Don't Mess With Texans

An emergency, that was clear. Half his mind was already listing the instruments and meds he might need—tourniquets, splints, horse-size syringes, painkiller? The other half was taking her in the way a punch-drunk boxer takes it on the chin, one hit after another, with no time between blows to recover. Drawl like hot honey in spite of her urgency. Her hair wasn’t standing on end; it just seemed that way. Eyes blue as a summer thunderstorm, pink-rimmed with recent tears or maybe lack of sleep, long-lashed in gold. A faint scent of flowers overlaid with a whiff of...bourbon? Maybe it was just some component of her perfume.

She tugged him toward the door. “Would you please, please, please help me?”

He would, in a heartbeat.

“I tried to tell her,” Carol Anne said angrily from behind the counter, “that Dr. Higgins is out. That if she’d just drive to Bennington, I’m sure she could find somebody who’d—”

“I haven’t got time!” his captor snapped without turning. She transferred her grip from his sleeve to his forearm. Slender fingers, and strong. “If you’d just come see...”

“Of course. Show me.”

“Doctor! Honestly, I never—”

The door slammed on Carol Anne’s reproach and they burst out into cold, crisp air—a warm day for January in Vermont, low forties with sunshine. Her breath smoked. “He’s around back.” She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds, but she was all leg in her tight blue jeans and short denim jacket. Matching him stride for stride, she tugged him down the drive, and he went willingly, wanting to laugh, in spite of her urgency, because of her fierceness.

“What an old dragon! I thought she’d chew me up and spit me out before you showed up. Though she’s right, this is terrible, me landing on you out of nowhere like this, ’thout an appointment, but I...” She shrugged and smiled up at him for the first time in apology. Beautiful teeth, something Nordic in her blood with that high coloring. She pronounced her long Is as ah. Ah thought...Ra-aht, instead of right...

Georgia, he guessed. What was she doing up here in the cold north? “How did he hurt himself?” And if she could smile like that, how terrible could it be? Half of him hoped for a false alarm, an easy fix. The other half wanted something serious that he could heroically cure. Dr. Taggart at your service, m’lady.

She shook her head. “He’s not hurt. Not yet.” Her smile faded and she darted ahead. “Here he is.” She threw a bolt on the trailer and swung open the rear door. “My baby.” She pronounced it mah. “Hey, Pookie, sweetheart!” She tipped her head in from the side, to peer past a dark brown flank and black tail. “It’s gonna be okay now. Ollie, ollie oxen free. Dr. Taggart’s gonna fix you up jus’ fine.”

Pookie was enormous, or maybe it was the confines of the trailer that made him seem so. Horses always looked enormous to Tag. Had ever since he was a boy back in Boston and saw the mounted cops’ animals, unpredictable and dangerous as their riders, with steel-shod hooves that could mash a mouthy slum kid’s feet to jelly. Though he’d handled horses at veterinary college, first impressions were hard to lose. Why couldn’t she have had a cow in need? Cows weren’t half so intimidating.

She bent over, denim stretched tight around trim curves, and Tag’s attention swerved sharply and stuck fast. Clearly he hadn’t been dating enough these past five months. Too busy, with Higgins dropping like a stone not six weeks after Tag bought into the practice. And even if he’d had the time, he hadn’t seen a woman up here he wanted to chase. Till now.

Metal rumbled as she slid a gridded ramp down to the ground. Tag found his voice. “Wait a minute. If he’s not hurt, what’s the problem?”

“Not a problem, exactly. I mean it is, but—” She vanished into the empty stall to the right of the horse. Hooves thudded on padded metal, then the horse, a stallion, backed ponderously down the ramp. Tag retreated several hasty steps. Miss Blue Eyes reappeared, holding the animal’s lead, then clattered down to ground level, caught his halter beneath his chin and turned him around. “Ta-da!”

The stallion tossed his dark head and she staggered, then laughed and flattened a hand high on his glossy neck. “Pookie, meet Dr. Taggart.”

The stud’s head towered high over her red-gold ripply curls. Horse-mountain. Dark eyes focused on Tag with an almost human curiosity. The stallion snorted, and the gruff “Huh!” sounded like an opinion.

“What precisely do you want me to do for...Pookie?” All half-ton-plus of him?

She gave him a dazzling smile. “I want you to Bobbitt this ol’ boy for me.” She slapped the stud’s shoulder for emphasis.

Oh, boy. “You mean...”

She nodded vigorously. “I mean fix him. Geld him. I bought him for riding and he...” Her eyes slid away to follow a crow winging over the barn, then back to Tag’s face and she shrugged. “His octane’s a bit high.” Her chin tipped up a notch. “I mean I can handle him, but...”

Tag didn’t know much about horses, but he knew this one was no lady’s ride. One toss of his head and the beast could have flipped her over the barn. “Um...if he’s Pookie, then you’re...?”

“Susannah,” she said, and held out a fine-boned hand. “Susannah...Mack.”

He liked her strength as they shook, liked even better that his hand dwarfed hers. She had calluses, just enough that her touch was interesting. “Susannah, if you just bought him... He’s a looker, but isn’t he a bit more horse than you need? Maybe you should consider taking him—”

Her eyes went steely. “There isn’t anything on four legs I can’t ride. That’s not the problem.”

“Then the problem is...?” And why the rush?

She stared at him unblinking as the tomcat he’d saved last night, then looked down at her toes. “Problem is we’re new in town. Just up from...the South.”

Tag glanced automatically at the trailer’s license, but it was too muddy to read the state. Looked like they’d forded a river on their way.

“We drove all night, and now we get here—” She scuffed at the frozen dirt “—I find the stable where I’d made arrangements won’t take him. I forgot t’mention he was a stud. They have only one turn-out pen, lots of mares, and they’re afraid he’ll...” She laughed.

“He will.” Tag rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. The last time he’d gelded a stallion, it had been a Shetland pony who’d almost returned the favor. He’d sported a tiny, blue-black hoofprint on his upper thigh for a month. He’d gone along to watch Higgins on a Saturday and that canny veteran had taken one look at the pony, then pressed Tag into service. The time before that had been in vet school. “What about some other stable?”

She looked up from her boots. “I want that one. And it’s just going to be the same ol’ story, wherever we go.” She drifted closer and put a hand on his arm. “Please do it? I don’t know where I’ll go or what I’ll do if you don’t help us.”

When she put it like that... And she was determined, that was clear, and he was damned if he’d have her turn to any other man—any other vet—for help. “All right, then.” Let’s get it over with. “When did he eat last?”

“Not since ’bout ten, last night.” She let Tag go and backed off a step, still holding him with her storm-cloud eyes.

“Good. Then his stomach’s clear.” The clinic barn was clean, with a freshly bedded stall waiting for the patients Higgins might never see again. And the older man’s instruments were stored in the surgery. “If you could walk him around the grounds for fifteen minutes or so, settle him down, I’ll turn on the heat in the barn and set everything up.” And snatch a quick look at his text on equine procedures.

And face down Carol Anne’s outrage when he told her to postpone his first two afternoon appointments. Luckily Susannah had descended on him at the start of his lunch break. An experienced vet could geld a horse in half an hour or less. But he’d want to take his time, measure twice and cut once, as the saying went. Oh, boy. Tag turned and headed for the clinic.

CHAPTER TWO

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, hands freshly scrubbed and jaw clenched tight on all the words he’d not said back to his assistant, such as Who’s the vet and who’s the med tech here? Tag stomped out the back door of the hospital, his home-visit bag swinging at his side.

“You don’t know her from Adam, that’s not your specialty, and she didn’t even make an appointment!” Carol Anne had protested, the last apparently being Susannah’s greatest sin. “Just waltzes in here, flaps those big eyes, says pretty please and you jump. Men!”

There was nothing like a little opposition to make him cast his own doubts aside. Tag stopped to scan the fields beyond the barn and his cottage, which he rented from Higgins. No long-legged lovely with King Kong horse. His gaze swung to her trailer and he frowned. Something about it... He spun on his heel as Carol Anne leaned out the back door of the clinic.

“I phoned Doc Higgins, but he’s not answering. But I left a message that if he came in anytime soon, he should call you on the barn line and—”

“Cancel that.” Tag didn’t need him or want him for this. And Carol Anne should know by now that he sometimes took advice, but he never took orders. They glared at each other for an ice-cold, unbending minute, then she banged the door shut.

He needed to calm down. Animals could sense your tension before you felt it yourself. Tag took a slow breath. Bedside manner of quiet, sunny confidence, that’s what was wanted here. Piece of cake, really, this procedure. The premise remained roughly the same whether you did tomcat or elephant. Laying him down would be the scariest moment. Horses were more fragile than they looked. And the danger cut both ways. A horse like that, toppling, could smash a man flat. His eyes lit on the barn door, an inch or so, ajar when he’d left it tightly closed. Ah.

They were waiting for him in the corridor outside the stall. The stud lifted his head and pricked his ears as Tag entered the barn. Susannah didn’t stir. She stood at his shoulder, face pressed to his chocolate-brown hide, one arm hooked over his withers. Asleep on her feet like a horse? “Susannah?”

She swung her head lazily Tag’s way, mouth, nose and forehead sliding across the stallion’s sleek coat. A sleepy, sensual move as if dragging her face across a warm pillow. To face a bedmate. The hair lifted along his arms. She was something! Cheek resting against the horse, she smiled at him. Her eyes glistened.

Had she been crying? “Susannah?” He reached for her, but Pookie thrust his nose out between them. Tag switched his attention to the stud, who had teeth the size of dominoes, offering the back of his hand for inspection, fingers curled away, ready to dodge. But the horse was satisfied with a lusty whiff of him, not a chunk. “Good Pook, nice Pookie.” Tag got a hand on his halter, rubbed his neck, turned to study her. “You all right there?”

“Um.” She nodded and pushed off from the horse. The hand that had been hidden from view held a small silver hip flask. “Just fine.” She cleared her throat and her voice gained conviction. “Finer than fine.” She thrust the flask at him. “Like a sip?”

“Not while I’m working.” He took the container and sniffed-bourbon—closed it with the cap that dangled from a silver chain. This was beautiful workmanship, with the name “Brady” engraved elaborately across its face. Who’s Brady? He tucked the flask into her jacket pocket. She was shivering, all the feverish vivaciousness of their first meeting faded to a braced stillness. And her eyes were much too bright. “You know,” he said, “we don’t have to do this right now. We could board him here for a day or so, if no stable will take him.” Of course, that meant Higgins would insist on doing the job once Carol Anne reached him.

Her lips slowly parted—and Tag’s brain went blank for half a dozen heartbeats. Then thought returned as his blood flowed north again and she shook her head.

“Nope. I’ve made up my mind. Let’s do it.”

Then he’d better get on with it. He had a full slate of patients this afternoon, beyond the two appointments he’d made Carol Anne reschedule.