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

He should just take a rain check, but for some reason that completely baffled him, he nodded. “Sure, I can wait.” His next question surprised him even more. “Need me to give you a hand?”

She smiled again, that sweet, friendly smile. “That would be great. I’m afraid Cleo isn’t too crazy about her visit to the vet.”

The next fifteen minutes were a real education. With his help, Ellie miraculously finessed the ornery goat into holding still long enough for an exam. She murmured soft words—nonsense, really—while her hands moved gently and carefully over the now docile goat.

“Okay, you can let go now,” she finally said. He obeyed, and the goat ambled away from them.

“What’s the verdict?” he asked.

She looked up from scribbling some notes on a chart. “Just as I suspected. Mastitis. She has a plugged milk duct. I’ll run a culture to be sure, but I think a round of antibiotics ought to take care of her.”

“Just like a cow, huh?”

“Just like. Same plumbing involved.”

“Cleo’s a hell of a lot uglier than any of my ladies.”

She grinned at him again. “Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, Harte. I imagine Jeb Thacker wouldn’t agree. Anyway, thanks for your help.”

She led the way inside the small building where she worked. While she went in the back to change her clothes, he shot the breeze with SueAnn, who went to high school with him and whose husband ran the local nursery in town.

In a surprisingly short time, Ellie returned wearing a pair of surgical scrubs. He figured she probably was supposed to look cool and professional in the scrubs, but instead they made her look not much older than one of Lucy’s friends on her way to a sleepover, especially with her auburn hair pulled back in that ponytail.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, sounding a little out of breath.

“No problem.”

SueAnn hopped up and poured a cup of coffee for Ellie. “Here you go, sugar.”

“Thanks. We’ll be in my office if you need me.”

“Take your time.”

Matt didn’t miss the not-so-subtle wink SueAnn sent the vet or the quick frown Ellie volleyed back. Before he could analyze the currents going on here, she walked into a cluttered office with books and papers everywhere. Dominating one wall was a window framing a beautiful view of the Salt River mountain range that gave the town its name. On the other was a big print of a horse—a Tennessee walker, if he wasn’t mistaken—running across a field of wildflowers, all grace and power and beauty.

“Thanks again for helping me with Cleo,” Ellie said as soon as he was seated.

“No problem. It was interesting to see you working on her.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Interesting in what way?”

He shrugged. “I kept waiting for you to pull out the needles or whatever it is you use for that stuff you do.”

“That stuff I do?”

There were suddenly as many icicles in her voice as he had hanging from his barn. “You know, that acupuncture stuff. You don’t do that all the time, then?”

Whatever friendliness might have been in her expression faded away, and she became guarded once more. “Just when the situation calls for it.”

“And this one didn’t?”

Her smile was paper-thin. “See that diploma on the wall? I’m a board-certified vet with several years’ experience in traditional veterinary medicine. The acupuncture stuff, as you call it, was just extra training to supplement my regular skills. I only use it as an alternative when some of the more orthodox treatments have failed or aren’t appropriate.”

“And when would that be?”

“A lecture on veterinary acupuncture is not the reason you stopped by, Mr. Harte.”

“I’m curious about what you do.”

She hesitated for a moment before answering. “Animals I treat most often are horses with performance problems, like short stepping or mysterious lameness. I’ve treated moon blindness successfully and also older horses with degenerative conditions like arthritis or joint disease. You’d be surprised at how effective acupuncture can be.”

He didn’t doubt that. He didn’t want to sound too skeptical, not when they were going to have to work together for the next few months, but he thought the whole thing was a bunch of hooey. Her California crowd might buy all this New Age crap, but folks in Wyoming looked at things like this a little differently.

For a minute, he thought about keeping his mouth shut and changing the subject, but she and her kid had been good for his daughter. He didn’t want to see her practice go under, since Lucy would just about wither away if Dylan moved.

He cleared his throat. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Dr. Webster, but it seems to me you might be better off focusing on those more traditional things you were talking about and leave the rest of that, er, stuff back in California.”

She pursed her lips together tightly. “Thank you for the advice,” she said, in a tone that left him in no doubt of her real feelings. And they probably didn’t include gratitude.

He should have stopped right there, but something made him push the issue harder. “Look, it’s no secret around town that you’ve lost a lot of customers in the last few months to Steve Nichols, Ben’s nephew. Hell, I’ve been using him myself. A lot of people don’t understand why Ben sold his practice to you in the first place instead of to Steve. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you could lure some of those folks back if you didn’t focus so much on the acupuncture side of things in your ads and all.”

“I don’t tell you how to run your ranch,” she said quietly, folding her hands tightly on the desk. “So please don’t tell me how to operate my practice.”

He sat back in the chair, aware he sounded like an idiot. Bossy and arrogant, just like Cassie always accused him of being. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s none of my business what you do. Just thought you should know that out here we tend to prefer the things we know, the way we’ve always done things, the way they’ve been done for generations. Especially when it comes to our stock.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Sorry if I offended you.”

She shrugged. “You’re only saying to my face what I’m sure everyone else has been saying behind my back. I appreciate your frankness. Now can we talk about the carnival?”

“Uh, sure.” Who would have dreamed twenty-four hours ago that he would consider a Valentine’s Day carnival a safe topic of conversation?

“So I was thinking about calling it A Fair to Remember,” she said. “What do you think?”

He scratched his cheek, not quite sure where she was going with this.

“From the movie. You know, Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant. Empire State Building. The one Meg Ryan bawled about in Sleepless in Seattle.”

At his continued blank look, she shrugged. “Never mind. We can talk about it later. We have ten weeks to work out all the details.”

Ten weeks working closely with Ellie Webster, with her green eyes and her wisecracks and her shampoo that smelled like lemon pie. He knew damn well the idea shouldn’t appeal to him so much.

Chapter 4

“So we’re agreed then,” Ellie said fifteen minutes later. “Given our mutual lack of experience, we need to delegate as much as humanly possible. Our first step is to set up committees for booths, decorations, refreshments and publicity. Once we get some other willing victims, er, parents on board, we can go from there.”

Matt scratched the back of his neck. “I guess. You know as much about this as I do. I just hope we can pull this off without making complete fools of ourselves. Or having the whole thing go down in history as the worst carnival ever.”