tasha snorted. “Damn girl. That’s a mental image I won’t easily be able to forget.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  When I got into the hallway outside the recovery kennels, an arm snaked around my waist and jerked me into one of the supply closets. When I opened my mouth to protest, warm lips covered mine. I should say warm and familiar lips. Otherwise I’d be protesting very loudly at being manhandled.

  After enjoying a few seconds of breathless lip lock, I forced myself to pull away. I stared into the jet-black eyes of the drop-dead-sexy vet tech I’d been hooking up with. Kieran was five years younger than me, which I suppose wouldn’t necessarily qualify me for cougardom. But there was no future with him. He was just a distraction in light of the upcoming six-month anniversary of the breakup of my last long-term relationship. Instead of continuing to lick my wounds, I’d decided to lick Kieran’s perfect washboard abs instead.

  “I’ve been thinking about you all morning.”

  “You have?”

  He dragged his teeth across his full bottom lip. “I’ve been thinking of all the ways I’m going to make you come tonight.”

  A bolt of white-hot lust zapped me between my thighs. “Is that right?”

  “Mm-hmm

  I slid my hand down the stubble on his cheek. “You sure are a naughty boy to be thinking those NC-17 thoughts at work.”

  Kieran gave me a wolfy grin. “What can I say? You drive me crazy.”

  An unattractive snort came from my nose. “In
my scrubs and lab-coat?”

  “Well, I know what you look like without them.”

  Oh yeah, he was killing me, Smalls. I could have stood there basking in his appreciation of me, but then I remembered my mother’s waiting call. “Hold those risqué thoughts until tonight, okay?”

  “My pleasure.” He winked. “Or should I say your pleasure.”

  Why, oh why did he just have to be a fuck boy? Any other woman would probably not have had such a fatalistic view of a potential future between us. They might have reasoned that age shouldn’t be an obstacle. After all, it was just five years. If the genders were on the other foot, so to speak, it wouldn’t even have been an issue. He had drive and ambition—not to mention his own apartment so he wasn’t living in his parents’ basement or anything all those lines.

  But I wasn’t any of those other women. Life experiences—or love experiences—had altered me into a Pessimistic Patsy rather than a Hopeful Hannah. I could call a fling at fifty paces, and that was all Kieran was. A fling. But for the moment, I was happy flinging with him.

  With a grin, I smacked his ass before heading out the door. Hustling down the hall, I made my way into the office allocated for us vets. After flopping down in a rolling chair, I picked up the phone before tapping the button on the flashing line.

  “Hey, Mom, to what do I owe the pleasure of this mid-afternoon check-in?” I teasingly asked.

  “Peyton, it’s about Papa.”

  At the mention of my grandfather, my body tensed. Few people are blessed to actually know their hero personally, but I was a lucky one. My father was an only child, so his parents were especially enamored with me and my siblings. While grandparents don’t really have favorites, I was the apple of my papa’s eye because I was an animal lover. While my young brother and younger sister loved our family pets, they had no desire to hang out at his vet practice or follow in his footsteps into veterinary medicine.

  As my fingers dug into the headset of the phone, I demanded, “What about Papa?”

  “He had a stroke this morning.”

  I shot out of my chair. My mind began free-falling with out-of-control thoughts. After a few seconds, the analytical side of my brain kicked in. “Which hospital? I’m hoping it’s Erlanger because they have a better neurological unit than Memorial. They’ve done an MRI to assess the damage?”

  When Mom sniffled, my breath hitched. “Mom?”

  “Oh Pey, he didn’t make it.”

  Air whooshed from my body, and I staggered back. Pain ricocheted through my chest. Thankfully, the desk chair was behind me to catch my fall. “Papa is…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. A few seconds past before I whispered, “Dead?”

  “Yes, honey, he is.”

  Tears stung my eyes. “But I talked to him last night.”

  “I know. He’d had breakfast with us. Nothing seemed off with him at all. He went out to get in his car to go on rounds, but he collapsed in the driveway. It was very quick, and he didn’t suffer.” Mom’s voice cracked, and she began to cry.

  Hearing her weep broke me even further, and I began sobbing. As tears clouded my vision, a reel of sweet, happy memories played in my mind. A pint-sized me sporting a stethoscope that was almost as long as I was tall. Going on rounds through the Georgia countryside with him. Cups of brew that were ninety-five percent milk and five percent coffee.

  The next thing I knew my father came on the line. “Hey, Peybug,” he said.

  At the sound of him using my childhood nickname, I cried even harder. “Oh D-Daddy, I’m s-so s-sorry.”

  After all, my dad had lost his father. Even though Dad hadn’t followed in his footsteps, Papa had always loved and supported his only son. “He wouldn’t want you to upset yourself like this at work. He would tell you to be strong for your patients.”

  Reaching for a Kleenex on the desk, I blew a grief-induced snot wad into the tissue paper. “I know he would. I just can’t help it.”

  “I’m trying to be thankful for small mercies.” Dad’s comment was true to form. As a minister, he always tried to find the good in a situation or the greater plan. “It was quick and painless, and he died preparing to do what he loved.”

  “You’re right. He always said he wanted to go quickly.” After he’d watched my grandmother deteriorate from colon cancer, Papa often commented how he wished she hadn’t had to suffer. He always lamented what a blessing it was to die in your sleep or to have a quick death. But I’m not ready for him to be gone. It’s too quick.

  “We’ve decided not to make any plans until you can get here.”

  Of my siblings, I was the only one who had left my hometown of Hayesville. My younger sister, Rebecca, taught first grade at the elementary school while my baby brother, Quinton, worked as a loan officer at the bank.

  Before I could say anything, Dad added, “I know it won’t be easy coming back, Pey.”

  He was right. My stomach churned at the prospect of entering Hayesville again. It had been almost a decade since I’d been within the city limits of the town where I’d grown up. I’m sure you’re wondering how it was possible for me to be so close to my family yet never go back home. The truth was my family respected my wishes not to ever have to lay eyes on a certain person ever again. The certain person who had broken my heart into jagged shards when I was just twenty years old. Since the bastard’s family went back generations in Hayesville, he wasn’t leaving anytime soon. Instead, I’d limped out of town and never returned. He’d run far until I left . . . bastard.

  Papa owned a lodge outside of the quaint Alpine-esque town of Helen, and we always met there for holidays and family events. You could say I was thoroughly spoiled that my family had allowed me to wallow in self-pity or self-preservation all these years. They probably should have told me to get over the bastard who had driven me away. The whole, “Time heals all wounds” bullshit. But they got what it was like to live in a small town that fed off gossip like buzzards over a carcass.

  Although I didn’t want to return to Hayesville, my broken heart wanted the comfort only my parents could give. Even though I wanted nothing more than to run out the door that minute, I couldn’t. I had post-surgery patients to check on, not to mention the other emergencies that might be brought in. I was one of the few vets who didn’t have children, so it would be almost impossible to find coverage. “I’ll leave right after work.”

  “No, honey, that isn’t necessary. Just come up in the morning. We can tell Rebecca and Quinton to meet us at the funeral home around noon.”

  Part of me still wanted to hop in the car the moment my shift was over. I didn’t like the thoughts of having to spend so much time alone with my grief. “Are you sure you don’t need me?” Inwardly, I was hoping he would change his mind and demand I come home that instant.

  “We’re fine. You go take care of your patients, and we’ll see you at noon.”

  I sighed. “Um, okay, if you’re sure.”

  “Love you, Peybug.”

  A knife twisted in my chest. “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  My head pitched forward, and I buried my face in my hands. In spite of the cloud of grief overcoming me about the loss of Papa, my mind went back to different time—one that wasn’t completely tied to Papa. A time where I experienced a different type of loss and grief.

  Chapter Two

  The Past

  In the past twenty years of my life, I don’t think I’d ever been so focused on time as much as I was today. Maybe it was because I’d not only scheduled my wedding day with military precision, but I was barking out orders like 4-star general. Everything from hair and makeup appointments to when to arrive at the church was meticulously timed. It was all part of my Type A personality. The loveable neurotic in me, as I liked to joke.

  Six months ago when I’d announced my engagement to Declan St. James, time had also been on the minds of my family and friends. The question echoed most was, “Don’t you want to wait until you get through veterinarian school or at
least your undergrad?” I’m sure to most people my wedding went against type. Valedictorians with full scholarships to the University of Georgia didn’t get married at twenty, even if they were from a small town. The rumor mill fanned the gossip that I must be pregnant. But after a few months passed by without a baby bump, people finally abandoned the idea.

  Since I wasn’t pregnant, it made it even more problematic why I wanted to get married at twenty. People just didn’t want to accept the answer that I was in love, or that my fiancé, Declan, supported my decision to finish school and pursue being a vet. As he often said, “There’s no reason in hell why we can’t achieve our dreams together, Pey. I love you, and I want to marry you right now.” Considering he was not only my boyfriend of the last two years, but the town catch, you could say I was easily persuaded. He’d been the quarterback of the football team as well as Homecoming King when I’d been elected Queen. He had plans of his own to earn a business degree and work for his father’s contracting business.

  Now as I stood in the one of the preparation rooms at the First Baptist Church of Hayesville, I couldn’t imagine my life without Declan. Not only that, the minutes couldn’t fly by fast enough until I became his wife. Even better would be when we arrived in Aruba late this evening to begin our honeymoon.

  As I was smoothing my fingers over the strand of pearls at my neck, I caught the reflection of my bridesmaids in the mirror. They were huddled in a clump by the door. With their heads bent, they spoke in low, frantic tones.

  Turning around, I asked, “What are you guys doing?”

  “We were looking for Declan,” Becca replied.

  My heartbeat accelerated at the thought of him in his tux. “How does he look?”