скачать книгу бесплатно
He looked so completely uncomfortable at the task ahead of them that Ellie had to smile. He must love Lucy very much to be willing to put himself through it despite his obvious misgivings. Not many men she knew would be willing to take on such a project for their ten-year-old daughters, and she felt herself softening toward him even more.
“I can talk to Sarah this afternoon if you’d like and tell her we’ve both agreed to do it,” she said.
“I’d appreciate that. I’ve got to run over to Idaho Falls to pick up a part for the loader, and it might be late before I get back in.” He unkinked his considerable length from the low chair and rose, fingering his hat.
He was so tall she had to crane her neck to look into those startling blue eyes. Just how did the man manage to make her little office shrink to about the size of a rabbit hutch by his presence? The awareness simmering through her didn’t help matters one bit.
“Sure you’re not too busy to talk to Miz McKenzie?” he asked.
“I should be able to carve out a few moments,” she murmured dryly. Her appointment schedule for the rest of the day was woefully empty, as she was fairly certain he must realize.
Sure enough, he looked even more ill at ease. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Think about what I said before, would you? About folks around here being more comfortable with what they know. Your business might pick up if you keep that in mind. You never know.”
Any soft feelings she might have been harboring toward him fluttered away like migrating birds. Before she could snap at him again to mind his own business, he shoved his hat on his head and walked out of her office with that long, ground-swallowing stride.
She might be annoyed with him, but that couldn’t keep her from wandering out of her office to the reception area to watch through the window as he climbed into a shiny new pickup that probably cost as much as her entire practice.
He drove out of the parking lot with deliberate care, as she was sure he did everything.
She had a sudden wild desire to know if he would kiss a woman that way. Thoroughly. Studiously. Carefully exploring every single inch of her lips with that hard mouth until he memorized each curve, each hollow. Until her knees turned to jelly and her body ached with need….
“Dreamy, isn’t he?”
Ellie whirled and found SueAnn watching her, mouth twitching with amusement. She swallowed hard and fought the urge to press a hand to her suddenly trembling stomach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.
SueAnn just laughed. “Right. Whatever you say. You want me to pick that tongue off the floor for you?”
She snapped said tongue firmly back into her mouth. “Don’t you have some work to do?”
“Oh, watching you go weak in the knees is much more fun.”
“Sorry to ruin your entertainment, but one of us does have some work waiting. If you need me, I’ll be in my office.”
“No problem. Looks like we’ll see plenty of Matt Harte between now and Valentine’s Day.”
That’s exactly what she was afraid of. She sighed and headed for her office. She had only been at her desk for a few moments when the cowbell on the door jangled suddenly. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see who came in, but she could watch SueAnn’s ready smile slide away and her expression chill by several degrees.
Curious as to who might have earned such a frosty glare from the woman who invented congeniality, Ellie rose and walked to the door of her office for a better look.
Steve Nichols, her main competition in town and the nephew of the vet who had sold her the practice, was just closing the door behind him.
She should have known. SueAnn had a good word to say about everybody in town except for Ben’s nephew. When it came to Steve, she was as intractable as Jeb Thacker’s goat.
Ellie couldn’t understand her animosity. From the day she arrived, Steve had gone out of his way to make her feel welcome in Salt River—treating her as a friend and respected colleague, not as a business rival who had bought his uncle’s practice out from under him.
“Steve.” She greeted him warmly to compensate for SueAnn’s noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
His mouth twisted into a smile underneath his bushy blond mustache, then he gestured toward the parking lot. “Was that Matt Harte I just saw driving out of here?”
For no earthly reason she could figure out, she felt a blush soak her cheeks. “Er, yes.”
“Is there a problem with one of his animals? Anything I should know about?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” She would have left it at that, but Steve continued to study her expectantly. Finally, she had to say something. “Our girls are in the same class and we’re working on a school project together,” she finally said. “We were just discussing some of the details.”
“Really? What kind of project?”
She didn’t understand this strange reluctance to divulge any information—maybe she was just embarrassed—but couldn’t bring herself to answer.
“They’re cochairs for the annual Valentine’s Day carnival.” SueAnn finally broke the silence, her voice clipped and her expression still cool.
His mouth sagged open, then a laugh gurgled out. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Matt Harte planning a school carnival? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Next thing I know, you’re going to tell me he’s opening up a beauty salon in town.”
Steve’s reaction matched her own when she had first heard about the carnival, so why did she feel so annoyed at him for it? And so protective of a bossy, arrogant rancher who couldn’t seem to keep his nose out of her business?
“He’s doing it for his daughter,” she said with a coolness to match SueAnn’s. “What’s so ridiculous about that?”
“It just doesn’t seem like his thing. Matt’s not exactly the PTA type, you know what I mean?”
She didn’t want to get into this with him, so she abruptly changed the subject. “Was there something you needed, Steve?”
He shrugged, letting the matter drop. “Do I need a reason to stop by and visit my favorite vet?”
Behind him, SueAnn made a rude noise that she quickly camouflaged behind a cough. Ellie didn’t need to phone a psychic hot line to read her mind. She was fairly sure SueAnn thought Steve’s favorite vet looked back at him in the mirror each morning.
The other woman opened her mouth to say something snide along those lines, Ellie imagined. She quickly gave her a warning glare. To her relief, after a moment SueAnn clamped her lips tightly shut.
“You don’t need a reason to visit, Steve. You know that.” Ellie spoke quickly to head off any more trouble. “You’re always welcome here. But surely you wouldn’t have dropped by during the middle of your busy time of day just to chat, right?”
He sent her that boyishly charming smile of his. “You caught me. Actually, I did have an ulterior motive for dropping by. I’m in a bit of a bind. I ran out of brucellosis vaccine this morning and I’m scheduled to inoculate the herd at Paul Blanchard’s ranch in an hour.”
Paul Blanchard! He was another of her regular clients, one of the few who had stayed with the clinic after she took over from Ben. Ellie’s heart sank. Another deserter. They were dropping like flies.
SueAnn sent her a speaking glance, but before she could answer, Steve went on. “I’ve ordered a rush job on more but it won’t be here until tomorrow. You wouldn’t happen to have a few doses to tide me over until the shipment arrives, would you?”
“You want me to loan you some of my brucellosis vaccine for Paul Blanchard’s stock?”
Steve seemed completely oblivious to the sheer audacity of asking a favor for an account he had just appropriated. He gave her a pleading smile. “If it’s not too much of a bother. You won’t need any before tomorrow, will you?”
She might have, if she had been the one treating Blanchard cattle. As it was, it looked as if she would have vaccine to spare. She ground her teeth in frustration. Her first instinct was to say no, absolutely not. He could find his own damn vaccine. But in her heart she knew it wasn’t really Steve’s fault her practice was struggling.
She also couldn’t blame him for setting up his own competing clinic after Ben unexpectedly sold this one to her. If their roles had been reversed and she’d been the one left out in the cold by a relative, she would have done exactly the same thing. And probably wouldn’t have treated the usurper with nearly the kindness Steve had shown her.
She forced a smile. “I’ll go check my supply.”
Trying hard not to mutter to herself, she pushed through the swinging doors that separated the front office and waiting room from the treatment area.
The refrigerator in the back was well-stocked, and she found a case immediately. For one moment, she debated telling him she couldn’t find any but she knew that was petty and small-minded so she picked it up and shouldered her way through the swinging doors again.
Steve wasn’t where she left him by the front desk, and she lifted a curious eyebrow at SueAnn, who scowled and jerked her head toward Ellie’s office. Steve was sitting behind her desk, browsing through her planner where she meticulously recorded appointments and scheduled treatments.
With great effort, she swallowed her irritation. “Here you go,” she said loudly. His gaze flew to hers, and he didn’t seem at all embarrassed to be caught nosing around in her office.
“Thanks, Ellie. I really appreciate this.” His mustache twitched again with his smile.
“Glad to help,” she lied, and was immediately ashamed of herself for the ugly knot of resentment curdling in her stomach. “Read anything interesting in there?” she asked pointedly.
“Sorry. Professional curiosity. You don’t mind, do you? I’m intrigued by the improvement you’ve noted here in that thoroughbred of Jack Martin’s. I thought nothing would cure her. She’s a beauty of a horse, and it would have been a real shame to have to put her down, but I thought she would always be lame.”
“She’s responded well to a combination of treatments. Jack and I are both pleased.”
“So are things picking up?”
Not with you stealing my clients one by one, she thought. “Actually, it’s been a pretty busy day.”
“Have you given any more thought to my offer?”
She blew out a breath. She absolutely did not want to go into this with him today. “I have. The answer is still no, Steve. Just like it’s been for the last month.”
He rose from the chair and walked around to the other side of the desk. “Come on, Ellie. Think about it. If we combined our practices, we could each save tens of thousands a year on overhead. And pooling our workload would ease the burden on each of us.”
What burden? She would kill for a little workload to complain about. Ellie sighed. His offer made common sense and, heaven knows, would help boost her meager income, but it also held about as much appeal to her as being knocked on her rear end by a hundred goats.
She didn’t want to be partners, not with Steve or with anyone else. She wanted to stand on her own, to make her own decisions and be responsible for the consequences.
She had spent her entire adult life working for others, from volunteering in clinics while she was still in high school to the last seven years working for an equine vet in Monterey.
She was tired of it, of having to play by others’ rules. Constantly having someone else tell her what animals she could treat and how she should treat them had been draining the life out of her, stealing all her satisfaction and joy in the career she loved.
It went deeper than that, though. If she were honest, her ferocious need for independence had probably been rooted in her childhood, watching her mother drink herself to an early grave because of a man and then being shuttled here and there in the foster care system.
She learned early she would never be able to please the endless parade of busybody social workers and foster parents who marched through her life. She couldn’t please them, and she couldn’t depend on them. Too often, the moment she began to care for a family, she was capriciously yanked out and sent to another one. Eventually, she learned not to care, to carefully construct a hard shell around her heart. The only one she could truly count on was herself.
This was her chance. Hers and Dylan’s. The opportunity to build the life she had dreamed of since those early days cleaning cages.
She wasn’t ready to give up that dream, patients or none.
Besides that, she had SueAnn to consider. With the animosity between the two, she and Steve would never be able to work together, and she didn’t want to lose her as a friend or as an assistant.
“I’m not going to change my mind, Steve,” she finally said. “It’s a good offer and I appreciate it, really I do, but I’m just not interested right now.”
If Dylan had given her that same look, Ellie would have called it a pout. After only a moment of sulking, Steve’s expression became amiable again. “I’ll keep working on you. Eventually I’ll wear you down, just watch.”
He picked up the case of vaccine and headed for the door. “Thanks again for the loan. I’ll drop my shipment off tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”
“That would be fine,” she said.
At the door he paused and looked at her with a grin. “And have fun working with Matt Harte. The man can be tough as a sow’s snout, but he’s a damn hard worker. He’s single-handedly built the Diamond Harte into a force to be reckoned with around here. I’m not sure that will help when it comes to planning a school carnival, but it ought to make things interesting.”
Interesting. She had a feeling the word would be a vast understatement.
* * *
He was hiding out, no denying it.
Like a desperado trying frantically to stay two steps ahead of a hangin’ party and a noose with his name on it.
A week after visiting Ellie at her clinic, Matt sat trapped in his office at the ranch house, trying to concentrate on the whir and click of the computer in front of him instead of the soft murmur of women’s voices coming from the kitchen at the end of the hall.
As usual, he had a hundred and one better things to occupy his time than sit here gazing at a blasted screen, but he didn’t dare leave the sanctuary of his office.
She was out there.
Ellie Webster. The city vet who had sneaked her way into his dreams for a week, with that fiery hair and her silvery-green eyes and that determined little chin.
He thought she was only driving out to the Diamond Harte to drop her kid off for a sleepover with Lucy. She was supposed to be here ten minutes, tops, and wouldn’t even have to know he was in here.
Things didn’t go according to plan. He had a feeling they rarely would, where Ellie Webster was concerned. Instead of driving away like she should have done, she had apparently plopped down on one of the straight-backed kitchen chairs, and now he could hear her and Cassie talking and laughing like they’d been best friends for life.
They’d been at it for the last half hour, and he’d just about had enough.
He wasn’t getting a damn thing done. Every time he tried to focus on getting the hang of the new livestock-tracking software, her voice would creep under the door like a sultry, devious wisp of smoke, and his concentration would be shot all to hell and back.
Why did it bug him so much to have her invading his space with that low laugh of hers? He felt itchy and bothered having her here, like a mustang with a tail full of cockleburs.
It wasn’t right. He would have to get a handle on this awareness if he was going to be able to work on the school thing with her for the next few months. As to how, he didn’t have the first idea. It had been a long time since he’d been so tangled up over a woman.
Maybe he should ask her out.
The idea scared him worse than kicking a mountain lion. He wasn’t much of a lady’s man. Maybe he used to be when he was younger—he’d enjoyed his share of buckle bunnies when he rodeoed in college, he wouldn’t deny it—but things had changed after Melanie.
He had tried to date a few times after he was finally granted a divorce in absentia after her desertion, but every attempt left him feeling restless and awkward.
After a while he just quit trying, figuring it was better to wake up lonely in his own bed than in a stranger’s.
He wasn’t lonely, he corrected the thought quickly. He had Lucy and Jess and Cassidy and the ranch hands. He sure as hell didn’t need another woman messing things up.
He cleared his throat. The action made him realize how thirsty he was. Parched, like he’d been riding through a desert for days.
The kitchen had water. Plenty of it, cold, pure mountain spring water right out of the tap. He could walk right in there and pour himself a big glass and nobody could do a damn thing about it.
Except then he’d have to face her.
He heaved a sigh and turned to the computer until the next wisp of laughter curled under the door.
That was it. He was going in. He shoved back from the desk and headed toward the door. He lived here, dammit. A man ought to be able to walk into his own kitchen for a drink if it suited him. She had no right to come into his house and tangle him up like this.
No right whatsoever.
