I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! Here is Chapter Twelve. Also, if you didn't get a chance to click over to the YouTube link to watch the book trailer, no worries. I have posted it here today. Those of you who know me, know that many of my books include a horse or two. Thisbook is no exception. :) Here it is:CHAPTER TWELVE
Stunned, Kelly mindlessly flipped through the channels on her TV trying to find a distraction. But the only thing that seemed to help was her cat, Stevie T (short for Stephen Tyler). He was curled up on her lap, purring away. Kelly stroked the long yellow fur on the tabby whose only purpose in life was to sleep, eat, and soak up attention. She scratched behind his ears. “Wish I was you,” she said. The cat opened his green eyes slightly and let out a soft meow, likely in protest that Kelly had spoken. “Sorry.”
She finally settled on HRTV to watch some horse racing. Horses were in her blood. She had been around them all her life, and even had one—Sydney, a mare—that she kept at the LA Equestrian Center. She tried to ride at least three days a week, when her busy schedule permitted.
Kelly had been born in Puerto Rico where her father worked as a groom and breezing race horses in the hopes of becoming a jockey. An opportunity came along when she was three and Raul moved his family to Lexington, Kentucky. In Lexington, he was able to work his way up from grooming race horses to training them. Now he trained and managed his own small stable. With any luck, he could end up with a future winner in his barn.
As a teen, Kelly breezed horses on the track before dawn. She’d thought long and hard about vet school vs. medical school, but in the end, she knew healing humans would be easier on her than trying to heal animals. She’d always formed attachments more easily to animals than people. However, as she’d grown in her role as a pediatrician, she realized being a human doctor was as tough as she’d thought being a vet would be. Emotions were emotions and they could get the better of her if she let them.
This train of thought led her right back to Baby Salazar lying in the NICU, and then to Jake. She tried to focus on the race—mud flying everywhere under pounding hooves, spraying like bullets into the eyes of the jockeys and horses.
Jockeys were an interesting lot. They worked so hard to make weight. They did everything from working out, starving themselves, taking diet pills, and even using cocaine to sharpen their focus and reaction time. Cocaine addiction amongst jockeys was high. It was one of the things her father did not like about racing. He’d recently fired one of the best jockeys to come through his stable for drug use.
Addiction. It would have been so easy for Kelly to piece all of this together if Lupe Salazar had been addicted to something. Kelly could treat addiction. She would know exactly what she was dealing with and how to handle it.
She needed to figure out the missing pieces. But as the emotions of the day finally caught up with her, she began to shut down. As she listened to the announcer and pounding hooves on the TV, she dozed off. Tomorrow she would see what she could figure out. She would do what she always did when she needed answers—make an early morning visit to the L.A. Equestrian Center, and, if time permitted, take Sydney out for a short trail ride before work. Syd had a way of helping her see things in a different light. Now it was time for sleep.
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