Alex (Killarny Brothers Book 2) Read online

  It took a moment for it to register whose face I was looking at. And when I finally realized whose face it was staring back at me, I couldn't look away.

  Alex jumped back like he had stood too close to a wood burning stove and was risking burning himself, backing away slightly and then pausing to look at me.

  "What the hell are you doing here?"

  Taken aback, I held up the can of primer that I would be using to cover the old paint on the sign once I made it back to the office.

  "I needed paint," I said without attempting to explain myself any further. In the moment it was too shocking to see him, but it didn't take long for those buried feelings to start bubbling to the surface again. It had been ten years since we last saw each other. Ten years since the biggest fall out of my life. Over half of my life had passed by since the last time I spoke with Alex Killarny, and even though I knew the chance was high that I would run into him once I moved back into town, I hadn't expected it to be within the first twenty-four hours.

  "You're back then?"

  I nodded simply, and he nodded in return, his eyes never leaving my own. It seemed like a challenge, but what he was challenging me to I couldn't be certain of. All I knew was that I wanted to get out of the hardware store and back down the street to my office before we got any deeper than the ‘Hi, how are you?’ portion of this conversation. McCall's Hardware was not the place to have this talk, not that I was looking forward to the content of the discussion wherever it inevitably occurred, but I preferred that it not happen in the middle of what amounted to the gossip hub of this town. Anything that went down here would be all over town by the time people started heading to Claire's diner for lunch.

  "I've...I've got to pay for this. See you around." I whipped around and walked toward the counter. It felt like he might have been following me, or at the very least his gaze was. I had a $10 out of my pocket and on the counter for Charlie before he could take the time to ring up the total.

  "I'll be back later for the rest of the things I need," I said as I hurried out the front door, the little bell ringing behind me as I stepped out onto the sidewalk, never pausing to slow down. My office was only a block away. A straight shot from where I stood and I wanted to get back there, to the safety of it, before Alex could appear from the hardware store and chase me down. Not that I thought he had any interest in doing so, but I really had no idea what was on his mind at that moment. Clearly, we were both equally surprised to have run into one another, and I could tell that he was feeling just about as enthused about the encounter as I had been.

  What had shocked me the most though were the feelings that came surging back to me, like a jolt to my system. It had been ten years since I stood in front of him and just as long since he had last touched me, and already I could feel the desire for him growing again. There it was like it had only been yesterday when we were last together

  I had thought we could manage to avoid each other once I came back. It wasn't likely, but there was a slim chance. Maybe we would only cross paths every once in a while and then our lives could go on like normal without bringing up too much from the past. I had no idea how his life might have changed in the past ten years. Mine certainly had. Through the years I had dated and finished college. The last time we had spoken had been around the time of our high school graduation...we had basically spent our entire time as adults apart from each other.

  Even when my best friend Lorna had tried to tell me about what was happening back here in Ashland, I had always steered her away from any discussion about the Killarnys in general and Alex Killarny specifically. She knew that talking about them was far too painful for me. Even hearing about them in passing was more than I wanted and she had learned a long time ago to leave them out of any conversation we were having about things from the past, no matter how pertinent the Killarnys might have been to the discussion. Beyond that though, I hadn’t shared most of what had transpired between Alex and myself all those years ago with my best friend. As far as she was concerned, it was a breakup and nothing more, but still, she had never pressed.

  I doubted that Alex was following me because it was quite likely he never wanted to see me again, but I rushed into my office anyway, uncertain if he even knew what I was doing back in town. Surely he would hear that I had taken over Doc Halloran's practice at some point, but word might not have made it out to their ranch yet. He would find out soon though as I noticed from the schedule Doc had left behind for me. I was due to head out to the Killarny Estate in the next week to check their mares. The place was big though, and there was a good chance I wouldn't see Alex at all while I was there.

  But it was probably just as great a chance I would have to see him, and now that bandaid had been ripped off, so it was one less thing for me to worry about.

  Lorna was in the front office pulling things out of boxes and setting them out on the desk that had been designated as hers. She was there helping me out until I found a full time office manager. Doc's granddaughter had been helping him out over the past few years, and he hadn't ever gotten around to hiring someone full time since his wife had retired from the practice. Now that was going to be up to me, and I would need to put ads in the paper or up around the noticeboards in town soon, but that was one thing on my to do list that I didn’t feel like focusing on at the moment.

  Lorna looked up as I entered the office. “Hey…what’s up with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is everything okay?” She dropped what she was doing, and I could tell from the concerned look on her face that my regular porcelain skin must have gone a full shade whiter—a terrifying thought in itself.

  “You might say that. I ran into Alex at the hardware store,” I said as I came around the other side of the counter to where her desk was and put the can of primer down.

  “Oh, shit,” she said, bringing her hand up to her mouth. “I guess…well; I guess it’s a good thing it’s over with then. Now you don’t have to wonder when it will happen.”

  I shook my head slowly and tried to bring myself back to the present. There was too much important work ahead for me to get my mind in a tangle over seeing a high school boyfriend. But deep down I knew that it was more than that.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Lorna asked, perceiving my emotions like she always did.

  “Not now, maybe later. Right now I’ve got to get this sign primed and painted and outside so that people know who the new vet is.”

  The painting was slow work as I stenciled my name on the wood and filled in the lines carefully. I hadn’t done anything like this since I was a child and it felt good to be doing something a little different from the norm. I had never been very artistic, but there were a few videos and photos I had looked at online to give me the inspiration for the sign. Once the letters were done, I would let them dry before putting a protective coating over the top, sealing it from weather damage. I had no idea how long I would be at the practice, but as it was something I had worked toward my entire adult life, my immediate plans were to stay here for the long haul.

  Or as long as my father needed me, which might not be very long at all. The thought sent a pang of sadness directly to my heart, and I felt tears start to build behind my eyes. No, I would wait to cry in the shower later that evening, where no one could hear me.

  The doctor had told my father his heart was bad a few years before and that he would have to do what he could then if he wanted to give himself a better chance at living. The particular kind of heart failure he was experiencing wasn’t reversible, but it could be slowed down for a time, and it had been for some years. But his latest report wasn’t good, and the doctor had essentially told him there would be another heart attack. Maybe big or maybe little, but eventually another big one would come, and that would be it. The small heart attacks had done so much damage that there really wasn’t anything left to do.

  When he told me about the state of things I knew what I had to do. I had been looking for a practice to take over anyway and w
anted to be closer to ranches so that I would have more opportunities to work with equine herds, and I made the call to Doc Halloran. I had done a little work at his clinic when I was in high school, and he was good friends with my family, so I had known that he was getting ready to retire after a long career in the community. It had made sense that I could come back here and take over the practice, to be back home and closer to my father whenever the time came.

  He didn’t require any additional care from me, but I felt better being close by. We had found a home healthcare nurse to check in on him and the status of his heart once each week to monitor how things were going and report back to his doctor. In the meantime my father went about his life as he always had, taking pride in the cattle he owned and enjoying the time he spent working with them on what little land we had left.

  I dotted the ‘i’ above my first name on the sign and looked down at my work. The sage green had bene a good call, and I thought it would look good contrasted against the red brick of the office facade.

  Heading back into the front of the office I saw Lorna packing up, and I thought it might be time for us to have a discussion about what had transpired that day.

  "Hey, you want to come upstairs and have a glass of wine?"

  She looked at me over her glasses and pushed a stray strand of her blonde hair behind her ear. "Sure. Nowhere else to be."

  We headed up the stairs to the spacious apartment above the clinic, and I went to the fridge to retrieve a bottle of sauvignon blanc that had been chilling since I had first arrived at the place. Grabbing a couple of glasses from the cabinet, I opened the bottled and poured generous amounts into each and handed one of them to Lorna.

  "Thanks so much for all that you've done to help me. You know I couldn't do it without you," I said with a smile as we clinked glasses and sipped the cold white wine.

  "Well, I know that you would have liked it if your sister had been able to help, but since Lucy is busy with work, then I am happy to help you out as much as I can for as long as you need me." She paused and swirled her wine. "But I've got a feeling you want to talk to me about something else, right?"

  I nodded. "Bingo."

  It had been years since I had voluntary brought up the Killarny family in conversation. Training myself to avoid any talk of them had been pretty easy living far enough away from home that they no longer had any kind of impact on my daily life. But now that I was back in Ashland that was going to change, and I needed to confront at least some of my surface feelings about the family with my best friend.

  “You remember that weekend that Alex and I broke up, right?”

  She nodded and took a sip of her wine. “How could I forget? You were inconsolable for a month after and then you refused to talk about it at all.”

  I sighed deeply and thought back to that time, finally opening up and explaining everything that had gone on between not only me and Alex but our respective families.

  It had been not long after my mother had first fallen ill. It was degenerative and in her muscles and while there wasn’t much that could be done, there were several drug studies available for her to take part in if only we would be able to pay for the expense of getting her to the hospital three states away and keeping her there for a week each time during the course of the treatment. It was something that quickly began to add up, and there wasn’t a lot my father could do to make more money at the time. The cattle business is a market like so many things, and there were only certain times of the year when selling really worked, and the rest of the time it was more about maintaining and caring for the herd.

  All that we had was the land. And so he had gone to his friend Sean Killarny, Alex’s father, about it to see if he would be willing to loan him some money for my mother’s treatments. It had hit my father’s pride very hard, and it took so much for him to go to Sean and ask for this. My mother’s illness was the only thing that could have driven him that far. He did it for her.

  Sean Killarny had more money than God and everyone within a one hundred mile radius, maybe further, knew it. He could have loaned the money and been done with it, knowing my father would pay him back eventually. But Sean had seen the dire truth of the situation—my father was in desperate need of the money and fast, and he would do anything to get it. Sean proposed the terms. He wouldn’t loan the money, but he would buy most of my father’s land with the intention of selling it back to him at cost when my father had the funds to repay him. In the meantime, we could still live on the land and wouldn’t have to worry about leasing it or anything of the sort. My father regretted it every day, but he hadn’t gotten any of this in writing, and so when things went badly later it was all his word against the other man.

  My father trusted Sean Killarny and had no reason not to believe that things wouldn’t pan out exactly as he said. But when the time had come, and he was ready to buy back the land, suddenly Sean was unwilling. He said that the value had gone up and since our small piece of land bordered one of the corners of the Killarny Estate it would be a valuable piece of real estate for him to keep, but if my father really wanted it back then Sean was willing to give it up for twice what he had paid for it.

  This was outrageous, and my father knew that it was all completely untrue. He threatened to take Sean to court over it, but as Sean was the one in possession of the land title, there wasn’t much to be done. Now he had my father between a rock and a hard place and insisted that if he wanted to stay on the land, he would have to start paying to lease the place. There was no other choice, and that’s what my father had started doing.

  All of this had happened while Alex and I were in our senior year of high school. I was planning to go to a state college, while Alex was going to a different university out of state to get a business degree and we knew we were going to part anyway, but we had been together for so long at that point we decided we wanted to make it work. Four years was a long relationship at that point in our lives, and we didn’t want to throw it all away. Alex had been my first love and I his, and the idea of losing that was too much.

  But we watched as our fathers quarreled and I saw how my mother was wasting away. The first drug trial had been a failure, so we put her on a second. With my father leasing the land back for use for his cattle we were leaking funds like a sieve, and there was very little to put toward my mother’s care.

  Alex and I fought for months. I was so angry at his father that I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him and even though Alex and I went through with it and attended our senior prom together, I refused to acknowledge his father’s presence when we took a photo in front of the grand staircase at Killarny Estate.

  It had all blown up that night. A week before graduation, on prom night, with a wild thunderstorm raging outside of our school gymnasium, Alex and I had sneaked off to his truck where we had sex in the cab. Not for the first time, but Alex had been my first, and this was all part of the passionate, fiery relationship we had shared back then. We fought like cats and dogs, but when we got back together, it was like the Fourth of July with fireworks going off all around us.

  I was putting my prom dress back on and suddenly the emotion of the night and knowing that I would be leaving for college soon got to me and I started to cry. Alex tried to comfort me, but I had pushed him away, angry that he was leaving, but more upset that he was related to the man who had done such an underhanded thing to my father—and Alex had done nothing to stop it.

  That was the night that I said it was over, although we spoke again a week later at our graduation. It had been terse and then explosive, with me screaming at him in the darkness on the football field after our graduation ceremony, caps in hand, gowns still on. I told him I never wanted to see or speak to him again and I had held to my word.

  And now here I was, recounting what had happened a decade ago to my best friend for the first time.

  “I can’t believe you never told me what Mr. Killarny did to your dad. It’s so fucked up.”

  I
nodded, somewhat in a daze. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to know the truth of what went on between them. I just didn’t know what I should say. You know exactly how powerful Sean Killarny is in this town. Everyone is under his thumb in one way or another, or they are loyal to him.”

  Lorna shrugged. “Well, you may have lucked out on your timing, because Sean Killarny has basically skipped town. He isn’t living around here anymore. I think he shows back up from time to time, but I heard he’s got a place down in Costa Rica.”

  That didn’t make much sense to me, but I didn’t press. Maybe Emily Killarny had decided that she wanted a time share and they were spending their retirement basking in the sun on the beach. It was more than my parents would ever be able to do. My mother had passed away not long after graduation ten years before, and now I was on the verge of losing my father as well.

  “Good riddance. It’ll be bad enough to have to see the rest of the gang of brothers around town.”

  She regarded me for a moment before speaking up again. “And you’re sure you’re not still…I don’t know, harboring any kind of romantic feelings toward Alex?”

  I frowned. “Seriously? It was all I could do not to spit on him when I saw him in the hardware store. He is the last person I want to see, and I definitely don’t want to be involved with him. That was over a long time ago, and I have no desire to see it start up again. There’s literally no good feeling left in me for him. What we had is nothing more than a memory now, and it’s a muddied one at that. We were kids, Lorna. You get over those things and move on.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. Our conversation moved toward other things, and I wasn’t sure exactly what I had hoped to accomplish by discussing that drama with her, other than to get it off my chest and finally let her know what had really precipitated my breakup with Alex Killarny.