LOVE OF A RODEO MAN (MODERN DAY COWBOYS) (2 page)

“Let’s get at it,” he growled. “It’s either that or butcher the whole infernal herd while Dad’s in town.”

The idea had merit, an
d they both considered it longingly for just an instant.

“Better pull on this suit. It’s none too clean in there,” Sara suggested.

She thought he was going to object, but he glanced again at the mess she was in and, with a few well-chosen cusswords, pulled the rubber coverall over his lean length and zipped it angrily.

“Boots?” Sara held Floyd’s mucky gum boots aloft, grasping them by the tops to avoid the manure. “I think these might fit you.”

She was actually enjoying herself for some perverse reason, probably because of the aloof way in which Mitch had sat on that fence just a short time ago, removed from it all, making her intensely uncomfortable. There was a certain poetic justice in having him join her.

He hesitated again, and both he and Sara studied his dusty leather boots.

“Damn it to hell.” With an exclamation of disgust, Mitch finally leaned back against the truck’s bumper and, bending one knee, smoothly pulled off his boot, exposing a green sock with a large hole in the toe.

There was something touching and vulnerable about a man with a hole in his sock. Sara silently handed him first one rubber boot and then the next, stifling a sudden urge to giggle at the sulky glower on his handsome features.

The suave cowboy of a few min
utes ago had been transformed by the shapeless vet’s garb, except for the worn felt hat that seemed to be part of his head. Sara suspected he’d draw the line at taking the hat off, and she was right. The hat stayed, crammed down tight on his skull with the gesture he’d used several times before, as if he were adjusting his helmet before going into battle.

“Let’s do it.” Mitch carefully placed his leather boots up on the truck’s tailgate, cast a
baleful glance down at the filthy rubber boots on his feet, cursed under his breath and led the way toward the pigpens.

Once inside the pen, Sara demonstrated the snare for him, and after a few minutes, Mit
ch got the hang of it much better than Floyd ever had. Mitch was stronger as well and superbly well coordinated. The pigs didn’t stand a chance, and she suspected they sensed it, because the whole procedure began to go the way it was described in the textbooks: smooth, efficient, rapid, professional.

Dirty, noisy and stinking.

Exhausting, filthy work.

But their eyes would meet over the top of a struggling, squealing hog, and one of Mitch’s thick eyebrows would lift in a wordless query.

Sara would cross her eyes and shrug.

What the hell are two nice people like us doing in a place like this?

She’d meet his green gaze and grin, aware that mud was now smeared across most of her face or that half her hair was flopping down her neck.

Incredibly enough, a giddy kind of wordless rapport blossomed and flourished between them as the afternoon progressed, a closeness tha
t might have taken weeks to develop under ordinary circumstances, or might never have developed at all.

Several times, some grotesque or utterly ridiculous action on the part of the pigs would start Sara giggling, and she’d watch in fascination as Mitch’s hard mouth widened and softened, just the way s
he knew it would when he smiled. Then they’d have to pause in the middle of the noise and heat and stand helplessly amidst the squalling bodies milling around them, bent over with hysterical laughter until control returned.

And at last, it was done. The number of labeled vials of blood exactly matched the tatto
oed numbers on the animals. Sara held a triumphant thumb high in the air and pointed at the gate.

Mitch made her a chivalrous bow, and then like maniacs they bolted for freedom, one trying to outdo the other in their stumbling race for the gate, impeded by the pigs and the sloppy fit of the gum boots.

Mitch got there first, but he turned back to clear a path among several milling bodies, and then they were outside the pen.

“This way,” he called, leading the way over to a tap with a hose attached. “Let’s wash these damn outfits off so you can at least handle them to put them in the truck.” Twisting it on, he turned the nozzle on Sara, washing away the worst of the muck
from her coverall and mischievously sending spurts of water into her hair and down her neck in the process.

But the cold water felt wonderful, and Sara held her hands in the stream and tipped her face up to the sky to let the drops cascade over her skin.

It was a childlike gesture that made something inside of him feel tender and warm.

Then she did the same for Mitch, carefully avoiding the hat still pulled low on his forehead.

“There’s a rough shower down at the barn, with towels and soap, if you want to use it,” he suggested as they wrestled their way out of the rubber suits a few moments later.

“I feel as if I’ll never get the stink off me,” she moaned.

The thin T-shirt and jeans Sara had on under the coverall were literally soaked with sweat, glued uncomfortably to her body, and she thought longingly of the clean ones she always kept in the truck. A shower would be heavenly, refreshing before she started the long drive back to the clinic. “I’d love it. But what about you, don’t you want a shower, too?” The moment the words were out, she blushed crimson as a Montana sunset. Would he think that was an invitation?

“I mean, don’t you want to use it first?” she stammered.

His lopsided grin came and went along with a teasing glint in his eyes. “Tell you what. I’ll give you the first fifteen minutes in there, but I warn you, after that I’m coming in. Oh, and while you’re in the shower, I’ll go up to the house and tell Mom you’re staying for supper.”

Sara was shaking her hea
d negatively before he was finished speaking.

“I couldn’t possibly do that, Mitch. It’s not fair to your mom, and also my family are expecting me home.”

He frowned. It had never occurred to him that she might be married. He tried to remember exactly what his father had said about her that morning.

“What family?” he demanded bluntly, noticing again how the sweat-dampened clothing outlined her tall, strong body. She had wide shoulders and lovely full breasts, a shape perfectly balanced by curving hips and slender waist. Her arms and legs were long, and she moved gracefully.

This was one lovely lady. His heavy eyebrows came together in a frown.

“Who’s waiting for you, Sara?”

There was a peculiar intensity to the query that puzzled her. “Why, Mom and my stepfather, Dave, probably, and Gram Adeline for sure, back at Bitterroot,” she supplied. She smiled and shook her head fondly. “Gram always insists I eat a full-scale meal at the end of the day, and she usually stands over me like a watchdog to see that I do. She has this theory about—” Sara beetled her eyebrows together and made her voice reedy and querulous.

“—dern fool diets and foolish women who starve themselves.’ Gram’s eighty-two, so I guess
she’s entitled to her pet theories.”

Mitch nodded, his frown gone. “I’ll get Mom to give her a call, then, and tell her you’re having a good dinner here and that we’ll make sure yo
u eat your carrots so your eyesight stays healthy.”

“But, I, your father, that is...”

Sara hated babbling like this, but she didn’t fancy choking down dinner under the sour surveillance of Wilson Carter, either.

“Pop’s bark is worse than his bite. He’s not bad, once you get to know him.” His impetuous invitation began to seem more and more a
good idea. “And my mom is probably like your grandma. Her idea of a real good time is feeding people.”

It was true.
Ruth had always loved to cook for him and his brother Bob and their friends. But that was long ago. Before. Nowadays there were never guests at the round oak table, and meals alone with his parents were one more of the numerous things Mitch found increasingly difficult since he’d come home. Besides, he simply wanted to spend more time around this Sara.

His insistence didn’t annoy her, the way another man’s might have done. She tilted her head and
gave him an appraising look.

He flashed his one-sided grin and raised his eyebrows questioningly, and she smiled too and gave in. “Okay, but make sure it’s not a problem for your mother. And I’ll call Bitterroot myself as soon as I shower.”

Fourteen minutes later, she rubbed dry with one of the oversized towels she’d found stacked neatly on a wooden shelf in the utilitarian washroom at one end of the huge, clean-smelling barn. She hurriedly pulled on clean underwear and the fresh denims and bright pink T-shirt she’d brought from the truck and used her brush as best she could on her wet, waving mass of hair.

When she opened the door and stepped outside, Mitch squinted up at her and nodded approval.

He was propped on his heels against the wooden wall of the building, a glowing cigarette held in his right hand between index finger and thumb, half cupped inside his palm. His hat was carefully brushed clean of mud and firmly in place, and she noted that his boots were, too. He rose to his feet in one effortless motion as Sara hesitantly walked toward him.

“Mom’s whipping up biscuits in your ho
nor. She gave me what for because I made you use the shower down here instead of sending you up to the house.”

“This one was great. You’re
sure it’s all right about supper?” Sara felt shy all of a sudden, and once again that unsettling awareness that had overcome her earlier was back. He had a way of giving her his undivided attention, eyes meeting and holding her own, seeming to convey quite different messages than the words they exchanged out loud.

“You must drive your mom crazy, asking people to eat at the last moment like this,” she went on, using conversation to fill in what could be a
n awkwardness, an admission between them of... what? Stop being a fool, Sara. This is your first exposure to a real, honest-to-goodness Montana cowboy, and you’re reacting like a fourteen-year-old from a parochial school.

“It’s good for her,” he said shortly. “I’ll be up as soon as I shower.”

He moved past Sara to the door, noting the way her skin shone from its recent scrubbing and the fact that her thick hair was beginning to dry in wispy little curls over her ears. He passed close by, and he could smell the harsh green soap they’d always used in the barn shower, along with a warm and subtly sweet scent, like wild grass in hot sunshine, that must be Sara’s own. He breathed it in, feeling as if he’d discovered an intimate secret about her.

Sara made her way slowly across the wide expanse of graveled yard over to where the rambling wood-framed farmhouse with its flaking coat of white paint squatted in a circle of lawn. She hesitated several moments before she made her uncertain way to the screen door at the side of the house where the kitchen
must be, judging from the delicious smell of baking biscuits wafting into the heavy evening air.

She was puzzling over Mitch’s comment about his mother. Why should having Sara arrive for dinner unexpectedly be good for Mrs. Carter? What was wrong with her in the first place that she might need such therapy?

Feeling a lot less than confident and wishing fervently she hadn’t let Mitch bulldoze her into this, she smoothed a hand over her still-wet hair and finally knocked softly on the screen door.

“Goodness, come right in dear. Mitch said...it’s Sara, isn’t it? Sara, eh...?”

“Sara Wingate, Mrs. Carter. I do hope I’m not putting you to a whole lot of bother. I told Mitch...”

“It’s a pleasure to have you, Sara. And please call me Ruth, won’t you?” Nervously wiping her floury hands on her faded apron, Ruth Carter nodded and smiled, motioning her guest into the large, cheery kitchen.

“Sit down, I’ll pour you some lemonade. I just have to...” Ruth’s voice trailed off as she hurriedly rescued a pan of biscuits from the oven of the large, modern electric range. The entire kitchen was well equipped, old and new blending in charming proportions: heavy old oak cup- boards fitted with gleaming stainless-steel sinks, a micro-wave resting beside an antique wooden bread box, an old coffee grinder on a shelf above a food processor.

Sara watched Ruth Carter curiously as the older woman moved around the kitchen. Ruth seemed about Sara’s own mother’s age, perhaps a few years past fifty, but the two women were very different. Jennie Wingate-Hoffman was attractive, vi
gorous, meticulously groomed, full of fast quips and bubbly good humor.

In contrast, Ruth’s hair was combed and careless
ly pinned back from her face, not styled, with wide streaks of white weaving through what must have once been a pure golden wheat color. Her delicate and pretty features were devoid of makeup, and around her eyes and mouth were deep lines, grooved into the mushroom-pale skin. She looked as if she’d recently been ill, and her smile, warm and sweet and rather shy, still seemed somehow forced, as if she weren’t in the habit of using it. Her clothes, too, looked as if they’d been donned for covering and little else. The cotton housedress was as faded as the apron, and it hung on her too-slender frame as if it might have been purchased for a much larger woman.

“Lemonade, heavens, I’d forget my own head these days...” Ruth poured a tall, icy glass for Sara and then, after a distracted glance around the
kitchen, a smaller one for herself. With an unconscious sigh, she slumped into a chair at the circular table, across from her guest.

“Supper’s nearly ready.
I hope Mitch thinks to call his father up from the cattle barn. Wilson bought a new steer today and he’s down there admiring it. Sometimes I envy men.” Ruth’s voice was both weary and querulous.

Sara didn’t have a clue what the proper response should be to a remark like that, and she be
gan to feel slightly uncomfortable. “Could I please use your phone, Ruth?” she asked after a few moments had passed in silence. “I left my cell in the truck.” It was a relief to get up and dial the number and hear the sprightly and businesslike voice of Gram Adeline announce, “Bitterroot Resort, can I help you?”

Sara grinned as she always did at Gram’s newly acquired professional telephone manner.

“Gram, it’s just me. How you doing? Learned how to make a Singapore sling yet?”

Gram had decided some weeks before that Dave needed a relief bartender, and she needed something to challenge her mind. So now every wall in her room was papered with her carefully hand-lettered recipes for exotic drinks, which Gram memorized as sh
e bustled around. She saw absolutely no discrepancy in being eighty-two years old and learning to be a bartender. And her family knew better than to try to dissuade her, despite their well-founded reservations about actually having her behind the bar. What Gram made up her mind to do, she did with a vengeance.

“Sin
gapore sling, let’s see now...”

“Gram, never mind, I’m just teasing. I’m calling to say I won’t be home for supper. I’m at the Carter ranch, and they’ve asked me to stay and eat with them.”

“That’s nice, dear. Isn’t that the place you had to do the pigs? How’d it go?”

“It went, uh, I guess as fine as pigs can go. I’ll fill you in on all the details when I get home.”

“All right, dear. And Sara?”

Sara grinned again. She’d bet her afternoon’s wages on what was coming next.

“Yes, Gram?”

“You mind your manne
rs, now.” There was teasing humor in the old voice. The words were a litany from Sara’s childhood, and they bound the two women together in fond memories of long-ago times.

“I will, promise. Bye, Gram.” She hung up slowly, aware that Ruth couldn’t have helped overhearing the conversation.

“My gram lives with Mom and Dave at Bitterroot. She helped raise my sister and me after my dad died, and she still treats me as if I was ten,” Sara explained.

“How lucky you are, to still have a grandmother around. My sons never met their grandparents. Both my mother and my father died young, and Wilson was an orphan,” Ruth said.

“Do you have any grandchildren?” Sara asked innocently, and then she watched with alarm as Ruth’s eyes slowly filled with big tears, which then trickled down her cheeks.

“Three dear little granddaughters, but Kate took them back to Seattle after...” Ruth’s face contorted into a mask of grief, and she seemed unable to go on as sobs overcame her.

Sara felt panicky. What on earth should she do? What had she done to bring on this storm of grief? She got hastily to her feet and went around the table, putting a clumsy arm around Ruth’s shoulders and patting her helplessly, fumbling at a box of tissues on the table and finally extracting a handful and offering them.

Ruth’s body shook with weeping, and then slowly she seemed to get herself under some control. “I’m so sorry, dear, such a thing to do when you’ve never even met me before.
It just comes over me, and Wilson... Wilson won’t let me talk about it. And talking helps, you know. Anyway, my daughter-in-law, Kate, she took the little girls back to her home in Seattle right after my oldest son, Bob, was killed last November. There was ice on the hill in the north pasture, and the tractor tipped and rolled, and Bob...” Ruth’s voice caught on another sob. “He was trapped underneath. Wilson couldn’t get him out until it.. .it was too late. Anyhow, I miss those little girls something fierce.”

Sara felt shock and overwhelming pity. She’d never felt as helpless in her life as she did this instant, trying to think of what to say to comfort Ruth. Why hadn’t Mitch warned her? Yet how could he have? They’d only known each other a few hours, and there wasn’t any tactful way to announce that your brother was dead and your mother half out of her mind with grief.

Male voices sounded outside, and Ruth hurriedly blew her nose, scurrying into the bathroom just off the kitchen. Sara could hear water running as Wilson Carter and Mitch came through the kitchen door. They were discussing the new steer, but they stopped when Sara rose to her feet and walked toward them. It seemed imperative that Ruth have the time she needed in the bathroom.

Both men took their hats off, and Sara took note of Mitch’s thick, springy dar
k hair. It looked softly disarranged, marked by the place his hat had rested, and he ran his fingers through it, setting it even more on edge. He gave her a tight-lipped smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, and Sara sensed tension between the old man and his son.

Sara smiled back at Mitch and determinedly held out her hand to Wilson. “Hello, Mr. Carter.”

He was the same height as Sara, and as trim and muscular as a much younger man. His face was ruddy and leather-like from the sun, but a sharp line across his forehead showed much lighter skin where the hatband rested.

“Hullo,” he growled, taking her outstretched hand after a slight pause, giving it a single shake and then dropping it. “We don’t stand on much ceremony around here, young woman. My name is Wilson, you call me that. Mitch tells me the pig testing went along all right.”

“Yes, we’re all done. I’ll have the results in a couple of days.”

“Humph. Well, damn good thing Mitch was around to give you a hand, is all I can say. Can’t expect a woman to do a job like that on her own.”

Sara’s mouth opened with a suitable retort to that and closed again as Wilson went blithely on. “I dropped Floyd off at the medical center in Plains. Don’t figure there was too much wrong with his arm, either. He managed to open the truck door with no problem before he remembered the derned thing was supposed to be out of commission.”

Sara nodded, noting the mischievous wink Mitch gave her from behind his father. “That sounds like Floyd,
all right,” she commented ruefully.

Wilson peered around her, his gaze searching the kitchen anxiously. “Where’s Mother got to? It’s past time to eat around here,” he said loudly, and Ruth appeared on cue from the bathroom, her cheeks unnaturally flushed and her eyes a little swollen. She went fluttering over to the stove and lifted various lids to check on the vegetables.

“Go sit down. Not here in the kitchen, Wilson, in the dining room. All of you, go now. I’ll just mash these spuds,” Ruth said.

“Can’t I help with something?” Sara asked, but Ruth gave her a watery smile and shook her head.

Wilson, conscious of his role as host, said loudly, “C’mon, Doc, take a seat out here so the rest of us can sit, too. I guess they still call you Doc, even though you’re a woman, huh?” He guffawed loudly at his joke, and Mitch shot him a narrow-eyed, quelling glance that Wilson blithely ignored.

Mitch carefully held Sara’s chair, and she slid gratefully into it, wondering if things were going to improve or only get worse. It had been a big
mistake, accepting this invitation. The dining room was obviously in use for her benefit, and just as obviously, Wilson Carter wasn’t particularly thrilled at having her at his supper table.

Mitch quietly took the chair right beside her, as if providing a bulwark between her and his father.

Altogether, Sara decided it was vastly different from any meal she’d shared before. The food was delicious, but Ruth popped up and down, anticipating everyone’s needs as well as serving, seeming not to take more than one or two bites of anything herself. Her activity was punctuated by Wilson’s monologue on the new steer and the need for repairs on the fence in the west pasture. Once, in an exasperated voice, he broke off his discourse to order, “Mother, sit still and eat your food. Makes me edgy, you jumping up and down all the time.”

Ruth seemed to shrink further into her skin, but she stayed sitting as they finished golden fried chicken, fresh garden salad and the flaky buttermilk biscuits she’d made in Sara’s honor.

“You’re a tremendous cook, Ruth,” Sara said sincerely, and Ruth smiled, a real smile this time, her pale skin flushed with pleasure. “Oh, any farm woman can cook. You don’t need training for that, the way you must to be a vet. How much schooling does it take to get your degree, Sara?”

“Four years of college and another three at vet school. Seven, altogether.”

“Must have been quite an experience. I suppose they teach you to do operations and all that?” Ruth said in a timid voice.

“They sure do. In our third year we had surgery twice a week.” Sara humorously described a few scenes from that training period, even succeeding in making Ruth laugh at one point when she told of a
n hilarious operation she and her surgery partner had performed on a ten-foot boa constrictor from a local zoo.

Both Mitch and his father smiled at her story, but Sara noticed their smiles seemed more for Ruth’s laughter.

“Understand you’re doin’ most of Doc Stone’s practice,” Wilson commented a little later, buttering one last biscuit and popping it whole into his mouth. “Seems hard to figure how a young girl could take over from a man with all Doc’s experience. Makes some of us old-timers a mite nervous, trusting you with our stock. No offense meant, you understand.”

Mitch had been quiet till
now, eating his meal with honest hunger. He looked up quickly and scowled at his father. “For heaven’s sake, Pop,” he snapped.

But Sara had encountered this same attitude at least once a day since she’d first started working for Doc Stone, and she no longer found it as ins
ulting as she had in the beginning. What Wilson was saying straight out was simply what most of the old-timers in the area felt, and she appreciated the chance to meet it head-on.

“It’s okay, Mitch. I understand what your dad is saying. I’ve still got a lot to learn,” she admitted forthrightly. “But I’ve also had an excellent edu
cation as well as practical experience. In vet school a lot of the learning is done first-hand, working with qualified vets. And you get a chance to be what’s called an extern, a student who lives in the clinic and takes the calls during the night. I did that, and it helps build confidence as well as supplying experience. I also worked every summer at a country practice, where we treated nearly every livestock problem imaginable. So I feel secure about the trust Doc Stone has put in me, and I’ll do my best to earn a reputation around here as a good vet. Everyone makes mistakes, of course. But I’ll do my absolute best.” She met Wilson’s eyes in a forthright challenge. “The thing is, you ranchers have to give me a chance to prove myself, like the fair-minded men I think you are. Can I count on you to do that, Mr. Carter?”

Wilson had been listening closely, and she’d caught him off guard with her challen
ge. He frowned at her in annoyance, and then, when she didn’t look away, he reluctantly nodded.

“I suppose everybody deserves a chance,” he allowed. “But mind you, that fancy degree won’t cut no ice if you don’t do a good job with my stock,” he warned.