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“Stop tormenting her.” I scolded him. “Mary, we’re staying here, but we’re buying a home in the Hampton’s too. Are you willing to travel, and also could we extend your duties to helping out with the baby, maybe babysitting sometimes so me and my future husband can go on date nights?”
“Oh I’d be delighted. Thank you.” She said, beaming widely.
Our baby chose that moment to make its first kick. A tiny little flutter in my stomach. I held my hand to my belly.
“Looks like baby is delighted too.” I told her.
Chapter 14
Amelia
Lewis Henry Carter was born on the 23 March. He was a delight, and we were so very much in love with our baby boy. We waited a whole eighteen months, until he was toddling around, before tying the knot.
Our wedding was indeed a huge, elaborate affair, though by that time I’d gone off the Bieber idea and instead we had a band. The ceremony over and the reception underway, we made our way onto the dance floor for our first dance to John Legend’s One Woman Man. He took me in his arms and held me tight.
“Thank you for bringing me back to life.” He told me, capturing my mouth in his.
“Thank you for loving me and helping create our beautiful son.” I replied.
As we danced, I noticed a white feather beside our feet on the dance floor. As the song ended, I picked it up and kissed it. I fully believed in white feathers being a sign from above and knew in that moment that my sister was giving us her blessing.
“Thank you, Vee, I love you.” I whispered. Then I let go of the feather and watched it float back down to the dance floor as the other guests joined us to continue the celebrations.
THE END
Author note: H and Tiffany’s story takes place in SOLD: Double Delights Book One.
Alex
Chapter 1
Alex
I stepped out of my house that morning, breathing in the crisp air that blew across the rolling hills of this part of Kentucky and closed my eyes, savoring the moment for just a second more. There was plenty to do around the ranch today, but I wanted to take a minute more to revel in the stillness of this most remote part of the ranch.
My father knew what he was doing when he gave me land in this area of the ranch. It was no secret that I was the most hermit like of all the Killarny brothers. I just had my own way of doing things and my preference for how I lived out here. Even though I was close to each of my brothers in one way or another, I was the one who tended to pre
fer retiring to my own house for the evening or any time that I wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle that followed them all around. It seemed like wherever you found more than one of us gathered together it either turned into a friendly argument or a wrestling match.
It was simply that we liked to poke fun at one another. My mother had been very patient with us all, but I knew that while she was alive, we had caused her an awful lot of grief. She had tried tirelessly to keep us all out of trouble and aside from a few drunken nights spent in county lockup we had stayed out of any kind of major drama for the length of our adult lives. We had all been a worry to her, and I thought about that on occasion, how she wanted us all to be happy and how many times I had heard her pray for that.
Now my mother was gone, and things on the ranch hadn't been the same since her death. We were all moving on in our own ways, and things had changed even further when my father had decided to pick up his things and move to Puerto Rico. It hadn't been too much of a shock to me. I knew my father was struggling to get past my mother's death, and the best way for him to do it would be to get as far away from the thing that most reminded him of her -- the ranch that the two of them had made their own after the death of my grandfather.
Killarny Estate spread out across the vast expanse of green hills in this part of the state. Perfect for raising horses, my family had carved out their place in the industry over a hundred years ago and continued to raise some of the fastest and most sought after thoroughbreds in the country and all over the world. You never knew who might call the office to inquire about a Killarny horse. We had seen some princes and sheiks visiting our estate in the years when we had our most distinguished horses breeding new foals every year.
The breeding had been what my father was most passionate about and in the years when my mother was battling cancer it had taken a backseat to her health. Now that we were back to our normal state of things, at least as normal as things could be without my father and mother overseeing the operation, we were expecting more foals, and we had reached the time of the year when we would need to start checking our mares for possible pregnancy. And that was the thing on my to do list for this particular day.
I closed the door behind me and headed up the road. It was about a half mile to the main barn from my house, and I enjoyed the walk. Even though I preferred being on a horse, I didn't really see any need in building my own stables like some of my brothers had at their own homes. To me, it was nice to maintain the sense of being out away from the rest of the world. I had a lot of pasture lands around me where some of our wild horses from the Dakotas were kept, and out the back of my house was where the woods started and things became a deep, dark thicket the further in you went. That was all Killarny land as well, a portion of it that had been set aside and would never be cleared, at least as far as any of us were concerned because it provided a nice buffer between our estate and the other ranch that was the nearest to us.
Walking up the road to the barn I caught sight of my niece Emma on her horse Saoirse. It was clear that she had not seen me there when I saw what she was about to do. Emma leaned in and urged her horse on, and together they bounded over a fence -- a fence that was absolutely not intended for jumping. I knew better than to shout out because it would spook the horse, and at that point, there was no need. The two of them had already cleared the fence and Emma was patting her horse on the head, telling her what a good job she had done. I was up behind the two of them before she noticed me there.
"So, Emma. Does your dad know you're practicing your jumps back here?"
Startled, my young niece turned around to face me, her cheeks burning red and her eyes going wide.
"Uncle Alex! Oh...please don't tell dad. He'll ground me if he knows I was back here jumping."
The girl looked legitimately afraid of being told she couldn't ride her horse for a week, the same as I would have been if I had been grounded at her age. Riding horses had been life for me just like it was for Emma and I had done much wilder things than jumping fences. There was a memory of crossing a ravine that stuck out to me in particular.
