There were times when he still missed Wyoming. He had loved it. Before Tiffany, the owner’s spoiled daughter, had decided she wanted to marry him, he had considered staying, settling down and buying some range land. Wyoming was definitely far enough away from his father.
But he couldn’t let go of his dream of vet school, and that was in Mississippi. He certainly did not want to marry Tiffany, no matter the pressure she put on him.
Not that marriage to Tiffany had ever been an option for him. He’d already made up his mind not to marry, ever. His family did not have a talent for it. His father was a terrible example of what a husband and father should be and the single example he’d grown up with. His brothers were trying to overcome Daddy’s legacy with only partial success.
So far not marrying hadn’t been a problem for him, because he’d never been in love. He’d always been willing to walk away from his current—what? Girlfriend?
He checked his rearview mirror, but he could no longer see Anne. He experienced a fleeting sense of loss. That was crazy. She was not even a friend. Barely a colleague.
Then why did he miss the sight of her when she disappeared from his mirror?
He checked his GPS to see if he was headed for the pig farm. It was on the edge of the territory he and Barbara covered, but he had never been there before. He wasn’t looking forward to the procedure. He was fond of pigs. They were smart and clean. But piglets made an unholy racket whenever anybody picked them up.
He liked most of the animals he served. You could trust them to act in character.
Human beings? Not so much. Human females? Never for one moment.
Back on the ranch in Wyoming, Tiffany was beautiful and bright and would be rich. She was the boss’s daughter, after all. She was also the most spoiled woman he had met in his life. Vince had grown up in Mississippi, the home base of the Daddy’s Girl, so to call Tiffany worse was saying something. When Tiffany wanted something or someone, all she had to do was crook her little finger, maybe shed a tear or so, and Daddy would get it for her.
Hadn’t worked with Vince, mostly because he was too busy and too blind to see what she was trying to do. She’d never forgiven him for passing her up.
He still had no clue why she’d wanted him. Maybe after he’d graduated from vet school he could have seen it. At that point he’d have career prospects, be able to afford a wife and children. That summer he was just another saddle bum working for her father, two years younger than Tiffany, naive, unformed and not simply wet behind the ears but downright sopping.
If he ever did consider marriage, he had no intention of living off his wife’s money, or his father’s, either. If he ever did decide to marry. But in that summer between his graduation from Mississippi State and his matriculation in their veterinary medicine program, he had nothing to offer. She was already once married and divorced. The woman jetted off to New York to get her hair cut, for Pete’s sake.
He’d heard from the other hands who had stayed on the ranch after he left that she had married a real estate tycoon she’d met on one of her New York trips. She was living in an apartment on the Upper East Side. No broken heart there. On either side.
He’d been nothing but another saddle bum come to Wyoming for a summer of breaking broncs, working cattle and sowing a few wild oats. The other hands envied him. They thought Tiffany was a catch. He’d rather have hooked a barracuda.
He’d come to Wyoming in the first place to get away from his family and to make enough money to pay for his first year at vet school.
His father had made it clear that unless he agreed to come home to practice after he qualified as a vet, he would not foot the cost of tuition. If Vince accepted family support, he would be indentured for life. Not going to happen.
He spotted the sign with a silhouette of a Duroc boar beside a pair of fancy iron gates. Most farmers hesitated to boast about raising hogs, so the sign was unobtrusive. He turned in and drove up the long gravel drive past the farmhouse and parked beside three red metal barns. The place was immaculate. The sort of place his father might have offered him. He climbed out, leaned against the hood of the van and waited for someone to come get him.
When he came back home from Wyoming at the end of the summer after avoiding Tiffany, he discovered his daddy had picked out a wife for him in Mississippi.
He’d gone to kindergarten with Cheryl, known to her family as Sugarpie. He loved her like a sister. He did not want to attempt to love her like a wife. The problem was that Sugarpie was slightly more agreeable to the marriage idea, although he knew she only loved him as a friend. She wanted him to come home to do what his father wanted. She didn’t want to leave her family to move away. When he said no, he’d lost her as a friend. He hated that.
Since he’d taken his new job at Barbara’s clinic, he figured he was back to the way he lived in Wyoming. No time, no women.
“Hey, Doc,” called a gravelly voice from the shadows under the overhang of the nearest barn. “Got your earplugs in?”
Vince grinned. He was ready.
Two hours later he drove back out the gates and left behind a satisfied client, and a bunch of vaccinated pigs.
He looked at his watch. Shoot, it was early yet. He might as well drop back by Martin’s Minis to see if Anne had managed to dodge disaster without him.
Why did the woman tread on his last nerve?
Something about the look of her with those long legs and that smooth stride stirred him. Something about her fair skin made him want to stroke her cheek. Something about her lovely, wide mouth and sensual lips made him want to kiss them to see if they were really as soft as they looked.
The rest of her wasn’t bad either.
But for the foreseeable future, women were out. Probably a good thing she didn’t like him. Made keeping his distance simpler. Anne deserved a man who knew how to love her. He didn’t. All his life he’d watched his father bully and demand so much from his wives that they left. His own mother had walked out eventually, even though she abandoned Vince as well. He had no point of reference for what made a good husband, built a good marriage. That kind of thing was born in or trained in early. Too late now.
CHAPTER TEN
“WHO IS THAT man getting out of the van?” Becca whispered. “He’s gorgeous.” She turned from brushing little Grumpy, who stood half-asleep on the cross-ties.
“Him?” Anne looked toward the parking lot. “Oh, that’s Victoria’s vet, Vince Peterson. He’s in practice with Barbara, my stepmother. He’s helping with the minis.”
“Is he married?”
“I have no idea.” She’d assumed because he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring that he was single, but many medical and engineering types did not wear rings because they could get caught in equipment.
It suddenly struck her that she did not want him to be married. What did it matter? She’d already classified him as having too high a “jerk” rating. “He’s too old for you, Becca. Put your eyes back in your head.”
“Nothing that looks like that is too old for me. I’ll bet he’s got six-pack abs. Yum, yum. You have dibs?”
“Good grief, no. We have a very prickly professional relationship. He thinks I’m an idiot. I think he’s a pompous jerk.”
“Then let the games begin.” Becca actually smacked her lips.
“Oh, no, you don’t. Your mother would kill me. You’re barely eighteen.”
“I’ve always liked older guys. I was madly in love with one of my doctors in Atlanta, but he blew me off after he told me his wife was expecting their second child.”
“Good for him.”
“Besides, no guy wants to go out with somebody who could fall on the floor without warning.”
Anne caught the change in Becca’s voice. Studiedly casual. This was the first time she had let slip that her disability bothered her more than she admitted.
> “You’re not going to fall. Not with a helper horse. You didn’t have a problem with Tom, did you?”
Becca shrugged. “That’s because Tom didn’t move away, and you grabbed my belt. A whole lot different from crashing in the fruit aisle at the grocery store and knocking a humongous stack of watermelons on the floor. I can’t take Tom Thumb into the store.”
“Sure you can. He’s no different from a seeing eye dog. He can go with you into stores, on airplanes, to class in the fall.”
“I want to move into the dorm this fall. My stupid parents won’t let me.”
“Keep talking to them. Maybe you’ll be ready.”
“So what am I doing this afternoon?”
“Working with one of the other minis.”
“Why not Tom Thumb?”
“Don’t forget you’re a test case. We’re going to see which minis we can train as helpers and which to drive carriages. You need to learn to drive a carriage, as well. You may not be able to ride a horse over fences at a horse show, but you can certainly drive a mini in carriage driving. Plenty of classes for VSEs.”
“But...”
“Since you’re only going to be here until Monday this time, we have to shoehorn as much as we can into the schedule. We can plan what to work on when you come back for more. Tom Thumb can lag behind in his lessons and catch up fast. The others—not so much. How about we put Grumpy back in his pasture and get ready for lunch?”
“With Mr. Handsome?”
Anne laughed. “That’s Dr. Handsome to you.”
As they walked up the hill toward the patio and swimming pool, Vince came out of Victoria’s kitchen door carrying a tray piled high with sandwiches. He set it down on the wrought-iron table and nodded to the two women. “Ladies,” he said, and flashed them a smile that made Anne’s heart leap. Heaven only knew what it did to Becca.
Anne introduced them. Becca reached out and took Vince’s hand. He pulled away before she did. Anne had never mastered the Southern simper, but Becca was a genius at it, complete with fluttering lashes. Uh-oh.
Anne hoped she wouldn’t have problems with Becca over Vince. The difference between eighteen and thirtysomething was substantial, but not insurmountable. As her mother had told her, older men played by different rules. Their idea of a relationship did not stop with sharing a chocolate malted after a movie, then parting at the front door with a good-night kiss. ’Course, from the stories she heard around the horse shows, girls Becca’s age were also playing by grown-up rules.
Not under Anne’s care, however.
She and Becca had both grown up in the horse show world. There tended to be fewer boys than girls riding. Add in the time spent in rehab after her accident, and chances were good that Becca had never had a real boyfriend.
Anne had once asked her father if he had any idea why there was such an imbalance between boys and girls in the horse world.
He told her not so much since Title IX—the law that tried to equalize sports for girls with sports for boys. But before that, boys had more access to team sports—baseball, football, soccer. Girls tended toward individual sports like tennis and golf that their parents paid for. “Girls fall in love with horses in a way boys don’t,” he said. “It’s as if they get infected with the equine plague. Some of them never recover.”
Anne hadn’t. Becca obviously hadn’t either.
“Victoria’s fed me half my meals the last couple of days,” Vince said. “Thought I’d reciprocate with lunch from the snack shop down the road.”
Becca flashed him a killer smile.
Anne was surprised when he took a step backward and gave Anne a help me glance.
Throughout the rest of the lunch, he talked mostly to Anne and Victoria. He didn’t actually snub Becca, but he avoided her eyes and moved his chair out of touching range.
“So, how did it go?” Victoria asked as she reached for a roast beef sandwich and another can of diet soda.
“Remarkably well,” Anne said. “We’ll take a break after lunch, and then we’re going to fit Molly with a VSE harness and see if we can drive her with the reins but without the cart. She needs to respond to rein signals without a rider or a cart behind her.”
“How do we do that? Becca asked.
“We walk behind her using pressure on the reins to point her in the right direction. Once she can do that, then we give her a bit of weight behind her to actually pull. A small trailer tire, for instance. After she’s comfortable with that, then we try to harness her to the little carriage.”
“It’s unfortunate that I don’t have a VSE that’s already trained to drive,” Victoria said. “Putting an untrained horse to a carriage beside a trained horse turns the old pro into a teacher.”
“Are you going to be here to help?” Becca asked Vince.
He leaned back in his chair and laid his half-eaten sandwich on his plate. “Sorry, no can do. I’ve got a list of appointments that will take me past office hours all over Williamston County. Even across the bridge to the south side of the river.”
“I’m going to be a vet like you,” Becca said.
Anne raised her eyebrows and caught Victoria’s surprised glance. This was the first time Becca had mentioned the possibility.
“I’d love to ride along with you on your calls,” Becca said. “I’d love to watch you. I could help.”
That’s all they needed.
“Sorry, I don’t take ride-alongs. You’re here to work with Anne. Aren’t you going home Monday? Not much time to get in everything you all want to do, is it?”
Becca pouted. Anne figured the teenager thought she was pouting “prettily,” but the expression turned her into a spoiled toddler.
Anne had to fight a smile when Vince rolled his eyes at her. Obviously he was used to being the recipient of crushes, was uncomfortable with them, but definitely knew how to defuse them. No worries there. Still, it was a good thing Becca planned to go home to Memphis on Monday.
Victoria took Becca down to the barn while Vince and Anne cleaned up after lunch.
“She’s got a crush on you,” Anne said.
“I’d rather have a water moccasin fall on my head.” He reached down to pick up a plate that Anne had just rinsed to put in the dishwasher. Their hands touched. For a second neither moved. His fingers laced into hers while the warm water flowed over them.
“Anne,” he said softly and turned her toward him. Their eyes met and held.
The plate clattered in the sink as he moved his fingers to the back of her neck. She swayed against him, unwilling or unable to look away.
As he bent toward her, the screen door to the patio opened, followed by footsteps.
They sprang apart and turned back to the still-running water.
“Come on, slowpokes,” Victoria said. “What’s taking so long?”
Vince cleared his throat. “Just doing a good job. We can go now. I’ll walk the two of you down to the barn.”
Victoria looked from one to the other with a slight frown on her face. “Sure,” she said.
* * *
FITTING ONE OF the VSE harnesses Victoria had acquired on Molly took Vince’s intervention. “I can stay long enough to give you a hand,” he said.
Anne felt herself blush.
Molly had no intention of allowing all that rig to be buckled on her small body. She spit out the bit on the little driving bridle half a dozen times before Vince managed to get the bridle over her head.
When Anne lifted her tail to place the crupper—the piece that buckled under her tail and kept the harness in the center of her back—Molly lashed out with a foot and would have connected with Anne’s shin if she hadn’t jumped out of the way and against Vince’s chest.
He caught her. “Careful, sport,” he said with his lips against her hair.
She moved away quickly and checked to see t
hat neither of the others had noticed that second’s hesitation.
While Becca buckled and snapped and fed the reins through the round metal eyelets called turrets that held them in place between bit and carriage, she did not show any sign of losing her equilibrium. So, Anne thought, physical concentration and hands-on labor might keep Becca’s stumbling and dizziness to a minimum. If so, then the more Becca was occupied in a task outside herself, the better she might be.
“Looks like you’ve got everything under control,” Vince said. “Anne, mind walking me up the hill?”
“Sure. Don’t do anything, Becca. Be right back.”
As they strolled to Vince’s truck, he said, “I wasn’t kidding about being careful. Becca can’t get out of the way as fast as you can.”
Anne stiffened. “I had noticed.” Back to: you doctor, me peon.
They had reached his van. He took her arms. “Don’t let anything happen to you. That girl adds a whole new element of danger.”
She relaxed. “I promise I’ll watch out. Thanks for helping with the harness.”
She waited there until he drove out. What had almost happened in the kitchen? She could still feel his hands on her arms. They’d been about to kiss when they were interrupted. She wanted him to kiss her. Some old comedian used to say, What a revolting development this is. That about summed up her feelings. Feelings she definitely did not want to develop for Vince.
By the time Molly was in harness, but still nowhere near the little carriage that stood in the aisle behind her, Anne stepped back out of kicking range, took the long carriage reins in both hands, and clicked to send Molly forward.
The little mare did her bounce up/kick out routine to the front of the barn before Anne tightened the reins and stopped her. Or at least stopped her forward motion. She stood in one place and danced, ready to explode all over again.
“Stand.” Anne said as she kept Molly in one place. She continued to bounce, but then moved off in a straight line when Anne asked her.
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