Once and for All (3 page)

“I’m worried.” Jodie paced to the picture window behind the dining room table and peered outside, hoping to see headlights. Mike had been due back from Idaho the day before. There’d been a storm to the north, so Jodie had assumed he’d waited to travel, and simply hadn’t bothered to call. But now he was more than twenty-four hours overdue and she hadn’t heard a word.

“You’re worried?” Margarite muttered from behind her. “I’m the one manning the syringe.” She’d already tried to coax Jodie into giving an injection, but Jodie couldn’t do it. Her fear of blood and needles was even greater than Margarite’s. What a team they made.

“I guess I’ll go through his file, see if his cell number’s there.”

“Eat first. Mike will probably be here by the time you’re finished.” Margarite set a salad on the counter next to the casserole, then held a plate out to Jodie. “He’d better be here.”

Jodie had tried to convince her that official cooking wasn’t necessary while her parents were gone, but Margarite was having none of that. She was paid to cook and she was going to put meals on the table—or the counter, as she’d done tonight, since they were eating buffet style.

After dinner there was still no sign of Mike, so Jodie went into her father’s office and opened the top drawer of the big oak file cabinet where Joe Barton kept paperwork for every employee that had come and gone since he’d bought his ranch three years ago. And there had been quite a steady stream of comings and goings. Jodie’s father was not an easy man to work for. He demanded a level of expertise and commitment that many people simply didn’t have anymore. Even Chandler had unexpectedly quit, which had in turn set off a major family argument.

Her father had immediately tried to cancel the European vacation her mother had been planning for almost a year. Jodie’s normally complacent mom had leveled threats, since she firmly believed her husband’s heart problems, which he refused to take seriously, stemmed from managing the ranch. Jodie had eventually come to the rescue, grudgingly taking a sabbatical so that she could look after the property during the eight weeks her parents would be touring southern Europe. It was the only way her father would agree to leave, and even then it had been an uphill battle convincing him to go.

“Damn it, I know it’s here,” Jodie muttered as she flipped through the manila folders, beating up her cuticles in the process. Her dad kept a hard copy of everything. She dug deep and finally found Mike’s file toward the back of the drawer and pulled it out. His cell number was there, so she dialed it from the office phone. No answer. Jodie jotted down the number and put the file away, telling herself not to worry. He was probably on the road, stranded somewhere with no service. It happened.

And it also meant that she and Margarite were about to embark on another adventure into veterinary care.

“Anything?” Margarite asked hopefully when Jodie returned to the kitchen.

She shook her head.

“I was afraid of that.” The housekeeper went into the mudroom, stoically put her feet, shoes and all, into rubber galoshes, and pulled a coat off the hook. Next came the giant black scarf, wrapped twice around her neck and knotted, the wool hat and finally gloves. Jodie had watched the procedure enough times during the past few days to know all the moves.

“Ready?” the older woman asked.

Jodie had already slipped her feet into boots and put on a coat. She could make it to the heated barn and back to the house without a hat or gloves.

Bronson limped painfully to the back of his stall when he saw them coming. He’d figured out that when Margarite showed up, a painful jab was soon to follow. Horses were a lot smarter than Jodie had first assumed.

She went into the stall and slipped the halter on the big horse, who gave her an equine look of sad resignation. Margarite’s expression wasn’t that much different as she entered the stall. She held up the penicillin bottle, stabbed the needle through the rubber opening and measured out the dosage. Then, needle in hand, she pounded her small fist on the horse’s hip a couple times to deaden the area, before she masterfully slipped just the needle into the muscle and attached the loaded syringe. Bronson bobbed his head up and down, but stood still as Margarite slowly pushed the plunger until it stopped, then removed the needle. As always, her face was pale when she finished.

“I hope Mike is here bright and early tomorrow morning,” she grumbled as they made their way along the snowy path to the house.

“He may even arrive tonight,” Jodie said, but she was getting a bad feeling about this. Mike should have called by now.

She tried to reach him two more times that evening from the ranch phone, and then, wondering if he recognized the ranch number and wasn’t answering on purpose, she dialed the number from her cell. A masculine voice said hello on the second ring.

“Is this Mike Bower?”

“Yes.”

“This is Jodie De Vanti. When are you coming back to the ranch?”

There was a healthy silence before Mike said, “I’m not coming back.”

Jodie’s temples started to throb.
What the hell?
“Why not?”

“I found another job up here, closer to my family.”

The throbbing intensified. “You do know that it’s common courtesy to give notice of resignation?” She spoke the last words through her teeth.

“I was going to call tomorrow after everything was firmed up here,” he confessed.

“And in the meantime, we’re left hanging, you coward.”

“Maybe if your dad wasn’t such a jerk, I’d still be there,” Mike said, and he had the gall to sound justified. “But he is and I ain’t.” He hung up the phone, and it was all Jodie could do not to throw hers across the room.

What an asshole, blaming her father, and not being man enough to quit properly.

Jodie weighed her phone in her hand for a moment, then carefully set it on the desk.

Okay. She could handle this. She was used to thinking on her feet. The only problem was she did it in a courtroom or while working with a difficult client. This was different.

“He’s not coming back,” Jodie told Margarite when she came in with a cup of tea.

The housekeeper stopped in her tracks and the cup clattered on the saucer.

“Hey,” Jodie said, trying to be as positive as possible, “is there any reason we can’t handle the ranch on our own until Dad returns? It’s only six and a half more weeks and so far so good…barring the horse incident.” She wasn’t wild about feeding in the subzero morning temps, but she’d do whatever she had to.

“Early calving.”

“What?” Jodie asked, her eyes getting round.

“The early calves. Sometimes the cows have trouble. And if there’s a blizzard, you can bet there’s a cow out there having a calf in it. Mike was out at all hours last year.”

Jodie went to the sideboard and poured two glasses of Malbec without bothering to ask Margarite if she wanted one. At this point they both needed a drink, and tea wasn’t going to cut it.

“I am
so
pissed at Mike,” Jodie muttered as she recorked the bottle with the crystal stopper. “At least he could have given some warning, the sniveling coward.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t leave sooner,” Margarite said matter-of-factly, accepting the glass after setting the porcelain teacup on the end table next to the leather sofa.

“Why?” Jodie asked. She had her own opinion—Mike was spineless—but was curious to hear the housekeeper’s take on the matter.

“Frankly, when things go wrong, your dad tends to fire from the hip. Mike and Chandler took a lot of heat over the past year.”

“Were they responsible for what went wrong?” Jodie asked reasonably, knowing that while her father was a tough man to work for, he set the same standards for himself that he set for others. She had spent her life living up to those standards and it had made her a stronger, more capable person.

“Not always,” Margarite said. “Sometimes Mother Nature was responsible. Your father came down on Mike pretty hard a time or two for things that were out of his control.” She shrugged her thin shoulders. “And Mike doesn’t take criticism well. I think the only reason he stayed as long as he did was because there were no other job opportunities.”

“Well, apparently one just arose,” Jodie said darkly, taking a healthy swallow of wine, “and now I have to try to hire a cowboy before this early calving starts.” She stared into her glass, slowly swirling the contents. Where did one start? The employment office?
Hi. Do you have any cowboys?

“Yeah, you need to do that.” Margarite hesitated in a way that made Jodie glance up. “But without Mike…you’re also going to have to find a vet that’ll come out here. Sometimes they have to C-section the cows.”

Jodie stopped swirling. “You’re kidding.” A vet. Willing to come out here. She’d practically had to promise her firstborn to get Sam to the ranch, and despite the decent job he had done on the stitches, she still didn’t have a lot of faith in his vet skills. Maybe sutures were his forte. Since her father had buried a thirty-thousand-dollar horse, internal medicine obviously was not.

“I’m not kidding one bit. Your dad bred the heifers to a big bull to get black calves.”

Jodie blinked at the housekeeper. “Why did he need black calves?”

“Black cattle sell for a few cents more a pound.”

Jodie couldn’t even begin to find the logic in that. It wasn’t as if the person consuming the cow knew what color it had been. She slumped back against the sofa cushions, reminding herself that this, too, would pass.

“Lucas is back in town.”

Jodie stared at Margarite over her glass.

“Wasn’t he in rehab?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t my dad fire him for drinking on the job?”

“Yes.”

Jodie closed her eyes. Debated. What the heck? “Do you know how to get hold of him?”

“I can find him. I know his sister.”

“Think he’d work temporarily?”

“We can ask.”

“Let’s do that.”

Margarite made a few calls, tracked Lucas down, and then Jodie phoned him. The cowboy was more than happy to put in a few weeks at the ranch while Joe was gone—with the understanding that if something permanent came up, he’d have to take it. He was in the middle of a job search.

Jodie agreed and hung up. Lucas might not be a vet, but he was a warm body and knew how to feed cattle and birth calves. Joe probably wouldn’t approve of Lucas any more than Sam, but Joe wasn’t going to know about any of this until he came back.

“Mrs. Newland.”

“Oh, man.”

Mrs. Newland was a sweet lady devoted to her two wild terriers. Sam didn’t do a lot of small animal work, but when one of the dogs had been attacked by a coyote, he’d stitched it up after hours.

“I know. What do you want to do?”

“Call the bank before you redeposit. If there aren’t enough funds to cover it, then bill her again.”

Sam couldn’t afford to do work gratis, much as he’d like to.

The bell on the back door rang, and Beau and Tyler, who were supposed to be on their way to school by now, came through the mudroom into the clinic office with a blast of cold air.

“We can’t get the Beast started,” Tyler said, rubbing his gloved hands together.

“For real?” The last time the boys had trouble starting the Beast was when Ty had a date and thought Sam’s Ford crew cab would be more impressive than a tiny ’94 Mazda pickup with a dented tailgate. Ty loved to impress. Beau was happy to just be himself.

“Yeah. I think it’s the battery. We’ll need a jump.”

Sam plopped the Elmer Fudd hat back on his head and grabbed his gloves. Five minutes later the Beast was running and he was coiling his jumper cables.

“Good luck with that test,” Sam said to Beau as the kid climbed behind the wheel. “You, too, Ty.”

“You don’t need luck when you’re good,” Tyler said with a confident smirk.

“You have a C.”

“Whatever.”

Sam opened his wallet and pulled out four twenties, which he passed to Ty through the open window. “Buy a battery for the Beast on the way home.”

“Are you sure?” The boys were supposed to handle maintenance on the small truck.

“Yeah. I don’t want you getting stranded somewhere.” The teens could change the oil themselves. A battery seemed more of a parental responsibility. Sam may have had parenthood thrust upon him, but he was determined to do the very best he could.