Once and for All

“Which one?”

“Guess.”

Sam didn’t need to. Math. As always. Beau’s twin, Tyler, didn’t have as much trouble with the subject as Beau did, but Ty couldn’t seem to explain the concepts to his brother. Heaven knew he’d tried, since Beau was six feet two inches tall and the top scorer on the basketball team. Ty was a quarter inch shorter and two points behind Beau in the stats. The team did all right with one brother, but with two, they were a force to be reckoned with.

“How bad?”

Beau swallowed as he glanced down, blond hair falling over his forehead. “A little lower than a D.”

“How much lower?”

“Fifty-five percent.” Beau dropped his backpack, which must have weighed forty pounds, judging from the sound it made when it hit the floor. “It was that last test.” He all but exploded as he said it. “I don’t get it. I studied the chapter and I thought I understood everything.”

Sam swallowed his anger. Beau was clearly upset, and the boy had spent way too much time close to tears over the past year and a half. “How’d Ty do?” he asked quietly.

“He passed. Of course.”

Sam moved out from behind the desk and crossed the room. He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder, then pulled him into a rough embrace. He didn’t know what else to do. How could he tell if Beau was honestly doing all he could to pass his classes, or whether he was putting in a moderate effort and hoping for the best? Sam had been in this parenting gig for only eighteen months, since his brother and sister-in-law were killed by a drunken driver while crossing a street in Las Vegas, and he’d received custody of their sons.

He let out a breath. He’d forgotten what hell the teen years could be, but he was reexperiencing them now in living color.

“What am I going to do?” Beau muttered before stepping back. He tipped his chin up, stared at the ceiling.

“You’re going to get your ass in a chair and work on math tonight. We have a couple days to raise your grade before the next eligibility check. Have you talked to the teacher?”

“No.”

“E-mail her. See what she has to say, what you need to work on. Then after supper we’re going over that test.”

As it turned out, though, Sam didn’t have the time. He and Beau had just settled at the kitchen table with pad, pencil and failed test paper in front of them when the phone rang.

“It’s the Taylor ranch,” Tyler called from Sam’s den.

Sam reached for the extension. One of the Taylors’ show mares had kicked its leg through a fencing panel and got hung up. The leg was swollen almost double and the owners suspected she might have a broken tibia.

He climbed into his canvas bib overalls, clamped the plaid wool hat on his head. “Listen,” he said in a low voice to Tyler. “Get your test and sit down with your brother and see what the two of you can figure out.”

“But—”

Sam had been a parent long enough to perfect The Look, which he now employed full force. “You want your brother eligible, right?”

“Right.”

“Then I don’t care if you have other plans. Help him out.”

“All right.”

“HAVE YOU HEARD FROM MIKE?” Jodie asked as Margarite pulled a casserole out of the oven. The housekeeper’s lasagna was made with cottage cheese and ground beef—not really lasagna, in Jodie’s opinion, but surprisingly tasty.

“No.” Margarite set the dish on a cast-iron trivet, then closed the oven door.

“I’m worried.” Jodie paced to the picture window behind the dining room table and peered outside, hoping to see headlights. Mike had been due back from Idaho the day before. There’d been a storm to the north, so Jodie had assumed he’d waited to travel, and simply hadn’t bothered to call. But now he was more than twenty-four hours overdue and she hadn’t heard a word.

“You’re worried?” Margarite muttered from behind her. “I’m the one manning the syringe.” She’d already tried to coax Jodie into giving an injection, but Jodie couldn’t do it. Her fear of blood and needles was even greater than Margarite’s. What a team they made.

“I guess I’ll go through his file, see if his cell number’s there.”

“Eat first. Mike will probably be here by the time you’re finished.” Margarite set a salad on the counter next to the casserole, then held a plate out to Jodie. “He’d better be here.”

Jodie had tried to convince her that official cooking wasn’t necessary while her parents were gone, but Margarite was having none of that. She was paid to cook and she was going to put meals on the table—or the counter, as she’d done tonight, since they were eating buffet style.

After dinner there was still no sign of Mike, so Jodie went into her father’s office and opened the top drawer of the big oak file cabinet where Joe Barton kept paperwork for every employee that had come and gone since he’d bought his ranch three years ago. And there had been quite a steady stream of comings and goings. Jodie’s father was not an easy man to work for. He demanded a level of expertise and commitment that many people simply didn’t have anymore. Even Chandler had unexpectedly quit, which had in turn set off a major family argument.

Her father had immediately tried to cancel the European vacation her mother had been planning for almost a year. Jodie’s normally complacent mom had leveled threats, since she firmly believed her husband’s heart problems, which he refused to take seriously, stemmed from managing the ranch. Jodie had eventually come to the rescue, grudgingly taking a sabbatical so that she could look after the property during the eight weeks her parents would be touring southern Europe. It was the only way her father would agree to leave, and even then it had been an uphill battle convincing him to go.

“Damn it, I know it’s here,” Jodie muttered as she flipped through the manila folders, beating up her cuticles in the process. Her dad kept a hard copy of everything. She dug deep and finally found Mike’s file toward the back of the drawer and pulled it out. His cell number was there, so she dialed it from the office phone. No answer. Jodie jotted down the number and put the file away, telling herself not to worry. He was probably on the road, stranded somewhere with no service. It happened.

And it also meant that she and Margarite were about to embark on another adventure into veterinary care.

“Anything?” Margarite asked hopefully when Jodie returned to the kitchen.

She shook her head.

“I was afraid of that.” The housekeeper went into the mudroom, stoically put her feet, shoes and all, into rubber galoshes, and pulled a coat off the hook. Next came the giant black scarf, wrapped twice around her neck and knotted, the wool hat and finally gloves. Jodie had watched the procedure enough times during the past few days to know all the moves.

“Ready?” the older woman asked.

Jodie had already slipped her feet into boots and put on a coat. She could make it to the heated barn and back to the house without a hat or gloves.

Bronson limped painfully to the back of his stall when he saw them coming. He’d figured out that when Margarite showed up, a painful jab was soon to follow. Horses were a lot smarter than Jodie had first assumed.

She went into the stall and slipped the halter on the big horse, who gave her an equine look of sad resignation. Margarite’s expression wasn’t that much different as she entered the stall. She held up the penicillin bottle, stabbed the needle through the rubber opening and measured out the dosage. Then, needle in hand, she pounded her small fist on the horse’s hip a couple times to deaden the area, before she masterfully slipped just the needle into the muscle and attached the loaded syringe. Bronson bobbed his head up and down, but stood still as Margarite slowly pushed the plunger until it stopped, then removed the needle. As always, her face was pale when she finished.

“I hope Mike is here bright and early tomorrow morning,” she grumbled as they made their way along the snowy path to the house.

“He may even arrive tonight,” Jodie said, but she was getting a bad feeling about this. Mike should have called by now.

She tried to reach him two more times that evening from the ranch phone, and then, wondering if he recognized the ranch number and wasn’t answering on purpose, she dialed the number from her cell. A masculine voice said hello on the second ring.

“Is this Mike Bower?”

“Yes.”

“This is Jodie De Vanti. When are you coming back to the ranch?”

There was a healthy silence before Mike said, “I’m not coming back.”

Jodie’s temples started to throb. What the hell? “Why not?”