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 young

er 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.

He nodded his head in the direction of the barn I was going to. "I've got a yearling in there I want to do a little work with. We've got a couple from Texas who are thinking about buying her, and I wanted to go ahead and get a little training in so they don't have so much to do with her initially. They're a little older, and I'm not sure they're up to the work the girl might require."

I nodded. "Which one?"

"Pineapple."

I took a look at my list just to make sure she wasn't on there. We kept the yearling fillies away from the stallions, but there was a possibility she had been with the group, and I would hate to be sending a pregnant horse down to Texas unexpectedly. Glancing over the list, I saw that she wasn't there and breathed a sigh of relief.

"She's a little skittish," Jake continued. "I'm going to do a little ground work with her and try the flag. She seems to be easily spooked by moving objects, and we need to work on that before we start trying to load her in a trailer."

"Good idea," I said as I placed the notebook back in my pocket.

"What are you up to?" He asked me as he gestured toward the notebook.

"Making a list of the mares we need to have the vet check when they come to make the rounds."

"Oh right," he said with a nod. "New vet in town. I haven't been around to catch a name yet. Have you heard who Doc Halloran brought on?"

I shook my head. "Nope, haven't heard a thing. Hope he's a good one. I don't really want to go looking for another at this time of the year. We've got too much work coming up for him."

"I heard it's a woman."

I stopped in my tracks and looked at my brother. "Seriously? The doc hired a woman?"

Jake nodded affirmatively. "Surprised me, too. I think a lot of the older guys are having a problem with it...well, I mean not the looks of her I'm sure. But you know how the old ones can be. They were already a little set against having a new vet, but the talk I've heard is the fact that it's a woman has them a little unsure about the whole thing."

I wasn't as backward or old fashioned as some of the ranchers in the area, but it was no surprise to me that they were against the idea of a female vet. Sure, there were some of them in the area, and it wasn't unheard of, but the one serving the nearby ranches for the past fifty years or so had been Doc Halloran, and they were accustomed to him. Having a new veterinarian working on their horses was one thing for them to get used to, having it be a woman when many of them still had pretty archaic ideas about what a woman's role was would be another thing altogether. And Doc Halloran had struck me as someone who might have fallen into this group that would have ideas about what a woman could and could not do. What that said to me was that he had a lot of faith in the abilities of this new vet and whether she was a man or a woman didn't matter to him one iota.

"Ah, well. I guess they'll have to get over it pretty quickly or find themselves someone new. And half the vets around here are women nowadays. They'll just have to get over whatever kind of old-fashioned ideas they have."

Jake nodded. "I agree."

We parted and went about our separate tasks and after I was done putting together my list of mares I headed back to the main barn to look for a can of WD-40 for that squeaky door. The supply closet was full to the brim with all sorts of things, but I couldn't find a single can of what I needed.

Tags: Gisele St. Claire The Billionaires Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net