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“Cleo?”
“Jeb Thacker’s Nubian goat. She has a bit of a personality disorder.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, let’s put it this way. Ben used to say that if she’d been human, she’d have been sent to death row a long time ago.”
Ellie grinned, picturing the old codger who had sold her the practice saying exactly that. Ben Nichols was a real character. They had formed an instant friendship the first time they met at a conference several years ago. It was that same bond that had prompted him to make all her dreams come true by offering her his practice at a bargain basement price when he decided to retire, to her shock and delight. He and his wife were now thoroughly enjoying retirement in Arizona.
“What’s Cleo in for?”
“Jeb didn’t know, precisely. The poor man ’bout had a panic attack right there when I tried to get him to specify on the paperwork. Blushed brighter than one of his tomatoes and said he thought it was some kind of female trouble.”
A homicidal goat with female trouble. And here she thought she was in for another slow morning. “Where’s Jeb?”
“He had to go into Afton to the hardware store. Said he’d be back later to pick her up.”
“In that case, let’s take care of the dog first since Mary Lou’s waiting,” she decided. She could save the worst for last.
It only took a few moments for her to diagnose that Sasha had a bad case of psoriasis. She gave Mary Lou a bottle of medicated shampoo she thought would do the trick, ordered her to wash his bedding frequently and scheduled a checkup in six months.
That done, she put on her coat and braved the cold, walking to the pens behind the clinic to deal with the cantankerous goat. Cleo looked docile enough. The brown-and-white goat was standing in one of the smaller pens gnawing the top rail on the fence.
Ellie stood near the fence and spoke softly to her for a moment, trying to earn the animal’s trust. Cleo turned and gave her what Ellie could swear was a look of sheer disdain out of big, long-fringed brown eyes, then turned back to the rail.
Slowly, cautiously, she entered the pen and approached the goat, still crooning softly to her. When she was still several feet away, she stopped for a cursory look. Although she would need to do a physical exam to be certain, she thought she could see the problem—one of Cleo’s udders looked engorged and red. She probably had mastitis.
Since Cleo wasn’t paying her any mind, Ellie inched closer. “You’re a sweet girl, aren’t you?” she murmured. “Everybody’s wrong about you.” She reached a hand to touch the animal, but before her hand could connect, Cleo whirled like a bronco with a burr under her saddle. Ellie didn’t have time to move away before the goat butted her in the stomach with enough force to knock her on her rear end, right into a puddle of what she fervently hoped was water.
With a ma-aaa of amusement, the goat turned back to the fence rail.
“Didn’t anybody warn you about Cleo?” a deep male voice asked.
Just what she needed, a witness to her humiliation. From her ignominious position on the ground, she took a moment to force air into her lungs. When she could breathe again, she glanced toward the direction of the voice. Her gaze landed first on a pair of well-worn boots just outside the fence, then traveled up a mile-long length of blue jeans to a tooled silver buckle with the swirled insignia of the NCHA—National Cutting Horse Association.
She knew that buckle.
She’d seen it a day earlier on none other than the lean hips of her nemesis. Sure enough. Matt Harte stood there just on the other side of the pen—broad shoulders, blue eyes, wavy dark hair and all.
She closed her eyes tightly, wishing the mud would open up underneath her and suck her down. Of all the people in the world who might have been here to watch her get knocked to her butt, why did it have to be him?
Chapter 3
Matt let himself into the pen, careful to keep a safe distance between his own rear end and Jeb Thacker’s notoriously lousy-tempered goat, who had retreated to the other side of the pen.
“Here, let me help you.” He reached a hand down to the city vet, still sprawled in the mud.
“I can do it,” she muttered. Instead of taking his hand, she climbed gingerly to her feet by herself, then surreptitiously rubbed a hand against her seat.
Matt cleared his throat. “You okay?”
“I’ve had better mornings, but I’ll live.”
“You hit the ground pretty hard. You sure nothing’s busted?”
“I don’t think so. Just bruised. Especially my pride,” she said wryly. She paused for a minute, then smiled reluctantly. “I imagine it looked pretty funny watching me get tackled by a goat.”
She must not take herself too seriously if she could laugh about what had just happened. He found himself liking her for it. He gazed at her, at the way her red hair had slipped from its braid thingy and the little smudge of dirt on her cheek. Her eyes sparkled with laughter, and she was just about the prettiest thing he’d seen in a long time.
When he said nothing, a blush spread over her cheeks and she reached a hand to tuck her stray hair back. “Did you need something, Mr. Harte?”
He was staring at her, he realized, like some hayseed who’d never seen a pretty girl before. He flushed, astounded at himself, at this completely unexpected surge of attraction. “You might as well call me Matt, especially since it looks like we’ll be working on this stupid school thing together.”
Her big green eyes that always made him think of new aspen leaves just uncurling in springtime widened even more. “You’re going to do it?”
“I said so, didn’t I?” he muttered.
She grinned. “And you sound so enthusiastic about it.”
“You want enthusiasm, you’ll have to find somebody else to help you.”
“What made you change your mind?”
He didn’t know how to answer that, and besides, it wasn’t any of her business. He said he’d do it, didn’t he? What more did she need? But somehow the sharp retort he started to make changed into something else.
“Miz McKenzie’s right,” he finally said. “Lucy’s done better in school this year than she ever has. She never would have wanted to organize something like this last year. I don’t want to ruin the improvement she’s made. Besides, she usually doesn’t ask for much. It’s a small price to pay if it’s going to make her happy.”
Ellie Webster cocked her head and looked at him like she’d just encountered a kind of animal she’d never seen before.
“What?” he asked, annoyed at himself for feeling so defensive.
“Nothing. You’re just full of surprises, Mr. Harte.”
“Matt,” he muttered. “I said you should call me Matt.”
“Matt.” She smiled suddenly, the most genuine smile she’d ever given him. He stared at it, at her, feeling like he’d just spent a few hours out in the hard sun without his hat.
“Is that why you stopped?” she asked. “To tell me you decided to help with the carnival?”
He shrugged and ordered his heartbeat to behave itself. “I had to drop by the post office next door anyway. I thought maybe if you had a second this morning, we could get a cup of coffee over at the diner and come up with a game plan. At least figure out where to start.”
Again, she looked surprised, but she nodded. “That’s a good idea. But if you’re just looking for coffee, SueAnn makes the best cup this side of the Rockies. We can talk in my office.”
“That would be fine. I’ve already had breakfast. You, ah, need to get cleaned up or anything?”
She glanced down at her muddy jeans, then at the goat with a grimace. “Can you wait ten minutes? Since I’m already muddy, I might as well take a look at Cleo now.”
He thought of the million-and-one things he had to do at the ranch after he ran to the parts store in Idaho Falls—the buyers he had coming in later in the afternoon, the three horses waiting for the farrier, the inevitable paperwork always confronting him.
He should just take a rain check, but for some reason that completely baffled him, he nodded. “Sure, I can wait.” His next question surprised him even more. “Need me to give you a hand?”
She smiled again, that sweet, friendly smile. “That would be great. I’m afraid Cleo isn’t too crazy about her visit to the vet.”
The next fifteen minutes were a real education. With his help, Ellie miraculously finessed the ornery goat into holding still long enough for an exam. She murmured soft words—nonsense, really—while her hands moved gently and carefully over the now docile goat.
“Okay, you can let go now,” she finally said. He obeyed, and the goat ambled away from them.
“What’s the verdict?” he asked.
She looked up from scribbling some notes on a chart. “Just as I suspected. Mastitis. She has a plugged milk duct. I’ll run a culture to be sure, but I think a round of antibiotics ought to take care of her.”
“Just like a cow, huh?”
“Just like. Same plumbing involved.”
“Cleo’s a hell of a lot uglier than any of my ladies.”
She grinned at him again. “Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, Harte. I imagine Jeb Thacker wouldn’t agree. Anyway, thanks for your help.”
She led the way inside the small building where she worked. While she went in the back to change her clothes, he shot the breeze with SueAnn, who went to high school with him and whose husband ran the local nursery in town.
In a surprisingly short time, Ellie returned wearing a pair of surgical scrubs. He figured she probably was supposed to look cool and professional in the scrubs, but instead they made her look not much older than one of Lucy’s friends on her way to a sleepover, especially with her auburn hair pulled back in that ponytail.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, sounding a little out of breath.
“No problem.”
SueAnn hopped up and poured a cup of coffee for Ellie. “Here you go, sugar.”
“Thanks. We’ll be in my office if you need me.”
“Take your time.”
Matt didn’t miss the not-so-subtle wink SueAnn sent the vet or the quick frown Ellie volleyed back. Before he could analyze the currents going on here, she walked into a cluttered office with books and papers everywhere. Dominating one wall was a window framing a beautiful view of the Salt River mountain range that gave the town its name. On the other was a big print of a horse—a Tennessee walker, if he wasn’t mistaken—running across a field of wildflowers, all grace and power and beauty.
“Thanks again for helping me with Cleo,” Ellie said as soon as he was seated.
“No problem. It was interesting to see you working on her.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Interesting in what way?”
He shrugged. “I kept waiting for you to pull out the needles or whatever it is you use for that stuff you do.”
“That stuff I do?”
There were suddenly as many icicles in her voice as he had hanging from his barn. “You know, that acupuncture stuff. You don’t do that all the time, then?”
Whatever friendliness might have been in her expression faded away, and she became guarded once more. “Just when the situation calls for it.”
“And this one didn’t?”
Her smile was paper-thin. “See that diploma on the wall? I’m a board-certified vet with several years’ experience in traditional veterinary medicine. The acupuncture stuff, as you call it, was just extra training to supplement my regular skills. I only use it as an alternative when some of the more orthodox treatments have failed or aren’t appropriate.”
“And when would that be?”
“A lecture on veterinary acupuncture is not the reason you stopped by, Mr. Harte.”
“I’m curious about what you do.”
She hesitated for a moment before answering. “Animals I treat most often are horses with performance problems, like short stepping or mysterious lameness. I’ve treated moon blindness successfully and also older horses with degenerative conditions like arthritis or joint disease. You’d be surprised at how effective acupuncture can be.”
He didn’t doubt that. He didn’t want to sound too skeptical, not when they were going to have to work together for the next few months, but he thought the whole thing was a bunch of hooey. Her California crowd might buy all this New Age crap, but folks in Wyoming looked at things like this a little differently.
For a minute, he thought about keeping his mouth shut and changing the subject, but she and her kid had been good for his daughter. He didn’t want to see her practice go under, since Lucy would just about wither away if Dylan moved.
He cleared his throat. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Dr. Webster, but it seems to me you might be better off focusing on those more traditional things you were talking about and leave the rest of that, er, stuff back in California.”
She pursed her lips together tightly. “Thank you for the advice,” she said, in a tone that left him in no doubt of her real feelings. And they probably didn’t include gratitude.
He should have stopped right there, but something made him push the issue harder. “Look, it’s no secret around town that you’ve lost a lot of customers in the last few months to Steve Nichols, Ben’s nephew. Hell, I’ve been using him myself. A lot of people don’t understand why Ben sold his practice to you in the first place instead of to Steve. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you could lure some of those folks back if you didn’t focus so much on the acupuncture side of things in your ads and all.”
“I don’t tell you how to run your ranch,” she said quietly, folding her hands tightly on the desk. “So please don’t tell me how to operate my practice.”
He sat back in the chair, aware he sounded like an idiot. Bossy and arrogant, just like Cassie always accused him of being. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s none of my business what you do. Just thought you should know that out here we tend to prefer the things we know, the way we’ve always done things, the way they’ve been done for generations. Especially when it comes to our stock.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Sorry if I offended you.”
She shrugged. “You’re only saying to my face what I’m sure everyone else has been saying behind my back. I appreciate your frankness. Now can we talk about the carnival?”
“Uh, sure.” Who would have dreamed twenty-four hours ago that he would consider a Valentine’s Day carnival a safe topic of conversation?
“So I was thinking about calling it A Fair to Remember,” she said. “What do you think?”
He scratched his cheek, not quite sure where she was going with this.
“From the movie. You know, Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant. Empire State Building. The one Meg Ryan bawled about in Sleepless in Seattle.”
At his continued blank look, she shrugged. “Never mind. We can talk about it later. We have ten weeks to work out all the details.”
Ten weeks working closely with Ellie Webster, with her green eyes and her wisecracks and her shampoo that smelled like lemon pie. He knew damn well the idea shouldn’t appeal to him so much.
Chapter 4
“So we’re agreed then,” Ellie said fifteen minutes later. “Given our mutual lack of experience, we need to delegate as much as humanly possible. Our first step is to set up committees for booths, decorations, refreshments and publicity. Once we get some other willing victims, er, parents on board, we can go from there.”
Matt scratched the back of his neck. “I guess. You know as much about this as I do. I just hope we can pull this off without making complete fools of ourselves. Or having the whole thing go down in history as the worst carnival ever.”
