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“And I’m just saying that I could be of real help to you if you’d trust me and show me what you need.”
“Is that right?”
“I’d go so far as to say that I could help out with a lot of things if you’d let me,” Meredith told him cautiously, thinking that had gone easier than she’d expected.
He folded his arms. “Ever seen a calf caught in barbed wire for so long that gangrene has set in?”
She blinked, caught off guard by the change of subject. Then she saw the quirk of his lips just before he swiped the napkin over them, and she knew instantly what he was doing.
Parking her hands at her waist, she said, “No. But I’ve seen plenty that would turn your stomach.”
They traded horror stories for several minutes, each more gory than the last.
Laughter bubbled up inside of her when she finally called a halt. “Look, I’m a nurse. You can’t gross me out.”
A grin split his tanned face. “Okay. Okay. Truce?”
She nodded. “Truce.”
“And thank you for the pudding,” he said, picking up the empty bowl and spoon.
Well, that was progress. She took a deep breath and plunged in.
“I was wondering...hoping you might need help with your practice.”
Sobering, he looked down. “No.”
Just like that? “But Rex says that you work alone and that your practice is huge, too big for one person.”
“Meredith,” he said, “I prefer to work alone.”
Her heart sank. Could he be that antisocial? “Truly?”
Shoving up to his feet, he held out the spoon and bowl, nodding. “That’s how I like it.”
“But why? Everyone says you have too much to do.”
“That’s true,” he admitted. “Still, I prefer to work alone.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Why would you want a job with me, anyway?” he asked, not even denying her last statement. “You’re an RN.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” she retorted, snatching the bowl from his hand hard enough to rattle the spoon, “there aren’t any nursing jobs around here. I’ve checked. I’ve put my name on the lists at all the hospitals and nursing homes within driving distance, and I’ve registered with every local agency. I’ve even called every doctor I can find. No one’s hiring.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What happened to your job in the City? I’m sure Rex told me you were taking a leave of absence.”
“It’s still there,” she admitted glumly. “But I don’t want to go back. I want to be here. I’ve always wanted to be here. Not at the ranch, necessarily, but in War Bonnet or close to. And now that Rex and Ann have come home to stay...” She shook her head.
“Just because they’ve come home doesn’t mean you have to,” he pointed out.
“You aren’t listening. I never wanted to be in the City. You’ve no idea how much I hate it there. I want to come home. I want to be close to my family. I wasn’t really close to Dad growing up, and now it’s like we have a second chance. I want to be here.”
“I want lots of things I’ll never have again, Meredith,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
Struggling not to weep, she shrugged, nodded and whispered, “Well, I have some time yet. Something might turn up.”
“You never know,” he said.
But she did know, all too well, and his tone said that he did, too. The truth was that if he didn’t give her a job, she wasn’t going to find one locally. The worst part was that it didn’t make sense. She could help Stark. They could help each other.
Why wouldn’t he take what she offered?
Did he dislike her that much?
Or was something else going on here?
Either way, unless God intervened, she was on her way back to Oklahoma City. Like it or not.
Chapter Three (#u06533cf9-665b-54d0-8c9e-1cf0bed3aac9)
As tired as he was, Stark had a difficult time dropping off to sleep between the hourly alarms set on his phone. He’d been too long without rest and knew his judgment would be impaired without it, but he couldn’t get Meredith Billings out of his mind. If she’d been male or fifty or as ugly as a mud fence, he’d have hired her with gratitude last night, but he had no room in his life, such as it was, for a pretty little thing like her.
No, the last thing he needed underfoot was an attractive female like Meri. He couldn’t afford to take a chance that one or the other of them might form an attachment. After losing Cathy, he was never going there again. He’d never survive a second loss like that. Truthfully, he hadn’t really survived the first one. All that was left of him was an empty husk and the work. He tried to concentrate on the latter and ignore everything else.
The horse seemed unchanged when Stark checked around four in the morning. He considered belting back one of the energy drinks that he lived on but decided against it. Instead, he stretched out on his bedroll again. The next thing he knew a woman’s shrieking voice woke him.
“Stark! He’s not breathing! Stark!”
The smell of strong black coffee cut through the odors of the stable, but he didn’t have time to think about it as he all but vaulted the stable gate. Meredith stood at Soldier’s head, her expression one of sheer horror. The horse’s head hung almost to the floor. Only the sling kept the animal upright. Stark grabbed his kit and found his stethoscope. After a quick examination, he was able to think.
“His heart’s still beating, but I don’t know how long he’s been without oxygen.” Stark began palpating the horse’s windpipe and giving orders. “Quick. I need a trach kit. Right side of the bag. And lay out a sterile sheet. Blue.”
Kneeling in the stall, Meredith worked swiftly, pulling on gloves and following instructions to the letter while Stark suited up. They had the tube in place in less than two minutes. Immediately Soldier twitched his ears and rasped in air. Holding the tracheotomy tube with one hand, Stark reached up to mop his brow with the other wrist, but Meredith beat him to it, blotting his forehead with a gauze pad. When he looked down, she had the suture kit open. As soon as he picked up the curved needle with the sewing silk threaded through it, she squirted antiseptic around the incision holding the breathing tube. It was as if the woman could read his mind.
Working quickly, Stark secured the breathing tube, while a lightly sedated Soldier swayed on his hooves, occasionally flicking his ears. Finally, Stark stepped back, satisfied with the work and the result.
He peeled off his gloves and tore off the coverall, saying grimly, “Get your brother while I clean up.” Shucking her gloves, Meredith dropped them onto the blue plastic sheet. “Meri,” he said, as she edged past him. She paused. It cost him, but he had to say it. “Good work.” She shot him a smile. “That doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods,” he warned.
Nodding soberly, she took off at a trot. Stark used the stethoscope once more, listening to the faint rattle in Soldier’s lungs.
By the time Meredith returned to the stable with Rex, Stark had bundled up the detritus from the tracheotomy and deposited it in the trash. He’d also zipped up his kit and performed a more thorough examination of the horse.
“Swelling in the retropharyngeal lymph nodes.” He showed Rex the bulging on the undersides of the horse’s jaws. “It doesn’t always happen with encephalitis, but it’s not that unusual.”
“So what do we do now?” Meredith asked worriedly.
Stark rubbed his chin, rough with three days’ growth of beard. Meredith had been a great help. She’d kept a very cool head during what had been a true emergency and had anticipated his every need as he’d worked. He couldn’t help being impressed by that. Now he was going to have to count on her to tend the horse while he was away, because he simply could not be in two places at one time. That was a fact with which he often had to deal, but it was seldom more essential than now.
“Basically, we watch him like a hawk,” Stark said. “We were sure lucky you woke me when you did.”
Almost as one, the brother and sister said, “I don’t believe in luck.”
That rocked Stark back. “You don’t believe in luck?”
“Not a bit of it,” Meredith told him firmly. She smiled at her brother, saying, “We believe in divine providence.”
Smiling, Rex wrapped an arm around his little sister’s shoulders and hugged her. “I thank God you walked in when you did.”
Stark clamped his jaw. He was well aware of the Christian teaching of divine providence, but he didn’t believe it for a moment. To believe that God tended to the personal lives of the average person was to believe that God had allowed Stark’s family to die, and that Stark could not—would not—accept.
He licked his lips and said, “Be that as it may, we’re working with a heap of negatives here. Encephalitis. Lymph node inflammation severe enough to cut off the air passage. And, from the sound of his breathing, pneumonia.”
“Oh, no,” Rex said, pushing a hand over his face.
“So that’s it?” Meredith demanded pugnaciously, parking her hands at her waist, and quite a neat little waist it was, too. In fact, she curved nicely in all the right places, which just made Stark want to run right out of there. “You’re going to recommend putting him down, aren’t you?”
Stark was trying so hard not to look at her that he almost didn’t hear her. When her words finally registered, he welcomed them and the anger that they stirred. “No, Miss High-and-Mighty. I have to admit that his chances have diminished, but I’m not ready to give up on him yet. Are you?”
“Of course not,” she retorted, sounding both relieved and affronted.
“Good. Then you won’t mind babysitting him while I’m gone.” Stark reached down and snatched up his kit.
“H-how long will you be away?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he all but snarled, shouldering the kit. The woman sure had a way of getting under his skin. He took a deep breath. “It depends on how many other patients I have.” He pulled two syringes from his shirt pocket and held them out to her. “One in the IV plug every four hours. There’s an extra IV bag next to my bedroll. Change it out when this one is down to the last mark. These big bags are tricky to estimate, so pull the bottom out like this to make sure how much is in it.” He demonstrated with both hands. “Watch the flow rate. If it dumps too fast, it’ll wash out all the medication, so check periodically.”
Meredith nodded. “Got it.”
“Don’t try to feed or water him today. If he starts to struggle, coughs or collapses, call me at once. Think you can handle all that?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“I hope so, because the alternative is to try to get him to a clinic, and, frankly, I doubt he’d survive the trip.”
She looked stricken at that.
Rex said, “I don’t think we should tell Dad just how bad it is. Not yet.”
Meredith nodded, then looked at Stark as if asking for his input. The very idea made him break out in gooseflesh. He shook his head.
“None of my business. I take care of the horse. Wes is your father. Y’all take care of him.”
She looked to her brother, saying, “Whatever you think best.”
Those words slugged Stark in the chest, echoing down through the years.
Whatever you think best, sweetheart. We’ll leave whenever you’re ready.
Stark practically ran after that, getting out of there as fast as he could. No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn’t escape the memories. Throwing his gear into his truck, he all but dove behind the wheel. Then he sat there for several long minutes, shuddering at the sounds in his mind of screeching tires and clanging metal. When at last the empty silence returned, he started the truck and, with shaking hands, went doggedly on his way. His lonely, tortured way.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” Dean argued quietly the next evening, his handsome blond head shaking. “I think you’re wrong.” A custom farmer, he’d come straight from the harvest to make his case, having neither showered nor eaten, so strongly did he feel. The weather forecast hinted at rain, which made for a long day for the harvesters. “When my granddad was ill, I learned quick that he resented more than anything for me and Grandma to try to protect him,” Dean said. “Grandpa said it robbed him of his pride and his manhood. Even though he was dying, I learned that the best thing I could do was sit down and talk man-to-man with him about whatever problems we were having.”
“And you were, what,” Ann asked, sitting beside him on the porch swing, “all of fifteen? Those must’ve been tough times for you, darling.” She brushed dust from his knee.
He nodded, wrapping his hand around hers. “They were. Now I have every hope that Wes is going to recover, but I’m not sure he’ll be happy if you keep this from him.”
“I have to agree,” Ann said, but then she was so in love with her husband that he could say the moon was made of seaweed and she would at least try to believe it.
Rex leaned against the porch railing, folding his arms. They’d convened this little family conference on the porch in order to be well out of Wes’s hearing, but they were still keeping their voices low. As he had recently proved, Wes was far from deaf.
“Dad’s so weak,” Rex mused, “and he loves that old horse. I—I just don’t know if we should tell him how serious the situation is. I feel we need to give Dad as much incentive as we can to live right now.”
“Maybe we could wait a day or two,” Callie suggested, sliding an arm around Rex’s waist.
Somewhere in the dark, an owl hooted. It was such a lonely sound, exactly how Meredith felt, standing here surrounded on a moonless October night by her siblings and their spouses. Still, it was better than sitting locked in her apartment with only her cat for company.
“Maybe Dr. Burns can give us some insight,” she said.
“Why don’t you go ask him?” Ann suggested.
Meredith caught—and ignored—the slightly suggestive undertone in her sister’s voice. “All right.” She turned away from the house. “He should’ve had time to make a full assessment of the horse by now.”
He had arrived well over an hour earlier, his usual bag from the local diner in tow. At some point during the day, he had taken the time to shower, shave and change clothes. He’d even shown up wearing a different hat, a cleaner, better version of his usual black felt Stetson. The sight had done strange, unwelcome things to her breathing, so she’d scampered out of the stable as quickly as she could, but she wouldn’t let that keep her from seeking him out now. She might not like Stark Burns, but he was in no way a danger to her. She knew that, had always known it, by sheer instinct.
Stepping off the porch, she walked down the well-beaten path beneath the trees. Behind her, she heard the thin wail of a tiny voice. Bodie was teething again, and sleep seemed to be eluding her. Meredith heard the screen door creak as her sister-in-law went into the house to see to the child. Ann and Dean had left Donovan at home with Dean’s grandmother.
Meri heard Ann say, “We ought to be getting back. Dean’s tired. Call me later.”
Rex replied something to that, but Meredith couldn’t make it out as she was moving farther from the house. She hopped over the bar ditch and out onto the dirt road. The vapor lamp atop the pole at the edge of the big red barn cast a wide circle of faint light over Stark’s truck. Cream colored, it looked gray in the light. The magnetic sign on its door read, Burns Veterinary Services, with a phone number beneath, followed by the words, War Bonnet, Oklahoma. He hadn’t bothered to include an address. War Bonnet was so small that a short drive around town would quickly locate the veterinary office on its outskirts, just past the Feed & Grain owned by Callie’s father.
Walking past the truck, Meredith stepped out of the circle of dim light and into the darkness once more before crossing the second bar ditch on the opposite side of the road, then crawling through the corral fence. There was a gate, but no one used it except to let horses in or out or drive truckloads of feed inside. As usual, except in the very coldest part of winter, the stable door stood open.
Meredith walked through the door and knew at once that Stark wasn’t inside.
She had no idea why he’d stepped out, but obviously he had. He couldn’t have gone far, though. His truck was still parked at the side of the road.
Going to Soldier, she checked his tracheotomy then the IV, the catheter first, followed by the bag. Wanting an accurate measurement, she tried to do it just the way Stark had shown her, pulling on the bottom of the big, heavy bag.
Suddenly, two arms came around her, trapping her, and two hands covered hers. Meredith screamed and jerked backward, colliding with a warm, strong body. Panicked, she threw first one elbow then the other and tore free, stumbling into the stall and throwing up her hands in defense.
“No! Let go! I’ll fight!”
Stark stood there, his arms held up, hands shoulder high and spread wide. “It’s okay,” he said gently.
Meri’s heart pounded so hard she thought she might be sick. Clasping a hand over the scar on her chest, she doubled over, gasping and swallowing down air.
