I shook my head. “No, I’ll take care of it. But I don’t think this is something I can do over the phone. I mean…Dad, they already paid the registration fee. We’re going to have to give that back to them if you don’t want any trouble out of this. They could sue you.”
He laughed. “There’s no way they are suing me. I know what they are up to and they sure as hell know what’s going on underneath the roof of their stables. Neither Sean nor his boys have the balls to take me to court because they know they are the ones who will end up in hot water if they do that.” My father opened one of his desk drawers and pulled out a checkbook. He picked up his pen and began making out the check, complete with the required number of zeroes. He signed his name and thrust the check at me. “Here, take it. Put it in the mail.”
I sighed. “Unfortunately, I think this is the sort of thing that has to be done in person. You know, we want to finesse this and treat it as sensitively as possible. They were our friends for a long time, and no matter what they are up to now, it would be inappropriate to put an end to a decade long relationship over the phone. I’ll take tomorrow off and drive up there to deliver this myself. Then maybe there won’t be much animosity.”
I got up and headed back to my office, trying to think how I could possibly smooth this over with the Killarnys. If my father was right then, we did need to end the relationship, but I definitely didn’t want to call them out on doping their horses without any evidence. No, I was going to have to cancel their registration and chalk it up as some kind of a mistake on our end. I would deal with it next year when it rolled around. Maybe their registration could get lost in the mail or something, but I would deal with that when it happened. Right now I needed to focus on how I was going to get them to believe whatever I said. And I needed to do it in a way that didn’t look completely suspicious.
Picking up my phone I looked up the number for Killarny Estate and dialed. A woman picked up, and I gave her my name.
“Mr. Killarny isn’t in right now. Could I take a message?”
Of course, a message. But what on earth would Sean Killarny believe?
“Could you tell him it’s Sara Waters and I’m just checking on some derby business? I’ll be by tomorrow afternoon if that’s okay. I wanted a chance to speak to him in person.”
“Okay then…it looks like he’s got an open afternoon. If you ring the bell at the main house when you get here, then we’ll find him for you. See you tomorrow, Miss Waters.”
I left the next morning and made the three hour drive to the Killarny Estate. It was nestled in an area with rolling green hills and was the most picturesque kind of horse ranch you could imagine. I knew I was getting close when I saw the pristine white fencing, but I was still several miles from the main entrance to the ranch. As soon as I pulled up to the stone arch, memories came flooding back of the time I spent here when I was a child. On occasion when my father purchased a horse from the Killarnys or had some derby business with them we would come up for a day visit, and I spent most of the time tormenting Pete Killarny, the oldest of the brothers who was the closest to my age. And to my ten year old eyes, he was the cutest. Back then he had sandy blond hair, blue eyes, and a few freckles dappled across his nose. I wasn’t quite as cute at the time. A little on the chubby side, my hair was frizzy, and I was just about to get braces. Soon after the glasses followed and it didn’t surprise me that when I had made Pete Killarny my first kiss he had been very reluctant.
I cringed at that particular memory and hoped that I wouldn’t run into him here. Of course, it had been years since that had happened and we had seen each other several times since then, but it didn’t change the fact that it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my entire life. Pete had looked at me incredulously and somewhat shocked, then turned around and left the old barn where the kiss had occurred. It was while they had been visiting Tennessee for our derby and now that I thought about it, it must have been exactly twenty years prior. So much time had passed. I eventually grew up and out of my braces, glasses, and baby fat, and Pete had grown into a very attractive young man. The last time I saw him, he was dating a new girl, and I remember how she had clung to him like a leech from a pond on a hot summer day.
It surprised me to remember how jealous I had been at that moment. The girl was unknown to me, but I hated seeing Pete with another girl, no matter how ga-ga they appeared to be over each other. She had been drop dead gorgeous, and there was no way I could hold a candle to her black hair and blue eyes. She had been thin as a rail and just looked the part of a girl who would end up marrying the heir to a massive horse ranch.
“God, maybe I’ll run into her again, too,” I said as I pulled into the circle drive in front of the main house. It was a gorgeous white colonial with massive pillars and a lamp that hung down in front of the front door. The place was positively palatial, and I was sure there had to have been many renovations since the last time I had stepped foot in the house.
I hopped out of my SUV and made my way to the front door where I rang the bell that let out the longest chime in the history of doorbells, and I waited for someone to answer. A middle-aged woman came to the door with a smile on her face.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
I smiled back at her. “I’m here for a meeting with Mr. Killarny. I called and spoke with his secretary yesterday.”
She nodded. “Come right in. I’ll show you to his office.”
The woman led me from the main foyer with it’s wide staircase that was appropriate for a royal presentation, down a hallway that led to an even smaller hallway. She opened the first door and ushered me inside.
“I’ll see that Pete knows you’re here,” she said as she closed the door behind her and before I could say anything she was gone.
I looked around in surprise. The nameplate on the desk said it plain as day. Pete Killarny. Where was Sean? Maybe the man didn’t have time for me, and he was letting one of his sons take care of the business today. Thoughts ran through my mind, and I tried to calm myself down. It wasn’t a big deal that I had to deal with Pete. He was probably just as knowledgeable about the ranch business as his father was. After all, what was I doing here? Taking care of things for my father.
And it wasn’t as if Pete and I had a history beyond me kissing him once when I was a child. There was some kind of electric tension in the air though at the thought of seeing him again. It was a little like when I had gone back to my ten year high school reunion. Of course, that had been a bust because of social media and the fact that I still lived in the same town where I had graduated from, but this meeting held the same kind of nervousness for me.
I wondered what he looked like and I glanced around the office to see if there was any sign of a photo. The walls were covered with bookshelves which were filled with hardback, leather-bound volumes. It looked like mostly classics or the sort of thing you could get an interior decorator to put together for you. I wasn’t sure if Pete was much of a reader, but he had never struck me as one. When we were young, he had been the jock, the kind of guy other guys wanted to be, and all the girls wanted to be with. He was less obvious about it than some guys were though and really seemed to have a sweet and genuine side if you could get past the hard exterior.
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.”
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Teach Her: A forbidden Professor and Student romance (School of Seduction Book 2) Page 11