“Fuck no we won’t. You don’t get to tell me how to treat my woman.”
I looked at Lorna, hardly believing that my friend was putting up with the crap from this drunk who had nothing to offer her.
“Lorna, come on,” I said, standing to leave.
“No one is going anywhere with my girl!” Billy shouted and started to slam a beer bottle down on the table. So he was the one who was trying to start prison fights in the bar.
Alex had his arm before he could make contact with the table and he pushed Billy back against the bar.
“Not tonight, you fucking shit head.”
Alex swung and made contact, knocking Billy to the floor. Billy stumbled to get up, and Alex hit him again and again, far too many times. I screamed for him to stop while I held Lorna back. She was a wildcat, and she was ready to fight the man attacking her boyfriend. Ten seconds in and it had already gone on too long. Finally, Alex let up and turned to leave the bar, walking out without me. I left Lorna to tend to her broken boyfriend and chased Alex outside.
“What the hell was that?” I yelled at him when we reached his truck.
“What do you mean? That asshole needed a beating.”
I pushed against his chest. “They are going to call the cops, and you are going to end up with an assault charge.” I stamped my foot. “Seriously, this was what I was worried about. This is the same kind of shit you were pulling when we were in high school. I knew that you liked to get into fights, but I thought you were over it by now. Clearly, you’re not.”
Alex followed me around to the passenger side of his truck. “You seriously think that wasn’t a fight worth having?”
“I get it that you think you need to defend a woman’s honor, and no, I do not think that Lorna needs to be with that creep, but it’s her choice. And you leaving the guy bloody on the floor of the bar is no way to take care of things.”
“So what the fuck is this?”
I threw my hands in the air and got into the truck, slamming the door behind me. Alex came around and got into the driver’s side.
“Take me back into town. We’re done.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’re done’? We hadn’t even started!”
I shrugged and looked away from him. “Alex, I’ve got too much going on. I don’t have time for someone who hasn’t advanced beyond bar fights. This is it. It’s not happening. I don’t care what we said. If this is the way you choose to spend your nights, this is not going to work with us.”
He looked at me and shook his head. Starting the truck, he drove me back into town in silence. Leaving me at the apartment, I watched him drive away, fairly certain that we were done for good.
Chapter 9
Alex
It was almost more than I could bear to be apart from her, knowing how close she was to me. We didn’t talk after that night at the bar and as much as I knew that what happened needed to happen—that motherfucker Billy had needed a good beating for as long as I had known him and I was glad I had done it—I had some regrets because the woman I wanted more than anything else in the world now wouldn’t have anything to do with me.
No one else had seen a problem with what had happened in the bar. No one called the cops and Billy never pressed charges, probably because he knew who I was related to and figured that we had some kind of arrangement with law enforcement. It wasn’t true as far as I knew, although some people probably held my father’s name in higher regard than others around town. So there had been no legal ramifications, but losing Maddy was the worst.
Months had passed. We saw each other when we had to and were civil, but neither of us ever brought up the night at my house. The conversation at the lake might as well have never happened. No matter what I wanted to come out of this, it was all gone now. Any future I thought we had together was toast because of my actions that night at the bar, and her reluctance to get into a relationship with someone she thought didn’t have all of their shit one hundred percent together.
Never mind the house I had built or the life I had. Things were going well for me, but all that Maddy could see was the surface. But something about it didn’t make sense to me. There had to be something else going on, and I was bound and determined to find out.
I waited until one afternoon when I knew that Maddy was scheduled to be at our ranch for a few hours and then I went into town to find Lorna at the clinic. She was busy working on some files when I entered the office.
“What are you doing here?” She asked crossly. I could tell she was still a little upset and I didn’t blame her for that.
“I need to talk to you about some things. But first is Billy like that at home?”
Lorna frowned. “It doesn’t matter. We broke up. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me since I’m best friends with the girlfriend of an asshole.”
“Did you tell him that your best friend and the asshole aren’t together anymore?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He moved on.”
I kept my thoughts to myself but knew that Lorna was better without the guy. He was nothing but trouble, the same as he had been when we were in school together, and she would thank herself down the road when she had been away from him longer.
“Why are you here, Alex?” Her tone was short.
“I am here to ask you why Maddy is really back in town.”
Lorna looked down at the paperwork in front of her. “You know why. Doc Halloran was leaving the practice and looking for someone to take over. She heard about it and jumped at the chance to have it.”
I shook my head, not believing her. “You know that’s not true. We both know who she is. She didn’t want to stick around here. She left here, and she had plans to do something else. I understand that becoming a vet was all about helping her father, but I want you to tell me what’s going on with the old man because I know that’s part of it. Tell me what it is.”
Lorna looked up to face me and chewed on her lip before finally speaking.
“She’ll skin me alive if she finds out I told you. You are literally the last person she wants to know this.”
“Lorna,” I pleaded. “I’m not trying to do anything malicious with this information. If anything I want to help her and I don’t know how to do that if I can’t figure out what is going on behind the scenes here. Tell me what it is, and maybe I can do something to help her. She’s your friend, and she’s mine too. I know I’ve wished that it was more, but I’m basically settled into the reality that it isn’t ever going to happen between us. If there is something I can do to fix the situation she’s in though—somehow make things easier for her…I want to do it. Help me help Maddy. Please.”
Maddy’s best friend was hesitant, but eventually, she decided it was worth it to tell me.
“It’s her dad. He’s sick.”
“How sick?” I asked.
“He’s sick like…there’s nothing they can really do for him. It’s not like they have given him an expected amount of time he has left. But basically, they’ve told him he has to take it easy. Nothing crazy going on. It’s his heart. It’s done. There was too much damage from several heart attacks, and now they are waiting for another one. The doctors have told him that one will come eventually and that will be the one that kills him.”
I stood there, not exactly in shock, but absorbing the information. Her father was an older man, and it wasn’t a surprise that he had heart trouble. The fact that he was essentially sitting in his house waiting to die though. That was too much.
“And Maddy is back here to be close to him and help him out financially, correct?”
Lorna nodded. “That was the idea. She didn’t know how long she would stick around, but she wanted something solid and secure enough so that she could stay as long as her father is here and needs her. Lucy is busy and really couldn’t be the one to step up to the plate. So Maddy is here, doing the sort of thing that Maddy does—taking care of everyone else before she considers herself. Alex, she’s not thinking about her happin
ess. It’s her father she’s putting first. I think…” she stopped speaking and shook her head. “Seriously, she will kill me if she knows I said this to you, but I think she loves you. I don’t think it ever stopped. I think the circumstances brought things to a halt. Now she thinks if she brings you back into her life that you are going to turn it upside down and cause problems when all she is trying to do is make her father comfortable in his last days.”
I took a deep breath and thanked Lorna before I left the clinic, stepping out into the early spring sunshine. I knew what I had to do.
Chapter 10
Madison
My phone rang as I was closing up the front of the clinic. Lorna had already gone home for the day and taking the time of day into consideration I figured that it was my father and worried for a moment that something might be wrong at his place.
I picked up the phone and saw that instead, it was Alex’s number. For a moment I held an internal debate—to answer or not? The way he had behaved over the past few months, so hot and cold toward me, was enough to make anyone crazy and I thought that we had settled on the fact that it was better for us not to have anything to do with each other outside of a professional capacity. I swiped to take the call.
“Hello?”
“I’ll cut to the chase,” Alex said. “I need you out here now. It’s the yearling. I think she’s about to have this foal.”
“Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”
I ended the call and threw my phone in my bag and gathered things I thought I might need. Pineapple was young, to begin with, but there were so many other concerns surrounding her giving birth. The poor thing was healthy but small, and I worried that even though nature usually had a way of working these things out, her fear might outweigh her instincts.
I ran out to my SUV and threw my bag in the back, hopping in the driver’s seat and speeding away out of town and in the direction of Killarny Estate. It was a quick drive down the mostly abandoned highway, but in the distance, I could see the storm clouds rolling over the hills, a sure sign that we were in for a very noisy evening as was common for a spring evening in Kentucky.
There was electricity in the air, literally, as I made my way up the drive and to the main barn at the ranch. Against the slate gray of the sky came a bolt of lightning slicing through the clouds and rendering the sky into two parts for a split second. It sent a chill up my spine as I parked my vehicle and went running toward the stable where Pineapple was housed.
It was dark in the stable, save for a single utility light shining into one of the larger stalls. Against it, I caught sight of Alex’s tall silhouette, and it made me catch my breath. He stood there, powerful and seemingly in control of the situation, but I knew nature better than this. And I knew Alex better as well. Behind all that strength and confidence in what he knew, there was a worry that something could go wrong. Losing the horse would be too much after everything that had transpired over the past year, and I knew I had to do everything in my power to help her through this delivery.
I rushed up behind him, and he turned to face me.
“Thank you for getting here so quickly,” he said as he turned back to the horse, who was very clearly in pain and scared of what was happening to her. “It seemed to come on pretty quickly. I called you just as soon as I realized what was happening.”
I moved in closer to the horse, saying soothing words and doing what I could to make sure she knew that I was there to help and not harm. Reaching out to touch her I felt the warmth of her body through the sheen of her golden coat. Her muscles rippled beneath my touch and I could sense the uncertainty in her behavior. It was clearly visible in her eyes, but there was something else there. She was slowly submitting to it and letting her body take control of what was a natural process.
“Everything seemed fine this morning. She wasn’t acting the least bit distressed. I can usually tell when a mare is about to foal, but she was acting completely normal.”
I nodded and backed away, coming to grab some instruments from my bag and then moving in to give Pineapple a more thorough examination. Everything looked like it was proceeding as it should and for me, there wasn’t much to do other than monitor her and make sure she didn’t go through any unnecessary stress. The one factor I still had no clue about was the weight of the foal. This was a premature delivery as far as we knew, assuming we had the date correct on the conception.
“All we can do is wait now,” I said as I moved to stand beside Alex.
“Well, if that’s all there is…you don’t have to stay. I can watch her, and I’ll let you know if anything changes.” His words said one thing, but his body language was telling me something else. I could tell he was worried about the young horse and how she would fare.
I shook my head. “No, I want to stay here with her. This is her first, and sometimes that can be tricky, especially since she’s so young and it’s coming early. Of course, it might not be early at all, and you know as well as I do there’s some variation on that. All we can do is watch and wait for her to deliver and hope for the best for the foal.”
A rumble of thunder echoed through the open end of the stable, and I looked outside to find that things had gone pretty dark, nothing but blue-gray shadows and the wind blowing through the trees outside. A storm was rolling in and was likely already here, and I had no idea exactly how bumpy our night was going to get.
“Nasty out there,” he said.
I nodded. “I think we’re in for a pretty bad storm.”
“Well, if it comes to it we can run to the cellar from here pretty easily.”
I sighed. All that this night needed was a tornado.
Alex pulled up a pair of 5-gallon buckets for us to sit on and I was grateful for even the uncomfortable seat after a long day vaccinating cattle. We were quiet for a while and didn’t know where to start if we were going to speak to each other at all. It had been months now of avoiding each other, pretending nothing happened and attempting to move on with our lives. Other than seeing Alex in town and when I came out to the ranch for regular checkups, there had not been much contact between the two of us. A part of me was missing him, but I knew that as long as things were at their current status, nothing could happen between us. No matter how much my body ached for it to be differently.
We watched the horse laboring in silence, and I got up occasionally to check her and make sure things were progressing at the speed that they needed to. She didn’t appear to be in any distress, and that’s what I was watching for—a sign that her little body wasn’t able to push the foal out on her own. That was the biggest risk here and one that I had worried about from the moment, I found the horse was pregnant, but I thought she was healthy enough that it wouldn’t be a life threatening issue for either Pineapple or her baby.
“I need to tell you something,” Alex said as I came to sit down again. “I know about your dad.”
I looked at him with surprise plainly showing on my face. “What do you mean? What do you know?”
He shrugged. “I cornered Lorna, and I asked her to tell me what was up. What the thing was that brought you back here. I knew that you wouldn’t just turn up out of the blue for know good reason. You never had any intention of coming back to this town, so why would you show up to take over this practice? I knew something else had brought you back to Ashland.”
I swallowed and took a breath. “What did Lorna tell you?” I didn’t want it to be everything. I didn’t want Alex to know just how bad it was and what a desperate situation my father was in. There was no need for him to show me pity now.
“Everything. That he’s sick and it’s his heart and that there isn’t really anything, they can do about it.”
I nodded, a little stunned hearing him say the words out loud. “Yeah.”
Alex reached for my hand and grabbed it, squeezing it gently.
“I want you to know that you aren’t alone. This isn’t something you have to handle on your own. You h
ave people that love you and can help you and whatever you need I would be ready to give it to you if you’d just ask.”
“You know I won’t do that,” I said as I looked at his hand holding mine.
“I do know. That’s why I decided to take some things into my own hands.”
He let go of my hand and got up, going over to one of the shelving areas and pulled something from a file folder, bringing it over and putting it in my hands.
“It’s the title to your land. It’s yours. I had it put back in your name, just so there is no mess when you go trying to settle things after…after your dad…”
I looked at him, my eyes wide and mouth gaping open. “You did…what exactly?”
“I got your land back. I’m giving it back to you. It was taken from your dad, and I feel like it’s the least that I can do, giving it back.”
“But how, I thought it was so much more complicated than that?” I knew that it wasn’t as simple as him just giving me the land. It belonged to his father, not to him, and it wasn’t his to give.
“I bought it.”
I reached for his arm and grabbed his shoulder, steadying myself where I sat on the bucket.
“No, Alex…you can’t.”
He shrugged. “Already did. It was the right thing to do, Maddy. I don’t want you or your sister going without. You and Lucy both deserve to have something that belonged to your father. It’s not fair the way things went down, and I wanted to do whatever was within my power to make them right again. My dad wasn’t ever going to do it for you; I’m sorry to say. I hope you’ll be able to forgive him someday, but I understand if it’s too much to ask. He doesn’t deserve it as far as I am concerned. I do hope that you’ll be able to look past things enough to speak to me again though.”
Without really thinking, I leaned over and hugged Alex, pulling him close and wrapping my arms around him tightly.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I don’t know how to express how much this means to me.”
Alex (Killarny Brothers Book 2) Page 8
