LITMIR.BIZ

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a pointer, and the father of her pups was anybody’s guess. The folks five miles down the road hadn’t known, and hadn’t cared. They’d just wanted her gone.

      She was halfway out of her truck when she spied the three Langford boys—men—striding across the parking area toward her.

      Even from a distance, she knew they couldn’t be anyone else, each of them tall and broad-shouldered, with the same sort of self-confident saunter. No one could mistake them for anything but brothers, though Tate was a bit taller and Jess was a little heavier.

      But despite the rocky end to their high school romance years ago, Tate was still the only guy who had ever made her stomach tie itself in knots and made her foolish heart beat a little faster.

      She stifled a sigh, wishing this vet call was already over.

      Jess reached her first and thrust out his hand. “Good to see you again, Sara. You and Tate were three years behind me, but I remember you from school.”

      She shook his hand and nodded, then looked over at Devlin and offered her hand to him, forcing herself to avoid any reaction to the scarring that trailed down the side of his temple and disappeared inside his shirt collar. “Devlin. Good to see you again.”

      “Same here.” He shot a quick, indecipherable grin at Tate as he shook her hand. “I hear you recently moved back to Pine Bend. I expect we’ll be seeing you out at the ranch quite a bit in the future. For vet calls, that is.”

      There was an undercurrent of tension—maybe even sly humor—radiating between the three brothers that she couldn’t quite read, and she faltered for a split second, then regained her composure. Whatever nonsense was going on between them, she needed to check the injured horse and be on her way. Leaving the Langford place would make the rest of the day seem a whole lot brighter.

      “So how is that gelding doing?” she asked briskly as she grabbed her satchel from the backseat of her truck and started for the barn. “Still on stall rest, right?”

      “Absolutely.” Tate followed her toward the barn.

      The other two brothers veered off toward a gleaming black Ford F350 hitched to an empty hay wagon. “See you later,” Jess called out. “I’ve got to meet a cattle buyer this afternoon.”

      “Thank goodness,” Tate muttered under his breath as the truck took off down the lane, light snow boiling up from beneath its tires.

      “What?”

      He hesitated, then gave her a wry glance. “Dev seems to think you and I were quite an item in high school, and that it never stopped.”

      She stumbled, but caught herself. “Oh.”

      “And since he has the tact of a Brahman bull, you might as well be forewarned. I am not responsible for anything he says, implies or does.”

      She couldn’t help but laugh at Tate’s pained expression. “I’m not sure I can visualize an ex-Marine as a matchmaker.”

      “Frankly, I think he and Jess were just trying to get me riled, but I can only hope for the best.”

      At the sound of a pitiful bark from her truck she glanced over her shoulder, then continued toward the barn.

      But when the dog howled with fear, that stopped her in her tracks. “I’m sorry. That’s Lucy. Do you have any dogs loose around here?”

      “Nope.”

      “Do you mind if I let her out of my truck?”

      “Go right ahead. She sounds pretty desperate.”

      Sara went back and lifted the dog down from the seat. Once on the ground, she shivered against Sara’s leg.

      “Looks like your dog is gonna be a momma, and soon.”

      “Within a few days, I suspect.”

      He gave the dog a closer look, then raised his gaze to Sara’s and lifted an eyebrow. “Except for that belly, she looks awfully thin.”

      “I saw her cowering in a snow-filled ditch a few miles down the road. I stopped at the house to ask about her, and the guy said he ‘wanted to get rid of her,’ because she’s pregnant.” Sara said a quick, silent prayer of thanks, grateful that she hadn’t driven past without noticing. “Pathetic as this is, she spent her life on a heavy log chain with a ramshackle doghouse, but he’d let her loose, quit feeding her and tried to chase her off so she’d move on. Can you imagine? Some people shouldn’t be responsible for any living thing.”

      “I’ll agree with you there. At the least, he should have spayed her.”

      “From the looks of the house I don’t think he could afford it, and this county doesn’t have a free spay clinic, either.” Another one of her goals, she reflected. “At least not yet.”

      “Are there any animal shelters?”

      “Not in this county. The closest is a two-hour drive.”

      “Some people cast off a dog like trash. But for that dog, home is their whole world—the one family they’ll love for their short lifetime, if they’re lucky. Heartless people like her owner make me sick.”

      Tate was watching her intently now, his eyes fixed on hers. She took a slow, deep breath to calm down the anger in her voice. “Sorry, I get a little intense when it comes to animal welfare.”

      “I wouldn’t expect anything less. It’s your job.”

      “And my passion.” She leaned down to ruffle the fur at the dog’s neck. “I’m just so sorry that I can’t keep her myself.”

      “Why not?”

      “I’m living in a small cabin, and don’t have enough space, or enough time at home to care for her. And the…um…current population there wouldn’t exactly be good company for a new mom and her litter of puppies.”

      “Population?”

      She felt her cheeks warm. Most people might think she was crazy, but she hadn’t been able to say no to a number of abandoned animals since returning to Pine Bend. If she gave in one more time she might end up sleeping in her truck. “I just wish I had a bigger place.”

      The dog waddled into the barn behind her and Tate followed, closing the door after them. He strode to a stall halfway down the aisle and brought out the injured colt.

      The gelding tossed his head and did a little sideways jog as if wanting to take off running. “He’s pretty impatient to be outside, as you can see.”

      After Tate cross-tied him, Sara knelt at his side and removed the layers of leg wrap and cotton batting.

      “The wounds look good,” she said, inspecting them closely. “With just the expected minimal seepage of serous—that’s clear—fluid but no evidence of swelling or infection.”

      After pulling clean materials from her satchel she rebandaged the leg, then gave the gelding another injection of long-acting antibiotics.

      “He shouldn’t be out in the pasture until the bandages are off and he’s fully healed. I’d rather he wasn’t free to run and buck just yet. But he could go on a hot-walker if you’ve got one, or you could pony him around the arena while riding another horse.”

      “That’s what I figured.” Tate led the colt back to his stall, took off the halter and came back out to the aisle. “No rush, that’s for sure. This is one of the Langford horses that we’ll—er, Jess—will put in our production sale next year. Well-broke ranch horses are worth quite a lot these days.”

      “That’s what I like to hear.” Sara picked up her satchel. “Is there anything else while I’m here?”

      He looked up at a calico barn cat glaring down at them from the rafters. “Jess says the barn cats need rabies vaccinations and whatever other vaccines they ought to have. But I don’t

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