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I packed up my things again and headed to the house to see Pete in his office so I could give him the final numbers and talk about when they needed me back to check the pregnant mares again.
“It’s been a while,” he said with a friendly smile as I entered his office. “Good to see you back around, Madison. I hope you’re enjoying the practice so far. I think everyone is missing Doc Halloran a little, but it’ll be nice to see your friendly face around here again.”
I gave him a half-smile. Pete of all people had to have known how difficult it was for me to be here. I put the list down on his desk.
“Seven from the ones that were anticipated, but the number came to eight when I checked the filly, Pineapple.”
Pete grimaced. “Well, shit. I’ll have to call the couple who were planning to take her to see what they want to do about it.”
I nodded. It wouldn’t be unheard of to choose to terminate at this point in the pregnancy. There were arguments for both sides, but in the end, it would come down to what her owners wanted.
“Whatever you need me to do, just give me a call. But I’m afraid it’ll have to be soon. Do you happen to know much about the stallion?”
Pete whistled. “He’s a big bastard. And apparently, has no manners. We would never have bred him to her on purpose. It was a complete accident.”
“Well, if he’s very big then we’ll definitely need to watch her. She is small, and a young one like her could tend to have a small foal. It’s the weight that tends to be an issue. Keep an eye out and let me know what you all decide and we’ll go from there.”
“Thanks, Madison,” Pete said as I stood to leave.
Happy to be out of the house and away from the threat of running into Alex again, I got into my SUV and started back toward town, glancing back in my rearview mirror just once. No matter what I was feeling and what I thought I might want in the moment, that was exactly where Alex Killarny needed to stay.
Chapter 5
Alex
Pete found me in one of the storage sheds cleaning out and organizing a bunch of nuts and bolts that were hanging around for some of the equipment on the ranch. Work that didn’t need to be done and that I had only picked up to pass the time until I knew that she was gone. From the look in my older brother’s eye, I knew he could tell right away that I had been avoiding seeing Madison.
“I had a little conversation with your girl,” he said as he clapped me on the back.
“Not my girl,” I said, shaking my head. “Not mine and not a girl anymore. She’s grown the hell up since the last time I saw her.” I tried not to think about that bead of sweat slipping down between her breasts and how I had wanted to bury my face between them, inhaling the scent of her and tasting the saltiness of her skin like she had just stepped from the ocean.
“Well, Dr. Graston then.”
I came up short at that comment. Somehow in all of that conversation with her, it hadn’t quite dawned on me that Maddy was a doctor. It made me swell with pride at the thought. She might not have wanted a thing to do with me, something I thought I could remedy with time, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t be proud of the woman’s accomplishments. She had come a long way, and I was glad to see all that she had achieved.
“So tell me what the two of you talked about.”
Pete pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket. “She confirmed the pregnancies we have, and she found one that I guess you thought might be possible. Pineapple.”
I slammed the coffee can full of bolts down on the shelf. “Damn. I was hoping it wouldn’t be the case.” But it was a good thing Maddy had discovered it. Pineapple was scheduled to go to Texas in the next few months, but if she was carrying a foal belonging to one of our stallions, then we were going to have to work something out with her soon-to-be owners.
“We’ll have to talk to the people who were going to buy her,” Pete said.
“Yeah. I’ll have a word with Jake since he’s been doing a lot of her training. I think he’s got a pretty good rapport with them. He can talk to them about what they want to do since technically she was about to go to them, but I do think we have some say in it since the stallion is one of ours. Did Madison say what she thought would be the best course of action?”
“She acknowledged that we might want to terminate and advised that if we chose to do so, we do it as soon as possible. She had already detected a heartbeat, so Pineapple is maybe a little further along than we had expected. The risks are what you might think given her age. Low birth weight. Pineapple’s size combined with who the sire is and his size could lead to some complications, but it’s hard to tell. You know all that.”
I nodded. I was aware, and I hated to think that Pineapple could be at risk, but the stallion was a valuable one and had produced many good race horses over the years for us. However, recently he had been a little more hesitant to produce for some reason. We needed to get that checked out to see if his motility was reduced, but until then it seemed a little stupid to give up the chance to have another of his offspring.
“I’ll talk to Jake. Thanks for letting me know.”
Pete headed back to his office, and I went to see Pineapple, now a little concerned about the yearling. Upon arriving at her stall, I found her enjoying some hay and seeming just as upbeat and perky as usual.
“Hey Pineapple,” I said as I gave her a scratch on the head. About that time Jake appeared and came to join me.
“Pete said you had something to tell me?”
“Yup. This one is expecting.”
