Once and for All Read online

  He stared glumly at the floor for much of the meeting, making Sam want to reiterate once again that the only reason his nephew was there was because he’d made a stupid choice. But Sam had already said that at least five or six times that morning and the message did not seem to be sinking in.

  “I want you home immediately after practice,” Sam said when Beau got up to leave. “No hanging with the guys.”

  Beau nodded, his expression blank, and then disappeared out the door. Sam could almost feel his nephew’s relief at finally escaping. The principal muttered something about having to patrol the halls, and followed Beau out of the room. Gerard disappeared after him.

  “Beau’s a good kid,” Miss Simms said, directing her attention back to Sam.

  “I know. I want to make sure he stays that way.”

  “You’d be surprised how many kids cheat. Even the good ones.”

  Frustration welled up inside Sam. “It’s not acceptable.”

  “No,” she agreed mildly. “It’s not. But it’s not the end of the world. He got caught. I’m certain he’ll have consequences at home.” No doubt. “Right now we need to see that he understands math.”

  Okay, was she politely telling him to get a grip? Quite possibly. But she wasn’t in charge of seeing that her dead brother’s children got off on the right foot in life.

  “Any clues how to do that?”

  “Small steps. Beau has trouble focusing, and when he gets frustrated he shuts down.” Miss Simms craned her neck to see if the hall outside the office was clear, then continued speaking in a tone just above a whisper. “Coach Gerard has tried to help him, since he’s also a math teacher, but frankly, he assumes too much understanding. Beau needs to be taken slowly from step one when he encounters a new concept. To be reminded of what he’s learned before and told how to apply it. Some kids make an instant leap. Others need review.”

  “Does Beau have a learning disability?”

  “He has a different learning pattern. What works for the majority of kids doesn’t work so well for him. He can come in during the mornings and I’ll help him.”

  “He hasn’t been doing that?” Sam asked. Beau was supposed to be.

  The math teacher gave Sam a weary smile. “He usually comes by on the morning of the test, panicked.”

  Another topic Sam needed to address with his nephew. He felt stupid for not already being aware.

  “I ordered a book online,” he said. “I’ll try to help him more.”

  “Feel free to call on me.”

  Sam forced a smile. “Thank you. I appreciate the offer.” It would have been great if Miss Simms had known of a tutor, but all she could recommend were peer tutors. Sam didn’t believe another kid was up to the job of hammering math into Beau’s head when adults couldn’t get the job done.

  He left the office and stepped into the milling swarms of kids in the hall. He caught sight of Beau standing next to a locker, talking to Marisa Brown, the perkiest of perky cheerleaders, and resisted the urge to push his way through the crowd and tell him he needed to focus on school, not women.

  Instead Sam continued to follow a stream of kids until he got to the exit. He’d fight that battle, along with several others, tonight. Right now he wanted to get his first call—the Barton ranch—over and done with.

  JODIE GOT UP EARLY and checked the bull—thankfully he wasn’t belly up—then sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and staring out the picture window at the snowy fields with the pastel-blue mountains behind them.

  She was grateful Sam had come the night before, grateful that he was doing what he could…but this was her father’s prize bull. She had to do everything she could, so she’d put in another call to Eriksson’s office, hoping to leave a message on voice mail for a call back. Instead she got the same recording as the time she’d called for advice about Bronson. Dr. Eriksson was out of the office for yet another week.

  What kind of vet took two-week vacations? Didn’t he realize that people needed him? Now?

  “Lucas said Sam is coming back this morning,” Margarite said as she sat down on the other side of the table with a crossword puzzle book and a cup of tea.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank goodness. I don’t want your dad to blame Lucas if the bull dies.” She spoke offhandedly, opening the book and finding where she’d left off, but her words made Jodie’s temples throb.

  “The bull isn’t going to die.”

  “All the same…” Margarite said in an unconvinced tone.

  My father won’t blame Lucas. He’s more reasonable than that.

  Jodie looked back out the window, the words unspoken. Margarite was no one’s fool. She lived on the ranch full-time and saw things Jodie didn’t. But that didn’t mean she was interpreting them correctly.

  “Lucas hasn’t been here long enough to be responsible,” Jodie finally said. “I’ll make sure my dad knows the truth. And since Lucas did me a favor and came back, I’ll do my best to see that Dad keeps him on…if he wants to stay, that is.” Granted, her father wasn’t a big believer in second chances, but he would listen to reason—especially economic reason. And if no other local person would work for him during the winter months, as both Mike and Margarite intimated, keeping Lucas made sense.

  “Good luck,” the housekeeper said in a way that made Jodie feel oddly weary. Her dad had developed one heck of a rep with people who just didn’t get how he operated. People who didn’t see how much he had accomplished in life through strength of character and his no-excuses attitude. “Is Sam going to be on call if Lucas needs help when the heifers calve?”

  “Is he likely to need help?” Jodie certainly hoped not. She’d been so damned fortunate to get Sam to come out here as many times as she had. It seemed unlikely that her luck would hold.

  Margarite looked up after fitting a few letters into the puzzle. “You do know that heifers are first-time mothers, right?”

  “Yes.” One of the few bits of cattle knowledge she had.

  “Well, because of that, it takes them longer to come back into season after they give birth, so they’re bred to calve early. That gives them time to get pregnant again. The bad part is that it’s colder and nastier when they have their babies. Plus they have weaker calves and less colostrum, so, yes, there’s a good chance we’ll need a vet.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “On the bright side, it’s not muddy, so there’re not as many cases of scours.”

  Jodie had no idea what Margarite was talking about, and she didn’t ask for clarification. The word scours had an ominous ring to it.

  “Joe’s been at this for three years, so he understands the reality, but…”

  “He’s a businessman,” Jodie finished for her. He would want a live calf by the side of every cow. Profit for each investment.

  “Lucas can handle regular births, but he can’t do C-sections.” Margarite knocked on the wooden table. “Not that we’ll have any.”

  Jodie smiled weakly and stared back out at the line of cattle stretched across the snowy pasture, heads down, eating the hay Lucas had dropped.

  Would her father want Sam on the ranch on a regular basis?

  No.

  Would Sam agree to come on a regular basis?

  Probably not—unless the money was a sure thing.

  Was she feeling an edge of desperation? Definitely.

  “Hey, you’re fortunate none of those fancy mares Joe bought last summer are due to foal until spring,” Margarite said, breaking into Jodie’s thoughts. “You’ll be long gone by then.” She picked up her pencil again just as Sam’s distinctive bronze-colored truck appeared on the crest of a small hill about a half mile away.

  Jodie watched the vehicle disappear into the dip half a mile from the house. “Margarite?”

  The housekeeper looked up.

  “Is Sam a good vet?”

  “Yeah. He is.”

  Jodie did her best to keep an open mind, which wasn’t easy after hearing her father rant abo
ut Sam for months. “Did he make a mistake with my dad’s horse?”

  Margarite hesitated, then said, “I’m not a vet, so I can’t say.”

  A politically correct and totally unhelpful answer. Jodie went to the sink and rinsed her cup, setting it on the drain board before going out into the mudroom and putting on her barn coat. She wound a red silk scarf around her neck and went outside into the nippy midmorning air to wait for Sam.

  Mike Bower had better darned well hope that she never accidentally ran into him, because if she did, she was going to indulge in some retribution for putting her in her current position. Sam might or might not be a good vet, but she felt decidedly uncomfortable being in a position where she was beholden to him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Have some answers. Please have some answers.

  Sam parked beside the pump house and went straight to the barn without acknowledging her, so Jodie crossed the wide drive to find out what was happening.

  He was in the bull’s pen, doing something with the big animal when she opened the door. She stepped inside, but hung back, not sure what he was up to or if it involved blood and gore. Bronson knocked his hoof against the stall door and Jodie went to see if Lucas had fed him yet. He hadn’t, so she put a flake of hay in the manger and then went in with the fork to clean the pen. She was spreading straw, shaking the flakes with the fork to loosen them, when Sam approached.

  “How’s the bull?” she asked, standing straight, both hands gripping the pitchfork.

  “I think he’ll get better now. If he doesn’t, I’ll have to operate.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Jodie was focusing on the “get better” part. There was hope.

  “I suspect traumatic reticuloperitonitis.”

  “Which is?” A big long vet word. She hoped he wasn’t trying to dazzle her with smoke and mirrors and vocabulary.

  “Hardware disease. I think he swallowed metal, like a nail or wire, and it’s perforating his rumen.”

  “He what? Where would he get a nail?”

  “Feed. Cattle don’t chew. They swallow all kinds of stuff.”

  “My dad isn’t going to believe this one.”

  “If he continues in the ranching business, he will.”

  “What’s the treatment if you don’t operate? I mean…it’s a nail. That can’t be good.”

  “I fed him a magnet.”

  “Very funny.”

  Sam’s expression didn’t change. “It’s the treatment. Look it up on the Web.” He seemed pretty damned confident. “The magnet will pull the nail out of the rumen wall and the wall will heal if all goes well.”

  “Do you make this up?” Jodie asked.

  “Would I risk another lawsuit?”

  Probably not, and she felt a ridiculous urge to trust him. “Okay. You feed him a magnet. How do you get the magnet out? Does it just…come out naturally?”

  Sam shook his head. “Cattle aren’t set up like that. The magnet stays in there.”

  “Forever?” This didn’t sound right.

  “Yeah. It doesn’t hurt the bull and the metal sticking to it can’t perforate anything vital. Sometimes we have to feed an animal two magnets during its life if one gets too much stuff stuck to it.”

  Jodie heard the theme to the Twilight Zone playing in her head. “But you don’t know that it’s…hardware whatever. Shouldn’t you x-ray or do an ultrasound or something before jamming a magnet down the bull’s throat?”

  “X-ray on an animal as massive as that bull only picks up large objects. Ultrasound is generally useless, and even if it isn’t hardware disease, the magnet won’t hurt him.” Sam fixed cool gray eyes on her face. “I’m doing what I can. If the bull doesn’t respond, I’ll make an incision, feel around and see if I can find anything.”

  Jodie’s stomach flip-flopped at the mental image of Sam “feeling around” a cow’s insides.

  He shifted the medical kit from one hand to the other, making her wonder how heavy it was. “My next call is fifty miles from here, so I need to get going.”

  Jodie followed him out of the barn, debating with herself. Ask him? Don’t ask him? He was stowing the kit in a compartment of the utility truck when she made her decision. “If we have trouble with calving, can I call you?”

  He turned toward her, looking at her in a way that made her nerves tingle. His eyes were the same color as a winter sky with a storm moving in. She cleared her throat before continuing.

  “I’ve been talking to Margarite and she told me early calving would start soon. Mike was supposed to be here, to handle the difficult births.”

  “And Mike isn’t.”

  “No. He isn’t. If you’ll agree to be on call for the calving, I’ll pay a retainer.”

  “What if you don’t use my services?”

  “That’s a chance I’ll have to take.” Sam just looked at her. “So,” she said briskly. “What do you say?” She actually felt her heart start to beat faster as she waited for his reply.

  Sam ran a hand over his jaw. The stubble there was reddish-brown, much darker than his blond hair. He was going to agree. Jodie could feel it.

  “The minute your dad comes back, I’m off the job. He can get his own help.”

  “Agreed.” Jodie had no other choice. Calves were coming.

  JODIE DID INDEED PAY SAM a healthy retainer when he returned to the ranch the next morning, and he in turn handed her a legal document, one that let him off the hook in case of any mishaps, including the two animals he’d already treated. She read through it and then signed without hesitation. Margarite witnessed the signature in Joe’s office.

  Sam had had the paper drawn up shortly after winning the lawsuit, and for a while he’d used it with new customers. During the last several months, though, it had sat untouched in his file cabinet, but now it was out and back in action. He was fairly certain that a sharp lawyer would find ways around it, which might be why Jodie had signed so readily, but it made him feel slightly better working on the Barton ranch.

  “I researched hardware disease,” Jodie said conversationally after she’d made a copy of the document. She seemed less stressed now that he’d agreed to provide emergency care, and maybe that was why he was having such a hard time keeping his eyes off her. He’d seen her as the cool, efficient lawyer, and he’d seen her angry, desperate and determined. But he’d never encountered this warm, approachable Jodie. “I guess magnets are the therapy, although it sounds whacked to me.”

  “Yes, whacked,” Sam repeated solemnly, for want of anything better to say.

  Jodie fought a smile, but it broke through as she made a note on the top of the document, and Sam felt an unexpected jolt of desire through his body.

  Where had that come from?

  Probably from not having sex in a really long time.

  Between running the business and monitoring the boys, he didn’t seem to have a lot of free time on his hands. Dating had been one of the things that had fallen by the wayside as he struggled to keep up with being a vet, business owner and parent.

  Frankly, he missed having a social life, but in two years his life would be back. Kind of. He was beginning to understand that parenting never ended.

  Jodie was still half smiling when she set the pen she’d used back in a fancy-schmancy carved holder, and Sam did not like the effect it was having on him.

  “I’m going to take the stitches out of the horse’s chest. Want to watch?”

  Jodie’s smile instantly faded and she shook her head. “No. Thank you. Just tell me how the bull is doing before you go.”

  “I’ll tell Lucas.” Sam didn’t particularly want to see Jodie again before he left.

  “That works.” She gave him a long speculative look before opening a file drawer and slipping the contract into a folder, making him wonder what she was thinking.

  Probably best if he didn’t know, just as it was best that she never find out what he’d been thinking.

  Sam went to the barn, checked the bull—wh
ich appeared less lethargic now that the magnet was drawing the nail or wire out of the ruminant wall—and then removed the stitches from the horse’s chest. He was pleased with how well the area was healing. There’d be visible scars, but they weren’t nearly as ugly as they could have been; in fact, with a growth of winter coat, they’d barely be noticeable. He’d done a decent job in spite of the shaky light and numbing cold. Joe wouldn’t see it that way, of course, but screw him.

  Sam found Lucas fueling up the tractor, and told him the bull was improving and that the horse could go back out into the pasture. It was the first time Sam could remember the guy not reeking of alcohol.

  “Jodie said I can call you for help with the difficult calves?” His breath crystallized in the cold air.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?” Lucas asked point-blank.

  “Because Joe isn’t here and I need the money.”

  Lucas looked back at the bull. “Same reason I’m here. I don’t suppose you need any help around the clinic come spring?”

  “I have the boys, and even if I did need help, I couldn’t pay you.”

  Lucas nodded. He reached up to adjust the faded yellow silk scarf that protected his neck, then took the fuel nozzle out of the tractor’s gas tank.

  “But give me a call anyway,” Sam said, feeling for the guy. It had to be rough, starting your life over in your early sixties. “You never know. Maybe I’ll win the lottery or something.”

  FOR ONCE THE Zephyr Valley Ranch was experiencing a zephyr rather than a fierce north wind. The warm breeze blew for two days, melting most of the snow and creating a quagmire in the pastures. Lucas was having trouble feeding the animals without getting the tractor stuck, but so far had managed to get the big machine back to the barn every morning.

  “This’ll be followed by a freeze and two feet of snow,” Lucas predicted. “Just in time for the first calves. I don’t know what it is about freezing cold, but it makes cows give birth.”