LITMIR.BIZ

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of an East Coast society princess, had turned the poor kid nearly speechless when she first came to the clinic. Antonia often had that effect on people, so she was not surprised. She didn’t try to be distant or icy; in fact, her basic nature was warm. But she was by nature and experience somewhat reserved, and the years of training in the proper demeanor expected of a young lady that she had received from her mother—“a lady does not cry in public,” “a lady doesn’t show a vulgar display of excitement,” “a lady does not display unseemly curiosity”—had given her a vaguely aloof air that she did not know how to shake. Even in the casual shirt and jeans that she typically wore on and off the job, she still looked like someone who should be on her way to a Junior League meeting. Today, for instance, she wore jeans and a plain blue shirt, with her hair pulled back and arranged in a practical French braid and only the barest hint of makeup on her face, yet she was somehow elegant.

      Antonia usually dealt with her looks by ignoring them. Once she was ready to go in the morning, she rarely glanced in a mirror the rest of the day. Her clothes were invariably practical. Her skin care regimen consisted of little beyond simple cleaning, moisturizing and frequent applications of sunscreen to keep her fair skin from burning. Her technician and friend Rita Delgado, whose devotion to skin care and makeup was profound, was frequently appalled by Antonia’s blasé attitude.

      “What is sickening,” she would say, shaking her head, “is that you do almost nothing and still look the way you do!”

      Antonia went to her office and pulled on a clean lab coat from the closet, then walked down the hall to the locked door that led to the back part of the clinic, where the sick animals were kept. Miguel was waiting for her there, and they started on their rounds, beginning with Dingo, who was miraculously hanging on.

      She had checked over only three animals, approving one for dismissal that day, when the door from the main office burst open and Lilian, the receptionist, bustled in. Lilian, a middle-aged widow of very precise habits, was often the first person to reach the clinic. She liked to have the coffee made and her book work done before the clinic opened at seven-thirty. Lilian had a rather militaristic bent, Antonia thought, and she wanted to have her supplies lined up and her plans in order before she did battle with their clients.

      “Dr. Campbell!” Lilian’s soft-featured face, so at odds with her crisp, no-nonsense personality, was creased with concern. “Daniel Sutton just called. He’s having trouble with one of his mares. He said to come right away. She’s been in labor for a while, and she’s losing ground.”

      “Daniel Sutton?” Antonia asked, already unbuttoning her lab coat and starting back toward the front of the clinic. “The ranch I went to last week?”

      “No, that’s Marshall. His father. Daniel’s on the same road, though, about ten minutes further west. Marshall Sutton’s a cattleman, but Daniel raises horses. He’s knowledgeable. If he says there’s something wrong, then there is.”

      “Okay. I’ll take the mobile.” Antonia hung her lab coat on a hook beside the back door, listening as Lilian gave her detailed directions to Daniel Sutton’s horse farm. She took the key to the clinic’s mobile vet truck from another hook. It was the task of whoever drove the truck last to make sure that it was filled with gas and stocked with supplies so that it was always ready to go the next day.

      She ran lightly down the steps and crunched across the gravel lot to where the mobile truck sat parked beneath a shade tree. Dr. Carmichael had told her many tales of his early days in the area, when he had driven around to the nearby ranches in his old International Harvester truck, a forerunner of the modern SUVs, with a stock of supplies in the back that he would need for his large animal practice. Today, of course, like most vets who practiced in rural areas, he had a modern mobile, a truck equipped with a shell, looking much like one of the smaller motor homes, in which there were sinks, refrigeration for some of the medicines and samples, and nearly every kind of instrument or medicine needed for working on animals in the field. It was generally far more practical for the vet to go to the horse or cow than for the animal to be loaded into a trailer and brought to the veterinarian.

      Time, of course, was of the essence when a mare was having problems foaling, and the long distances between farms and ranches here ate up that precious time, so Antonia stepped on the gas when she left the outskirts of Angel Eye, bringing the truck up to eighty. She doubted that any sheriff’s deputy in this ranching community would interfere with a speeding vet on her way to save a horse.

      Lilian’s directions were as precise as she was, and Antonia had no trouble finding the Sutton horse farm. She turned off the highway onto a graveled road, blocked by a mechanized steel gate. She pushed the button on the small raised platform, and almost immediately the gate began to swing open.

      “I’m in the foaling pens, Doc,” a deep male voice, tight with worry, said over the intercom. “Better step on it. She’s in a bad way.”

      Antonia stepped on the accelerator and started up the long drive. Automatically she noted the details of the farm as she drove toward the house and barn in the distance. It was obviously a working farm—there were none of the expensive decorative touches that marked the rich hobbyist horse farms. Everything was plain and serviceable, from the front gate to the black metal fences to the old farmhouse at the end of the drive. However, there was nothing shabby or ill-kempt about it, either. The fences, the road, the barn, the paddocks, even the two horse trailers sitting beside the barn—all were in good repair and of good quality. It was a neatly kept place, and the horses in the pasture beside the road looked equally well taken care of.

      She pulled to a stop between the barn and the lower-roofed stables and hopped out of the truck. Grabbing her doctor’s bag, she hurried toward the stables, presuming that the foaling pens were there. As she did so, a tall man came out of the building, squinting in the sun. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, stared for a moment without moving, then came toward her at a lope.

      He was long-legged, with a lean, muscled build that came from years of hard work rather than an intimate acquaintance with weight-training machines. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore boots, worn blue jeans and a white short-sleeved T-shirt, and he looked so unutterably male that Antonia’s breath caught in her throat. She stopped where she was, a little taken aback by her own reaction. Tight jeans and a wide chest didn’t usually make her stomach flutter anymore, and she had seen plenty of cowboys since moving to Texas. None of them, however, had sent this jolt of pure, instinctive lust shooting straight down through her.

      “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his dark brows drawn together in a deep frown, as he stopped a few feet from her. “Where’s Doc?”

      He glanced toward the veterinary truck, then back at her. He was a big man, taller by several inches than Antonia, who was accustomed to looming over most men. He wore no hat, and his hair was thick and black and a trifle shaggy. His skin was tanned from years of exposure to the sun, and there were deep sun lines at the corners of his dark eyes. He was handsome and just as intensely masculine up close as he had appeared at a distance.

      Much to Antonia’s astonished dismay, she simply looked at him, unable to speak.

      “Damn it!” the man went on. “I told her I needed Dr. Carmichael. Didn’t she understand? The foal’s in the wrong position. I gotta have a vet, not some tech fresh out of school!”

      Antonia stiffened at his words, a quick rush of anger coming to her rescue. “I am the vet,” she told him crisply and extended her hand, pleased to see that it didn’t shake despite the bizarre inner turmoil that afflicted her.

      The man stared at her, his jaw dropping comically. “What?”

      “I’m the vet. Dr. Carmichael’s new associate. I am Dr. Campbell.” She dropped her hand, unsure whether shock or simple rudeness had kept him from shaking her hand. “Now, where’s your mare?”

      “But you can’t be—” he said, a stunned look on his face. “You’re a girl.”

      “I will take that as a compliment to my youthful appearance rather than a male chauvinist remark,” Antonia said coolly. “However, I am the vet. Dr. Carmichael needed someone

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