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But now that I was out on my own, with a place and good, solid work—plus the aforementioned added experience thanks to my exploits with a few of the older women around town—I felt pretty confident that at the very least I could offer Madison Graston a good time if she wanted it.
Avoidance was probably my best bet if I was going, to be honest with myself about the situation. Maddy didn’t want anything to do with me, and I could tell that from the speed at which she had exited the hardware store. But maybe for old times sake, she would like to have a little fun. I stuck that idea in my back pocket, thinking I might look up her best friend Lorna who still lived in town. Lorna’s boyfriend played pool down at the roadhouse fairly regularly, and that might be the place to go if I wanted to try to catch a glimpse of Maddy again while she was in town. A couple of drinks together and some reminiscing and I might be able to talk her into reliving some of our glory days. I had upgraded to a bigger, better truck and there was nothing I would enjoy more than getting all grown up Maddy Graston into the cab of that thing, spreading her out and breathing in the delicious scent of her again, my hands splayed in her curly red hair, kissing that statuesque white neck of hers and getting her to scream.
I remembered what it had been like to be with her when we were younger and wondered how it would be the same—or possibly new and different—now that we were older.
Being so close to her again was like standing next to a lit campfire. There was something blazing in me I had almost forgotten, and the thought that Madison still had that kind of power was irritating and beguiling.
She had always been a noisy one, and so the back pasture had worked best for us. She wasn’t your typical country girl though, and I felt pretty bad taking her out there like that, but she wanted it just as badly as I did. We were two combustible materials and when you got us together back then—bam. Off we went. I had tried to make the situation as comfortable as possible, not wanting her to be completely put off by the idea of having sex in the bed of
a truck, but there was only so much a teenage boy could do. My mother eventually realized why I was stockpiling quilts. Instead of chastising me though she gave me a talk about responsibility and safety and that was that. It wasn’t the sort of thing Sean Killarny stuck his oar in about.
I thought about how grateful I was that my mother had been around because goodness knew exactly how my brothers and I would have turned out without her. Probably ‘perfectly heathen’ as my grandmother used to say. But I didn’t really want to let my thoughts dwell on my mother at the moment.
Maddy was back. The girl that I had loved as a teenager. The woman I wanted now. No matter how much she might try to deny it, I knew that deep down she still wanted me, too.
Our last time together had been good, great even. I didn’t like to think about the argument that had followed, but instead my hands squeezing her breasts, rubbing her nipples into hardened points and hearing her mewling cries as I probed her gently with my tongue. I could still remember the taste of her and the way she shuddered and screamed as I sucked her clit, begging me not to stop. I had licked her cleaned before sliding inside her, moving slow and gentle with her at first. That wasn’t what I wanted now though. I wanted, hard and fast, filling her up and then doing it all over again.
God, that had been an amazing night. It had been a forgone conclusion that the two of us would end up together, married and with children as soon as we were done with college. But neither of us had been the type to stick around and live that small town life. And now…look at where we stood. Right back here with her in Ashland and me working on the ranch.
I was hard just thinking about her and the possibilities there. The reality of the matter was that she probably didn’t want to be in the same room with me, but I knew enough about myself and was pretty confident that if I could get her in the same room and under just the right circumstances, that I could make sure she never wanted to leave again.
Chapter 4
Madison
When I stepped back into the office after running a few errands around town that morning, Lorna held up a slip of paper and waved it at me, a sly little grin growing on her pleasant face.
“The secretary from Killarny Estate called. They need the new vet to come out and take a look at some mares that might be pregnant.”
I looked at her wide-eyed. “Do they have any idea who the new vet is?”
Lorna shook her head at me. “If she did then she didn’t let on that she was aware and I certainly didn’t say anything. But I’m not sure she’s anyone that would know you anyway, so there’s that. I think it’ll be a hell of a surprise when you show up there to check Alex’s mares though.” She laughed but then caught herself when she saw the expression on my face.
“I knew it would come down to this—that I would have to deal with him and his family if I came back here and took over this practice, I just wasn’t expecting it to be so soon after I arrived.”
The run-in at the hardware store had been like some kind of meet cut out of a rom-com, and I hated rom-coms. At least I had convinced myself that I did, but it was likely related to having been burned so early in life when it came to romantic relationships. I knew that none of those things were real and I didn’t want to spend my time working up some kind of belief that finding something so perfect was possible in real life.
And now here I was, back in my hometown, face-to-face with the man I had thought I was going to marry. Ten years down the road and we weren’t married—hell, we were hardly even speaking. Barely a sentence worth of conversation in a decade. But we would soon have to be on speaking terms if I was going to be living in this town and working with his horses on a regular basis.
“Well, they were on Doc’s calendar, so I knew it was coming up. How many mares will I be looking at out there?”
Lorna looked down at the message she had taken. “Fifteen.”
“They are going to have a hell of a busy spring if all of them are pregnant. Okay, can you confirm with them that I’ll be out there tomorrow morning?”
I went about my business the rest of the day and tried not to think about the fact that the next day I would most likely have to have a conversation with Alex Killarny. I had no idea what his reaction would be when he found out that I was the new vet and I hoped that maybe word had already reached him so that it wouldn’t be a total surprise when I arrived at the ranch the next day. We could be civil, and I kept telling myself that. No matter what had happened, that was all in the past, and I needed to not dwell on it if I was going to have a successful time working in Ashland again.
But deep down inside there was a gnawing desire that I couldn’t shake. It didn’t matter how many men I had been with since Alex—even when we were younger, he was amazing. He had made me feel things that I had never encountered again in my life, which was pretty sad now that I thought about it. The way he could walk into a room and his sheer magnetism drew me to his side. The way the words he spoke in that deep baritone seemed to cascade over me like a gentle summer rain. I couldn’t be in a room with Alex without thinking about fucking him and now that we were older and so much time had been spent apart, I wondered what it would be like with both of us having so much more experience under our metaphorical belts.
There was still anger though. Not quite hatred, but enough dislike because of what his family had done to mine that the thought of good, angry sex sounded very appealing. Hell, maybe Alex would be into that.
But that thought made me pause. As much as I wanted him, which was something I could admit to myself even if it was uncomfortable, when I looked at Alex I saw something else. I was pretty sure the guy wanted me all right, but I didn’t think that the wanting I saw in his eyes had anything to do with hatred, and I didn’t have time for that.
It was the twins who greeted me when I arrived at the ranch early the next morning, helping me pull some equipment from the back of my SUV. I could usually complete the pregnancy checks manually, but in some situations, an ultrasound was required. The boys were the same laughing jokesters they had been when they were kids the last time I had seen them, only now they were tall, grown men, who I could tell got up to as much trouble as they always had and maybe worse. They led me to the stables were I could find all the mares and showed me the list and where each of them was. It was easy enough to proceed with the work from there.
“Pete might come out of his office to see you, but if you need anything from us, just shout,” Stephen said with a smile as he and his twin brother walked away to attend to some other work at the ranch.
I made my way down the list with the help of some of the ranch hands, taking the mares to the designated area where it was safe to do the business of checking their wombs. All of the mares were pretty amiable, and I was near the end of the list, heading to the second stable when I saw Alex standing there at the entrance watching me. It was evident from the look on his face that he had no idea what I was doing there.
