The Valentine Two-Step

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “You can stop looking at me like that,”

  Ellie said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re feeling sorry for the poor little foster girl playing make-believe. I did just fine.”

  “I never said otherwise,” Matt said gruffly.

  “You didn’t have to say a word. I can see what you’re thinking clear as day. I’ve seen pity plenty of times. But I’ve done just fine,” Ellie insisted, lifting her chin. “And I don’t care what you think about me, Harte.”

  “Good. Then it won’t bother you when I tell you I think about you all the time. Or,” he finished quietly, “when I tell you that I think you’re just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen standing in my barn.”

  Ellie’s jaw sagged open, and she stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “Close your mouth, Doc,” he murmured wryly.

  She snapped it shut, knowing exactly what he was going to do….

  The Valentine Two-Step

  RAEANNE THAYNE

  Books by RaeAnne Thayne

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom #960

  Saving Grace #995

  Renegade Father #1062

  *The Valentine Two-Step #1133

  RAEANNE THAYNE

  lives in a crumbling old Victorian house in northern Utah with her husband and two young children. She loves being able to write surrounded by rugged mountains and real cowboys.

  To Lyndsey Thomas, for saving my life and my sanity more times than I can count!

  Special thanks to Dr. Ronald Hamm, D.V.M., animal healer extraordinaire, for sharing so generously of his expertise.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Prologue

  “It’s absolutely perfect.” Dylan Webster held her hands out imploringly to her best friend, Lucy Harte. “Don’t you see? It’s the only way!”

  Lucy frowned in that serious way of hers, her gray eyes troubled. In the dim, dusty light inside their secret place—a hollowed-out hideaway behind the stacked hay bales of the Diamond Harte barn loft—her forehead looked all wrinkly. Kind of like a shar-pei puppy Dylan had seen once at her mom’s office back in California.

  “I don’t know…” she began.

  “Come on, Luce. You said it yourself. We should have been sisters, not just best friends. We were born on exactly the same day, we both love horses and despise long division and we both want to be vets like my mom when we grow up, right?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “If my mom married your dad, we really would be sisters. It would be like having a sleepover all the time. I could ride the school bus with you and everything, and I just know my mom would let me have my own horse if we lived out here on the ranch.”

  Lucy nibbled her lip. “But, Dylan…”

  “You want a mom of your own as much as I want a dad, don’t you? Even though you have your aunt Cassie to look after you, it’s not the same. You know it’s not.”

  It was exactly the right button to push, and she knew it. Before her very eyes, Lucy sighed, and her expression went all dreamy. Dylan felt a little pinch of guilt at using her best friend’s most cherished dream to her own advantage, but she worked hard to ignore it.

  Her plan would never work if she couldn’t convince Lucy how brilliant it was. Both of them had to be one-hundred-percent behind it. “We’d be sisters, Luce,” she said. “Sisters for real. Wouldn’t it be awesome?”

  “Sisters.” Lucy burrowed deeper into the hay, her gray eyes closed as if, like Dylan, she was imagining family vacations and noisy Christmas mornings and never again having to miss a daddy-daughter party at school. Or in Lucy’s case, a mother-daughter party.

  “It would be awesome.” That shar-pei look suddenly came back to her forehead, and she sat up. “But Dylan, why would they ever get married? I don’t think they even like each other very much.”

  “Who?”

  “My dad and your mom.”

  Doubt came galloping back like one of Lucy’s dad’s horses after a stray dogie. Lucy was absolutely right. They didn’t like each other much. Just the other day, she heard her mom tell SueAnn that Matt Harte was a stubborn old man in a younger man’s body.

  “But what a body it is,” her mom’s assistant at the clinic had replied, with a rumbly laugh like grown-ups make when they’re talking about sexy stuff. “Matt Harte and his brother have always been the most gorgeous men in town.”

  Her mom had laughed, too, and she’d even turned a little bit pink, like a strawberry shake. “Shame on you. You’re a happily married woman, Sue.”

  “Married doesn’t mean dead. Or crazy, for that matter.”

  Her mom had scrunched up her face. “Even if he is…attractive…in a macho kind of way, a great body doesn’t make up for having the personality of an ornery bull.”

  Dylan winced, remembering. Okay, so Lucy’s dad and her mom hadn’t exactly gotten along since the Websters moved to Star Valley. Still, her mom thought he was good-looking and had a great body. That had to count for something.

  Dylan gave Lucy what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “They just haven’t had a chance to get to know each other.”

  Lucy looked doubtful. “My dad told Aunt Cassie just last week he wouldn’t let that city quack near any of his livestock. I think he meant your mom.”

  Dylan narrowed her eyes. “My mom’s not a quack.”

  “I know she’s not. I think your mom’s just about the greatest vet around. I’m only telling you what he said.”

  “We just have to change his mind. We have to figure out some way to push them together. Once they get to know each other, they’ll have to see that they belong together.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  Dylan blew out a breath that made her auburn bangs flutter. Lucy was the best friend anybody could ask for—the best friend she’d ever had. These last three months since they’d moved here had been so great. Staying overnight at the ranch, riding Lucy’s horses, trading secrets and dreams here behind the hay bales.

  They were beyond best, best, best friends, and Dylan loved her to death, but sometimes Lucy worried too much. Like about spelling tests and missing the bus and letting her desk get too messy.

  She just had to convince her the idea would work. It would be so totally cool if they could pull this off. She wanted a dad in the worst way, and she figured Matt Harte—with his big hands and slow smile and kind eyes—would be absolutely perfect. Having Lucy for a sister would be like the biggest bonus she could think of.

  Dylan would just have to try harder.

  “It’s going to work. Trust me. I know it’s going to work.” She grabbed Lucy’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Before you know it, we’ll be walking down the aisle wearing flowers in our hair and me and my mom will be living here all the time. See, I have this plan….”

  Chapter 1

  “They did what?”

  Ellie Webster and the big, gruff rancher seated beside her spoke in unison. She spared a glance at Matt Harte and saw he looked like he’d just been smacked upside the head with a two-by-four.

  “Oh, dear. I was afraid of this.” Sarah McKenzie gave a tiny, apologetic smile to both of them.

  With her long blond hair and soft, wary brown eyes, her da
ughter’s teacher always made Ellie think of a skittish palomino colt, ready to lunge away at the first provocation. Now, though, she was effectively hobbled into place behind her big wooden schoolteacher’s desk. “You’re telling me you both didn’t agree to serve on the committee for the Valentine’s Day carnival?”

  “Hell no.” Matt Harte looked completely horrified by the very idea of volunteering for a Valentine’s Day carnival committee—as astonished as Ellie imagined he’d be if Ms. McKenzie had just asked him to stick one of her perfectly sharpened number-two pencils in his eye.

  “I’ve never even heard of the Valentine’s Day carnival until just now,” Ellie offered.

  “Well, this does present a problem.” Ms. McKenzie folded her hands together on top of what looked like a grade book, slim and black and ominous.

  Ellie had always hated those grade books.

  Despite the fact that she couldn’t imagine any two people being more different, Ellie had a brief, unpleasant image of her own fourth-grade teacher. Prissy mouth, hair scraped back into a tight bun. Complete intolerance for a scared little girl who hid her bewildered loneliness behind defiant anger.

  She pushed the unwelcome image aside.

  “The girls told me you both would cochair the committee,” the teacher said. “They were most insistent that you wanted to do it.”

  “You’ve got to be joking. They said we wanted to do it? I don’t know where the he—heck Lucy could have come up with such a harebrained idea.” Matt Harte sent one brief, disparaging glare in Ellie’s direction, and she stiffened. She could just imagine what he was thinking. If my perfect little Lucy has a harebrained idea in her perfect little head, it must have come from you and your flighty daughter, with your wacky California ways.

  He had made it perfectly clear he couldn’t understand the instant bond their two daughters had formed when she and Dylan moved here at the beginning of the school year three months earlier. He had also made no secret of the fact that he didn’t trust her or her veterinary methods anywhere near his stock.

  The really depressing thing was, Harte’s attitude seemed to be the rule, not the exception, among the local ranching community. After three months, she was no closer to breaking into their tight circle than she’d been that very first day.

  “It does seem odd,” Ms. McKenzie said, and Ellie chided herself for letting her mind wander.

  Right now she needed to concentrate on Dylan and this latest scrape her daughter had found herself in. Not on the past or on the big, ugly pile of bills that needed to be paid, regardless of whether or not she had any patients.

  “I thought it was rather out of character for both of you,” the quiet, pretty teacher went on. “That’s why I called you both and asked you to come in this evening, so we all could try to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Why would they lie about it?” Ellie asked. “I don’t understand why on earth the girls would say we volunteered for something I’ve never even heard of before now.”

  The teacher shifted toward her and shrugged her shoulders inside her lacy white blouse. She made the motion look so delicate and airy that Ellie felt about as feminine as a teamster in her work jeans and flannel shirt.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “I was hoping you could shed some light on it.”

  “You sure it was our girls who signed up?”

  Ms. McKenzie turned to the rancher with a small smile. “Absolutely positive. I don’t think I could possibly mix that pair up with any of my other students.”

  “Well, there’s obviously been a mistake,” Matt said gruffly.

  Ms. McKenzie was silent for a few moments, then she sighed. “That’s what I was afraid you would say. Still, the fact remains that I need two parents to cochair the committee, and your daughters obviously want you to do it. Would the two of you at least consider it?”

  The rancher snorted. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “I don’t think so,” the teacher answered gently, as if chiding a wayward student, and Ellie wondered how she could appear to be so completely immune to the potent impact of Matt Harte.

  Even with that aggravated frown over this latest scheme their daughters had cooked up, he radiated raw male appeal, with rugged, hard-hewn features, piercing blue eyes and broad shoulders. Ellie couldn’t even sit next to him without feeling the power in those leashed muscles.

  But Sarah McKenzie appeared oblivious to it. She treated him with the same patience and kindness she showed the fourth graders in her class.

  “I think you’d both do a wonderful job,” the teacher continued. “Since this is my first year at the school, I haven’t been to the carnival myself but I understand attendance has substantially dropped off the last two years. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what a problem this is.”

  “No,” the rancher said solemnly, and Ellie fought the urge to raise her hand and ask somebody to explain the gravity of the situation to her. It certainly didn’t seem like a big deal to her that some of the good people of Salt River decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day somewhere other than the elementary school gymnasium. Come to think of it, so far most of the people she’d met in Salt River didn’t seem the types to celebrate Valentine’s Day at all.

  “This is a really important fund-raiser,” Ms. McKenzie said. “All the money goes to the school library, which is desperately in need of new books. We need to do something to generate more interest in the carnival, infuse it with fresh ideas. New blood, if you will. I think the two of you are just the ones to do that.”

  There was silence for a moment, then the rancher sat forward, that frown still marring his handsome features. “I’m sorry, Miz McKenzie. I’d like to help you out, honest. I’m all in favor of getting more books for the library and I’d be happy to give you a sizable donation if that will help at all. But I’m way out of my league here. I wouldn’t know the first thing about putting together something like that.”

  “I’m afraid this sort of thing isn’t exactly my strong point, either,” Ellie admitted, which was a bit like saying the nearby Teton Mountain Range had a couple of pretty little hills.

  “Whatever their reasons, it seemed very important to your daughters that you help.” She shifted toward Matt again. “Mr. Harte, has Lucy ever asked you to volunteer for anything in school before? Reading time, lunch duty, anything?”

  The rancher’s frown deepened. “No,” he finally answered the teacher. “Not that I can think of.”

  “All of her previous teachers describe Lucy as a shy mouse of a girl who spoke in whispers and broke into tears if they called on her. I have to tell you, that is not the same girl I’ve come to know this year.”

  “No?”

  “Since Dylan’s arrival, Lucy participates much more in class. She is a sweet little girl with a wonderfully creative mind.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “Very good. But despite the improvements, Lucy still seems to prefer staying in the background. She rarely ventures an opinion of her own. I think it would be wonderful for her to help plan the carnival under your supervision. It might even provide her some of the confidence she still seems to be lacking.”

  “I’m a very busy man, Miz McKenzie—”

  “I understand that. And I know Dr. Webster is also very busy trying to establish her practice here in Star Valley.”

  You don’t know the half of it, Ellie thought grimly.

  “But I think it would help both girls. Dylan, as well,” the teacher said, shifting toward her. “I’ve spoken with you before with some of my concerns about your daughter. She’s a very bright girl and a natural leader among the other children, but she hasn’t shown much enthusiasm for anything in the classroom until now.”

  The teacher paused, her hands still folded serenely on her desk, and gave them both a steady look that had Ellie squirming just like she’d been caught chewing gum in class. “It’s obvious neither of you wants to do this. I certainly understand your sentiments. But I have to tell you, I
would recommend you would put your own misgivings aside and think instead about your daughters and what they want.”

  Oh, she was good. Pour on the parental guilt, sister. Gets ’em every time.

  Out of the corner of her gaze Ellie could see Harte fighting through the same internal struggle.

  How could she possibly do this? The last thing on earth she wanted was to be saddled with the responsibility for planning a Valentine’s Day carnival. Valentine’s Day, for heaven’s sake. A time for sweethearts and romance, hearts and flowers. Things she had absolutely no experience with.

  Beyond that, right now she was so busy trying to salvage her floundering practice that she had no time for anything but falling into her bed at the end of the day.

  Still, Dylan wanted her to do this. For whatever reasons, this was important to her daughter. Ellie had already uprooted her from the only life she’d known to bring her here, to an alien world of wide-open spaces and steep, imposing mountains.

  If being involved in this stupid carnival would make Dylan happy, didn’t she owe it to her to try?

  And maybe, just maybe, a selfish little voice whispered, this might just be the ticket to help you pile drive your way into the closed circle that is the Star Valley community.

  If she could show the other parents she was willing to volunteer to help out the school, they might begin to accept her into their ranks. Lord knows, she had to do something or she would end up being the proud owner of the only veterinary practice in Wyoming without a single patient to its name.

  “I suppose I’m game,” she said, before she could talk herself out of it. “What about you, Harte?”

  “It’s a Valentine’s Day carnival. What the hell do I know about Valentine’s Day?”