LITMIR.BIZ

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one of Gus’s sons, and had seen his two older brothers around town while growing up. They’d all been decent kids, far as she knew, but over the years they’d probably grown up to be just like their father.

      Grabbing her satchel from the seat next to her, she rounded the back of her truck and swiftly added extra supplies from the various doors in the vet box. Sutures. Surgical equipment. IV sedative. Antibiotics. Sterile saline for flushing the wounds. Bandaging materials.

      No one had come out of the house, the machine shed or the two barns to greet her when she arrived, so she headed straight for the horse barn. The tractor-wide double doors were closed against the mid-February bite in the air, so she opened the smaller walk door and stepped inside to the sound of an old country song blaring on the radio.

      A wave of nostalgia washed over her as she took in the long cement aisle flanked with a dozen box stalls on each side. Pine paneling rose halfway up each stall front and its sliding door, with vertical metal pipes forming the barrier along the top half of the stalls for ventilation and visibility.

      Partway down, a young sorrel stood cross-tied in the middle of the aisle with a broad-shouldered man in jeans and black shirt hunkered down at its side. He was expertly wrapping one of its front legs.

      “Hello, there,” she called out. “I’m Dr. Branson. Someone called, and—”

      The man finished the last wrap of the bandage around the leg, stood abruptly and turned to face her, his expression stunned. “Sara?”

      “Tate?” Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. She felt as stunned as he looked, and it took a moment to find her voice with so many painful high school memories crashing through her thoughts.

      Guilt.

      Remorse.

      Heartache.

      In high school, the first time he’d angled a heart-stopping grin in her direction she’d felt herself falling, falling into the depths of his silver-blue gaze, too mesmerized to even speak, even though she’d known he was way too wild and irresponsible—a magnet for the popular, flirty girls. Not a guy who’d want a plain, ordinary nerd like her.

      But nothing had ever been predictable where Tate Langford was concerned.

      “W-what are you doing here?”

      He blinked. “That was you on the phone?”

      “Calls roll over to my cell phone if the clinic receptionist is on another line.” She tipped her head slightly. “Guess I forgot to introduce myself.”

      “As did I.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It’s been a long time.”

      “Fourteen years.” She felt a flare of warmth in her cheeks, realizing it sounded as if she had been actually paying close attention to that passage of time all these years, like some lovesick puppy. “I mean—since high school graduation.”

      “And now you’re the vet in town.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Quite an improvement over the crotchety old buzzard who owned the clinic years ago. Knowing what he was like, I’m sure he drove a hard bargain.”

      “I don’t know. The vet who bought the practice from him left to join her fiancé’s practice in Idaho. I signed the papers a few weeks ago.”

      “I thought your parents wanted you to go to med school, like they did.”

      “Adamantly. But I had a change of heart.” Coupled with a surge of rebellion leading to an estrangement that still hadn’t fully healed.

      Life hadn’t been any easier for Tate, though, given his father’s reputation as a controlling, volatile man who never backed down. In high school, Tate had once told her that he hated the ranch and couldn’t wait to leave. And once he did, he was never, ever coming back.

      She cocked her head and studied him. “I remember your dad wanted every one of his sons to stay on the ranch. But by the time I left for college I heard all of you had left. For good.”

      “Yeah, my dad’s plans didn’t work out so well, either. All of us dreamed of escaping the ranch, and we did.” A corner of Tate’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Devlin went into the Marines, Jess left to rodeo and then I followed suit. When we disrupted Dad’s plans for building his ranching dynasty, he was so riled that he told us to never come back. He was not a forgiving man.”

      She furrowed her brow, thinking. “I’ve only been back a few weeks, but I think I might have seen Jess around town.”

      “Probably. When Dad got Parkinson’s he wasn’t happy about swallowing his pride and asking Jess to come back. Ironic, because Jess had been saving his rodeo earnings for vet school, and gave up his own dreams to take over the ranch. Dad died a year later, and I doubt he ever thanked Jess for coming home.”

      “What about Devlin?”

      “He was severely injured in a bomb blast, and got a medical discharge from the Marines. He moved back last spring. Now he’s an active partner in the ranch.”

      “So you and your brothers ended up ranching after all.”

      Tate rested a hand on the gelding’s sleek neck. “Not me. I came back a few days ago, and I’ll be home for just a few months. Too many bad memories here to suit me.”

      “I don’t blame you.”

      In grade school, he’d lost a younger sister in a tragic accident, and less than a year later his mother died. The whole town knew how harsh Gus had been with his sons after that. For all of their land and wealth, no one would’ve wanted to be in their shoes.

      Which made her own behavior toward Tate in high school seem all the worse. Maybe he didn’t remember anything about it, after all these years, but seeing him again made that emotional baggage weigh heavily on her heart.

      She swallowed hard and shook off her thoughts as she approached the two-year-old gelding, ran a comforting hand down his neck and shoulder and carefully unwrapped the leg. “You’ve done a good job of keeping this leg clean. He’s up to date on all of his vaccinations, right? Including tetanus?”

      Tate nodded. “I checked his records. All good.”

      “What happened?”

      “Barbwire,” he said with disgust. “If I was going to stay here longer, I’d have time to replace all of it with something safer—at least around the horse pastures. Some cattle went through the fence last night. At least a hundred head of Angus were in the horse pasture this morning, and by then, this colt had gotten tangled up in the downed wire.”

      “The cattle probably didn’t even see the fence during that heavy snowfall. Did you get them all rounded up?”

      “Yep. At least they were contained in an adjoining pasture. My brothers came over to help drive them back.”

      She administered an intravenous sedative, and waited until the gelding’s head sleepily lowered. After injecting some anesthetic, she examined the edges of the lacerations, flushed them with sterile saline and probed the depths of the wounds.

      She retrieved suture materials from her satchel and got to work. “I’m only suturing the cannon bone area,” she said without looking away from the leg. “Fortunately, the wounds on the pastern are minor. In that area, sutures tend to pull out when the joint flexes. I’d have to do something more involved.”

      When she finished, she wrapped the leg in gauze, then fluffy white sheet cotton, followed by stretchy Vetrap to thoroughly stabilize the dressing.

      After she’d administered an injection of IM antibiotics, she stowed her gear back into the satchel and pulled off her vinyl gloves. “Stall rest only. I need to see this horse in three or four days, and then a week or two after that. Will someone be around, say, on Thursday morning around eleven?”

      “Sure. Just give me a call if anything changes.” He slowly led the injured gelding into a stall and unbuckled his halter,

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