But he had trusted her. Had let himself begin to care for her. He had given her a chance despite his instincts to the contrary, and she had violated that trust by passing on a potentially deadly illness to six of his animals.
He refused to look at her, knowing he would weaken when he saw the hurt in her eyes. He was a fool when it came to women. An absolute idiot. First Melanie with her needy eyes and her lying tongue and now Ellie with her sweet-faced innocence.
She had suckered him into completely forgetting his responsibilities—that the ranch came first, not pretty red-haired veterinarians. He was thirty-six years old and he damn well should have known better.
“That’s your decision, of course,” she said quietly after a moment, her voice as thin and brittle as old glass. “I certainly understand. You have to do what you think is right for your animals. Goodbye, Matt.”
She walked out of the barn, her shoulders stiff with dignity. He watched her go for only a moment, then turned to his horses.
What was she doing?
Hours later, Ellie navigated the winding road to the Diamond Harte while the wipers struggled to keep the windshield clear of the thick, wet snow sloshing steadily down.
She should be home in bed on a snowy night like tonight, curled into herself and weeping for the loss of a reputation she had spent five months trying to establish in Salt River. A reputation that had crumbled like dry leaves in one miserable afternoon.
That’s what she wanted to be doing, wallowing in a good, old-fashioned pity party. Instead, here she was at nearly midnight, her stomach a ball of nerves and the steering wheel slipping through her sweat-slicked hands.
Matt would be furious if he found her sneaking onto the Diamond Harte in the middle of the night. The way he had spoken to her earlier, she wouldn’t be surprised if he called his brother to haul her off to jail.
But despite his order to stay away, she knew she needed to do this. Cassie had tried to reassure her that the horses’ conditions had improved when Ellie called earlier in the evening, but it wasn’t good enough. She would never be able to sleep until she could be sure the animals would pull through.
She couldn’t believe this was happening, that in a single afternoon her whole world could shatter apart like a rickety fence in a strong wind.
Matt’s horses had only been the first to fall ill. By mid-afternoon, she’d received calls from the three other ranches she’d visited the day before reporting that all the horses she had seen in the last forty-eight hours had come down with the same mysterious symptoms.
She’d done her best for the afflicted animals, treating them with high dosages of penicillin while she struggled exhaustively to convince the ranchers to continue allowing her to treat their stock.
And to convince herself this couldn’t be her fault.
The evidence was mounting, though. And damning. It did indeed look like staph infection, centered near the entry marks where she had treated each horse with acupuncture the day before.
How could this be happening? She was so careful. Washing her hands twice as long as recommended, using only sterile needles from a reputable supplier.
Maybe she’d gotten a bad batch somehow, but she couldn’t imagine how that was possible. Each needle came wrapped in a sterile package and was used only once.
The same questions had been racing themselves around and around in her head until she was dizzy from them, but she was no closer to figuring out how such a nightmare could have occurred.
Hard to believe the day before she’d felt on top of the world, had finally begun to think she had actually found a place she could belong here in Salt River.
All her dreams of making a stable, safe, fulfilling life for Dylan and for herself were falling apart. When this was over, she was very much afraid she would be lucky to find a job selling dog food, let alone continue practicing veterinary medicine anywhere in western Wyoming.
Every time she thought about the future, all she could focus on was this sick, greasy fear that she would have to sell the practice at a huge loss and go back to California and face all the smug people who would be so ready with I-told-you-so’s.
She would have to leave the people she had come to care about here. SueAnn. Sarah McKenzie. Cassie Harte.
Matt.
Her chest hurt whenever she thought about him, about the way he had looked at her earlier in the day. With contempt and repugnance, like she was something messy and disgusting stuck to the heel of his boot.
He shouldn’t have had the power to wound her so deeply with only a look, and it scared her to death that he could. How had she come to care for him—for his opinion of her—so much?
He should mean nothing more to her than the rest of her clients. Only another rancher paying her to keep his horses healthy, that’s all. So why couldn’t she convince her heart?
The pickup’s old tires slid suddenly on a patch of black ice hidden beneath the few inches of snow covering the road, and panic skittered through her for the few seconds it took the truck to find traction again. When it did, she blew out a breath and pushed away thoughts of Matt Harte and his chilling contempt for her. She needed to concentrate on the road, not on the disaster her life had turned into.
At the ranch, she pulled to the back of the horse barn, grateful it was far enough from the house that she could sneak in undetected. She climbed out of the truck on bones that felt brittle and achy and crunched through the ankle-deep snow to the door.
Inside, the horse barn was dark except for a low light burning near the far end where, she supposed, the sick mares were being kept. She made her way down the long row of stalls and was about halfway there when a broad-shouldered figure stepped out of the darkness and into the small circle of light.
Chapter 11
Matt.
Her heart stuttered in her chest, and for a moment she forgot to breathe, caught between a wild urge to turn around and run for the door in disgrace and a stubborn determination to stand her ground.
His little brindle-colored cow dog gave one sharp bark, then jumped up to greet her, tail wagging cheerfully. Ellie reached down and gave her a little pat, grateful at least somebody was happy to see her.
“Zoe, heel,” he ordered.
With a sympathetic look in her brown eyes, the dog obeyed, slinking back to curl up at his feet once more.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Maybe it was wishful thinking on her part, but she could almost believe he sounded more resigned than angry to find her sneaking into his barn. At least he didn’t sound quite ready to call the cops on her. That gave her enough courage to creep a few steps closer to that welcoming circle of light.
Behind him, she caught sight of a canvas cot and a rumpled sleeping bag. Matt had surrendered the comfort of his warm bed to stay the night in a musty old barn where he could be near his ailing horses.
The hard, painful casing around her heart began to crack a little, and she pressed a hand to her chest, inexplicably moved by this further evidence of what a good, caring man he was.
“Doc?” he prompted. “What are you doing here?”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I know you told me to stay away, but I couldn’t. I…I just wanted to check on them.”
“Cass said you called. Didn’t you believe her when she told you the antibiotics seemed to be working?”
Heat crawled up her cheeks despite the chill of the barn. “I did. I just had to see for myself. I’m sorry. I know I have no right to be here. Not anymore. I won’t touch them, I swear. Just look.”
His jaw flexed but he didn’t say anything and she took that as tacit permission. Turning her back on him, she slowly walked the way she had come, down the long line of stalls, giving each animal a visual exam.
As Cassie had reported, the infection seemed to have run its course. At least their symptoms seemed to have improved. Relief gushed over her, and she had to swallow hard against the choking tears that threatened.
“Delilah s
eems to have been hit worst,” Matt said just behind her, so close his breath rippled across her cheek. “She’s still running a fever but it’s dropped quite a bit from earlier.”
Trying fiercely to ignore the prickles of awareness as he invaded her space, she followed the direction of his gaze to the dappled gray. “What are you putting on that abscess on her flank?”
He told her and she nodded. “Good. That should take care of it.”
“Now that you mention it, it’s probably time for another application.” He picked up a small container of salve from the top rail of the fence and entered the stall.
Speaking softly to the horse, he rubbed the mixture on to the painful-looking sore, and Ellie watched, feeling useless. She hated this, being sidelined into the role of observer instead of being able to do something. It went against her nature to simply stand here and watch.
He finished quickly and crossed to the sink to wash his hands. An awkward silence descended between them, broken only by the soft rustling of hay. Matt was the first to break it. “How are all the other horses faring?” he asked.
“You know about the others?” Why did she feel this deep, ugly shame when she knew in her heart none of this could be her fault?
He nodded. “Nichols told me. Three other ranches, a dozen horses in all including my six.”
She had to fight the urge to press her hand against her roiling stomach at the stark statistics. “Just call me Typhoid Mary.”
To her surprise, instead of the disdain she expected to see, his eyes darkened with sympathy. “So how are they?” he asked.
“I lost one.” Her voice strained as she tried to sound brisk and unaffected. “One of Bob Meyers’s quarter horses. She was old and sickly anyway from an upper respiratory illness and just wasn’t strong enough to fight off the infection, even after antibiotics.”
Despite her best efforts, she could feel her chin wobble a little and she tightened her lips together to make it stop.
The blasted man never did as she expected. Instead of showing her scorn, he reached a hand out to give her shoulder a comforting squeeze, making her chin quiver even more.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
She let herself lean in to his strength for just a moment then subtly eased away. “I don’t know what happened, Matt. I am so careful. Obsessively so. I always double scrub. Maybe I got a bad shipment of needles or something. I just don’t know.”
“It’s eating you up inside, isn’t it?”
“I became a vet to heal. And look what I’ve done!”
His fingers brushed her shoulder again. “You can’t beat yourself up about it for the rest of your life.”
He was silent for a moment, then sent her a sidelong glance. “I said some pretty nasty things to you earlier. Treated you a lot worse than you deserved. I’m sorry for that.”
His brusquely worded apology fired straight to her heart. “You were worried about your horses.”
“I was, but I still shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. I apologize.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. You had every right to be upset—I would have been if they were my horses. I understand completely that you want to bring Steve back on-board. He seems to have handled the situation exactly right.”
He shrugged. “Well, they all seem to be doing okay now. Mystic was the one I was most worried about, but she was eating fine tonight, and neither she or her foal seem to be suffering any ill effects.”
Something in what he said briefly caught her attention, like a wrong note in a piano concerto. Before she could isolate it, he continued. “As for the others, I think we’re out of the danger zone.”
“But you decided to stay the night out here anyway.”
He shrugged. It might have been a trick of the low lighting, but she could swear she saw color climbing up his cheeks. “It seemed like a good idea, just to be on the safe side.”
“Well, I’m sorry I woke you.”
“You didn’t. I was just reading.”
She looked over his shoulder and saw a well-worn copy of Owen Wister’s The Virginian lying spine up on the army-green blanket covering the cot. “Apparently your father was not the only one interested in the Old West.”
A wry smile touched his lips. “It’s a classic, what can I say? The father of all Westerns.”
She could drown in that smile, the way it creased at the edges of his mouth and softened his eyes and made him look years younger. She could stay here forever, just gazing at it….
“Wait a minute.” The jarring note from before pounded louder in her head. “Wait a minute. Did you say Mystic was sick, too?”
He nodded and pointed to the stall behind them. Dust motes floated on the air, tiny gold flakes in the low light. Through them she could see the little mare asleep in the stall.
The implications exploded through her, and she rushed to the stall for a better look. “I didn’t treat her yesterday!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you remember? I was going to. She was on my schedule. But I ran out of time and planned to come back later when I could spend more time with her.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Don’t you get it? If Mystic came down with the same thing the others had, it can’t be because of me, because of any staph infection I might have introduced through unsanitary needles, like Steve implied. I didn’t even touch her yesterday!”
He frowned. “You did a few weeks ago.”
“So why didn’t she show symptoms of illness much earlier than yesterday, when all the other horses became sick?”
“Maybe it was some delayed reaction on her part. Just took it longer to hit her.”
“No. That doesn’t make sense. I’ve been through at least two boxes of needles since then. They couldn’t have all been bad, or every single one of my patients would have the same illness. Don’t you see? Something else caused this, not me!”
She wasn’t thinking, caught up only in the exhilaration—this vast, consuming relief to realize she hadn’t unknowingly released some deadly plague on her patients. If her brain had been functioning like it should have been, she certainly would never have thrown her arms around Matt in jubilation.
She only hugged him for a moment. As soon as reality intruded—when she felt the soft caress of his chamois shirt against her cheek and smelled the clean, male scent of him—she froze, mortified at her impulsiveness. Awareness began as a flutter in her stomach, a hitch in her breathing.
“Sorry,” she mumbled and pulled away.
He stood awkwardly, arms still stiff at his sides, then moved to rest his elbows on the top rail of Mystic’s stall to keep from reaching for her again. “We’ve still got twelve sick animals here, then. Any ideas why?”
“No. Nothing.” She frowned. “Steve’s right, it has all the signs of a bacterial infection, but it’s like no other I’ve ever seen before. And how could it spread from your ranch to the rest that have been hit, unless by something I did? I seem to be the only common link.”
“Maybe you tracked something on your boots somehow.”
“I don’t know of anything that could be this virulent in that kind of trace amount. And what about the abscesses?”
He had no more answers than she did, so he remained silent. After a long moment, she sighed. “The grim reality is, we might never know. I’ll get some bloodwork done and send the rest of the needles from the same box to the lab and see what turns up. Who knows. We might get lucky and they can identify something we haven’t even thought about. Something that’s not even related to me.”
“I hope so,” he said gruffly.
He wasn’t sure when the anger that had driven him all afternoon had begun to mellow, but eventually his common sense had won out. Even if she had spread the infection, he had no doubt it was accidental, something beyond her control.
She was a good vet who cared about her patients. She would never knowingly cause them harm.
“I really hope for your sake everyt
hing turns up clean,” he said quietly.
She flashed him another one of those watery smiles that hid a wealth of emotions. This had to be killing her. It would be tough on any vet, but especially for one as passionate and dedicated as Ellie.
“Thanks.” After a moment, she let out a deep breath. “It’s late. I should go so you can get back to your book.”
She didn’t look very thrilled at the idea. Truth be told, she didn’t look at all eager to walk out into the mucky snow. She looked lonely.
“Where’s Dylan tonight?” he asked.
“At SueAnn’s. I was afraid I’d get called out in the middle of the night to one of the other ranches and would have to leave her home alone. I really hate doing that, so Sue offered to take her for the night.”
“You have no reason to rush off, then?”
She blinked. “No. Why?”
“You could stay. Keep me company.”
Where the hell did that come from? He wanted to swallow the words as soon as they left his mouth, but it was too late now. She was already looking at him, as astounded as if he’d just offered to give her a makeover or something.
“You…you really want my company after today?”
The doubt in her voice just about did him in. He was such a pushover for a woman in distress. She only had to look at him out of those big, wounded eyes and he was lost, consumed with the need to take care of her—to relieve that tension from her shoulders, to tease a laugh or two out of her, to make her forget her troubles for a moment.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Come on. Sit down.”
Still looking as wary as if she had just crawled in to a wolverine’s den, she unzipped her coat and shrugged out of it. Underneath, she wore a daisy-yellow turtleneck covered by a fluffy navy polar fleece vest.
She looked young and fresh and sweet, and he suddenly realized what a disastrous error in judgment he had just committed. Why hadn’t he shoved her out the door when he had the chance?
The Valentine Two-Step Page 13