by Loree Lough
All four horses were highly agitated, but he focused on Millie.
“Easy, girl,” he said, moving slowly forward. “It’s okay. You’re all right now, and—”
And then he saw it.
Teeth bared standing tall, it pawed at the air as if boasting about having Millie’s blood still on its muzzle. Reece had never been much of a woodsman, but he knew enough about the outdoors to realize raccoons didn’t prowl around in the bright light of day unless …
Taylor rushed into the barn, breathless from her sprint across the yard. “Eli said there’s something wrong with the horses?”
“Better stay away from the gate,” he warned.
But that’s precisely where she went. And when she saw what Reece already knew, a small gasp escaped her lips. “No,” came her trembly sigh, “please, God, no …”
“Taylor, I’m not kidding. You need to step back.”
Instead, she hooked her fingers of one hand over the top of the gate, and reached for Millie with the other. “Don’t be afraid, sweetie. You’ll be all right, I promi—”
Reece stepped up behind her and gently gripped her biceps. “That ’coon could have rabies,” he said. “You can’t go in there, no matter how tempting it is.”
Taylor jerked free of his grasp and whirled around to face him, head on. “I know that!” she said, her voice thick with a sob. “I’ve lived out here most of my life!”
“Then you know how important it is to think with your head, not your heart. You can’t do Millie—or Eli—any good if that animal bites you, too.”
He’d seen that “you’re so mean!” expression on the faces of young patients whose pain and panic made them a danger to themselves and those attempting to care for them. He hated doing it, but sometimes, a gruff no-nonsense scolding was the only way to reach them.
“Open that door as wide as it goes,” he growled, “and get on up to the house. Call Animal Control and explain what we could be facing here, and whatever you do, make sure Eli stays inside.”
A minute, maybe two had passed since she’d first entered the barn, but it felt ten times that. If the heat blazing from her storm-gray eyes was any indicator, his tough-guy routine had done the trick: eyes and lips narrowed, Taylor stood trembling for all of a second, then turned on her heel and hurried back to the house.
Reece tightened his grip on the pitchfork, facing the stall with every intention of skewering the raccoon.
But it was gone.
Heart hammering, he searched the rest of the stalls, behind the feed bins, under wheelbarrows in the grooming bay, rattling brooms and muck forks as he went, hoping to roust out the masked intruder before it sunk its fangs into one of the other horses.
Shouldn’t he have seen something—a flash of gray and black as it scuttled toward one of the windows or hay being kicked up by its back feet, heard something as it clawed its way through the opening? No … not with all that commotion going on in every stall.
The raccoon’s behavior might be a symptom of rabies, or a reaction to being trapped in the stall with a kicking, stomping mare. After his own similar run-in with that young stallion years ago, Reece could certainly identify with that! Thinking it best to err on the side of caution, he’d snap on two pairs of surgical gloves when he got around to patching Millie up. Because if the ‘coon’s saliva got into the slice he’d picked up while digging through patient files in his office earlier …
No time for thoughts like that; going into the stall with the terrified horse was more than scary enough.
He couldn’t count on Animal Control to get here quickly, so Reece ran to the car for his medical bag. As his grandfather always said, horses were accidents waiting to happen. Nicked shins, scraped shoulders, and abrasions caused by roughhousing or scratching an itch made it necessary to keep a ready supply of iodine, medicated ointments, and sticking plaster on hand. No doubt Taylor had a well-stocked kit out here someplace.
Sure enough, he found syringes, antibiotics, ointments, and a suture kit in the small fridge under the tack bench. Reece knew how to dose his human patients, based on weight and metabolism, but how much lidocaine was too much—or not enough—to dull Millie’s pain while he stitched up her cuts and bites?
Taylor would know, and he could ask her … if he hadn’t chased her out of her own barn. Yeah, he’d done it for her own good, but that didn’t make it any easier to picture the way she’d looked when he snarled at her. Feelings of guilt and exasperation merged as he flipped open his cell phone. He added frustration and fear to the mix as he dialed her number.
She silenced the second ring with a curt “Animal Control is on the way.”
“Good. Good.” Reece drove a hand through his hair. “Is somebody up at the house—Tootie or Isaac or a guest, maybe—who can stay with Eli? Because I need you to get back down here, fast.”
He heard her sharp inhalation of air. “Why? What’s wrong now?”
“I’ll need your help, keeping Millie calm while I clean and stitch up those cuts.” She started to say something—probably that she could do all that herself—but he cut her off. “It’s only because I’m in surgery three, four times a week that I know I can get it done faster than you can.” And you’re wasting precious time, Taylor, coddling your ego.
“Be there in thirty-two seconds.”
Reece figured it took five seconds to hang up the phone and look at his watch, and started the countdown at six. With every tick as the second hand swept around the dial, he found himself hoping she really had timed herself, running from the house to the barn. “… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty,” he whispered to himself, “thirty-one—”
“I see you found the first-aid kit,” she said, snapping on a pair of gloves.
“Better make it two pair,” he said, sliding into a pair of his own.
Her hands hovered above the dispenser, but only for the nanosecond it took to figure out why. “She seems much calmer than when I left here. Alvin and Bert and Elsie, too.” She loaded a hypodermic with Metronidazole and added “How’d you accomplish that, Mr. Scared of Horses?”
“Hypnosis.”
One well-arched brow rose as she thumped the vial.
“It’s part of my stand-up act,” he added. And she grinned. Not much, but enough to give him hope that later, when things calmed down, she might accept his apology.
“I told the guy on the phone they should drive straight to the barn. Let’s hope they pay attention … and follow directions.”
“So what can I do to steady her while you—”
“Nothing.”
After the way he’d talked to her earlier, he could hardly complain about her tone. He stood back as she opened the gate and eased into the stall, muttering in low, slow syllables as she went. If Reece didn’t know better, he’d say Millie’s eyes welled up with tears as she tucked her nose into the crook of Taylor’s neck. And barely flinched as her mistress inserted the needle.
“Take this,” she said, holding up the needle, “and put it in that bucket near the door. Then gather up whatever you’ll need to clean her up, and I’ll hold her steady while you work your magic.”
One thing was certain: Taylor Bradley could give as good as she got. He’d think twice—no, three times—before picking a fight with her again!
“So where’d the little beast go?” she asked while he carried out her instructions.
“Don’t know.” Reece poured iodine onto a wad of cotton, and got down on one knee. “Only place I didn’t look was up in the loft.”
Millie snorted quietly as he dabbed at her cuts, but made no move to kick or stomp him. Remarkable, he decided, that Taylor—who probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds with a full Thanksgiving dinner in her belly—had no trouble controlling a nine-hundred-pound, thirteen-hands-high animal. And kept right on controlling her until Reece had cleaned up every nick. “Now that the blood is gone, it doesn’t look like I’ll need to stitch anything up.”
“Did you hear that, girl? The
doctor says he won’t need to poke you full of pinholes.”
Millie’s nudge nearly knocked Reece onto his butt. “Is that your way of saying thanks?” he asked her. “ ’Cause if it is, I’m way okay with you skipping the formalities altogether.”
Taylor’s laugh was missing its usual music, telling him that she understood that Millie was far from out of the woods. Living in mountain country, he had no doubt that the horse had received routine rabies vaccinations. Unfortunately, in way too many cases, the inoculation masked the symptoms, adding to the consensus that the only typical thing about rabies was that nothing about it was typical.
The only way to know for sure if the horse had been infected was to capture and euthanize the raccoon to test its brain and saliva for evidence of the virus. If by some miracle the Animal Control officers found it, Taylor would have to quarantine Millie until the lab results came in. If AC didn’t find the ’coon, the horse would remain isolated while Taylor watched for telltale signs of the disease. Either way, the coming weeks wouldn’t be easy on her, so Reece decided then and there to spend a lot more time at the Misty Wolf.
“I wonder how Eli is doing.”
“Wondering what’s going on out here, I imagine,” he said, gathering soiled gauze and cotton pads. He walked them to the bucket where he’d put the syringe. “But I’m sure he’ll be relieved to hear the horses weren’t gobbled up by a wolf or a bear.”
Taylor closed the gate and joined him at the tack bench. “A wolf or a bear? Where would he get such an idea?”
“He’s four. And a boy.” Reece smiled. “A miraculous combination that pretty much guarantees that even when he’s fast asleep, his imagination is wide awake.”
As she put the first-aid kit to its proper place, he noticed that her hands were still shaking. It made him want to hold them … right before drawing her close in a comforting hug.
“You sound awfully sure of yourself.” She glanced at Millie, still pacing in her stall. “I hope she settles down soon. All this excitement can’t be good for her. Especially if …”
Especially if the ’coon had rabies, he finished silently. The virus attacked the central nervous system, so it wasn’t farfetched to assume all this agitation could speed the onset of symptoms.
He chose to respond to her first comment rather than heighten her fears about Millie’s behavior. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I was a dreamy-eyed kid once upon a time, too.”
When she fixed that big-eyed gaze on him, his knees went weak and his heart beat double-time. What was she looking for? he wondered. Proof that he’d been a lot like Eli when he was a boy?
“It isn’t hard to believe,” she said softly. “I’ve seen photographic evidence of it. And you know what?”
Every muscle tensed as he waited to hear what.
“Eli favors you. A lot. Same eyes, same smile.”
Her voice trailed off, and because he didn’t know how else to explain it, Reece blamed the madness of the past half hour for the tears in her eyes. Taylor faced the stall again, and as she stroked Millie’s nose, he walked up behind her, taking care to leave a good two feet between them.
She’d suffered more losses than he had: her parents, then the grandparents who’d raised her, a young husband, her brother, and finally, Margo. Taylor had given new meaning to the word bravado, but he only had to blink to see the way she seemed to melt to the earth as Margo’s casket disappeared into the cavernous black hole. If it hadn’t been for Isaac on her left and Tootie on her right, Taylor would have done just that.
Memory of the things he’d said made Reece hang his head. He never would have admitted it at the time, but his behavior had shamed him to the soles of his shoes. And that was before he’d figured out that her heart was bigger than her head! Man, it was tempting to wrap his arms around her, beg her forgiveness, and tell her everything would be all right … that he’d make everything all right!
“I think it’s okay to leave her now,” he said, surprised at the gravelly tone of his voice. Reece cleared his throat. “At least long enough to check on Eli. I mean, I’m sure he’s fine, but his little head must be full of questions. And—”
“You’ll stay a while, won’t you? Help me explain things to him?”
The two feet that had separated them dwindled to one, and as she stood looking up at him with those too-big-for-her-face hopeful eyes, he nodded. “You know I will. But …” Reece licked his lips, slapped a palm to the back of his neck, shook his head. “But first … about the way I barked at you earlier … I hope you’ll accept my apology, because—”
She held up a hand, traffic-cop style. “Hey, I’m the first to admit that I was behaving like an irrational child. In your shoes, I’d have done the same thing.” Grinning, she gave him a playful shove, then faced Millie again. “Better a firm scolding than what guys in the movies do to hysterical women.”
The very idea rocked him. Had that tongue lashing at Margo’s grave made him look like the type who could slap a woman, for any reason?
“I … I hope you know I’d never hurt you.”
Taylor was fussing with the horses when she said, “Oh, quit your worrying. I got your number years ago.”
What in blue blazes did that mean?
“All bark, no bite.” She jiggled the stall gate to check the latch. “Why, I’ll bet you can’t even bring yourself to squish spiders and beetles, can you?”
As a matter of fact, he preferred the capture-and-release system. He might have admitted it, if the Animal Control van hadn’t pulled up outside the barn just then.
Following the customary introductions and interrogation, each man donned thick gloves and grabbed a catch stick. If, after a thorough search, they couldn’t find the raccoon, they agreed to bait a have-a-heart trap. The one in charge promised to share their conclusions before heading back to town to file their report.
Taylor started to follow them, stopping long enough to say “I don’t want to take the chance they’ll get Millie and the others all riled up again.” Walking backward, she added “Thanks for hanging around. There’s pie in the pantry. Apple and cherry. Help yourself.”
And with that, she disappeared into the barn.
So much for the out-of-sight-out-of-mind maxim, he thought as, head down and hands pocketed, Reece walked toward the house.
Something told him he’d see her pretty, concerned face every time he blinked.
And in his dreams.
11
The day after the raccoon attacked Millie, Taylor rescheduled every guest, and to thank them for their courteous cooperation, promised to add three free days to their new reservations. Those who’d stayed with her before were so saddened when they heard what had happened to their favorite trail horse that they refused the offer, and all but one first-timer followed suit. Their kind words and offers to pray for Millie touched Taylor so deeply that she decided to follow through on the proposal anyway as they checked out of the Misty Wolf.
With one less item on her Worry List, Taylor wondered how she’d spend her nights. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to ask Tootie or Isaac to keep an eye on Eli while she watched over the horse; didn’t feel right about leaving Millie with either of them while she tended to Eli. So she drove into town and bought a baby monitor. “I’m almost five years old!” he complained when she set it up. But he saw the sense in it when she explained how it would allow her to be in two places at the same time.
That first night, when Isaac saw her hunched over the tack bench, adding squares to the quilt, he stomped from the barn, muttering about eyestrain and backaches. When he returned a few minutes later, balancing a lamp and an end table atop one of the rocking chairs from the front porch, she wrapped him in a grateful hug.
Every night of the two weeks since, after listening to Eli’s bedtime prayers, she’d gone straight to the barn. The steady sound of his restful breaths, sighing through the receiver, had a calming effect on Millie. On Taylor, too, as she snipped patches from the shirts and
skirts that had belonged to Eli’s loved ones. Tidy, color-coordinated stacks sat on her chairside table, their count dwindling by one every time she connected a square to those already put into place by her mother.
Yes, Eli’s gift was definitely beginning to take shape. And yet …
By the time she’d reached this point with other quilts she’d designed and sewn, anticipating what it might look like when finished kept her sewing, despite burning eyes and sore fingers. But this one? This one left her with the sense that she’d overlooked something … something fundamental. Wondering what it might be preoccupied her thoughts often enough to justify the playful taunts of Isaac and Tootie. She found herself dreaming about it, too, and on more than one occasion, the question woke her in the middle of the night.
So tonight, in the hope of getting to the bottom of it, Taylor carpeted the barn floor with an old blanket and laid the quilt on top of it. She examined it from every angle—standing, sitting, even on her hands and knees—but the puzzle remained unsolved. How could she continue working on the project—her most significant to date—without figuring it out?
Frustration drove her inside. Maybe a little time and distance would give her the perspective needed to solve the puzzle. There were plenty of other things she could do while watching for signs that Millie had contracted the deadly disease, like adding photos to Eli’s album or transferring all those magazine clippings to cards in her recipe file.
She kicked off her flip-flops and fired up the burner under the tea kettle. Why not make a list of chores while waiting for the water to boil? Paper and pen in hand, Taylor sat at the table, in the very chair Reece had occupied earlier. What a pity, she thought, that it took something as grim as Millie’s situation to encourage his twice-weekly attendance at supper. Eli loved spending all that extra time with him, and to be honest, Taylor enjoyed his company, too.
A soft hissing sound, followed by something cool, slithering onto her bare foot, inspired a tiny squeal of fright. On her feet, she backed away from the table, looking for a weapon of some sort to defend her from the garter snake that had somehow snuck into the house.