LITMIR.BIZ

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sad. “Not that way, it isn’t. I won’t ever marry.”

      “But one day…”

      She shook her head. “No.”

      Winnie bit her lower lip. “When you’re a little older, it might be different,” she began. “Keely, you’re nineteen. Boone is thirty. That’s a big age difference, and he thinks about things like that. His fiancée was only a year younger than he was. He said that people should never marry unless they’re the same age.”

      “Why?”

      Winnie sighed. “I’ve never talked about it much, but our mother was twelve years younger than dad. He died a broken man because she ran away with his younger brother. He always said he made a major mistake by marrying someone from another generation. It was just too many years between them. They had nothing in common.”

      Keely felt heartsick for the family. “Is your mother still alive?”

      She bit her lip. “We…don’t know,” she said. “We’ve never tried to find her or our uncle. They married, after the divorce, and moved to Montana. Neither one of them ever tried to contact us again.”

      “That’s so sad.”

      “It made Boone bitter. Well, that and then his fiancée cutting out on him. He doesn’t have a high opinion of women.”

      “You can’t blame him, really,” Keely had to admit. She patted her horse’s neck. “It’s sad, isn’t it, that we’re both too young for the men we care about?”

      “Only in their minds,” Winnie returned. “But we can always change their opinions. We just have to find an angle. One that works.”

      Keely laughed. “Doesn’t that sound easy?”

      Winnie grimaced. “Not really.” She tugged on the reins, backing her horse out of the creek. Keely followed suit. “Let’s talk about something more cheerful,” Winnie said on the way back to the ranch. “Are you coming to the big charity dance?”

      Keely shook her head. “I’d like to, even without a date, but both my junior bosses are going, and so is our senior tech. I have to be on call.”

      “That’s awful!”

      “It’s fair, though. I was off last year.”

      “I remember. Last year you stayed home.”

      Keely studied the pommel as the leather squeaked under the steady motion of the horse’s body. “Nobody asked me to go with them.”

      “You don’t encourage men,” Winnie pointed out.

      Keely smiled sadly. “What for?” she asked. “Any man who asked me would have been second best. I don’t want to get involved with anyone.”

      Winnie had always been curious about Keely’s odd private life. She wondered what had happened to the other woman to leave her so alone. “It’s just a dance,” she pointed out. “You don’t have to agree to marry the man when he takes you home.”

      Keely burst out laughing. “You’re terrible!” she choked.

      “Just pointing out an obvious fact,” came the amused reply.

      “Anyway, I’ll be working. You go and have enough fun for both of us.”

      “Any man who took me would be second choice, too,” she reminded her friend. “The difference is, I want to go so I can rub my date in Kilraven’s face.”

      “He won’t go,” Keely murmured.

      “What makes you think so?”

      “Just a guess. He keeps to himself. He reminds me of Cash Grier, the way he was before he married Tippy Moore. Grier was a bona fide woman hater. I think Kilraven is, too.”

      Winnie hesitated. “I wonder.”

      Keely didn’t follow up on the remark. She felt sorry for Winnie. She felt sorry for herself, too. Men were such a headache….

      She came back to the present in time to see Boone coming out of the examination room with Bailey on a leash. He walked right past Keely without looking at her or saying a word to her. She stared after him with her heart breaking right inside her chest. Then she turned and went back to work, putting on a happy face for the benefit of her coworkers.

      Keely hated Boone’s ex-fiancée on sight. Misty Harris’s father ran a private detective agency in San Antonio, and she was wealthy. She was pretty, she was very intelligent and she looked down on other women. Boone, Winnie had told Keely, liked a woman with a good mind and an independent spirit. She also thought that the woman probably was good in bed, which made Keely uncomfortable.

      The woman had a poisonous tongue, and she didn’t like Keely. It was obvious when she arrived for a date with Boone the next Friday night and found Keely sitting in the living room with Winnie.

      “No dates?” she chided the other women, looking sleek in a black cocktail dress with her long black hair flowing over her shoulders. Her deep blue eyes were twinkling with malicious amusement. “Too bad. Boone’s taking me to the Desperado concert. He’s going to introduce me to the lead singer. We’ve had tickets for two months. It’s going to be a great evening!”

      “I love Desperado,” Winnie had to agree.

      “I wouldn’t miss this concert for anything,” the brunette purred.

      There was a noise at the side door, scratching and howling.

      “Oh, it’s that dog,” the brunette muttered. “He’s filthy. For God’s sake, Winnie, you aren’t going to let him in? The Persian rugs are priceless! He’ll get mud all over them!”

      “Bailey is a member of the family,” Winnie said icily as she opened the door and pulled a towel from a shelf nearby. “Hello, old fellow!” she greeted the old German shepherd. “Did you get wet?”

      She started toweling him dry and wiping his paws. He was panting and whining. His tongue was purple. He shuddered. His stomach was swollen.

      With a practiced eye, Keely observed him. Something was wrong. She got up and joined Winnie at the sliding glass door, going down on one knee. Her hands touched the dog’s distended belly.

      She clenched her teeth. “He’s got bloat,” she told Winnie.

      “What was that?” Boone asked, taking the steps two at a time.

      Keely looked up at him, trying not to betray her pleasure at just the sight of him. “Bailey’s got bloat. He needs to be seen by a vet right now.”

      “Don’t be absurd,” Boone shot back. “Dogs don’t get bloat.”

      “Big dogs do,” Keely said urgently. “You must have seen the condition in cattle at one time or another. Here. Feel!”

      She grabbed his hand and carried it to the dog’s belly.

      He felt it and scowled.

      “Look at the color of his tongue,” Keely persisted. “He isn’t getting enough oxygen. If you don’t get him to the vet soon, he’ll be dead.”

      “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” the brunette spat. “He’s just eaten too much. Put him in his kennel. He’ll be fine by morning.”

      “He’ll be dead,” Keely repeated flatly.

      “Listen, you, I’m not missing that concert for a stupid old dog with an upset stomach!” the brunette raged. “You’re just trying to get Boone to notice you by telling him something’s wrong with that dog! He knows what a crush you have on him. This is a pathetic act!”

      Boone looked at Keely, who was pale and sick at heart to have her innermost secret spoken aloud for Boone to hear.

      He ran his hand over Bailey’s stomach one last time. “It’s not bloat,”

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