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A quick sweep of the room revealed nothing, and there was no sign of any photos on his desk. I thought it was peculiar, but it also didn’t look like it was Pete’s office for some reason.
I waited and watched the grandfather clock tick until several minutes had passed and then I heard the doorknob rattle. When I turned I saw that another woman was standing there, this one much younger and looking a little uncertain.
“Miss Waters?”
“Yes, I was just waiting for Mr. Killarny…but I thought I was going to be seeing Sean today.”
Understanding swept over her facial features. “Oh, I’m sorry about that. I thought you knew that Pete was running the day to day operations now. But about that, I think he must have missed your name in his schedule for the day, and I’m afraid he is somewhere out on the property. Probably working with the horses. If you’d like me to try to call him, I could do that…”
I stood and shook my head. “No, there’s no need for you to bother with that. I’m familiar with the place. If you don’t mind, I’ll just head out for a little stroll and see if I can find him.”
She smiled at me and nodded. “By all means.”
I made my way outside and down one of the pathways that led to the main stable and barns. The property was massive and meant he could be anywhere, so it might have been a foolish move not to have her call him. I had time to take a self-guided walking tour of Killarny Estate though.
Suddenly the reason I was here came back to me. If my dad thought they were doping their horses, then this might not be the wholesome family run ranch I had always thought it was. But I had no way of knowing and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go all out believing my dad’s hunches at this point. Still, it wasn’t going to be a pretty scene giving the check back to Pete, especially since he wasn’t expecting it.
I entered the stable and found it empty other than several horses in their stalls. They were all calmly chewing on hay and barely looked up to regard me. I smiled as I walked down the middle of the stable, taking in the beauty of the animals that the Killarny family had bred and raised. They had some of the
best thoroughbreds in the country, and people paid top dollar to get their hands on some of the horses that came from this ranch. Being up close and personal with the amazing animals was a real treat that I savored. I couldn’t help having a love of horses. It had been instilled in me from a young age and even after my parents’ divorce when I was very young, my mom had made sure that I spent equal time with my father, so I had been exposed to the horses from the time I could walk.
I stopped in front of one of the stalls and read the nameplate.
“Hello, Saoirse. These Killarnys like their Irish names, don’t they? Well, you’re a beautiful girl, there’s no mistaking that.”
“Can I help you?” The voice echoed from the other end of the stable, and I turned to see who it was. The light coming from the stable exit left the person standing there in silhouette, and I couldn’t make out who it was until he got a little closer.
Pete Killarny. He wasn’t the little boy I had kissed, but he wasn’t much different from the young man I had last seen a little over ten years prior. His hair was darker now, and the freckles were gone, but his eyes were every bit as deep blue as they had been then. He had broadened though. His shoulders were wider, and he was muscular, a little bulkier than he had been when he was a teenager. No longer wiry, he walked with the confidence of a guy who owned the place.
And that he did. At least a portion of it.
But the part that surprised me, the most shocking feeling that I hadn’t expected at all, was the immediate desire to jump him. He was incredibly handsome, and while that in itself wasn’t a surprise, my reaction to him really was. Inside I was telling myself to calm down and that this wasn’t the rational response to have when meeting someone you haven’t seen in several years. And then there was the other thing…the thing I didn’t want to think about but really needed to confront before I thought about tackling this guy and begging him to take me right there in the stable.
I was reacting this way because I needed this. It had been a year since I’d walked in on my fiancé Dalton sleeping with my best friend, Meg, and called it all off. The big society wedding, the marriage that was going to make the kind of connections my father wanted me to have. I let it all go in that moment when I discovered the worst betrayal of my life.
And I hadn’t had sex since. It had been a year since I had been with anyone. I knew because the date that was supposed to be our anniversary was coming up. And the day that I found Dalton with Meg, he had been with me earlier in the day. That morning before he left for work we had made love and talked about our plans for dinner that night, but I had come home to pick up something I had forgotten and walked in on the two of them together. It had ruined everything, and I tried not to think about it any more often than I had to.
But here I was, in front of Pete Killarny, thinking about how badly I wanted to know what he looked like naked.
“Hi Pete…it’s been a long time.” I laughed, but it was clear he had no clue who I was. “It’s Sara…Sara Waters.”
Chapter 3
Pete
When I entered the stable and saw the woman standing in front of Saoirse I couldn’t tell who she was. Obscured by the light coming from the entrance at the other end of the stable, all I could see was that she had one hell of a body and I wanted to get a better look.
When she turned and smiled at me, there was a glimmer of recognition in her eye, but I struggled to think when I had ever met this beautiful woman. And then she said her name.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, hardly realizing what I was saying.
She looked taken aback. “Well, it’s good to see you too, but that’s not any way to greet someone you haven’t seen in more than a decade.”
I cleared my throat. “I…uh, sorry about that. You just took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting to see you standing here in the middle of my stable.”
“I called and made an appointment,” she frowned, “but you weren’t there for our meeting.”
I let out a breath and ran a hand through my hair. “Sorry about that. I’m still not used to checking the damn calendar every day. They’ve got a thing set up on my laptop but I’m not used to looking at it yet, and frankly, I’m pretty annoyed that some damn alarm keeps going off every day. Haven’t figured out how to fix that yet, but I’ll have someone get to it sometime.” I made a mental note to ask Emma. Of course, my twelve year old daughter would know exactly how to make the alarm stop bugging me.
