Awakening His Shy Vet

by Shelley Rivers

  The sound of footsteps broke into her concentration again, and with one final offer of love from her heart Ruby stepped away, pleased to see her new friend with her head down, looking more relaxed than when she’d first entered the stables. With luck, it would be enough to last for a few hours, until the coming storm had moved on.

  ‘Here’s the water,’ Kern said, walking towards them.

  Ruby nodded. ‘Good. I think your girl’s ready for a drink. She should settle now.’

  Kern placed the bucket down on the stable floor in front of Evie. ‘She seems much more relaxed. What did you do?’

  ‘A little bit of massage,’ she hedged, not about to admit the truth.

  Her kind of healing was seen by many as some kind of hocus-pocus witchery and not proper medicine. But she knew it was. What she did dealt with the damaged spirit inside an animal.

  ‘Some horses respond to it when they’re stressed, others not so much.’

  Kern continued to regard his horse. ‘She’s definitely calmer. Massage...?’

  Ruby stepped away and retrieved her bag. ‘She may sleep for a while. You might want to try her in a stall.’

  ‘I prepared one earlier, just in case,’ he said. ‘Give me a minute and I’ll walk you back.’

  Ruby shook her head and wandered over to the entrance. The sun was low on the horizon and casting a pretty pink hue over the sky. ‘You don’t have to. It’s not far.’

  Kern led a much calmer Evie into a stall. ‘How are you going to get across the river without your local piggyback knight to carry you? We’re kind of a rarity in Dorset, you know.’

  She laughed. ‘I think this time I’ll walk across, thanks.’

  Kern closed the stable door and followed her outside. ‘No need. Where are you from, Ruby?’

  ‘Here and there,’ she answered, purposely vague. ‘No particular place or town.’

  When they came to the river, Kern scooped her up and stepped into the water before she could argue or decline.

  ‘I said I’d walk over this time,’ she complained, but instinctively wrapped an arm around his neck and held tight.

  ‘I know,’ he said, moving through the water to the other side. Again, he stopped at the centre of the river. ‘Of course if you’d rather I dropped you, just say.’

  She gripped his neck tighter. ‘When you’ve gone to so much trouble, that would be ungrateful and stupid.’

  Kern laughed and shifted her higher in his hold. ‘So you’re a lady with no set home?’

  ‘None except for the one I take with me.’

  Reaching the other bank, he placed her back on her feet and together they moved in the direction of her caravan. ‘Well, you certainly have a mysterious aura about you.’

  Ruby frowned at his words, not sure how to take them. They sounded complimentary, but she’d never had anyone say anything like that before, so she wasn’t sure.

  ‘I do?’

  ‘I’m sorry that I doubted you earlier,’ Kern said. ‘You must have wondered what was going on after that scene between Fin and I. Truth is, I haven’t been home in a long time, and I’m not staying for any longer than I need to.’

  ‘Does your aunt know?’ Ruby asked.

  He shrugged and turned to her. ‘Probably—deep down. For the first time in years I’m in a position to make decisions which affect only me and no one else. My being here is only to tie up loose ends before I move on.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Doesn’t matter where I stand on this farm, I just feel the past mocking me.’

  Curious, she asked, ‘Why would it do that?’

  ‘Because I have a bad habit of making the women in my life sad. And it’s time it stopped.’

  Not understanding, Ruby regarded this man whose spirit appeared dejected and tired. As though life had slammed him with trouble too much. It saddened her, because she knew that feeling.

  ‘I don’t know what you did to Evie. God knows, I’m going to spend the rest of the night trying to figure it out. But you did something while I was fetching the water. Of that I’m sure.’

  Ruby shrugged and glanced away. She didn’t like not telling the complete truth, but she refused to give him a reason to dismiss her gift as nonsense when he’d already seen its effect.

  ‘I just talked to her and massaged her a little. It was hardly anything. In fact, forget about making any payment to the practice. Consider it a neighbour’s freebie.’

  ‘Thanks, but I know it was more than that,’ he said, stepping closer. He touched Ruby’s face and turned it to him. ‘Your eyes are pools of secrets, aren’t they? You’re too enticing for a man like me.’

  ‘I am?’

  He winked and tilted his head. ‘Goodnight, Ruby.’

  A shiver ran over her skin as he disappeared back across the river. Kern MacKinley saw too much, and from now on she had to make certain that where she was concerned he saw no more.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘OKAY, I’M HERE. What’s wrong?’ Kern panted, having run over from the stables to his aunt’s place after receiving a text message demanding his immediate presence.

  Eloise stopped hunting through a bundle of old leather tack and smiled. ‘Nothing. I just need your help with clearing this place.’

  Kern glanced around the barn, packed with boxes and long-abandoned pieces of furniture, all the tat a person tended to accumulate after years of living in the same place, and almost groaned. This was the reason she’d called him over? A barn full of rubbish that had probably sat here for decades?

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ Eloise replied cryptically. ‘And as you have time right now, seeing as you’re still undecided about your future, I figured you’d be glad to help. Besides, it will save you from having to do it when I depart for the next world.’

  Kern sank down on a nearby stool and wiped his sweaty forehead. ‘You’re not going anywhere, so why the rush?’

  Eloise peered at him. ‘Who knows what’s in store for me—or you—but I want this done. Move this lawnmower, will you?’

  He stood and lifted the mower, which looked like a relic from the Edwardian era, and dumped it out of his aunt’s way. ‘Why the sudden urge to spring clean?’

  His aunt returned her attention to the tack. ‘I need the room.’

  He again glanced around the barn. ‘For what?’

  ‘You are a Nosy Nicholas today, aren’t you?’ Eloise tutted, tugging on a leather bridle before tossing it back into the box. ‘I just want your help, Kern. Not your opinion.’

  ‘Forget I asked.’ Kern remembered from his childhood that when his aunt was in this mood it was better just to do what she wanted. ‘Where should I start?’

  ‘You can put this old tack by the door,’ she said, shoving the box towards him. ‘It’s old, but with a good cleaning it will be as good as anything you can buy. It belongs to you, anyway.’

  He lifted several pieces out of the box and inspected it. His aunt was right. Although it was old, it was in good nick.

  He glanced at her with suspicion. ‘It does?’

  ‘Yes.’ Eloise nodded and waved a hand towards it. ‘I borrowed it from your mother, along with a few other bits and bobs, after she died.’

  Kern stared at his aunt. ‘After she died?’

  Eloise picked at the top button of her cardigan. ‘The day after the reading of the will, actually. You’d run off, and Fin was in London, no doubt trying to find some way to break the terms of the will. So I went over to the house and the stables with a van and...borrowed a few things.’

  Kern took in all the boxes cluttering the area for a third time. Slowly, he recognised several pieces of furniture that had used to belong to his mother. Family heirlooms from his grandparents’ time. ‘You borrowed them?’

  ‘Just until you came home,’ Eloise said, flashing him a bright smile. ‘Well, I wasn’t going
to leave it all for Fin to sell off, was I? You can go through it and decide what you want to keep and take back to the farm with you. The rest you can chuck out. Of course I never imagined I would be storing it for so long.’

  Kern decided it was time for him and Eloise to get a few things straight.

  ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the farm. I just had to get away. Without Mum it felt wrong to be here. And, even though I was young, I had sense enough to understand that trying to run a business with Fin would never have worked. There was also a part of me that wanted to prove I could make it on my own. I worked my way from stable boy to boss and I’m proud of that fact.’

  ‘Your mother would have been proud too, you know,’ Eloise said. ‘Of everything you’ve achieved. Even though it wasn’t here at the farm, she still would have been proud.’

  A hard lump formed in Kern’s throat at his aunt’s well-meant words. It was praise he didn’t want to hear—not when he had fallen so far.

  ‘Well, she would have something to say about where I am now, I’m sure.’

  ‘She would have said that at the bottom of nowhere there’s only one way to go. Back to the top of somewhere. Where you really belong.’

  Kern sighed and focused on the box of tack. ‘Who says I want to go back?’

  ‘Horses and racing fuel your blood, Kern,’ his aunt insisted. ‘No point in denying that truth. What are you going to do if not train horses?’

  That was a question he had no answer for. ‘I’m not sure. I haven’t decided.’

  ‘There’s nothing to decide. Can you really see yourself in a nine-to-five job, stuck in an office somewhere? You’re down, Kern, but you’re not finished. Not you—never you. You have land, the farm and a good horse. One from good stock, from what I can see. I’d say you have it pretty fine for a man about to rebuild his life.’

  Kern shrugged, not sure he wanted to hear his aunt’s words of encouragement. Right now, the whole idea of returning to the racing world left bitterness in his mouth.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No maybe. Training is what you were born to do. It’s what your parents taught you. Stop wallowing in the past and get on with achieving the glory days of tomorrow.’

  * * *

  ‘Ah, here she is. Ruby, come in and see how little my nephew has accomplished in the hour he’s been here. He needs organising and I bet you can do it.’

  Kern glanced up from searching through the umpteenth box of rescued belongings, to see the woman standing with her dog on the threshold of the barn. Dressed in black cut-off jean shorts and a black T-shirt with hearts, roses and skulls all over it, she should look like a Goth, but the red and white scarf tied in her curly black hair gave her a fifties rockabilly cuteness instead.

  Eloise walked over to Ruby. ‘I have some shopping to do, so I’ll see you two later. If you’re good, I’ll bring you both back a treat.’

  Kern waited until his aunt had disappeared before speaking. ‘I think she still thinks of me as a child. Though I’d best prepare you—my aunt’s idea of a treat is never the expected.’

  ‘Not sweets, then?’ Ruby asked, shoving her hands into the pockets of her shorts.

  Kern did his best not to take in her slim legs and the pretty curve of her calf muscles. But he was male, and Ruby was an attractive woman. And it had been so long since he’d thought of a woman as anything but an unfixable dilemma...

  He chuckled and shook his head. ‘No. Far too conventional for Eloise. Years ago she brought me a children’s book I was desperate to own. She gave it to me to read, but when it was time for her to go home she took the book with her, stating that she had to take it back to the library the next day.’

  Ruby stared at him. ‘She didn’t tell you it was a library book when she gave it to you?’

  ‘Nope. Eloise was always kind of crazy like that. And when you’re raised with the unconventional, you miss it when it’s no longer around. Though there’s other people’s type of crazy to deal with instead, I guess.’

  Ruby moved towards him, her dog following at her heels.

  ‘Has she always been interested in astrology?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah. My aunt is as bright as a wolf moon. Don’t be fooled by the scatty act she likes to use when it suits her. She’s clever, tough, and she has a heart so soft it makes whipped cream look hard. I’d hate you to think differently. How did she talk you into helping with clearing the barn?’

  Ruby stroked her dog’s head and smiled down at him. ‘She offered to have Dog one night a week, so I can do a late shift at the practice.’

  Kern lifted a plastic tub filled with horse brushes and carried it over to the entrance, where several other containers and boxes were stacked. ‘Are you always happy when you talk about your work?’

  She nodded. ‘What’s the point in working at a job if you don’t love doing it?’

  Her words reminded him of his aunt’s earlier ones, but he pushed the thought away. The future could wait until another day. Right now there was a barn to clear. Though where he was going to put everything he wanted to keep, he’d yet to figure out.

  ‘What should I do?’ Ruby asked, reaching out to pick up an old book. She blew the dust off the jacket and smiled. ‘“The Long-Abandoned Farm”.’

  ‘How apt,’ Kern mused. ‘Start anywhere you want. I have a feeling I’ll be packing it all in the horsebox and carting it back to the farm with me, anyway.’

  * * *

  ‘You’ve been quiet for a long time. What have you found over there?’

  Kern jumped down from the chair he was standing on, coughing as dirt rose up from the floor after his landing. Walking through the dust cloud, he wove between several crates to where Ruby sat on an old pine box at the back of the building, sifting through a dark wooden trunk.

  ‘I’m looking at this,’ she murmured, her concentration on the piece of paper in her hand.

  Intrigued, Kern reached Ruby’s side and crouched down. ‘What is it?’

  Ruby handed him a faded old newspaper cutting. ‘This must have been important to someone. And look at these photos. Aren’t they wonderful?’

  Kern took the black-and-white cutting from her, immediately recognising the image. A larger one used to hang in the stable office—a proud token from his grandparents’ time. In the photo, they stood on either side of a horse. The horse he knew had been his grandparents’ first National Hunt winner.

  ‘Do you know who they are?’ Ruby asked.

  Kern nodded and smiled. ‘Let me introduce you to my grandparents—Tom and Ada MacKinley.’

  Ruby took the piece of paper back and smiled brightly. ‘Hello, Tom and Ada. I’m pleased to meet you. You look a little like your grandfather, you know?’ she told Kern.

  He glanced at the photo again, searching for similarities with the old man he remembered only as a booming voice and a loud laugh but seeing none. ‘Yeah?’

  Ruby traced a finger lightly over his grandfather’s faded black-and-white image. ‘Here in the jaw and the eyebrows. In the eyes too. You both have determination in your gaze.’

  Kern didn’t see it. Everyone had always commented that he took after his father in looks and his mother in temper. Perhaps now he was older it had changed.

  ‘My grandmother would have said bloody-mindedness. They married when they were both eighteen years old. They bought this land with a dream in their hearts and a willingness to work for it.’

  Ruby glanced up. ‘Did the dream come true for them?’

  ‘Yes, for their lifetime it did. Grandfather Tom bred and trained winners. My grandmother ran the business side. The old man won nearly every cup and award you can imagine. They were talented and a team. It makes a difference working towards success when two people are willing to work for the same goal. They were good people.’

  ‘They sound it.’

  ‘The
y were each other’s backbone and reassurance when times were tough or lean. My mother was the same with my father. But when he passed, I suppose she lost her anchor. She struggled to keep the place going. She only married Fin because he threatened to take away his seven racehorses unless she did. The farm was going through one of its lean times, with Dad and Grandfather dying within two years of each other and new trainers coming into the business—young and keen, full of enthusiasm and false promises. In the end there were too many obstacles for her to fight against. She lost a couple of big owners to men who were not only the preferred sex, but who also spouted the guarantees of wins they wanted to hear.’

  ‘So she married your stepfather to save the business?’

  ‘Yeah—a man she couldn’t stand, but needed. I told her on their wedding day I would never forgive her—that I’d rather she lost everything than be married to someone who wasn’t Dad.’

  ‘You were close to your father?’

  ‘I was his shadow from before I could walk. My relationship with my mother was never the same after he died. She might have saved the farm and the business, but she lost my respect.’

  ‘That was harsh,’ Ruby muttered.

  He sighed and reached for a photograph from the trunk. One of his mother and father on their wedding day. ‘It was. And, do you know, if I was standing in her boots today I’d marry someone to keep what I’d worked for. I know that now. I’ll always regret not being able to tell her so.’

  ‘She probably understood your anger.’

  He nodded, then grinned. ‘But I bet she wondered how the hell she’d managed to raise such an obnoxious, self-righteous brat.’

  Ruby laughed and handed him another photograph. This one of a pretty grey horse. ‘I’m sure she did that on a daily basis anyway.’

  Kern touched the photo but didn’t take it. ‘Are you insinuating something, Ruby?’

  Shaking her head, she struggled to stop the corner of her mouth from twitching. ‘Never.’

  Kern leaned closer, his shoulder bumping hers. ‘Are you sure?’