“Seriously. Can’t you think of anyone who might have done this?”
She shrugged. “I’ve had a few little disagreements with ranchers over treatment of their animals. It’s part of the territory. Just business as usual for a vet.”
“What kind of disagreements?”
“Well, for one thing, you’d be amazed at some of the conditions people think are perfectly okay for their animals. I’d like to see some of them try to stay healthy when they’re living knee-deep in manure. And then they think it’s their vet’s fault if their animals don’t thrive.”
“How heated did these little disagreements get?”
“Not hot enough for something like this.”
“Well, I still think you better come up with a few names for Jess to check out. Some of these old-timers are set in their ways and don’t like an outsider coming in and telling them how to take care of their animals.”
Outsider. The word stung like vinegar poured on a cut. How long would it take before she was no longer considered a foreigner in Star Valley? Would that day ever come?
She didn’t bother to point out the obvious to Matt—that, for the most part, he still had the exact same attitude. Before she could come up with a nonconfrontational answer, they heard a car door slam.
“That will be Jess,” Matt said, a few seconds before his brother burst into the kitchen.
“It’s about damn time,” Matt snapped. “Where have you been?”
The police chief snorted. “Give me a break. You couldn’t have called more than ten minutes ago. What do you want from me? The department’s Bronco only goes up to a hundred twenty.”
Before Matt could growl out a rejoinder, Ellie rose, stepping forward in an instinctive effort to keep the peace between the brothers. “Thank you for coming out, Jesse, although it’s really not necessary. I told your brother we could have done this in the morning.”
Jesse immediately shifted his attention to her. To her complete shock, he reached both arms out and folded her into a comforting hug as if they’d been friends for years. “I’m so sorry you had to go through something like this. How are you holding up, sweetheart?”
She stepped away, flustered and touched at once, in time to catch Matt glare at his brother and Jesse return it with a raised eyebrow and a look she could only call speculative.
“Fine,” she said quickly. “As I tried repeatedly to tell your brother, I’m really okay. He won’t listen to me.”
“Matt’s a hardheaded son of a gun. Always has been.” Jesse grinned at her, then removed his hat and coat and hung them on the rack by the door before making a detour to the fridge.
“I’m starving. Been on since noon. Anything I can eat while Ellie gives her statement?” he asked his older brother.
Matt scowled. “This is serious. Feed your face on your own time.”
Jesse ignored him and pulled out a plastic-wrap-covered plate. “Here we go. Cassie’s incredible fried chicken. The woman’s an angel.”
He set the plate on the table, straddled a chair, then nodded to Ellie. “Okay. I’m ready. Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on? Start at the beginning.”
Her mind felt as scattered as dandelion fluff on a windy day, and for a moment she gazed at the two brothers as she tried to collect her thoughts. That didn’t help at all. The two of them together in such close proximity were nothing short of breathtaking.
She’d never considered herself a particularly giddy kind of female, but any woman who said her pulse didn’t beat a little harder around the Harte brothers—with their dark good looks and those dangerous eyes—would have to be lying.
Matt was definitely the more solemn of the two. There was a hardness about him his younger brother lacked. Jess certainly smiled more often, but she thought she had seen old pain flash a few times in his eyes, like at the dinner table the other day when the talk had turned to their parents.
“Anytime here, Doc.”
She pursed her lips at Matt’s impatience, but quickly filled the police chief in on what had happened, only pausing a few times to glare at his brother for interrupting.
“I still think it’s a prank, nothing more,” she finished. “Just a really ghoulish one.”
“Hmm. I don’t know.” Jesse wiped his mouth with a napkin. “The only thing I can do at this point is check out these names you’ve given me and maybe something will shake out. In the meantime—”
The radio clipped to his belt suddenly squawked static. With an oath, Jesse pulled it out and pressed a button. Then Ellie heard a disembodied voice advising of a rollover accident on U.S. 89 with multiple injuries.
Jesse rose with surprising speed from the chair. “Shoot. I’ve got to run out to that. We’re shorthanded, and the only other officer on patrol is J. B. Nesmith. He won’t be able to handle this one on his own. Sorry, Ellie. I was going to tell you to be extra cautious at home and at the clinic. I’ll try to have my officers keep an eye on both places whenever they can while the investigation is ongoing.”
He shrugged into his coat and shoved on his hat. “Promise you’ll call right away if anything else unusual happens. Anything at all.” He gave her another quick hug, then rushed out, snagging a leftover brownie as he went.
CHAPTER 10
The subtle tension simmering between her and Matt had eased somewhat while Jesse was there. After he walked out of the kitchen and left them alone once more, her nerves started humming again like power lines in the wind.
She blew out a quick breath and picked up her backpack from the table. “I think I’ll just head home now, too.”
Matt’s frown creased the weathered corners of his mouth. “I thought we agreed it would be best for you to stay here tonight.”
“We didn’t agree on anything.” She stared him down. “You made a proclamation and expected me to simply abide by your word.”
He gave her a disgusted look. “I swear, you are the stubbornest damn woman I have ever met.”
“That’s why you like me so much.” She smiled sweetly.
For one sizzling moment he studied her, a strange, glittery light in his eyes. “Oh, is that why?” he finally murmured.
Heat skimmed through her, and she gripped her bag more tightly. She found it completely unfair that he could disarm her with a look, that he could make her insides go all soft and gooey without even trying.
“Please stay, Doc. Just for tonight. You know, if you went home I’d spend the whole night worrying about you, and I’ve got a horse to train in the morning. You wouldn’t want me to make some dumb mistake and ruin her just because I didn’t get any sleep, would you?”
“Nice try, cowboy.”
He flashed a quick smile that sent her heartbeat into overdrive. “Humor me. It would make me feel a whole lot better knowing you’re not at that house by yourself after what happened tonight.”
She gave a disgruntled sigh. How could she continue to argue with him when he was being so sweet and protective?
On the other hand, she thoroughly despised this insidious need curling through her to crawl right into his arms and let him take all her worry and stress onto those wide, powerful shoulders.
She could take care of herself. Hadn’t she spent most of her life proving it? She wasn’t her mother. She didn’t need a man to make her feel whole, to smooth the jagged edges of her life.
She could do that all by herself.
“Come on.” He rose and headed for the door. “I’ll show you to one of the guest rooms.”
She looked at the stubborn set of his jaw and sighed. Like water on sandstone, he wasn’t going to give up until he totally wore her down. Either that or he would probably insist on following her home and inspecting every single inch of her house for imaginary bogeymen before he could be satisfied it was safe.
The idea of him invading her home—her personal
space—with all that masculine intensity was far more disturbing to her peace of mind than spending the night in his guest room.
“This isn’t necessary,” she grumbled.
“It is for me.” He didn’t bother to turn around.
She huffed out a disgruntled breath. She would spend this one night in his guest room and then she was going to do her best to stay as far away from Matt Harte as she possibly could, given the facts that Salt River had only five thousand residents, that she was contracted to treat his animals and that they had to plan a carnival together.
He was as dangerous to her heart as his outlaw namesake to an unprotected pile of gold.
* * *
The blasted woman wouldn’t leave him alone.
Matt jerked the chute up with much more force than necessary. No matter how much he tried to stay away from her, to thrust her from his mind, she somehow managed to work herself right into his thoughts anyway. He couldn’t shake her loose to save his life.
Ever since the week before when she had stayed at the ranch, his mind had been filled with the scent of her and the way she had looked in the morning at the kitchen table eating breakfast and laughing with Cassie and the girls. Fresh and clean and so pretty he had stood in the doorway staring at her for what felt like hours.
She haunted his thoughts all day long—and the nights were worse. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop thinking about the taste of her mouth and the way she had melted in his arms.
This, though. This was getting ridiculous. He damn well ought to be able to find a little peace from the woman while he was in the middle of checking the prenatal conditions of his pregnant cows.
But here was Steve Nichols bringing her up while he had one hand inside a bawling heifer. “You hear what happened to Ellie last week?” he asked over his shoulder.
Matt scowled at her name and at the reminder of the grisly offering left in her truck. “Yeah. I heard.”
Nichols’s blond mustache twitched with his frown. “Your brother have any leads?”
“Not yet. Ellie thinks it’s just a prank.”
The vet looked at him. “But you don’t?”
He shrugged. “I think whoever is capable of doing something like that is one sick son of a bitch.”
But a canny one, Matt acknowledged. One who knew how to lay low. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the week since she’d found the dead cat in her truck—a stray that, she learned during an autopsy, had indeed died of a natural cause, feline leukemia.
To be cautious, Ellie had installed an extra lock at her house and had hired Junior Zabrinzki’s security company to check on the clinic during the night. So far, everything had been quiet, although she still claimed that she sometimes had the eerie feeling someone was watching over her shoulder.
He didn’t know any of this firsthand. He’d only seen Ellie once since she had stayed at the ranch, the day before, when she’d come out to treat some of his horses. Despite his best efforts to pry information out of her, somehow the contrary woman managed to steer every single conversation back to his animals.
Good thing his little brother was the chief of police. If he hadn’t forced Jesse to give him regular progress reports on the investigation, he would have been a whole lot more annoyed at Ellie.
Progress was far too optimistic a word, though, from the reports he’d been getting. Jess was still as stumped by the threat as he’d been that first night, and Matt was getting pretty impatient about it.
“You talk to a lot of ranchers around here,” he said suddenly to Nichols. “You have any ideas who might be angry enough at Ellie to threaten her like that?”
Steve shook his head, regret in his eyes. “I wish I did, but I’m as baffled as anybody else. I know she’s had a rough time of it with some of the old-timers. Ellie’s not exactly afraid to speak her mind when she sees things she doesn’t like and, I have to admit, some of her ideas are a little out there. But I really thought things had been better for her in the last month or so.”
He had to give Nichols credit for not showing any sign that he minded Ellie’s presence in Star Valley. He wasn’t sure he would have been so gracious in the same circumstances if a rival suddenly moved in to his business turf.
“I’d sure like to find out who it is, though,” Steve said, his voice tight and his movements jerky. “It kills me to think about her finding something as sick as that. Of being so frightened. Ellie’s a good vet and a wonderful person. She didn’t deserve that.”
Matt sent the other man a swift look, surprised by his vehemence. Maybe it was just professional respect, but somehow he didn’t think so. Nichols acted more like a man with a personal stake in her business.
Did the two of them have a thing going? The thought left a taste in his mouth about as pleasant as rotten crab apples, and he had a sudden, savage urge to pound something.
But what business was it of his if she was seeing Steve? He had no claim on her, none at all. They were friends, nothing more. And not even very good friends at that.
Did she kiss Nichols with the same fiery passion she’d shown him? he wondered, then instantly regretted it.
“The investigation is still open,” he said tersely. “Sooner or later Jess will get to the bottom of it.”
“I hope so. I really hope so.”
They turned to the cows and were running the last heifer through the chute when Hector Aguella hurried into the pens, his dark, weathered face taut with worry. “Boss, I think we got a problem.”
“What’s up?”
“Some of the horses, they’re acting real strange. Like they got into some bad feed or something. I don’t know. They’re all shaking and got ugly stuff coming out their noses.”
“How many?”
“Six, maybe. You better take a look.”
“I’ll come with you,” Nichols said.
The noonday sun glared off the snow as he and Steve headed toward the horse pasture. When they were close enough to see what was happening, Matt growled an oath.
Even from here, it was obvious the horses were sick. They stood in listless little groups, noses running and tremors shaking their bodies.
“Call Doc Webster and get her out here fast,” he ordered Hector, breaking into a run. “And send Jim and Monte over to help me separate the healthy animals from the sick ones. If this is some kind of epidemic, I don’t want to lose the whole damn herd.”
“Do you want me to examine them?” Nichols called after him.
He hesitated for only a moment. Technically, the horses were Ellie’s territory, but it seemed idiotic to refuse the other vet’s offer of help when it could be an hour or more before she arrived at the ranch. “Yeah. Thanks.”
With the help of the ranch hands, they quickly moved the animals who weren’t showing any sign of sickness to a different pasture, then Steve began taking temperatures and doing quick physical exams.
“What do you think they’ve got?” Matt asked after the vet had looked at the last sick horse.
Steve scratched his head where thinning hair met scalp. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It looks like some kind of staph infection. They’ve all got the same big, oozing abscess.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s hit them all the same. They’ve all got fevers, runny noses and chills. We’ll have to run a culture to find out for sure. Whatever it is, it’s damn scary if it can cause these symptoms to come on so fast. You said they were fine yesterday, right?”
“Yeah. I didn’t notice anything unusual. So you’re thinking a bacterial infection? Not something they ate?”
“That’s what it looks like. I’m concerned about the abscess.”
“How could something like that have hit them all at the same time?”
“I don’t know.” Steve paused. “When I was in vet school I he
ard about a herd getting something similar to this. Same symptoms, anyway.”
“What was the cause there?”
“If I remember right, it was traced to unsanitary syringes used for vaccinations. Ellie hasn’t given them any shots lately, has she?”
“She was out yesterday, but all she did was that acupuncture stuff on some of the mares to ease some of their pregnancy discomfort.” He stopped, an ugly suspicion taking root.
Yesterday. Ellie had been here yesterday with her needles. Could she have done something that caused the animals to become deathly ill? Could she have used bad needles or something?
He couldn’t believe it—didn’t want to believe it. But it was one hell of a coincidence. He pushed the thought away. Now wasn’t the time for accusations and blame. Not when his horses needed treatment. “So what can we do?”
“Push high dosages of penicillin and wait and see. That’s about all we can do for the time being.”
“You got any antibiotics with you?”
“Not much but enough, I think. It’s in my truck over by the chutes. Let’s hope it’s the right one. I’ll run a culture as soon as I can so we’ll know better what we’re dealing with.”
He was only gone a few moments when Ellie’s rattletrap of a pickup pulled up, and she emerged from it flushed and breathless.
“What’s happening? Hector said you’ve got an emergency but he didn’t say what. Is it Mystic? Is she threatening to lose the foal again?”
Before he could answer, her gaze landed on the horses, still shuddering with chills, and all color leached from her face. “Holy cow. What happened to them?”
“You tell me,” Matt growled.
She sent him a startled look. “I…I can’t know that without a thorough examination. How long have they been like this?”
Faster than a wildfire consuming dry brush, anger scorched through him—at her and at himself. He should have known better, dammit, than to let a pretty face convince him to go against his own judgment.
He should never have let her touch his stock with her wacky California ideas. He wouldn’t have, except she had somehow beguiled him with her soft eyes and her stubborn chin and her hair that smelled like spring.
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