Sun Kissed

by Catherine Anderson

  Love. In Samantha’s experience, people all too often used the emotion as an excuse to inflict pain. Almost before the thought took root in her mind, she felt guilty for entertaining it. Clint was many things—arrogant, infuriating, and domineering, to name only a few—but no one who knew him well would ever accuse him of being deliberately cruel. “I know he means well,” she settled for saying. That was the entire problem with Clint, wasn’t it? He always meant well.

  “For all his faults, darlin’, he’s loyal to the marrow of his bones. Instead of goin’ home, he’s beddin’ down in an empty stall to grab some shut-eye so he can spell you and Tucker later.”

  A knot of resentment formed at the base of Samantha’s throat. That was another problem with Clint. No matter how badly he behaved, he always managed to redeem himself in everyone’s eyes. “That’s good of him,” she pushed out. “I honestly doubt I’ll be able to rest, though.”

  Her father nodded. “I know your heart’s hurtin’, honey. It’s a terrible thing Steve’s done.”

  A chill moved through her. There it was, the acknowledgment they’d both been avoiding. Steve had done this. Mentally, she kept circling the truth of it, much as she might a coiled rattlesnake. Steve, her monstrous nemesis, had reared his ugly head again.

  “Maybe it’s a mistake somehow,” she said softly.

  “A mistake?”

  “Yes. You know, an accident.” She turned aching eyes on her sire, wanting him to lie to her, yet knowing he wouldn’t. “Like Tucker mentioned earlier. Arsenic leaching from the wood, stuff like that. There’s no proof of a deliberate poisoning yet. Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions.”

  Her father just stared at her, his look inexpressibly sad. “You know better than that, Samantha Jane.”

  It was true; she did know better. She had nothing more to say. Quite simply, there were no words. The person she’d once believed she loved more than anyone else in the world was taking another stab at her, and this time, the blade had hit home in a way she’d never thought possible. Her horses. Oh, God. That was the trouble with intimate relationships: You revealed too much and made yourself vulnerable. Steve knew she’d rather cut off an arm than see harm come to one of her animals.

  “The other boys are headin’ home to stretch out and sleep on a proper bed,” her father informed her softly. “Come mornin’, you and Jerome will be wiped out. The three of them will help keep things under control over here while you snooze for a few hours.”

  “But they have their own ranches to run.”

  “And they’ll run ’em,” her father assured her. “Between the three of ’em, they’ll also run things over here for a bit. It’s not that big a deal.” He pushed clumsily at her hair and then patted her shoulder. “I love you, honey,” he said gruffly. “I’m sorry it’s come to this. If I could change it for you, I would.”

  Tears sprang to Samantha’s eyes. She blinked them away and tried to smile. “I love you, too, Dad.”

  “You want me to go find the bastard and kill him for you? I’m an old fart. If they put me in jail and throw away the key, I’ve already had a damned good life.”

  “It’s a tempting thought,” she said shakily. “But he isn’t worth it.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I can’t talk about it right now. I know we’ll have to discuss what should be done very soon. Just not right now.”

  “I understand,” he whispered.

  Only he didn’t, not really. Samantha doubted anyone could understand the myriad emotions that were at war within her right then, anger and regret struggling for supremacy, with a host of other feelings tangled inside her like a skein of yarn that had been batted about by a pair of kittens. She needed some quiet time—some thinking time. That was a luxury to be denied until Blue got through this crisis and she felt confident Tabasco was going to survive.

  “I’m taking off,” her father whispered. He gestured with a swing of his head. “Jerome needs stitches. I’m taking him to the ER.”

  Until that instant Samantha had forgotten all about the gash on her foreman’s forehead. “Oh, God,” she said faintly. “Where’s my mind at?”

  “On important matters,” her dad replied. He gave her shoulder a hard squeeze as he pushed to his feet. “Jerome understands that. Go easy on yourself for once.”

  Eighty-three minutes after the first injection of naloxone, Blue Blazes began to get fidgety. Tucker noted the time on a small tablet, which he carried in his shirt pocket, and prepared a second shot. He heard rather than saw Samantha stir from her trancelike vigil.

  “It’s working even better than I hoped,” he told her. “Naloxone’s period of action lasts anywhere from forty-five to ninety minutes. He’s gone almost a full ninety.” He administered the second dose of the drug, patted the stallion’s shoulder, and then sent the horse’s worried mistress a reassuring smile. “He’ll be fine now. Come morning there’ll be only the cuts on his legs to remind you it ever happened.”

  She hugged her knees. Gazing down at her diminutive form, Tucker decided he’d never seen anyone more beautiful. He’d dated more striking women, to be sure, but by comparison, all of them had been fussy and artificial, all acrylic fingernails, artfully styled hair, and expensive clothes, with nothing natural about them. Samantha had bits of straw in her wildly curly hair, her clothing was wrinkled, and, God forgive him for noticing, she wore no bra. Without support, her breasts were more softly rounded under her shirt and jiggled just a bit when she moved, and her nipples were more readily visible when they hardened and jutted against the cotton.

  “I am so grateful to you for saving him,” she said softly. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

  Tucker could think of a few ways she could settle the debt, but those were the kinds of thoughts a gentleman never shared with a lady. Not that he’d ever worried overmuch about being a gentleman. Maybe, he realized now, that had been because he’d always kept company with women who’d never expected that of him.

  “Trust me,” he said, “you’ll feel the debt has been settled in full when you pay my bill.”

  She smiled wanly. “I’d forgotten about that. You have a way about you that makes people think you do it all simply because you care. That’s a rare gift in a vet.”

  “I do care,” he replied. “In a perfect world, I’d treat my patients for free, but in the real world, I have to eat and pay off a mortgage.”

  Tucker plucked the tablet from his pocket again to jot down another note.

  “You write in that a lot.”

  He depressed the button on the pen to retract the tip before putting it back in his pocket along with the tablet. “I’m anal.”

  She rewarded him with a laugh. He had almost forgotten how much he enjoyed the sound.

  “Seriously. I’m a record keeper. When I return to the clinic, I’ll enter all this information into my computer. If you ever call me out to look at Blue or Tabasco again, I’ll have an accurate account of my last visit—all the drug info, what worked and what didn’t. Isaiah thinks I have a compulsive filing disorder.”

  She laughed softly again. “Do you?”

  “Depends on how you look at it, I guess. He’s totally disorganized. If he doesn’t have his nose in a thick tome, researching a disease, he’s treating animals.”

  “Ah, the conjoined-twin syndrome again.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Isaiah’s idea of filing something is to throw it in a drawer. That’s no syndrome; it’s laziness.” He winced and made a gesture as if to erase the words. “Strike that. It isn’t laziness, not really. More that he hyperfocuses. He’s a fabulous vet, the best I’ve ever seen, next to myself.”

  “There’s that phenomenal conceit again.”

  Tucker grinned. “Guilty as charged. When it comes to my ability as a vet, I’m pretty high on myself.” He hunkered down to reorganize his satchel. “Only I like to think of it as confidence, not conceit.” He sent her a questioning look. “When it comes to breeding and training horses, don’t you f
eel absolutely confident? I only ask because I think you should. Your horses are incredibly well mannered, and they’ve got fabulous temperaments. Tabasco is a pretty sick boy right now. If ever a horse had reason to be crabby and difficult, it’s him. But he’s a big old baby. That’s impressive.”

  Her small chin came up a notch. “I don’t feel absolutely confident,” she said thoughtfully, “but I do feel extremely proud. Breeding blue roans isn’t easy, and I’m beginning to make real strides in that. Training any horse to be unfailingly gentle takes a lot of hard work, too.”

  Sensing that breeding horses might be one of her favorite topics, Tucker cocked his head. “What’s difficult about breeding blue roans?”

  She loosened her arms from around her knees and settled back against the wall, treating him to another look at those soft, perfectly shaped breasts that he’d been trying so hard to ignore. Clearly enamored of the subject, she said, “A lot of people might tell you it isn’t difficult.” She puffed at the curls that lay in wild disarray over her forehead. “They’re the ones who don’t know what they’re doing, and as a result they sell supposed blue roans to others for outlandish prices, and the buyers eventually end up with grays or some other color. Some of them never realize they’ve been gypped and perpetuate the mistake by breeding their horse to another supposedly true blue roan.”

  She began citing genetic codes, which Tucker suspected made most people’s eyes roll back in their heads, but he found it interesting. The lady not only understood equine genetics, but could also recite all the various combinations that produced different colors of horses.

  “To an untrained eye, a lot of horses look like blue roans,” she told him.

  Biting back a smile, Tucker sat down and settled his back against the opposite wall. It was good to see her like this. Despite the exhaustion that had underscored her eyes with dark smudges and leached her face of color, her expression suddenly burned with passion. “How’s that?”

  “Trust me, some grays look very much like blue roans. It takes an expert eye to see the difference. In a gray, the roaning extends up onto the head and down the legs and often into the tail. That is not a blue roan. It’s a gray.”

  “I’ll be damned. I think I’ve been mistaking grays for blue roans, then.” He flashed her a sheepish grin. “When I got here tonight, my first thought when I saw Blue was how gorgeous he is, which kind of surprised me, because blue roans don’t normally appeal to me.”

  She looked affronted. “Blue roans are beautiful animals.”

  “True blue roans.” He winked at her. “You should name one of your colts True Blue.”

  She smiled but shook her head. “I name all my horses after things in my cupboards. Blue is named after a spicy brand of smoke-flavored barbecue sauce. The others are pretty self-explanatory. True Blue is a cute name, though. Maybe my dad will use it.”

  Tucker watched her push easily to her feet. That was another thing about her that he found attractive: She was in superb physical shape. Not the working-out-every-day-at-the-gym kind of good shape so common in his age group, but the kind of physical conditioning that came only from hard work. She was lean, toned, and able to move with surprising speed.

  “I’m going to check on Tabasco,” she informed him.

  Tucker regretted seeing her go. They’d just found some common ground and, he hoped, were becoming friends. Now she was off, aborting the conversation before it could delve any deeper into more personal subjects.

  Watching the swing of her nicely rounded hips, he wondered if that wasn’t exactly her aim—to keep him at arm’s length.

  Chapter Ten

  At just a little past three in the morning, Isaiah Coulter returned with the blood panel results. When Samantha caught movement and glanced up at the stall gate, she was surprised it wasn’t Clint rousing himself to spell her for a while, or her father returning from his emergency run to the hospital. Instead she saw Isaiah’s dark, handsome face. Despite his resemblance to Tucker, she recognized him by the jacket he wore.

  He waved a handful of documents. “Where’s Tucker?”

  “Over with the other horse.” Slipping her rosary back into her pocket, Samantha pushed to her feet, her gaze shifting to the papers in Isaiah’s hand, which he’d rested atop the gate. Tucker’s guess about the morphine had al ready been proved correct by the successful effects of the naloxone, but she was still hoping he might be wrong about the arsenic. “What do Tabasco’s test results show?”

  Isaiah shook his head. “Sorry. It’s Tucker’s place to tell you that. Just know you’ve landed yourself one fine vet.”

  That told Samantha more than she wanted to know, namely that Tabasco had indeed been poisoned. Blue had almost a half hour left to go before he would need another injection, so she walked with Isaiah to Tabasco’s stall. Tucker was adjusting the IV drip on a fresh bag of fluids. When he saw his brother, the first words from his mouth were, “Is it arsenic?”

  After they entered the stall, Isaiah closed the gate behind them and thrust out the paperwork. “I’ll let you make the call on that.”

  Tucker took the reports, his forehead furrowing in a frown as he scanned each page. Samantha craned her neck, trying to read the results herself, even though she wouldn’t know good numbers from bad.

  Finally Tucker nodded. “Definitely arsenic, then.” He flipped to another page, scanned it, and said, “Damn, it’s playing hell with his liver and kidneys. Let’s just pray I’m not too late, and that the D-penicillamine works.”

  “D-penicillamine?” Isaiah echoed. “For what, an arsenic chelator?”

  “It’s been used with good success in humans,” Tucker replied, “and it has a wide margin of safety for use in animals. For a horse this size they recommend fifty milligrams three to four times a day. I’ve already given him the first injection.”

  “All joking aside about the photographic memory, how the hell do you remember all this stuff?” Isaiah asked. “Do you have your laptop out in the truck so you can look it up?”

  Tucker gave his brother a vaguely irritated look. “I don’t know how I remember stuff. I just do.”

  Samantha’s stomach twisted into a painful knot. She gazed past Tucker at Tabasco. “Is he going to die, then?”

  “I hope not,” Tucker replied. “His liver and kidney counts don’t look good. I’m not going to lie to you about that, Samantha, or make promises just to ease your mind. He’s a very sick horse.”

  She gulped and nodded. “What are his chances, do you think?”

  Tucker pushed a big hand through his sable hair. “I don’t know. The poison has been in his system for over a week, with no chelating agent to get it out of his body.”

  Samantha closed her eyes. If Tabasco died, she would be partly responsible. When she’d learned Doc Washburn was away on vacation she should have called Tucker immediately. Instead, because she’d dreaded seeing Tucker again, she had settled for negligent care from a second-rate veterinarian.

  “How does a chelator work?” she managed to ask.

  “It’s an agent that helps remove heavy metals from the bloodstream. Arsenic lingers in the blood and tissues, and in large enough amounts it continues to do damage long after it’s ingested. A chelating agent acts sort of like a magnet. It bonds with heavy metals and minerals such as arsenic, allowing them to be flushed from the body.”

  “Think of it as a body wash,” Isaiah inserted, “only on the inside.”

  “So it is arsenic poisoning,” Clint said.

  Samantha jumped with a start and turned to find her brother standing just inside the gate, which he’d left yawning open behind him. His face was clenched in anger, his jaw muscle ticking. Bits of straw clung to his blue chambray work shirt.

  “That day at the courthouse,” he said evenly, directing his gaze at her, “I swore I’d make that son of a bitch regret the day he was born if he ever hurt you again. It wasn’t an empty threat. It was a vow.”

  Samantha shook her head, silently plead
ing with Clint not to air her dirty laundry in front of two strangers. But he was too furious to notice.

  “I stayed away from this ranch when the marriage went south,” he went on, his voice vibrant with rage. “I looked away when I saw the bruises, telling myself you’d gotten hurt working with the horses. I lied to myself be cause I knew you didn’t want me to interfere. He was your husband, and it was between you and him, so I tried my damnedest to stay out of it.” He leaned closer to get nose-to-nose with her. “But that’s not the case now. The marriage is over, and he’s going to pay for this. I’m going to hunt him down like the worthless dog he is, and I’m going to stomp the living hell out of him.”

  “Clint, that’s enough,” she tried.

  “No, not nearly,” he shot back. “He gave Blue a shit-load of morphine for it to have affected him that way. Have you even stopped to wonder why?”

  Samantha shook her head. “We don’t know for certain it was Steve. You need to calm down.”

  “Like hell I’ll calm down. He knows how much you love Blue Blazes, and killing Blue with arsenic wouldn’t have been horrible enough to suit him. So instead he set out to make him die the most awful, goriest death possible, while you watched. Either that or he was hoping you’d be foolish enough to enter the stall so the horse could kill you. He’s a mean, rotten, lying, low-down bastard, and right now he’s probably kicked back in a recliner, drunk as a lord, laughing his ass off.”

  “Clint, please.”

  “If I don’t stop him he’ll try again,” her brother warned. “He won’t be happy when he finds out Blue isn’t dead. And he’ll find a way to sneak back in here and do it again.”

  Samantha whipped away from her brother, only to see Tucker and Isaiah staring at her with shock and pity in their expressions. She was so humiliated she wanted to crawl into a hole. She shoved past Clint to escape the stall and ran from the building.