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  “Really?” Jodie seemed shocked at the idea, though why, he didn’t know. Injections were common on a ranch and Margarite had grown up on a huge one up north.

  “Yes.” Sam pushed back the edge of his coat sleeve and glanced at his watch. He might just make it back for the second half of his nephews’ basketball game. “I want to be paid now.”

  “Don’t trust me?” Jodie asked sardonically.

  “Don’t want to see you again.”

  She stilled, but her expression didn’t change. “That’s to the point.”

  Sam shrugged. “It’ll take me a few minutes to calculate the bill.”

  “Calculate away.” She strode off toward the house, which was about twice the size it used to be now that Joe Barton was done pouring a boatload of money into it.

  Sam charged full price and then some for the after-hours call. By the time Jodie came back with a checkbook he had the figures for her.

  “What’s the damage?”

  He held out the paper, which she slowly scanned, noting each item. Then she began to write. What would it feel like, Sam wondered, to write a check for that amount and not tell the recipient to please hold it for a day or two while he transferred funds to cover it?

  “Thank you for coming,” she said briskly. Then her eyes traveled upward to the top of his head. To the Elmer Fudd hat.

  Sam’s mouth tightened as he took the check, written on the ranch account. He hoped hers was one of the authorized signatures, since Tim Paulsen at the bank would notice. Jodie didn’t actually live at the ranch, but visited when the whim hit her. The rest of the time she spent in Las Vegas, practicing law.

  “Thanks.” He folded the check once and shoved it into his pocket before walking back to the truck. Mission accomplished. Now he hoped he never had to set foot on the Barton ranch again.

  JODIE CHECKED THE HORSE at ten o’clock and then again at midnight, tromping through the snow to the barn in silk pajamas, a down coat and insulated rubber boots. Usually Mike, her father’s cowboy, had trails cleared between the buildings, but it had snowed during his days off and Jodie hadn’t yet gotten around to shoveling the paths. Snow was not something she dealt with in Las Vegas, but after growing up in Chicago, she’d had enough white stuff to last her a lifetime.

  Bronson was lying down when Jodie came in through the side door, as he’d been the last time she’d checked. But now he lifted his head and seemed more alert as she approached the stall. She couldn’t believe the number of sutures Sam had so patiently tied in the cold and dark, while the light she was supposed to be holding steady wavered about. Maybe he had made a fatal mistake with her father’s horse last year, but he’d done a good job tonight. The horse would have bled to death if he hadn’t relented and agreed to treat the animal.

  Was it her fault that the horse had gotten out in the first place? She honestly didn’t know. The gate had been open when she’d found him, injured and bleeding, and she had used it earlier that day. Margarite had gone through it, too. One of them was responsible.

  Even if it wasn’t her fault, Jodie felt like crap. She hated making mistakes. She pushed her hands into the pockets of the down coat and watched as the horse tucked his nose to his chest and closed his eyes. A few minutes later she left the barn. She needed to get some sleep.

  Or try to.

  Margarite was in the kitchen tidying up when Jodie walked into the covered porch. The woman’s charcoal-colored hair was rolled into pin curls—something Jodie hadn’t seen since her grandmother had passed away—and she was wearing a blue fuzzy robe that zipped from her ankles to her chin. Quite the look, but somehow Margarite managed to pull it off with an air of dignity.

  “Do you want some tea or something?” she asked through the open door to the porch as Jodie slipped out of her boots and hung up the coat she’d worn over her pajamas.

  “No. Thanks.” She padded into the kitchen in her stocking feet, ruffling her hair to shake off the droplets of water from melting snowflakes.

  “Is he okay?” Margarite folded the dishcloth she’d been using to wipe down the counters, then adjusted the stools at the breakfast bar. The housekeeper liked everything to be just so. Margarite would have latched the gate all the way.

  “So far.” Jodie hoped he stayed okay or she’d have even more explaining to do to her father.

  “He’ll recover.” The housekeeper snapped off the kitchen light and both women walked through the dining room to the staircase.

  Again Jodie felt a wave of guilt.

  Margarite tilted her chin up to look Jodie straight in the eye. “Accidents happen on ranches.” Her voice was stern. “Understand?”

  “Yeah.” Jodie pressed her lips together. “Are you sure you can give the shot tomorrow?”

  Margarite’s face contorted into an expression of prolonged suffering. “Yes, I can give the shot if you can hold the horse. But the very instant Mike gets back, he’s taking over. I hate to give penicillin. It’s a very thick liquid and the needle’s big and it takes forever—”

  Jodie held up a hand. “Thanks. I understand.” She gave a shudder and headed for her bedroom. So much for sleeping.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “WHY AREN’T YOU at practice?” Sam frowned as Beau, one of his twin nephews, came in through the front door of the vet clinic, the bells Katie had attached to the door announcing his entrance.

  “I’m ineligible this week.”

  “What?” Sam stood up behind the desk. At fifteen, Beau was almost as tall as him, but was still very much a kid inside—a kid who wasn’t doing too well in school. “I thought you said you had your classes under control.”

  Beau flashed him an angry look. “I thought I did have them under control.”

  “Which one?”

  “Guess.”

  Sam didn’t need to. Math. As always. Beau’s twin, Tyler, didn’t have as much trouble with the subject as Beau did, but Ty couldn’t seem to explain the concepts to his brother. Heaven knew he’d tried, since Beau was six feet two inches tall and the top scorer on the basketball team. Ty was a quarter inch shorter and two points behind Beau in the stats. The team did all right with one brother, but with two, they were a force to be reckoned with.

  “How bad?”

  Beau swallowed as he glanced down, blond hair falling over his forehead. “A little lower than a D.”

  “How much lower?”

  “Fifty-five percent.” Beau dropped his backpack, which must have weighed forty pounds, judging from the sound it made when it hit the floor. “It was that last test.” He all but exploded as he said it. “I don’t get it. I studied the chapter and I thought I understood everything.”

  Sam swallowed his anger. Beau was clearly upset, and the boy had spent way too much time close to tears over the past year and a half. “How’d Ty do?” he asked quietly.

  “He passed. Of course.”

  Sam moved out from behind the desk and crossed the room. He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder, then pulled him into a rough embrace. He didn’t know what else to do. How could he tell if Beau was honestly doing all he could to pass his classes, or whether he was putting in a moderate effort and hoping for the best? Sam had been in this parenting gig for only eighteen months, since his brother and sister-in-law were killed by a drunken driver while crossing a street in Las Vegas, and he’d received custody of their sons.

  He let out a breath. He’d forgotten what hell the teen years could be, but he was reexperiencing them now in living color.

  “What am I going to do?” Beau muttered before stepping back. He tipped his chin up, stared at the ceiling.

  “You’re going to get your ass in a chair and work on math tonight. We have a couple days to raise your grade before the next eligibility check. Have you talked to the teacher?”

  “No.”

  “E-mail her. See what she has to say, what you need to work on. Then after supper we’re going over that test.”

  As it turned out, though, Sam didn’t have the t
ime. He and Beau had just settled at the kitchen table with pad, pencil and failed test paper in front of them when the phone rang.

  “It’s the Taylor ranch,” Tyler called from Sam’s den.

  Sam reached for the extension. One of the Taylors’ show mares had kicked its leg through a fencing panel and got hung up. The leg was swollen almost double and the owners suspected she might have a broken tibia.

  He climbed into his canvas bib overalls, clamped the plaid wool hat on his head. “Listen,” he said in a low voice to Tyler. “Get your test and sit down with your brother and see what the two of you can figure out.”

  “But—”

  Sam had been a parent long enough to perfect The Look, which he now employed full force. “You want your brother eligible, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then I don’t care if you have other plans. Help him out.”

  “All right.”

  “HAVE YOU HEARD FROM MIKE?” Jodie asked as Margarite pulled a casserole out of the oven. The housekeeper’s lasagna was made with cottage cheese and ground beef—not really lasagna, in Jodie’s opinion, but surprisingly tasty.

  “No.” Margarite set the dish on a cast-iron trivet, then closed the oven door.

  “I’m worried.” Jodie paced to the picture window behind the dining room table and peered outside, hoping to see headlights. Mike had been due back from Idaho the day before. There’d been a storm to the north, so Jodie had assumed he’d waited to travel, and simply hadn’t bothered to call. But now he was more than twenty-four hours overdue and she hadn’t heard a word.

  “You’re worried?” Margarite muttered from behind her. “I’m the one manning the syringe.” She’d already tried to coax Jodie into giving an injection, but Jodie couldn’t do it. Her fear of blood and needles was even greater than Margarite’s. What a team they made.

  “I guess I’ll go through his file, see if his cell number’s there.”

  “Eat first. Mike will probably be here by the time you’re finished.” Margarite set a salad on the counter next to the casserole, then held a plate out to Jodie. “He’d better be here.”

  Jodie had tried to convince her that official cooking wasn’t necessary while her parents were gone, but Margarite was having none of that. She was paid to cook and she was going to put meals on the table—or the counter, as she’d done tonight, since they were eating buffet style.

  After dinner there was still no sign of Mike, so Jodie went into her father’s office and opened the top drawer of the big oak file cabinet where Joe Barton kept paperwork for every employee that had come and gone since he’d bought his ranch three years ago. And there had been quite a steady stream of comings and goings. Jodie’s father was not an easy man to work for. He demanded a level of expertise and commitment that many people simply didn’t have anymore. Even Chandler had unexpectedly quit, which had in turn set off a major family argument.

  Her father had immediately tried to cancel the European vacation her mother had been planning for almost a year. Jodie’s normally complacent mom had leveled threats, since she firmly believed her husband’s heart problems, which he refused to take seriously, stemmed from managing the ranch. Jodie had eventually come to the rescue, grudgingly taking a sabbatical so that she could look after the property during the eight weeks her parents would be touring southern Europe. It was the only way her father would agree to leave, and even then it had been an uphill battle convincing him to go.

  “Damn it, I know it’s here,” Jodie muttered as she flipped through the manila folders, beating up her cuticles in the process. Her dad kept a hard copy of everything. She dug deep and finally found Mike’s file toward the back of the drawer and pulled it out. His cell number was there, so she dialed it from the office phone. No answer. Jodie jotted down the number and put the file away, telling herself not to worry. He was probably on the road, stranded somewhere with no service. It happened.

  And it also meant that she and Margarite were about to embark on another adventure into veterinary care.

  “Anything?” Margarite asked hopefully when Jodie returned to the kitchen.

  She shook her head.

  “I was afraid of that.” The housekeeper went into the mudroom, stoically put her feet, shoes and all, into rubber galoshes, and pulled a coat off the hook. Next came the giant black scarf, wrapped twice around her neck and knotted, the wool hat and finally gloves. Jodie had watched the procedure enough times during the past few days to know all the moves.

  “Ready?” the older woman asked.

  Jodie had already slipped her feet into boots and put on a coat. She could make it to the heated barn and back to the house without a hat or gloves.

  Bronson limped painfully to the back of his stall when he saw them coming. He’d figured out that when Margarite showed up, a painful jab was soon to follow. Horses were a lot smarter than Jodie had first assumed.

  She went into the stall and slipped the halter on the big horse, who gave her an equine look of sad resignation. Margarite’s expression wasn’t that much different as she entered the stall. She held up the penicillin bottle, stabbed the needle through the rubber opening and measured out the dosage. Then, needle in hand, she pounded her small fist on the horse’s hip a couple times to deaden the area, before she masterfully slipped just the needle into the muscle and attached the loaded syringe. Bronson bobbed his head up and down, but stood still as Margarite slowly pushed the plunger until it stopped, then removed the needle. As always, her face was pale when she finished.

  “I hope Mike is here bright and early tomorrow morning,” she grumbled as they made their way along the snowy path to the house.

  “He may even arrive tonight,” Jodie said, but she was getting a bad feeling about this. Mike should have called by now.

  She tried to reach him two more times that evening from the ranch phone, and then, wondering if he recognized the ranch number and wasn’t answering on purpose, she dialed the number from her cell. A masculine voice said hello on the second ring.

  “Is this Mike Bower?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Jodie De Vanti. When are you coming back to the ranch?”

  There was a healthy silence before Mike said, “I’m not coming back.”

  Jodie’s temples started to throb. What the hell? “Why not?”

  “I found another job up here, closer to my family.”

  The throbbing intensified. “You do know that it’s common courtesy to give notice of resignation?” She spoke the last words through her teeth.

  “I was going to call tomorrow after everything was firmed up here,” he confessed.

  “And in the meantime, we’re left hanging, you coward.”

  “Maybe if your dad wasn’t such a jerk, I’d still be there,” Mike said, and he had the gall to sound justified. “But he is and I ain’t.” He hung up the phone, and it was all Jodie could do not to throw hers across the room.

  What an asshole, blaming her father, and not being man enough to quit properly.

  Jodie weighed her phone in her hand for a moment, then carefully set it on the desk.

  Okay. She could handle this. She was used to thinking on her feet. The only problem was she did it in a courtroom or while working with a difficult client. This was different.

  “He’s not coming back,” Jodie told Margarite when she came in with a cup of tea.

  The housekeeper stopped in her tracks and the cup clattered on the saucer.

  “Hey,” Jodie said, trying to be as positive as possible, “is there any reason we can’t handle the ranch on our own until Dad returns? It’s only six and a half more weeks and so far so good…barring the horse incident.” She wasn’t wild about feeding in the subzero morning temps, but she’d do whatever she had to.

  “Early calving.”

  “What?” Jodie asked, her eyes getting round.

  “The early calves. Sometimes the cows have trouble. And if there’s a blizzard, you can bet there’s a cow out there h
aving a calf in it. Mike was out at all hours last year.”

  Jodie went to the sideboard and poured two glasses of Malbec without bothering to ask Margarite if she wanted one. At this point they both needed a drink, and tea wasn’t going to cut it.

  “I am so pissed at Mike,” Jodie muttered as she recorked the bottle with the crystal stopper. “At least he could have given some warning, the sniveling coward.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t leave sooner,” Margarite said matter-of-factly, accepting the glass after setting the porcelain teacup on the end table next to the leather sofa.

  “Why?” Jodie asked. She had her own opinion—Mike was spineless—but was curious to hear the housekeeper’s take on the matter.

  “Frankly, when things go wrong, your dad tends to fire from the hip. Mike and Chandler took a lot of heat over the past year.”

  “Were they responsible for what went wrong?” Jodie asked reasonably, knowing that while her father was a tough man to work for, he set the same standards for himself that he set for others. She had spent her life living up to those standards and it had made her a stronger, more capable person.

  “Not always,” Margarite said. “Sometimes Mother Nature was responsible. Your father came down on Mike pretty hard a time or two for things that were out of his control.” She shrugged her thin shoulders. “And Mike doesn’t take criticism well. I think the only reason he stayed as long as he did was because there were no other job opportunities.”

  “Well, apparently one just arose,” Jodie said darkly, taking a healthy swallow of wine, “and now I have to try to hire a cowboy before this early calving starts.” She stared into her glass, slowly swirling the contents. Where did one start? The employment office? Hi. Do you have any cowboys?

  “Yeah, you need to do that.” Margarite hesitated in a way that made Jodie glance up. “But without Mike…you’re also going to have to find a vet that’ll come out here. Sometimes they have to C-section the cows.”