LOVE OF A RODEO MAN (MODERN DAY COWBOYS) (13 page)

The cat had struggled last week when Sara examined her, but today she was absolutely ferocious. “Poor Queenie,” Emily was moaning, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the box on Sara’s desk. “She’s never been away from me overnight, that’s what’s wrong. She senses I’m leaving her. She sleeps right beside me, has a special pillow all her own, you know.”

Sara dabbed with antiseptic at the deep scratch on her arm and winced, trying her best to dredge up the proper amount of sympathetic comfort for Emily and not feel animosity for Queenie.

“We’ll take good care of her, and of course she’ll be quite groggy, so she won’t be too upset at being away from you,” Sara assured the pathetic woman, walking with her to the door.

When Emily finally left and Sara began preparing for the operation on the cat, she wa
s grateful that Floyd again arrived on time to help. They had all they could do to hold the cat down long enough to administer the anesthetic.

Queenie was like a wild thing, crouching and attack
ing, biting and hissing and refusing to be petted or gentled.

Floyd used a canvas restraint to protect Sara and himself, but Queenie managed to inflict damage despite it.

“That’s a nasty bit of business, that unfortunate animal,” Floyd pronounced darkly, holding a bit of gauze to his thumb. Queenie had bitten a hunk out of him before she finally succumbed to the drug that put her to sleep so Sara could get on with the operation.

“At least a hernia isn’t too difficult to repair,” Sara foolishly declared. “It won’t take long at all.”

Two and a half hours later, she wished fervently that she’d never laid eyes on Queenie. Everything that could have gone wrong with a supposedly straightforward procedure had, and at one point Sara had been certain she was going to lose the cat from hemorrhage.

Several of Queenie’s vital organs were protruding through the large tear in her diaphragm. There were adhesions to deal with, and each stage of the operation took twice as long as it ought to have. After what seemed an eternity, Queenie was once again in the infirmary, stable and sleeping peacefully, and Sara could hurriedly turn her attention to the other appointments for the morning, apologizing to disgruntled people who’d been waiting for a long time.

Doc was only a little late, arriving before she was finished with the morning’s work.

“That hernia operation
delayed everything,” she apologized, and he seemed to hide a grin as he turned toward his office.

She’d have to phone Jennie and Adeline and tell them she couldn’t make it for the tri
p out to visit Ruth this afternoon. Her heart sank. She’d been looking forward to an afternoon away from animals and their problems, an afternoon of old-fashioned woman talk...with maybe a chance to spend a few minutes with Mitch thrown in as a bonus.

“I couldn’t believe how many problems that cat gave me,” she admitted to Doc. “If the woman were paying for it, I’d charge her double and a half.”

“Happens sometimes, always at the most inconvenient moment,” he said laconically, adding, “You’re off this afternoon, anyway. I’ll take over from here. Floyd can phone and postpone the non-emergency farm calls. We’ll do them first thing tomorrow morning.”

Feeling like a kid let out of school, Sara drove as fast as she dared back to Bitterroot. She’d shower quickly and put on a dress for a change, that nice midnight-blue cotton that Jennie had picked out for her weeks ago and that she’d never worn... and maybe pin her hair up in a high and complicated bun at the back and put a bit of makeup on.

She grinned at herself in the truck mirror. After all, it was time Mitch saw her in something other than blue jeans and work clothes. Trouble was, to get herself done up she was facing what she’d always labeled Too Much Fuss About Nothing.

And for once in her life, she was looking forward to the effort.

By eight o’clock that evening, Sara was slumped in a battered deck chair beside the pool at Bitterroot, letting the water drip from her body and her skin dry in the warm evening air.

She’d forged up and
down the pool until she was exhausted. The saloon was quieter tonight than usual, which was why she’d chanced putting on her bathing suit and taking a swim. With any luck, no eager cowboy would wander out and notice her and decide she really needed company.

As a pre
caution, she’d positioned herself so that her chair back shielded her from the doorway that led to the saloon across the courtyard.

She shook her soppin
g hair out of her eyes and wondered if any trace of the careful makeup she’d applied that afternoon still lingered after forty minutes spent churning up and down the swimming pool.

Probably not. Wasted effort, getting all dressed up and fixing her hair that way. Mitch had been conspicuously absent all afternoon.

Ruth had finally mentioned that Wilson and Mitch were miles away, helping a neighbor with haying. So much for putting on a dress, Sara thought with a wry grin. At least her mother and grandmother had been pleased for once with the way she looked, although Gram hadn’t been fooled for a second as to the real reason for Sara’s finery.

But all she’d said was, “You clean up real pretty, child.” And then she’d winked knowingly.

Sara heard the sharp clip of boots on the cedar decking behind her, and her heart sank.

Damn.

She was going to have to deal with one of the cowboys from the saloon after all, which would probably mean getting up and retreating to her cabin fairly quickly, depending on how much the guy had had to drink.

The footsteps came right up behind her chair and stopped.

“I hear the visit with Mom went really well,” Mitch said. “I thought about you the whole damn time I was slaving on the tractor out in those fields today, Doc.”

He
came around and sat down in the other deck chair, looking freshly showered, wearing clean denims and an open-necked light green shirt that matched his eyes... and, of course, his Stetson was tilted jauntily over his forehead.

Sara sat straighter in the chair, wishing she’d at least worn her newer bikini. The old red one she had on was faded to a tired, streaked pink, and the elastic was none too good in the bottoms.

“We had a super visit,” she assured him, with just the slightest trace of a catch in her voice. “I think it did your mom a world of good.”

It felt absolutely wonderful to have him sitting there, grinning his crooked grin at her while his eyes quietly made a sweep up and down her
almost naked body and then narrowed.

“Hey
, beautiful,” he said, in quite a different tone than before, deep and meaningful. “I wish I’d brought my swimsuit, the water looks great.”

But it wasn’t the water he was looking at, and his gaze made Sara much warmer than she’d felt moments before.

“Dave probably has a spare set you could borrow...” she began, but Mitch shook his head.

“I’ll bring my suit next time. Tonight I want to spend a quiet hour or two just talking with you, if that’s possible,” he explained, glancing over at the saloon, where voices and music from the jukebox were spilling out into the early July twilight. “Are we likely to have a chance for that, sitting out here? And what’s the probability factor for an emergency call from the clinic tonight?”

He wasn’t being sarcastic at all, Sara realized, just practical. After all, evening calls for her from the clinic were commonplace, and the night she’d asked him for dinner, she’d ended up working.

“Want to go for a walk?” she suggested impulsively.
“That’ll get us away from the saloon crowd, and I left my cell in my cabin. There are lovely trails all through those woods back there, and it won’t be dark for at least another hour or two.”

He nodded
, and she jumped to her feet, giving the sagging bikini a necessary hoist and bringing an appreciative look from Mitch that made her blush.

“C’mon, I’ll put some clothes on. My cabin’s this way.” They strolled across the yard, and the sounds from the saloon grew fainter as they threaded their way through the tall old pines to where her tiny cedar cabin was, half-hidden among the trees. It had a small front por
ch nestled under the roof overhang, and Sara had brought an old rocking chair from the lodge so that she could sit outside in the evening, watching night fall, listening to the birds... and swatting mosquitoes.

They climbed the three wooden steps and Sara opened the heavy door. The log cabin was a s
ingle large room, sparsely furnished, with a couch that doubled as a bed, a chest of drawers, a small wood-burning heater in one corner, and a table with several chairs.

Sara had a coffeepot and a hot plate but no kitchen. There was a bathroom lean-to added on at the back of the structure; when Dave’s grandfather had first built the cabins, outdoor plumbing was the rule of the day, so Dave had added the bathrooms at a later date.

Mitch looked around curiously, paying close attention to the framed certificate Sara had hung proudly on the wall declaring her a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. There was a framed photo of her graduating class on the bureau, and he spent several minutes picking her out of the group.

“Ever miss your college days?” he inquired.

“Not for a moment,” she assured him. “Those years were hard because there was never enough money, so I felt as if I was running from class to work without enough hours for sleep. It’s wonderful now, getting a paycheck every month, being able to live by myself and still be close to my family.”

“This cabin is a lot like mine at the ranch,” he told her. “Mom wanted me to stay in my old bedroom in the house, but it made me feel as if I were smothering, living in the house again with Mom and Pop. So I fixed up what used to be the hired man’s quarters, a little cabin out behind the garage, and I like it fine.”

“It’s like having the best of both worlds, isn’t it?” Sara pulled clothing out of the closet, underwear out of a drawer, and headed for the bathroom.

“I’ll be ready in a minute,” she promised, hurrying in and shutting the door, then stripping off the bikini. She groaned when she took a quick glance in the mirror. There wasn’t a single trace left of the carefu
lly arranged hairdo or the subtle makeup job she’d managed earlier in the day.

Her face shone from the long swim in the mineral pool, and her hair was hanging in ropes down her back and drying into a stiff, impossible frizz at the front.

Hurriedly she turned on the shower and rinsed her head, rubbing it with a towel and tying the entire unruly mass of hair back with an elastic. She donned denim shorts and a patterned blouse, splashed on cologne as an afterthought and opened the door.

Mitch was out on the porch, rocking leisurely to and fro in the chair. He turned and smiled when she came out.

“You look nice,” he assured her, and she smiled at him, wondering if a time would ever come when her grooming would coincide with their meeting. “What’d you do to yourself?” He touched the scratch on her cheek and then traced the other scratch marks on her arms as well.

“Oh, there’s this miserable cat I had to do an operation on....” Sara explained about Queenie, and Mitch laughed as she outlined how the cat had attacked both her and Floyd.

They wandered slowly along the trails where Sara usually jogged. The heat of the afternoon still lingered in the air, even in the depths of the forest, and the birds sounded sleepy as they sang their evening songs.

“I saw a deer jump across this path the other morning,” she confided. “It’s thrilling to still see wild animals in their natural habitat. In many pla
ces, the wild things are disappearing.”

Mitch had her hand clas
ped in his, fingers fitting between fingers. “Montana still has a lot of wild game. In fact, Pop was saying the other day that there’s a small herd of wild horses up in a canyon in the hills above the ranch. Of course, there used to be huge herds of wild horses ranging all around here, but there aren’t many left now. The town of Plains actually used to be named Wild Horse Plains.”

Sara swung their hands back and forth between their bodies. “I’d love to see
a wild horse,” she said. “It would be something to tell your grandchildren someday.”

Mitch hadn’t been thi
nking too much about grandchildren, but it sounded like a fine idea. “Why don’t I saddle up a couple of horses on the weekend, and we can ride up to the canyon and maybe get a look at them?”

“That would be f
un.” Sara grinned up at him. “Steamboat for me again, right?”

“Unless you think he’s too spirite
d for you,” Mitch said, and Sara used her free hand to give him a poke on the arm.

“I had your mom and mine laughing this afternoon about old Steamboat running off with me,” she said.

“Did you tell them how I saved you, just like one of those heroes in an old movie?”

Her cheeks grew pink. “I only told them some of it. There were parts of that rescue that were x-rated.”

“Let’s see,” he said. “Were those the parts that went something like this?” He pulled on her hand, turning her neatly into his arms. His kiss was full of the hunger she roused in him. They stood for uncounted minutes, lost in the wonder of lips and tongue and hands, bodies straining together. When they reluctantly drew apart, an owl was hooting overhead and the first faint glimmers from a half-moon shone down through the tall pines.

“We’d better go back. Gram’s liable to send out a search party if I’m gone too long.”

On the way, Sara chatted to him about the afternoon she and her relatives had spent with his mother. “They got along famously, and your mom served such a big afternoon tea I couldn’t eat supper. She actually had several recipes for squares and things that Gram doesn’t have. And your mom and mine talked about grieving, too, which I think was good.”

“They must have also talked a lot about this restaurant at Bitterroot your mom an
d Gram are planning,” Mitch remarked, “because Mom went on and on about it at supper time. Said she’s coming over early next week to see all the changes they’ve made.”

Sara was
quiet, wondering if she ought to tell Mitch exactly how the conversation about the restaurant had developed.

“We could sure use another good cook a couple days a week over there, once we get properly set up,” Jennie had said halfway through the conversation, and Gram had agreed heartily, adding, “
I don’t suppose you’d be interested, Ruth? Be the best thing in the world for you right now, getting out with people, having a job to go to.”

“Work was the only thing that kept me sane when my first husband was killed,” Jennie added. “It would be the best thing you could do for yourself, Ruth.”

Sara, sitting quietly back with a sandwich and a cup of tea, watched Ruth’s face and wondered if her mother and Gram had had this idea cooked up long before today’s visit. Most likely.  They were smooth operators, those two.

There was surprise first
on Ruth’s face, then an expression of longing and regret.

“Oh, I don’t think I could. I’ve never worked except at home, you know,” she said shyly.

Gram snorted. “Hogwash. Anybody who cooks for threshing crews like you have could do the job at Bitterroot with one arm tied.”

Ruth’s face flushed with pleasure. “Do you think so
, really?” she’d asked in a wistful tone.

That was why Ruth was coming over, so that she could look things over and decide if she wanted the job. Sara thought of Wilson and wondered what his reaction would be to the idea. Obviously Ruth hadn’t mentioned it yet to him or to Mitch. Well, it was her decision, her secret for the moment if that’s how she wanted it.

Sara didn’t say anything more to Mitch about it, and soon they were back at her cabin.

“I’d best be getting home,” he
said. “Pop’s a firm believer in starting the day at 5:00 a.m.”

Sara chuckled. “He and Gram must’ve gone to the same school. She figures anything after eight in the morning is afternoon.”

One last, long, tantalizing embrace, and Mitch settled his hat back on his head and turned down the path. “Want to go see those wild horses Saturday or Sunday?” he inquired.

“Sunday,” she decided. “Late afternoon.”

Maybe there wouldn’t be any emergency calls this Sunday. Maybe if there were she could get them taken care of early. And maybe she was being an incurable optimist to think she could get away at all.

“Good,” Mitch said. “Then, we can use Saturday night to go to the dance in the hall at Plains.”

Sara vaguely remembered seeing posters advertising the event.

“That would be nice, as long as I don’t hav
e to work,” she said.

“It’s not until eight in the evenin
g, you’ll be done by then, won’t you?”

She hesitated. If past Saturdays were anything to go by... “I s
ure hope so,” she sighed, and Mitch seemed to take that as a positive answer.