Once and for All

“How bad?”

Beau swallowed as he glanced down, blond hair falling over his forehead. “A little lower than a D.”

“How much lower?”

“Fifty-five percent.” Beau dropped his backpack, which must have weighed forty pounds, judging from the sound it made when it hit the floor. “It was that last test.” He all but exploded as he said it. “I don’t get it. I studied the chapter and I thought I understood everything.”

Sam swallowed his anger. Beau was clearly upset, and the boy had spent way too much time close to tears over the past year and a half. “How’d Ty do?” he asked quietly.

“He passed. Of course.”

Sam moved out from behind the desk and crossed the room. He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder, then pulled him into a rough embrace. He didn’t know what else to do. How could he tell if Beau was honestly doing all he could to pass his classes, or whether he was putting in a moderate effort and hoping for the best? Sam had been in this parenting gig for only eighteen months, since his brother and sister-in-law were killed by a drunken driver while crossing a street in Las Vegas, and he’d received custody of their sons.

He let out a breath. He’d forgotten what hell the teen years could be, but he was reexperiencing them now in living color.

“What am I going to do?” Beau muttered before stepping back. He tipped his chin up, stared at the ceiling.

“You’re going to get your ass in a chair and work on math tonight. We have a couple days to raise your grade before the next eligibility check. Have you talked to the teacher?”

“No.”

“E-mail her. See what she has to say, what you need to work on. Then after supper we’re going over that test.”

As it turned out, though, Sam didn’t have the time. He and Beau had just settled at the kitchen table with pad, pencil and failed test paper in front of them when the phone rang.

“It’s the Taylor ranch,” Tyler called from Sam’s den.

Sam reached for the extension. One of the Taylors’ show mares had kicked its leg through a fencing panel and got hung up. The leg was swollen almost double and the owners suspected she might have a broken tibia.

He climbed into his canvas bib overalls, clamped the plaid wool hat on his head. “Listen,” he said in a low voice to Tyler. “Get your test and sit down with your brother and see what the two of you can figure out.”

“But—”

Sam had been a parent long enough to perfect The Look, which he now employed full force. “You want your brother eligible, right?”

“Right.”

“Then I don’t care if you have other plans. Help him out.”

“All right.”

“HAVE YOU HEARD FROM MIKE?” Jodie asked as Margarite pulled a casserole out of the oven. The housekeeper’s lasagna was made with cottage cheese and ground beef—not really lasagna, in Jodie’s opinion, but surprisingly tasty.

“No.” Margarite set the dish on a cast-iron trivet, then closed the oven door.

“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.

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO believe this,” Katie said as Sam came in from an early morning emergency call—a bull with a broken leg—that had segued into routine equine dental work in which the horse had not been all that eager to participate. He was tired and ready to believe anything. And he groaned when he saw what she was holding between her thumb and forefinger, as if it were a dead mouse.

“Whose check bounced?” He shrugged out of his canvas coat and hung it on a wooden peg. It was the third returned check that week. At this rate, he wasn’t going to be able to pay his own bills. Given the choice, Sam would rather wrestle a prolapsed uterus back into a struggling cow than deal with billing and accounts receivable—although, since it was just after the holidays, his mailbox wasn’t exactly spilling over with envelopes containing checks. And obviously, those that did arrive were not a guarantee of money in the bank.

“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.

IT HAD BEEN A WHILE SINCE Jodie had seen a more wonderful sight than Lucas Reynolds driving the tractor with the hay trailer behind it out into the field to feed the horses and cattle. Not that she and Margarite hadn’t done a fine job of feeding, but enough was enough. She liked being inside with a cup of coffee rather than outside on the back of the trailer, freezing her ass off.

Margarite had been in a good mood since he’d showed up yesterday, the morning after Jodie called. No more injections, no more cold trips out to the haystack. Lucas Reynolds was indeed a knight in shining armor. Or rather a knight in a beat-up canvas coat, a ratty silk scarf and a battered felt cowboy hat. But the expression on his craggy face was relaxed and his eyes clear, quite a change since the last time Jodie had seen him, during a summer visit just before Joe fired him.

Margarite came into the dining room and set a list on the table beside Jodie’s coffee cup. “I thought of a few more things I need in Elko, if you don’t mind.”

“Trust me. I don’t mind.” She was looking forward to getting out of the house for a few hours, and had volunteered to go on a grocery run to town. While she was there, she’d stock up on books, see about a manicure, get the Spitfire serviced.

She called her law office as she drove north, and talked briefly to Penelope, the receptionist, who told Jodie that since she was on sabbatical, she needed to focus on things other than work. Besides, there was no gossip and no new cases of note. Things were running smoothly, but yes, they would run more smoothly once Jodie got back. And then Penelope had hung up on her.

Okay. Jodie dropped the phone onto the passenger seat. Point taken. No obsessing over work. She was on leave. She was supposed to relax and come back refreshed. No telling if that would actually happen, since she hadn’t wanted to leave in the first place.

She reached for the phone again and called Gavin, the associate who had taken her unfinished cases. She enjoyed a few minutes of conversation and discovered the status of each case before he had to go. Jodie hated being away from the office, hated waking up in the morning with nothing to work on, no strategy to plan. But … at least her sabbatical had gotten Joe onto the airplane. The smile on her mom’s face as she’d followed him into the security area had been worth the long empty hours Jodie was spending on the ranch.

When she arrived back in the late afternoon, the trunk of her small car loaded with groceries not available in Wesley’s much smaller stores, she knew something was wrong. Lucas and Margarite were in the kitchen, talking in low voices, when she came in through the mudroom. The top of the housekeeper’s head barely hit the tall cowboy’s shoulder, but there was no doubt as to who was controlling the conversation. They turned in unison as she closed the door, and Jodie instantly knew she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear.

“I think we’re going to need a vet,” Lucas said before the door latched.

Jodie stared at the couple in disbelief. “Oh, just shoot me now.”

“It’s that new bull your dad bought before he left,” Margarite said, her expression grim, as well it should be. Joe had spent a ton of money on that black bull because it was homozygous, whatever the heck that meant.

“I found him standing hunched up in the corner of the pasture, and brought him in,” Lucas added. “I think we should have someone take a look at him fast.”

Jodie felt like beating her head against the wall. “Maybe we can have Dr. Eriksson fly in from Vegas?” The vet had his own plane and often flew to the ranch for routine veterinary work. It cost Joe a bundle, but it was the only way he could get services. So far it had worked, because so far there hadn’t been a pressing emergency that Mike couldn’t handle. No. That had waited until Jodie was here and spineless Mike was gone.

“Already checked. He’s on vacation.”

“This isn’t happening.” Jodie rubbed her hands over her face in a gesture of frustration. “What do you suggest?” she asked Lucas.

“I’m no vet, so I suggest we get one.”

“Let’s go take a look at the bull,” she said.

Not that she knew a lot, but Jodie wanted to see how sick the animal was. Two minutes later she had her answer. Real sick. Lucas had herded him into the west end of the barn, opposite the stall where Bronson was recovering, and he was now in a small pen, standing with his body contorted into an oddly hunched position. He either didn’t care or was unaware that Jodie and Lucas were there, a few feet away from him. His eyes were half-closed, his breathing labored.

“What are the odds of two emergencies in one week?” she asked in a defeated tone.

Lucas snorted. “On a ranch, it’s more like what are the odds of not having two emergencies in one week? Your father has been damned lucky so far.”

“Well, it’s catching up to him now.” Jodie patted the metal rail of the enclosure with an air of finality, and then started for the barn door. “I want you to call all the vets within driving distance and see if any will come out here.”

“All right.” Lucas’s tone said it all. No, they wouldn’t, and he hated being the guy who had to ask. But he had a better chance at talking them into it than she did.

“Just give it a try, okay?”

“Sure. We’re going to need more penicillin for the gelding, too.”

“Can you get it at the feed store?” Jodie asked. She was amazed at what the store stocked. Whereas human vaccines were regulated substances, many animal vaccines were readily available to whoever was gutsy enough to give an injection.

“You gotta get it from a vet.”

“Figures.”

“I’m going to check on the horse before I go back to the house,” Jodie told Lucas as he started for the door. Actually, she didn’t have the stomach to listen to him get shot down.

The gelding nickered as Jodie approached. “Hi, Bronson.”

She and the animal had become close over the past few days. He didn’t move much due to pain, but when he saw her coming without Margarite, his ears tipped forward and he limped over within scratching range. Jodie alone meant the itchy spots would be addressed.

“Feeling better?” she asked, rubbing his nose and stroking the thick winter hair on his jowls. As she studied the long crisscrossed lines of sutures across his chest, she felt the now familiar twinge of guilt.

She hadn’t asked Sam about the stitches—didn’t know if they dissolved or needed to be taken out. Lucas probably knew. He’d better.

“I’ll find out about those stitches,” she told the gelding. “And when we get them out, you’ll be as good as new.” Although she doubted her father was going to agree after he saw the poor animal’s scarred chest.

Jodie patted the horse and went back to the house. Lucas was still on the phone when she passed through the kitchen into the dining room, his back to her. She’d hoped the local vets would be more receptive to him, but he didn’t look like a man who was having a lot of luck.

Five minutes later he walked into the dining room, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck in a helpless gesture. “I can’t find a vet.”

He left the room as Margarite came through the doorway that led to the living room, broom in hand. The woman stopped dead when she saw the melting globules of snow and mud on the tile floor. Her dark gaze shot to the kitchen entryway just as the door clicked shut.

She let out a breath and started sweeping the snow out of the dining room and into the kitchen. Jodie followed the damp broom trail, glad she’d slipped out of her boots in the mudroom.