Alex (Killarny Brothers 2)

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 prefer 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.

"Promise me you aren't going to do it again?" I asked, trying to make my tone sound as serious as possible, but I didn't really have the paternal sternness that her dad, my oldest brother Pete, always managed to use.

"Promise. I'll wait until my lessons." She answered affirmatively.

I nodded. "Good. But if I catch you again you know I'll have to tell your dad about it." I hoped that she wouldn't take that word of caution the same way I would have at her age. That sort of thing would have meant, "Don't get caught."

She smiled and nodded at me. "Deal." Emma led her horse back around and through the pasture and I headed on my way to the barn, making a mental checklist of the things I needed to accomplish on this particular day.

I needed to give the vet a call and see when they could come out to do pregnancy checks on the mares. It was a task that we sometimes handled ourselves, but was best left to the professionals. Doc Halloran had always been the one to service our horses and check up on the wild herd out back, but he had recently retired, and there was a new vet setting up shop at his practice. He had assured everyone that the new vet was going to be able to take care of us all just the same and I took his word for it. The man had been in the business of caring for race horses longer than I had been alive...and possibly even longer than my father. He was in his 80s, and it was well past time for him to hang up his hat. I trusted that the man knew what he was up to hiring the new vet that would take over for him and continue working with all of the nearby ranches, but I

knew that some of the older generation would have an issue with it. They always took issue with something new changing up what they were used to as the norm.

The barn door squeaked as I opened it and I made a note to grab some WD-40 the next time I was in town. Otherwise, it wouldn't get done. It was the sort of thing I could assign to one of the hired hands to make sure it happened, but if I left it up to one of my brothers to notice it, then it would be forever before it was taken care of. Pete was too busy with the business side of things, and I couldn't really blame the man for that. Taking care of his daughter and maintaining his new relationship was enough work for any one man. I didn't cut my younger brothers as much slack, but everyone knew that Jake was up to his own thing and the twins were always off doing as they pleased as soon as their work was done. Stephen and Sam were living up to their reputations as the youngest, and while I knew I could ask them to do something, they'd rather be off chasing tail than running errands for me. I was always the one who noticed the details and paid attention to the smallest changes around the ranch. I wasn't sure if it was a good thing or if I was slipping into my father's OCD ways since he was no longer around to monitor the day to day running of the ranch.

I grabbed the small notebook from the breast pocket of my shirt and started tallying the mares that we needed to have checked. They were spread out across the three barns, and it was going to take me a while to count which ones had been with a stallion in the past few weeks. We kept meticulous records on which mares had been with which stallions, but there had been an incident about a month ago with Nevada Rebel, one of our more cantankerous stallions, jumping a fence and getting into a group of mares before anyone could stop him. I tried to keep a close watch on that, and most of our breeding was intentional given the nature of what we did. Accidents happen though, and if any of the mares that had been in the group that Nevada Rebel had infiltrated turned out to be pregnant, then we were going to have to spring for the DNA testing once they foaled. It was pricey but a requirement for breeding purposes. No one would be willing to purchase a horse whose lineage couldn't be confirmed.

As I made my way to the second barn, my brother Jake caught up with me; saddle slung over his shoulder. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and I could see that he had already been up to some work that morning.

"Where are you headed?" I asked.