“She won’t.” He started toward the front of the barn. “She’ll let me know when she’s ready to lie down again.”
“Okay.” It made Tracy nervous to see Dottie parading around when she needed to be settled on a bed of clean straw near the equipment Drake had laid out.
He turned and led the mare back toward Tracy. “You look worried. That foal isn’t going to suddenly drop out of her with no warning, like a gum ball popping out of a machine.”
That made her laugh. “I suppose not.”
“Ever been in a maternity ward in the hospital?”
“Not as much as you might think. There’s a growing tradition around here of having babies at home. But yes, I’ve been in one a time or two.”
“Do you remember seeing pregnant women walking up and down the corridor?”
“I guess I have, now that you mention it.”
“Same idea with a horse. Sometimes just lying there isn’t the best plan. When a mare’s in labor, it can feel better for her if she’s able to move around. Isn’t that right, Dottie?”
The mare snorted.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Need another lap?”
Dottie paused by the stall door.
“Up to you.” Drake smiled and stroked the mare’s neck.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
He glanced over at Tracy and blinked. “What makes you say that?”
“You’re smiling, and you seem very relaxed and happy.”
“That’s partly your doing, sweetheart. And I could say the same about you.”
She blushed. “Point taken.”
“But you’re right. I am enjoying myself, now that you mention it. Which is interesting, because lately I’ve been asking myself if I should continue being a vet.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to be a vet? You’re obviously good at it.”
“I’m a decent vet.” He continued to stroke and scratch Dottie’s neck. “Not as gifted as my buddy Regan, but decent.”
What an interesting admission. She wondered if she could coax him to say more. “You must be excellent or he wouldn’t have left you in charge while he’s gone.”
“I’m fine for backup. But Regan’s understanding of horses is exceptional. I admit I envy that ability.” He glanced at her. “I can see the wheels turning.”
“So you’ll give up rather than compete with him?”
“No, nothing like that. Or I hope that wouldn’t be my reason. And if you’re dying to ask if my jealousy had something to do with what happened last Christmas...”
“It crossed my mind.”
“The answer is yes, probably, to some extent. But it’s not that simple.”
Tracy didn’t think so, either. She was about to ask another question when Dottie snorted even louder than before and stepped back into the stall.
“I think it might be showtime.” Drake led her over to the bed of straw and unsnapped the lead rope. Dottie carefully dropped to her knees and rolled to her side. Then she rolled back and forth, groaning.
“Is she okay?”
“I’m sure it hurts, but this is normal.” Drake unsnapped his cuffs and folded back his sleeves before putting on clear plastic gloves. “Poor girl. Bet you’ll be glad when this is over.” He stood back and gave Dottie plenty of room as she continued to grunt and roll.
Tracy hovered by the stall entrance. “Anything I can do?”
“My usual plan is to let nature take its course. If nature flakes out on me, then I’ll move in and help things along. But for now, we let Dottie do her thing.”
The mare finally stopped rolling and lay in the straw, her flanks heaving. Drake crouched down by her rump. He drew her tail aside and scooped away several handfuls of straw. “Here we go! Come on in here, Tracy. Get a better view.”
She crept closer, heart pounding. Drake had done this countless times, so he probably wasn’t the least bit worried. But she was the one who’d agreed to take this pregnant mare, and she desperately wanted everything to go well. She was torn between fascination with the process and the urge to bury her head in her arms until it was all over.
“See? Here come the forelegs.” Drake’s voice vibrated with excitement.
“Feet first?”
“If we’re lucky, and it looks as if we are.”
Sure enough, two sticks that apparently were legs emerged covered in what looked like a greased, semitransparent garbage bag. Tracy held her breath.
“There’s the nose. See it?”
Tracy leaned closer as a blunt, somewhat head-shaped form followed the spindly legs. “Yeah,” she murmured. “Come on, Dottie. You’re doing great.”
“She is. She’s pushing for all she’s worth, and...there...the body, the hind legs, and...we’re done!”
“What about that slimy thing?”
“We’ll see if Dottie wants to handle that part, too. The less interference from me, the better. Let’s give her a little more room.” Drake edged away a few feet and Tracy followed his example.
Dottie lay still for a moment, still breathing hard. Then she lifted her head and gazed down the length of her body.
“Your foal is right there, girl,” Drake crooned. “You did a mighty fine job. Want to finish up?”
As if she’d understood every word, Dottie maneuvered until she could lick the foal.
“Incredible.” Tracy watched as the little creature gradually was freed of its covering. “It looks like her!”
“It does, indeed.” Drake moved closer. “Will you let me take care of the cord, sweetie? That’s a good girl.” He handled the job with brisk efficiency and then checked between the foal’s legs. “Colt.”
“A son. Dottie has a son.” Tracy couldn’t help thinking of how proud Jerry Rankin would be. She’d make it her job to track him down. He should at least have visiting privileges.
Drake gathered up his instruments. “Glad I didn’t have to use most of these. When everything goes according to plan, I don’t. This birth was pure pleasure.”
“I’m glad, for many reasons.” Tracy straightened. “And I don’t know what I would have done without you here. The minute she started rolling around, I’d have been beside myself.”
He shrugged. “You would have called the guy from Jackson.”
“And he would have taken a good hour to get here. By then it would have been all over. Even if it had gone well, I wouldn’t have known whether it was going well or not. I would have been a basket case.” She gazed at him. “Minimize your contribution if you must, but I won’t.”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “You sound serious about that.”
“I am.” She didn’t return his smile. “You rode in here like a knight in shining armor and saved the day. I’m incredibly grateful that you did, and I’m prepared to let people around here know that they’ve judged you unfairly.”
“Whoa, whoa! You’re going to start a campaign to get the residents of this town to like me? That would be embarrassing as hell. Don’t you dare.”
“I’ll be subtle about it.”
“I don’t know how subtle you can be once they figure out we spent the night together.”
She frowned. “You make that sound as if you’re leaving after tonight.”
“For your sake, I probably should. Maybe we can convince everyone I was only here for the birth of the foal and we were too busy taking care of that to get horizontal.”
“I don’t care if they know we got horizontal, although technically, that hasn’t happened yet. I’m still hoping.”
He chuckled and glanced up at the rafters. “Oh, Tracy. You do have a way about you.”
“You, too. And a killer accent.”
His green eyes danced as he met her gaze. “And you accuse me of being c
harming. If you keep making remarks like that, you’ll make it impossible for me to resist you.”
“Booya!”
“Tracy...” He laughed and shook his head.
“And I do want to set people straight about you. I wish they could have seen you tonight with Dottie. These are horse people, Drake. They’d respect the way you dealt with her, how patient you’ve been the whole time. It would go a long way toward repairing the damage. Please don’t tell me I can’t mention what you’ve done here tonight.”
His eyebrows lifted. “All of what I’ve done?”
“No, of course not. The vet part. Not the action on the hay bale. That’s our business.”
“Good luck with that. Apparently you’ve forgotten that I have a reputation around these parts, and everyone will assume I won you over with lots of good sex, and that’s the only reason you’ve become my biggest fan all of a sudden.”
“But I seduced you.”
“Are you going to tell them that?”
She had to admit that didn’t sound like a good idea. “I’d like to keep sex out of the discussion. This is about you getting a fair shake in this town because you’re not the villain everyone thinks you are.”
“They know Regan has forgiven me, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
He spread his arms. “There you go. They know the wronged party has moved past the incident, but that doesn’t matter. They think Regan is going too easy on me.” He paused. “You thought so.”
“I know, but that was before—”
“Tracy, it’s a wonderful impulse, but I don’t think having you sing my praises is going to help, especially because you’re the town sweetheart and they’ll assume I’ve despoiled you.”
“Despoiled? Who uses that word anymore?”
“Me. It’s one of my closely guarded secrets. I actually liked my English classes. I dug Shakespeare and even thought the sonnets were cool. I, um, have been known to write my own poetry. Which no one has ever seen, by the way.” He peered at her as if he’d just confessed to occasionally committing murder.
She was stunned, both by the fact he was a closet romantic and that he’d never revealed it before. “No one?”
“Nope.”
“Where do you keep it?”
“I have some journals in the cabin.”
“Would you...let me read them?”
He gazed at her for a long time. “I don’t know. Maybe. Let me think about it.”
“Okay.” At least he hadn’t flatly refused.
He broke eye contact and turned his attention to Dottie and her foal. “You know, if we’re not careful, we’ll miss the magic when the little guy first gets to his feet.”
She took her cue. He was through delving into his most personal issues for now. “Can’t have that! I specifically brought my phone to record it.”
“Then get ready, because his momma’s looking to get up, and once she does, she’ll coax her son to do the same.”
Tracy focused her lens on the foal. “He seems so fragile. Can he really stand on those legs?”
“He has to if he wants to eat, and believe you me, he wants to eat. That’ll be his primary goal for quite a while. It’s the way everything’s set up. Foals have to stand to eat, which in the wild means they’ll soon be ready to run if a predator comes along.”
“I’m glad that won’t be a problem for Sprinkles.”
“Sprinkles? Is that his name?”
“I think it is.” She held the phone steady and snapped a couple of shots of the foal lying in the straw. “He looks like vanilla ice cream with sprinkles.”
“So he does.” Drake sounded amused.
“But you have a vote. If you have a name to propose, go right ahead. Without you, he might not even be here.”
“I like Sprinkles. Do you think we need to give Regan and Lily a vote?”
“Maybe, but let’s not. Let’s just announce that his name is Sprinkles. We were here at the critical moment, so I think that gives us naming privileges.” As she gazed at her phone’s screen, Dottie’s nose appeared. She nudged the foal. “Is this it?”
“This is it.” Drake came to stand next to her. “You’ll text these to me, right?”
“You bet.” She took shot after shot as Dottie coaxed her wobbly foal to test those toothpick legs against the pull of gravity.
She didn’t realize she was cheering softly until Drake joined in. They stood there like a couple of proud parents urging a toddler to walk. When he was finally standing on those impossibly long legs, they both uttered a muted cheer, one guaranteed not to startle the little guy and cause him to lose his balance.
Tracy got a few more shots of Sprinkles nursing before she turned off her camera. “So sweet. Should we give them some privacy?”
“Not quite yet. I have to stick around and make sure Dottie passes the placenta, but if you’re tired, go on back up to the house.”
She shook her head. “If you’re staying, I’m staying.”
“It won’t be very interesting from here on out. The drama is over.”
“I’ll get to be with you, right?”
“Yes, but I won’t be a lot of fun. I need to monitor these two and make sure everything’s fine, so if you brought another condom down, I wouldn’t be able to—”
“Are you suggesting that all I can think about when I’m with you is sex?”
He gave her a lazy grin. “Just for the record, I wouldn’t blame you for that. It’s quite a compliment, when you stop to think about it.”
“Well, just for the record, I would love to stay down here and talk with you, even if we can’t have sex.”
He met her gaze. “That’s an even bigger compliment. Thank you, Tracy.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll go get the blanket and make us a nice place to sit. And then we can discuss why you’re considering giving up your profession.”
He groaned at that, but she ignored him. Drake Brewster needed to exorcise his demons, and she was just the person to help him do it.
9
DRAKE HAD GROANED partly because he thought Tracy expected him to. Secretly he was relieved to have someone willing to discuss what he should do with his life. The men in his family weren’t supposed to have doubts, and if they did, they knocked back a few shots of bourbon and forgot about their worries. As the only son of a man who’d always been cloaked in absolute certainty, Drake had never felt free to be unsure.
While he examined mother and foal for any signs of stress, Tracy arranged their seating. He came out to discover she’d doubled the blanket and laid it alongside the outer wall of the stall. She sat on one side of it, her arms wrapped around her bent knees.
She freed one hand to pat the spot next to her. “Take a load off, cowboy.”
“I love having you call me that.” He dropped down beside her and sat cross-legged. “But much as I like it, I don’t qualify.”
“Sure you do.” She glanced over at him. “You know your way around horses and you look good in the clothes. You’ll pass.”
The woman sure could make him laugh. “But I can’t twirl a rope and I’ve never ridden in a Western saddle. Just English.”
“We can fix that tomorrow.” She picked up her phone and looked at the time. “Or more accurately, today. But you are missing one critical component of cowboyness.”
“I’m probably missing several, but what one are you thinking about?” Feet in front of him, he relaxed against the wooden wall behind them. Tonight he’d made love to a woman and watched over the delivery of a healthy foal. Good stuff.
“You don’t have a hat. Or if you do, I’ve never seen it on you.”
He turned his head to look at her. She looked right back, her dark eyes warm, her expression open and accepting. That m
ade him feel like a million bucks. “You’re right. I don’t own a cowboy hat.”
“Why not?”
He couldn’t help smiling. She was so damned cute. She’d put her hair back in its ponytail, probably so it wouldn’t be in her way during the foaling. “I thought we were going to discuss my next career move.”
“We can in a minute, but I’m curious about the hat thing. I’ve watched plenty of folks come out to this part of the world, and if they like it here, they usually pick up a hat, even if they’re not planning to stay. You haven’t bought one.”
“I guess it’s a fair question.” He savored the feeling of being able to talk to her without worrying what she’d think. “I believe a hat signifies something important, and as I said, I don’t qualify.”
She took some time to absorb that. “Regan would probably teach you to rope, and two of these horses need to be ridden, so you could check that box fairly easily, too.”
“I hadn’t thought of asking Regan to teach me roping. Might be fun.”
“Then you could get a hat.”
Resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes, he thought about it, but even if he learned to throw a rope and spent some time in a Western saddle, he still couldn’t picture himself wearing the hat. “Don’t think so. A baseball cap is all I need.”
“A cowboy hat is more practical. It shades your eyes and the back of your head. Plus it looks really cool.”
“I know, but...” He tried to identify where his resistance came from, because she was right about the practical side of a Western hat. When it suddenly hit him, he sucked in a breath. Yeah, that was it.
“What?”
“When I was a kid, I liked cowboy movies. I even watched the old ones on cable, the ones where you could tell the good guys because they wore the white hats.”
She didn’t say anything, but her hand found his. She interlaced their fingers and held on.
“I admired everything about those guys. They were champions of the weak, they were honest to a fault, and...loyal to their friends.” It physically hurt his throat to say that last part, but he forced himself.
She squeezed his hand.
“I don’t deserve to wear that hat, Tracy.” When he felt her move and let go of his hand, he opened his eyes.
Riding Hard Page 9