Big-Bucks Bachelor

Even if success was bittersweet.

His pull was enough, and the calf’s head emerged, followed quickly by the rest of the baby in a wet rush. Steam rose from the calf in the frigid January air let in by the ever-widening gaps between the boards of the Masons’ barn walls. Jack let go of the cow’s back leg and caught the calf, easing the newborn to the thick straw covering the largest stall in the barn. While Kyle and Olivia Mason might not be able to afford to fix up their old barn, at least they took excellent care of the animals within.

Jack barely had time to clear the calf’s nose and mouth to help it pull in its first breath before the baby’s mother had turned and taken up her motherly duties of licking and nudging her calf to stand. He straightened and backed away to let the cow’s natural instincts do their job.

A hand clapped on his shoulder and he turned to meet Kyle’s grin. About twelve years older than Jack’s thirty-three years, Kyle Mason was starting to show his age—in the graying of his dark brown hair at the temples, visible beneath his green John Deere baseball cap, and the belly where the beer he used to be able to work off now settled. Kyle and his wife, Olivia, were good people. They’d been there for Jack when he’d needed it, and Jack was glad to be of some help to them.

Kyle squeezed Jack’s shoulder before releasing him. “I knew if anyone could save those two, you could.”

Jack shrugged and grabbed a towel from the fence to clean his hands off. Until four months ago when he’d finally found some help, he’d been the only veterinarian in the little town of Jester, Montana. And before he’d come eight years ago, they’d had to beg someone to come over from the much larger town of Pine Run, about twenty miles southwest of Jester. But the townsfolk’s faith in his abilities warmed him just the same. “She only needed a bit of help.” He nodded at the calf. “That little fellow was almost too big for his own good.”

Kyle’s face lit up. “A bull?”

“A bull,” Jack confirmed, using a clean corner of the towel to wipe his too long hair, its light brown darkened by sweat, out of his eyes. He really did need to make time to let Dean Kenning, the town’s barber, take a whack at it.

“Hallelujah. Maybe I’ll finally be able to afford to fix up some things around here.”

Jack followed Kyle’s gaze with his own, taking in the boards warped from the extreme southeastern Montana weather and the farm equipment wearing more rust than green paint. But the Masons had held things together better than some folk around here. “I’m sure you’ll get a good price for him in Pine Run. Might even be worth the trip to Billings.”

Before Kyle could respond, the sound of Kyle’s wife of almost twenty years, Olivia, frantically calling for her husband and Jack reached them. “Kyle! Jack! Ky-le! Jaaack!”

While Jack knew that Olivia Mason wasn’t given to hysterics—being a teacher in the town’s lone school that housed all the kids, grades K-12—one glance at Kyle told Jack something serious must be going on to generate that sort of noise from her. The concern building in Jack’s chest was mirrored on Kyle’s face.

They had barely left the stall to go see what was wrong when Olivia barreled through the barn door, letting in a burst of frigid air that lightened the heavy smell of cattle considerably. Her light brown hair flew in her face and the hem of the serviceable blue shirt-dress she’d worn to work swirled around her slim form along with the snow that had followed her in. Most telling of all, she hadn’t put a coat on.

They rushed toward her.

She was crying. And laughing. “Oh, Kyle, sweetheart, you’re not going to believe this. And Dean said you, too, Jack. Oh, my word, all of us!” She spread her arms, then pulled them back in to cover her mouth. Squealing behind her hands, she started to bounce up and down, looking like a teenager instead of a woman in her early forties.

Kyle grabbed her upper arms to still her and bent to look her in the eye. “Olivia! What is it? What happened?”

She slid her hands from her mouth to her flushed cheeks. “We’re rich, Kyle! All of us. We’re all rich!”

Just as confused as Kyle clearly was, Jack took a step closer to her. “Olivia—”

She stopped him with a wave of her hands, then took a deep breath and straightened, encouraging Kyle to let go of her. Despite her visible effort to calm herself, her voice was still shaky. “Dean Kenning called. The lottery. One of our twelve tickets hit. We won. And not just enough for a pizza party, like last time. We won the jackpot. The fifteen of us won the lottery!” She squealed again and launched herself into her husband’s arms, nearly knocking his green cap off.

Jack stumbled a step back as if it had been his arms Olivia had jumped into, gripping the towel he still held tightly in his hand. He couldn’t believe it.

He had never before played with the loosely defined Main Street Merchants who’d been pooling their money and having Dean drive into Pine Run each week to buy tickets in the Big Draw lottery for the past eight years. As long as Jack had been living in Jester.

But Wyla Thorne had decided not to play anymore, her optimism running as thin as the town’s luck, and yesterday morning as Jack was heading into the Brimming Cup for his daily apple Danish, Dean had stepped out of his barbershop to yell across the street at Jack to ask if he wanted to take Wyla’s place. For the heck of it, Jack had thrown in a dollar. Talk about it paying off.

Now he had more than enough money to do what he needed to do.

Kyle loosened Olivia’s hold around his neck to ask, “How much? How much was the jackpot up to this week?”

Olivia released him and stepped away, her pretty face glowing. “Forty million. We get to split forty million.”

Kyle whooped and swept his wife up into his arms again, then twirled her around.

Jack’s own head was spinning. Forty million. “How—” his voice cracked and he had to try again.

“How many ways? Did I hear you say fifteen of us played?”

Kyle stopped so Olivia could answer. “Yes, fifteen total. But married couples only count as one, if they put in only one dollar. Counting Kyle and I, the Perkins, and the Cades as one each, the money will be split twelve ways.”

A familiar stab of pain pulsed in Jack’s heart at the mention of married couples. He closed his eyes, giving the pain time to settle in to its usual steady ache.

Setting Olivia down, Kyle mumbled to himself and counted on his fingers, obviously doing the math, then said, “After they halve it for taking the lump sum payout, which we did, right?”

Olivia nodded.

“And after taxes, I think that’ll leave us all with something like one million, one hundred thousand and change.” He moved his mouth as he silently ran over the numbers again, ticking off on his fingers, then waved off his apparent need for accuracy with a frustrated sounding noise. “Anyway, it’s definitely well over a million dollars. A million dollars.”

He whooped again and whipped off his baseball cap to hit it against his leg. “Damn, Olivia, no more money worries for us!”

Jack absently twisted the towel between his hands as he wandered back toward his stuff.

Over a million dollars.

More than enough to finally get him out of Jester and open a new practice in some other state.

Somewhere far from the memories of all that he had lost here.

The only thing left to do was get his new partner, Melinda Woods, more established, then he could take off.

And maybe, just maybe, make a new start.

He might be able to finally outrun the pain.

Chapter One

Two months later as Jack sat at his desk, the slight rattle of aluminum blinds against the clinic door brought his gaze down from a pet pharmaceutical company’s wall map of where rabies most often occurred in the United States. He’d been fantasizing again about where he’d set up shop next. Through the open door of the clinic’s lone office he saw that his partner in the Jester Veterinary Clinic, Melinda Woods, had just burst into the lobby as only a petite, shy woman could, barely rattling the blinds to announce her arrival.

Since she normally didn’t make any noise at all when she came in, Jack knew something was wrong. His gut tightened and he frowned. The last thing he wanted was Mel upset. She was the key to his being able to leave Jester.

As she strode toward him, he met her glowering gaze, surprised to find her big brown eyes sparking in a way he’d never seen before. His gut tightened still more. “What’s up, Mel?”

“Pigs! That’s what. Pigs.”

Jack’s eyebrows went up. “Pigs?”

She stopped beside the coatrack next to the office door. “Like I don’t know from pigs. Me! Of all people!” Yanking her big, tan corduroy jacket off her shoulders, she muttered darkly when the sleeves of her red flannel shirt clung to the jacket’s quilted lining. The resulting static electricity had the fine strands of long, blond ringlets that had escaped her ponytail rising in a crazy dance around her head.

She looked more than a little wild around the edges, a far cry from the quiet, efficient woman Jack had grown used to in the six months they’d worked together. It had taken him a long time to find someone willing to work in such a small town so far from anything, and the fact that that someone was as easy to get along with as Melinda was nothing short of a miracle.

Hopefully nothing had happened to change his surprisingly good luck of late.