Outlaw Hartes: The Valentine Two-Step / Cassidy Harte And The Comeback Kid

She chewed her lip again, then looked at the cat. “We never do anything together.”

He rocked back on his heels, baffled by her. “What are you talking about? We do plenty of things together. Just last Saturday you spent the whole day with me in Idaho Falls.”

She rolled her eyes. “Shopping for a new truck. Big whoop. I thought it would be fun to do something completely different together. Something that doesn’t have to do with the ranch or with cattle or horses.” She paused, then added in a quiet voice, “Something just for me.”

Ah, more guilt. Just what he needed. The kid wasn’t even ten years old and she was already an expert at it. He sighed. Did females come out of the box with some built-in guilt mechanism they could turn off and on at will?

The hell of it was, she was absolutely right, and he knew it. He didn’t spend nearly enough time with her. He tried, he really did, but between the horses and the cattle, his time seemed to be in as short supply as sunshine in January.

His baby girl was growing up. He could see it every day. Used to be a day spent with him would be enough for her no matter what they did together. Even if it was only shopping for a new truck. Now she wanted more, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to provide it.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell me all this before you signed me up? Then we could have at least talked it over without me getting such a shock like this.”

She fidgeted with Sigmund, who finally must have grown tired of being messed with. He let out an offended mewl of protest and rolled away from her, then leaped from the bed gracefully and stalked out the door.

Lucy watched until his tail disappeared down the end of the hall before she answered him in that same low, ashamed voice. “Dylan said you’d both say no if we asked. We thought it might be harder for you to back out if Ms. McKenzie thought you’d already agreed to it.”

“That wasn’t very fair, to me or to Dr. Webster, was it?” He tried to come up with an analogy that might make sense to her. “How would you like it if I signed you up to show one of the horses in the 4-H competition without talking to you first?”

She shuddered, as he knew she would. Her shyness made her uncomfortable being the center of attention, so she had always avoided the limelight, even when she was little. In that respect, Miz McKenzie was right—Dylan Webster had been good for her and had brought her out of her shell, at least a little.

“I wouldn’t like it at all.”

“And I don’t like what you did any better. I ought to just back out of this whole crazy thing right now.”

“Oh, Dad, you can’t!” she wailed. “You’ll ruin everything.”

He studied her distress for several seconds, then sighed. He loved his daughter fiercely. She was the biggest joy in his life, more important than a hundred ranches. If she felt like she came in second to the Diamond Harte, he obviously wasn’t trying hard enough.

Lucy finally broke the silence. “Are you really, really, really mad at me?” she asked in a small voice.

“Maybe just one really.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “But don’t worry. I’ll get you back. You’ll be sorry you ever heard of this carnival by the time I get through with you.”

Her eyes went wide again, this time with excitement. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

“I guess. I think we’re both going to be sorry.”

But he couldn’t have too many regrets, at least not right now. Not when his daughter jumped from her bed with a squeal and threw her arms tightly around his waist.

“Oh, thank you, Daddy. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re the best.”

For that moment, at least, he felt like it.

* * *

“No way is Matthew Harte going to go through with it. Mark my words, if you agree to do this, you’re going to be stuck planning the whole carnival by yourself.”

In the middle of sorting through the day’s allotment of depressing mail, Ellie grimaced at SueAnn Clayton, her assistant. She had really come to hate that phrase. Mark my words, you’re not cut out to be a large animal vet. Mark my words, you’re going to regret leaving California. Mark my words, you won’t last six months in Wyoming.

Just once, she wished everybody would keep their words—and unsolicited advice—to themselves.

In this case, though, she was very much afraid SueAnn was right. There was about as much likelihood of Matt Harte helping her plan the carnival as there was that he’d be the next one walking through the door with a couple of his prize cutting horses for her to treat.

She sighed and set the stack of bills on SueAnn’s desk. “If he chickens out, I’ll find somebody else to help me.” She grinned at her friend. “You, for instance.”

SueAnn made a rude noise. “Forget it. I chaired the Halloween Howl committee three years in a row and was PTA president twice. I’ve more than done my share for Salt River Elementary.”

“Come on, SueAnn,” she teased. “Are you forgetting who pays your salary?”

The other woman rolled her eyes. “You pay me to take your phone calls, to send out your bill reminders and to hold down the occasional unlucky animal while you give him a shot. Last I checked, planning a Valentine’s Day carnival is nowhere in my job description.”

“We could always change your job description. How about while we’re at it, we’ll include mucking out the stalls?”

“You’re not going to blackmail me. That’s what you pay Dylan the big bucks for. Speaking of the little rascal, how did you punish her, anyway? Ground her to her room for the rest of the month?”

That’s what she should have done. It was no less than Dylan deserved for lying to her teacher. But she’d chosen a more fitting punishment. “She’s grounded from playing with Lucy after school for the rest of the week and she has to finish reading all of Little Women and I’m going to make sure she does a lot of the work of this carnival, since it was her great idea.”

“The carnival she ought to be okay with, but which is she going to hate more, reading the book or not playing with her other half?”

“Doesn’t matter. She has to face the music.”

SueAnn laughed, and Ellie smiled back. What would she have done without the other woman to keep her grounded and sane these last few months? She shuddered just thinking about it.

She winced whenever she remembered how tempted she’d been to fire her that first week. SueAnn was competent enough—eerily so, sometimes—but she also didn’t have the first clue how to mind her own business. Ellie had really struggled with it at first. Coming from California where avoiding eye contact when at all possible could sometimes be a matter of survival, dealing with a terminal busybody for an assistant had been wearing.

She was thirty-two years old and wasn’t used to being mothered. Even when she’d had a mother, she hadn’t had much practice at it. And she had been completely baffled by how to handle SueAnn, who made it a point to have her favorite grind of coffee waiting very morning, who tried to set her up with every single guy in town between the ages of eighteen and sixty, and who brought in Tupperware containers several times a week brimming with homemade soups and casseroles and mouthwatering desserts.

Now that she’d had a little practice, she couldn’t believe she had been so fortunate to find not only the best assistant she could ask for but also a wonderful friend.

“What’s on the agenda this morning?” Ellie asked.

“You’re not going to believe this, but you actually have two patients waiting.”

“What, are we going for some kind of record?”

SueAnn snickered and held two charts out with a flourish. “In exam room one, we have Sasha, Mary Lou McGilvery’s husky.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Him. Sasha, oddly enough, is a him. He’s scratching like crazy, and Mary Lou is afraid he has fleas.”

“Highly doubtful around here, especially this time of year. It’s too cold.”

“That’s what I tried to tell her. She’s convinced that you need to take a look at him, though.”

Dogs weren’t exactly her specialty, since she was a large animal veterinarian, but she knew enough about them to deal with a skin condition. She nodded to SueAnn. “And patient number two?”

Her assistant cleared her throat ominously. “Cleo.”