A Cold Creek Noel

by RaeAnne Thayne

“I can help you back here. I’ve...had some training and I often helped Doc Harris. I actually worked here when I was a teenager.”

  If her life had gone a little more according to plan, she might have been the one taking over Doc Harris’s clinic, though she hoped she wouldn’t be as surly and unlikable as this new veterinarian.

  “That won’t be necessary.” Dr. Caldwell dismissed all her hopes and dreams and volunteer work at the clinic as if they meant nothing. “Joni and I can handle it. If you insist on waiting, you can go ahead and have a seat in the waiting room.”

  What a jerk. She could push the matter. She was paying for the treatment here, after all. If she wanted to stay with her dog, there was nothing Dr. Ben No-Bedside-Manner Caldwell could do about it. But she didn’t want to waste time and possibly jeopardize Luke’s treatment.

  “Fine,” she muttered. She turned and pushed through the doors into the waiting room, seething with frustration.

  After quickly sending a message to Ridge updating him on the situation and reminding her brother he would have to pick his daughter, Destry, up from the bus stop, she plopped onto one of the uncomfortable gray benches and grabbed a magazine off the side table.

  She was leafing through it, barely even registering the headlines in her worry over her dog, when the bells on the door chimed and a little boy of about five burst through, followed a little more slowly by an older girl.

  “Daaad! We’re here!”

  “Hush.” A round, cheerful-looking woman who looked to be in her early sixties followed more slowly. “You know better than that, young man. Your father might be in the middle of a procedure.”

  “Can I go back and find him?” the girl asked.

  “Because Joni isn’t out here either, they must both be busy. He won’t want to be bothered. You two sit down here and I’ll go back to let him know we’re here.”

  “I could go,” the girl said a little sulkily, but she plopped onto the bench across from Caidy. Like father, like daughter, she thought. This was obviously the new vet’s family, and his daughter, at least, seemed to share more than blue eyes with her father.

  “Sit down,” the girl ordered her brother. The boy didn’t quite stick his tongue out at his sister, but it was a close one. Instead, he ignored her—probably a much worse insult, if Caidy remembered her own childhood with three pesky brothers—and wandered over to stand directly in front of Caidy.

  The little boy had a widow’s peak in his brown hair and huge dark-lashed blue eyes. A Caldwell trait, apparently.

  “Hi.” He beamed at her. “I’m Jack Caldwell. My sister’s name is Ava. Who are you?”

  “My name is Caidy,” she answered.

  “My dad’s a dog doctor.”

  “Not just dogs,” the girl corrected. “He’s also a cat doctor. And sometimes even horses and cows.”

  “I know,” Caidy answered. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Is your dog sick?” Jack asked her.

  “In a way. He was hurt on our ranch. Your dad is working on him now.”

  “He’s really good,” the girl said with obvious pride. “I bet your dog will be just fine.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Our dog was hit by a car once and my dad fixed him and now he’s all better,” Jack said. “Well, except he only has three legs. His name is Tri. My dad says it’s ’cause he always tries hard, even though he only has three legs.”

  Despite her worry, she managed a smile, more than a little charmed by the boy—and by the idea of the taciturn veterinarian showing any hint of sweetness.

  “Tri means three,” Ava informed her in a haughty sort of tone. “You know, like a tricycle has three wheels.”

  “Good to know.”

  Before the children could say anything else, the older woman came back through the door leading out of the treatment room, her features set in a rueful smile.

  “Looks like we’re on our own for dinner, kids. Your dad is busy fixing an injured dog and he’s going to be a while. We’ll just go catch some dinner and then head back to the hotel for homework and bed.”

  “You’re staying at the Cold Creek Inn, aren’t you?” Caidy asked.

  The other woman looked a bit wary as she nodded. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

  “I’m Caidy Bowman. My sister-in-law Laura runs the inn.”

  “You’re Chief Bowman’s sister?” There was a definite warmth in the woman’s voice now, Caidy noticed wryly. Her charmer of a brother often had that effect on those of the female persuasion, no matter their age.

  “I am. Both Chief Bowmans.” With one brother who was the police chief and the other who headed up the fire department, not much exciting happened in town without someone in her family being in the thick of it.

  “How nice to meet you. I’m Anne Michaels. I’m Dr. Caldwell’s housekeeper. Or I will be when he finally gets into his house. With the maids at the inn cleaning our rooms for us, there’s not much for me to do in that department. Right now I’m just the nanny, I suppose.”

  “Oh?”

  The woman apparently didn’t need any more encouragement than that simple syllable. “Dr. Caldwell is building a house on Cold Creek Road. He was supposed to close on it last week, but the contractor ran into some problems and here we are, still staying at the inn. Which is lovely, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still a hotel. After three weeks, all of us are a little tired of it. And now it looks like we’ll be there until after the New Year. Christmas in a hotel. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  Maybe that explained the man’s grouchiness. She felt a little pang of sympathy, then she remembered how he had basically shoved her out of the treatment area. No, he was probably born with that temperament. He and Festus would get along just fine.

  “It must be very frustrating for all of you.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Two children in a hotel, even a couple of rooms, for all those weeks is just too much. They need space to run. All children do. Why, in San Jose, the children had a huge backyard, complete with a pool and a swing set that rivaled the equipment at the nearest park.”

  “Is that where you’re from, then? California?”

  Anne Michaels nodded and Caidy thought she saw a note of wistfulness in the woman’s eyes that didn’t bode well for the chances of Dr. Caldwell’s housekeeper-slash-nanny sticking around in Pine Gulch.

  Anne watched the children, who were paying them no heed as they played a game on an electronic device Ava had pulled out of her backpack.

  “Yes. I’m from California, born and bred. Not Dr. Caldwell. He’s from back East. Chicago way. But he left everything without a backward look to head west for veterinary school at UC-Davis and that’s where he met the late Mrs. Caldwell. They hired me to help out around the house when she was pregnant with little Jack there and I’ve been with them ever since. Those poor children needed me more than ever after their mother died. Dr. Caldwell too. That was a terrible time, I tell you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “When he decided to move here to Idaho, he gave me the option of leaving his employment with a glowing recommendation, but I just couldn’t do it. I love those children, you know?”

  Caidy could relate. She loved her niece Destry as fiercely as if the girl were her own. Stepping in to help raise her after her mother walked out on Ridge and their daughter had created a powerful bond between them as unshakable as the Tetons.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  Anne Michaels gave a rueful shake of her head. “Look at me, going on to a perfect stranger. Staying at that hotel all these weeks is making me batty!”

  “Perhaps you could find a temporary rental situation until the house is finished,” she suggested.

  “That’s what I wanted to do but Ben doesn’t think we can find anyone willing to rent us a place for only a few weeks, especially over the holidays.”

  Caidy thought of the foreman’s cottage, empty for the past six months since the young married couple Ridge had hired to
help around the ranch had moved on to take a job at a Texas ranch.

  It was furnished with three bedrooms and would probably fit the Caldwells’ needs perfectly, but she was hesitant to mention it. She didn’t like the man. Why on earth would she want him living only a quarter mile away?

  “I could ask around for you if you’d like. We have a few vacation rentals in town that might be available. At least it might give you a little breathing space over the holidays until the house is finished.”

  “How kind you are!” Mrs. Michaels exclaimed.

  A fine guilt pinched at her. If she were truly kind, she would immediately offer the foreman’s cottage.

  “Everyone here in Pine Gulch has been so nice and welcoming to us,” the woman went on.

  “I hope you feel at home here.”

  Again that wistfulness drifted across the woman’s features like an autumn leaf tossed by the breeze, but she blinked it away. “I’m guessing the dog Dr. Caldwell is working on back there is yours, then.”

  Caidy nodded. “He had a run-in with a bull. When you pit a forty-pound dog against a ton of beef, the bull usually wins.”

  She should be back there with him. Darn it. If she were better at handling confrontations, she would have told Dr. Arrogant that she wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, she was sitting out here fretting.

  “He’s a wonderful veterinarian, my dear. I’m sure your pet will be better before you know it.”

  The border collies at the River Bow Ranch weren’t exactly pets—they were a vital part of the workload. Except for Sadie, anyway, who was too old to work the cattle anymore. She didn’t bother to correct the woman, nor did she express any of her own doubts about the new veterinarian’s competence.

  “I’m hungry, Mrs. Michaels. When are we going to eat?” Bored with the game apparently, Jack had wandered back to them.

  “I think your father is going to be busy for a while yet. Why don’t you and Ava and I go find something? Perhaps dinner at the café tonight would be fun and we can pick something up for your father for later.”

  “Can I have one of the sweet rolls?” he asked, his eyes lighting up as if it were already Christmas morning.

  The housekeeper laughed. “We’ll have to see about that. I’d say the café’s business in sweet rolls has tripled since we came to town, thanks to you alone.”

  “They are delish,” Caidy agreed, smiling at the very cute boy.

  Mrs. Michaels rose to her feet with a creak and a pop of some joint. “It was lovely to meet you, Caidy Bowman.”

  “I’m happy to meet you too. And I’ll keep my eye out for a suitable vacation rental.”

  “You’ll need to take that up with Dr. Caldwell, but thank you.”

  The woman seemed to be efficient, Caidy thought as she watched her herd the children out the door.

  The reception room seemed even more bleak and colorless after the trio left. Though it was just past six, the night was already dark on this, one of the shortest days of the year. Caidy fidgeted, leafing aimlessly through her magazine for a few moments longer, then finally closed it with a rustle of pages and tossed it back onto the pile.

  Darn it. That was her dog back there. She couldn’t sit out here doing nothing. At the very least she deserved to know what was going on. She gathered her courage, took a deep breath and pushed through the door.

  Chapter Two

  Ben made the last stitch to close the incision on the puncture wound, his head throbbing and his shoulders tight from the long day that had started with an emergency call to treat an ailing horse at four in the morning.

  He would have loved a nice evening with his kids and then a few hours of zone-out time watching basketball on the hotel television set. Even if he had to turn the sound low so he didn’t wake up Jack, the idea sounded heavenly.

  The past week had been a rough one, busy and demanding. This was what he wanted, he reminded himself. Even though the workload was heavy, he finally had the chance to build his own practice, to forge new relationships and become part of a community.

  “There. That should do it for now.”

  “What a mess. After seeing how close that puncture wound was to the liver, I can’t believe he survived,” Joni said.

  He didn’t want to admit to his assistant—who, after three weeks, still seemed to approve of the job he was doing—that the dog’s condition was still touch and go.

  “I think he’s going to make it,” she went on, ever the optimist. “Unlike that poor Newfoundland earlier.”

  All his frustration of earlier in the afternoon came surging back as he began dressing the wound. A tragedy, that was. The beautiful dog had jumped out of the back of a moving pickup truck and been hit by the car driving behind it.

  That dog hadn’t been as lucky as Luke here. Her injuries were just too severe and she had died on this very treatment table.

  What had really pissed him off had been the attitude of the owner, more concerned at the loss of all the money he had invested in the animal than in the loss of life.

  “Neither accident would have happened if not for irresponsible owners.”

  Joni, busy cleaning up the inevitable mess he always left behind during a surgery, looked a little surprised at his vehemence.

  “I agree when it comes to Artie Palmer. He’s an idiot who should have his privileges to own any animals revoked. But not Caidy Bowman. She’s the last one I would call an irresponsible owner. She trains dogs and horses at the River Bow. Nobody around here does a better job.”

  “She didn’t train this one very well, did she, if he was running wild and tangled with a bull?”

  “Apparently not.”

  He turned at the new voice and found the dog’s owner standing in the doorway from the reception area, her lovely features taut. He swore under his breath. He meant what he said, but he supposed it didn’t need to be said to her.

  “I thought I suggested you wait in the other room.”

  “A suggestion? Is that what you city vets call that?” She shrugged. “I’m not particularly good at doing as I’m told, Dr. Caldwell.”

  Sometime during the process of caring for her dog, Ben had come to the uncomfortable realization that he had acted like a jerk to her. He never insisted owners wait outside the treatment room unless he thought they might have weak stomachs. So why had he changed policy for Caidy Bowman?

  Something about her made him a little nervous. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but it might have something to do with those impossibly green eyes and the sweet little tilt to her mouth.

  “We just finished. I was about to call you back.”

  “I’m glad I finally disregarded your strongly worded suggestion, then. May I?”

  He gestured agreement and she approached the table, where the dog was still working off the effects of the anesthesia.

  “There’s my brave boy. Oh, Luke.” She smoothed a hand over the dog’s head. The dog’s eyes opened slightly then closed again and his breathing slowed, as if he could rest comfortably now, knowing she was near.

  “It will probably take another half hour or so for the rest of the anesthesia to wear off and then we’ll have to keep him here, at least overnight.”

  “Will someone stay with him?”

  At his practice in San Jose, he and a technician would alternate stopping in every few hours through the night when they had very ill dogs staying at the clinic, but he hadn’t had time yet to get fully staffed.

  He nodded, watching his plans for a nice steak dinner and a basketball game in the hotel room go up in smoke. He had become pretty used to the cot in his office lately. Whatever would he do without Mrs. Michaels?

  “Someone will be here with him. Don’t worry about that.”

  A look of surprise flickered in her eyes. He couldn’t figure out why for a moment, until he realized she was reacting to his soft tone. He really must have been a jackass to her.

  “I’m sorry about...earlier.” Apologies didn’t come easily. He could p
robably thank his stiff, humorless grandfather for that, but this one seemed necessary. “About not letting you come in during the treatment, I mean. I should have. And about what I said just now. I’m usually not so...harsh. It’s been a particularly hard day and I’m afraid I may have been taking it out on you.”

  She blinked a little but concealed her emotions behind an impassive look. For some reason, that made him feel even more like an idiot, a sensation he didn’t like at all.

  “You were able to save his leg. I thought for sure you would have to amputate.”

  “He wouldn’t be much use as a ranch dog, then, would he?”

  Her look was as cool as the December night. “Probably not. Isn’t it a good thing that’s not the only thing that matters to me?”

  So she wasn’t like his previous client, who hadn’t cared about his injured dog—only dollars and cents.

  “I was able to pin the leg for now, but there’s no guarantee it will heal properly. We still might have to take it. He was lucky, if you want the truth. Insanely lucky. I don’t know how he made it through a run-in with a bull in one piece. His injuries could have been much worse.”

  “What about where he was gored?”

  “The bull missed all vital organs. The puncture wound is only a couple inches deep. I guess the bull wasn’t that serious.”

  “You would think otherwise if you had been there. He definitely was seeing red. After I pulled the dog out, he rammed the fence so hard he knocked one of the poles out of its foundation.”

  She pulled the dog out? Crazy woman, to mess with a bull on a rampage. What was she thinking?

  “Looks like he’s coming around,” he said, not about to enter that particular fray.

  The dog whimpered and Caidy Bowman leaned down, her dark hair almost a match to the dog’s coat. “Hey there. You’re in a fix now, aren’t you, Luke-my-boy. You’ll be all right. I know it hurts now and you’re confused and scared but Dr. Caldwell fixed you up and before you know it you’ll be running around the ranch with King and Sadie and all the others.”

  Though he had paperwork to complete, he couldn’t seem to wrench himself away. He stood watching her interact with the dog and winced to himself at how quickly he had misjudged her. By the gentleness of her tone and the comforting way she smoothed a hand over his fur, it was obvious the woman cared about her animal and was not inexperienced with injuries.