The Restless Virgin

Those would be the last words that Lucas McCloud would ever say to his daughter...yet the guilt heaped on Sam’s slender shoulders that night would last a lifetime.

One

Austin, Texas

1998

Sam frowned at the scribbled directions she held, trying her darndest to decipher her nephew’s scrawled handwriting. When she got back to the Double-Cross, she promised herself, she was going to make arrangements to have a separate phone line installed for her veterinary practice and invest in a good answering machine. And this time she meant it! Unraveling the messages taken by whoever happened to pick up the phone at the main house on the Double-Cross Heart Ranch was a royal pain in the butt.

She glanced up, peering through her truck’s bug-splattered windshield at empty pastures duck with overgrown weeds and cedar saplings. Snapped barbed wire coiled crazily along the fence line like a home perm gone bad, while sparrows splashed in a rusted water trough. Above the crumbling limestone pillars flanking the gate, a faded sign swung.

“Rivers Ranch,” she said aloud. Since the name matched that on the message her nephew Jaime had taken, she figured she must have the right place.

And if this is how Nash Rivers takes care of what’s his, she added mentally, it’s no wonder he’s got a sick horse.

But his abilities as a rancher weren’t her concern, Sam reminded herself. Only his livestock were. Still, having been raised on a ranch, the sight of so much neglect was a hard thing for her to abide.

Setting her jaw against her client’s poor management of his land, Sam turned onto the pitted road beneath the warped and faded sign and headed for the barn she could see in the distance.

An S-600 Mercedes sedan was parked at an odd angle to the barn, its silver-and-chrome body catching the sunlight and shooting it back, nearly blinding Sam. As she drew nearer, she saw a man pacing between the car and the barn. At the sound of her truck, he stopped and turned, watching her approach from behind a pair of dark sunglasses. Dressed in a gray pinstriped suit, he seemed at odds with the rustic setting around him...but well matched to the sleek, expensive car parked in front of him.

The dark scowl he wore sent a shiver down Sam’s spine. She quickly shoved back the dread of having to deal with him, and forced herself to focus instead on the animal that needed her care. Anxious to get to her patient, she parked and hopped down from the cab of her truck, pausing to grab her vet bag from the toolbox in back. “Nash Rivers?” she asked as she approached him.

He continued to scowl at her. “Yes?”

“I’m here to see about your horse.”

Nash slipped his sunglasses to the end of his nose and peered down at her. “You’re the vet?”

He wasn’t the first client shocked to discover that Dr. Sam McCloud was a woman, but his skeptical tone made Sam tense defensively. “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

Problem? Nash took his gaze on a slow journey from the top of her sweat-stained gimme cap, over her faded T-shirt and ragged jeans, down to the scuffed toes of her manure-caked boots. Yeah, he had a problem, all right, but it wasn’t with her choice of profession. It was with her.

She dressed like a down-on-his-luck cowboy and carried a chip on her shoulder the size of a Texas armadillo. She was gruff, mannish and about as charming as a coiled rattler. If a man could get past all that, Nash supposed he might notice the long brown ponytail that poked through the back opening of her cap, and a pair of piercing brown eyes that screamed a silent warning: “One step closer, buster, and I’ll jerk your heart out of your chest with my bare hands.” And if the look wasn’t enough to scare a man off, Nash supposed a fellow might wonder about the figure concealed beneath that oversize T-shirt and baggy jeans.

But not Nash. He wasn’t interested in women. Especially one who took such pains to hide her femininity.

“Not as long as you can do your job,” he replied tersely, shoving the sunglasses back into place on his nose.

But not before Sam saw the disapproval in his gray eyes. She glared at his back as he turned to lead the way into the barn, tempted to climb right back in her truck and let him find another vet willing to make a call to his pathetic ranch. But she couldn’t. Not when an animal needed her care.

Damping down her anger, she followed him, glancing right and left, taking in the empty stalls, the smell of mildew and wood rot that hung in the air. Though the floor of the alley was raked clean, everything else about the place screamed neglect.

Sam was so absorbed in the squalor of the barn’s interior, she nearly plowed into Nash’s backside when he stopped before a stall. Catching herself just short of physical contact, she took a hasty step backward and pulled her cap farther down on her forehead, shadowing her heat-reddened cheeks. Nervously wetting her lips, she avoided Nash’s gaze and turned toward the stall and the horse inside it. A bay, about fifteen hands high, peered back at her.

The horse did something for Sam that a man rarely could—he made her smile. “Hey there, boy,” she whispered, stretching out a slow hand in greeting. “What’s wrong with you, buddy?” A velvet nuzzle nudged at her hand and Sam’s smile broadened.

“Nothing that a twenty-gauge shotgun wouldn’t solve.”

Sam whipped her head around at the sarcastic comment, her brow furrowed. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Nash pulled off his sunglasses and polished them on the lapel of his suit. “I want him put down.”

The vet bag slipped from Sam’s fingers and fell to the floor, shooting up a puff of dust. “Put down?” she echoed. “But why? What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing.” He slid the glasses into the inside pocket of his jacket, then rolled his wrist, glancing at his watch, his expression one of impatience. “How long will this take? I’ve got to get back to my office.”

Sam stared at him in disbelief, not at all sure she had heard him correctly. “Are you asking me to put down a healthy horse?”

He gave his sleeve a sharp snap, then lifted his hand to smooth it over hair as black as midnight. “That’s the idea. Now, again, how long will this take?”

Sam felt the blood drain from her face, then rise again as anger pulsed through her body. She stooped and snatched her bag from the floor. “A lifetime,” she muttered, straightening. “Specifically, his!” she added with a jerk of her head in the horse’s direction. She spun and headed for her truck.

The nerve of the man! she fumed silently. Calling her all the way out here for a job like this. Sam McCloud never put down an animal unless there was nothing medically left to offer, and only then if she felt she was saving the animal from more suffering. Grumbling under her breath about fools and murderers, Sam had almost made it to the barn door when a hand closed over her arm, jerking her back around.

Nash Rivers stood in front of her, his eyes narrowed dangerously. A sense of déjà vu swept over Sam as she remembered another time, another man who’d stopped her in just such a way. Fighting back the memory and the fear, she thrust out her chin. “Get your hands off me.”

Nash dropped his hold on her and took an impatient breath. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you. I just want this taken care of as quickly as possible. I’ve already wasted several hours waiting for you to respond to my call. I don’t relish having to wait any longer while I try to find another vet willing to come all the way out here.”

“That’s too damn bad.”

Again Sam turned toward her truck.

Again Nash grabbed her arm.

Sam wheeled, her eyes shooting fire.

The look was warning enough. Nash dropped his hand. “Listen, lady,” he began, struggling for patience, “I want the horse put down. And I’m willing to pay whatever you ask. Just do it quickly, okay? So both of us can get back to work.”

“My work is saving horses,” Sam snapped. “Not killing them.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “That horse you’re so determined to save nearly killed my daughter. And I’ll be damned if I’ll give him a chance to try again. Now are you going to put him down, or do I have to call another vet to handle this for me?”

Before Sam could answer, a whirlwind of white-blond hair, clawing fingers and kicking feet came out of nowhere and attacked her. “You can’t kill my horse. I won’t let you!” the child screamed as she beat at Sam’s stomach and arms.

“Hey! Hold on there a minute.” Sam struggled frantically to get a grip on the little girl. Finally managing to close her hands on the child’s upper arms, she dropped to her knees in front of her, holding her in place. Though dried blood marked an ugly cut from hairline to eyebrow on the girl’s forehead, the injury didn’t seem to have affected her strength any. Her body remained rigid as she glared at Sam, her lips pressed tightly together, her cheeks red, her eyes puffy from crying.

In spite of her attack on Sam, the child’s concern for her horse placed her a notch or two above Nash Rivers in Sam’s estimation. “I’m not going to kill your horse, sweetheart, I promise.”

The girl continued to glare stubbornly at Sam. “What’s your name?” Sam asked, hoping to put the girl at ease.

“Colby.”

“Mine’s Sam.”

In spite of her resentment, the child sputtered a laugh. “Sam? That’s a boy’s name.”

“And a girl’s. Short for Samantha. What’s your horse’s name?”