LOVE OF A RODEO MAN (MODERN DAY COWBOYS)

by Hutchinson, Bobby

  “No use,” she whispered. His heart plummeted, and he felt Sara slump.

  Suddenly the mare jerked abruptly, gave a cry and a gigantic heave, and the foal neatly slid out, knocking Sara backward in the straw and landing in Mitch’s arms.

  Carol gave an excited cry and moved closer, but her voice faded into despair as she realized the little body Mitch held was motionless, lifeless, the open eyes staring blindly.

  “Oh, it’s dead,” she wailed, as Sara scrambled toward it.

  “Massage, like this,” Sara ordered feverishly, and as Mitch rubbed the wet, limp body, Sara swiftly wiped the nostrils and mouth clean and began blowing into the lungs.

  Breathe, she begged silently, blowing as hard as she dared into the tiny open mouth. She blew until her own lungs protested, and she drew a quick lungful of air and blew again.

  And then, unbelievably, the little animal sucked air in, once, paused, choked...then more evenly, with rhythm, he inhaled, exhaled, choked again... he was alive. He was breathing on his own. His big eyes moved, his delicate body quivered.

  “That’s it, that’s a smart baby,” Sara crooned. She untwisted the forelegs with gentle concentration, and within a miraculous few moments, the foal struggled to his feet, reeling drunkenly on his spindly legs.

  “Hot damn, he’s alive,” Mitch crowed exultantly. “Sara, darlin’, he’s alive, you got him breathing.” Adrenaline coursed through his veins, the same exultant pleasure he used to feel at winning the main event at the rodeo. He felt like tossing his Stetson in the air and whooping for joy.

  “Let’s get some intravenous fluids into Scarlett quick to replace the electrolytes she’s lost, and then we’re going to have to get her up so this guy can nurse. He desperately needs that first mother’s milk. It’s full of nutrients and special antibodies he can’t get any other way.”

  Working swiftly and efficiently, soothing the mare with a stream of words and tenderly stroking hands, she soon had the drip in place.

  Fifty minutes later, with Mitch helping, Scarlett rose unsteadily to her feet and Sara helped the staggering foal to find the teat and nurse. Scarlett stretched her graceful neck around to take a long, considering look at her difficult offspring. She hesitated and then finally began to lick him.

  The last of Sara’s concerns obviously faded. “She’s accepted him,” she breathed softly. “They’ll be fine now.” Tears poured down her face, the aftermath of tension and the incredible relief of having both mare and colt survive. It was nothing short of a miracle.

  Sara let the fat, salty drops roll freely down her cheeks.

  Mitch felt his heart contract with joy and humble gratitude that this amazing woman had the knowledge needed to assist in the birth and that nature had provided the necessary extra dose of luck that every vet prayed for at such times.

  A dusty sunbeam was filtering through a small window high in the log wall, and as Mitch watched, its light picked out Sara’s face, gray eyes shining silver and wet with tears, long, curling lashes clumped on cheeks stained with dirt. Her hair, caught in its usual haphazard knot at the back of her head, was coming undone, and wispy strands curled around her ears and down her back. Straw stuck to her bloodstained coverall.

  Mitch glanced bashfully at her, his own eyes suspiciously damp, and she turned her head just then and smiled at him, a watery, blazingly triumphant, ecstatic grin.

  He looked into the shining glory of her face and everything in his immediate world shifted, rearranged itself. It was as if he’d been asleep all his life and suddenly awakened.

  He fell totally in love with Sara Wingate at that exact moment in time.

  Carol, teary and wonderfully relieved, hurried up to the house to make coffee.

  “Bill promised he’d make it home before dark, and I just can’t wait to see his face when we show him the foal. I just can’t wait,” she chattered as she hurried away.

  Sara struggled out of the filthy blue coverall, revealing well-worn jeans and a faded yellow T-shirt. She shook her head at the state of Mitch’s clothing.

  “If you’re going to insist on being in on the vet action like this, you ought to get a coverall and keep it in your truck,” she teased him, wondering momentarily why he kept looking at her in that curiously intense way. Probably because she was an absolute disaster of a mess, she concluded, lifting a hand up to her hair, painfully aware all of a sudden of the state of her hands and arms and of the probable dirt on her face. She hurried over to the outside tap and filled a bucket to wash off the worst of the grime, acutely conscious of Mitch following close behind.

  She always carried soap, towels and washcloths in the bag with her instruments, and she lathered a cloth and scrubbed vigorously at her arms, dried them hurriedly, then bent forward and applied the dripping, soapy washcloth to her face and neck, closing her eyes.

  They were still screwed tightly shut when she felt a warm male hand grip her wrist firmly, extract the washcloth and then gently rub it across one cheek and down her jawline.

  “You missed a place right here,” he said softly, and she was aware of the deep resonance of his voice and of its slight unsteadiness. She drew her breath in sharply when his callused fingers took hold of her chin as if she were a child he was tenderly washing. There was nothing at all childish about the way his touch made her feel, however.

  Her breath quickened and the pulse in her throat felt as if it were hammering wildly. The places his fingers touched felt scalded. She stood utterly still. For some obscure reason, she kept her eyes shut as he clumsily blotted her face dry, aware of how close he was to her, of his fingers still holding her chin. There was an instant when she could smell the man-scent of him, the heady combination of clean perspiration, cigarettes and after-shave, mingling with the more intimate, sweet and faintly beery odor of his breath as he whispered questioningly, “Sara?”

  Then his lips closed over hers before there was time to answer his tentative question. His hand left her chin, came slowly up to cradle the back of her head, tilted it expertly to the exact angle he needed, and she felt the brim of his hat touch her forehead as he turned his head one way, then the other, barely brushing her lips.

  “Sara,” he murmured, answering his own query, breathing her name as he kissed her more deliberately this time, and she thrilled at the note of wonder in his voice. All the same, she wasn’t prepared for the sensations exploding within her.

  His lips were testing, tasting her essence, and her secret places reacted hot and urgently. Her lips parted, and his tongue touched at each corner of her mouth. His tongue questioned. Hers answered.

  The tension of the afternoon, with its dramatic birth and successful conclusion, culminated now in heightened emotional awareness for each of them.

  For Mitch, holding this woman and kissing her was like some long-forgotten dream. There was a sense of rightness about it, of heady, delicious exploration. But there was also intense and immediate need, the healthy and overwhelming hunger of a man for his woman, compounded by the fiery response her lips and mouth and body offered after those first tentative moments.

  His hands slid down and around her hips, drawing her closer, and Sara felt her own arms encircle him, felt the iron hard muscles tense and quiver as her widespread fingers traced slowly down the long line of his back from broad shoulders to narrow waist. The feel and smell of him enveloped her senses as intensely as his mouth explored and ravaged and incited her emotions.

  His embrace was both knowing and yet somehow shy, endearing and yet incendiary, a mixture that sent need snaking hotly through Sarah’s abdomen.

  She moved her head restlessly, wanting the kiss to deepen even more, and neither noticed when his hat fell off and tumbled to the straw at their feet. Her hips were touching his, and she moved against him sinuously, urgently, intimately, unable to control the impulse. Their breath came in short gasps, and each could feel the other’s heartbeat.

  His lips left her mouth, nibbled their way down and over her chin, and the
very tip of his tongue traced a burning trail down her throat to where the pulse thundered.

  The growling of a large truck’s engine as it made its way slowly down the rutted driveway above the house gradually intruded on the small, heated space they’d created.

  Sara was the first to move, taking a shaky step backward and stumbled over the forgotten bucket on the floor beside them.

  Mitch steadied her, arms firm on her shoulders, and swore under his breath.

  “It’s Bill. His timing’s gone all to hell since he played shortstop years ago,” he said as lightly as he could manage, instinctively offering her time and space to deal with what had flamed between them. But his eyes were dark and heavy with unconcealed passion when they met hers.

  Her skin was flushed, and she still panted as if she’d been running hard. “I don’t, I mean usually... this doesn’t happen this way for me...I mean, the first time I...” she stammered, and felt her face flame at the gauche statement.

  But he nodded slowly, his gaze holding hers. “For me either, Sara,” he breathed fervently, and she instinctively believed him.

  “For me either,” he repeated.

  For a long, timeless moment, they stared at each other. Then a slow, wicked twinkle grew in the green depths of Mitch’s eyes, and he lowered his tone to a lecherous growl. “Hell, woman, if that’s a first effort, think what we can accomplish with some practice. Why, we can probably get real good at this,” he drawled, picking up his Stetson and brushing it off, fitting it back on his dark head in one deft movement and giving her a lurid wink from under the brim.

  She had to smile at his nonsense, and the smile broadened as she took in the streaks of dirt smearing his cheeks and chin.

  “You’d better take that hat off again and give your face a wash,” Sara suggested.

  “I will if you will,” he said with a grin. “You’ve got dust from me all over your neck.”

  A blush she couldn’t control turned her face rosy pink as she remembered in vivid detail just how that had happened, and Mitch had to stop himself from gathering her close all over again.

  They were both acceptably clean when they sat down in the kitchen of the farmhouse a little later with their excited hosts. Carol poured steaming cups of hot coffee for herself and Sara, while the men enjoyed a cold beer after they’d made another trip out the barns to inspect the colt.

  Bill was elated about the foal and obviously pleased to see Mitch again after so many years.

  “I followed your career the whole time you were in rodeo, Mitch, felt proud as all get out when you won All Around Cowboy those times. Then we were over at Carol’s folks’ place one night and we happened to see you on TV, doing commercials, and I figured I’d be boasting about how I knew you when. Thought for sure it’d be Hollywood next stop.”

  “No chance,” Mitch declared fervently. “That little taste of making a film was more than enough for me. Never saw a bigger waste of people’s time than that performance.”

  They talked about television commercials and the endless process of filming for several minutes, and then Bill said awkwardly, “Terrible thing, your brother getting killed that way. We were at the funeral, Carol and I, but with your mom so broke up, we didn’t want to intrude, coming over to introduce ourselves. You home for good now?”

  Mitch’s features seemed to tighten, and his glance fell to the beer can he was holding. His voice was low, the distinctive drawl more pronounced when he answered.

  “Looks that way. After Bob died and Mom got so depressed, Pop started talking about selling the ranch and moving to Spokane or some such nonsense. They never thought much of the rodeo life I led. Mom was always scared I’d get hurt, and it got worse during those months after Bob died. She became more and more anxious, and I did some thinking and made the decision to come back and try my hand at a steady job.”

  He grinned wryly, but Sara could sense the bitterness behind the words and the smile, just as she had the first night they’d met. Mitch was not entirely content with being home again.

  “I always figured I’d come back someday anyhow and be a rancher,” Mitch was adding with an attempt at lightness that didn’t quite make the grade. “Professional rodeo’s a young man’s game, forty’s about the limit and I’m thirty-four already. So it just happened sooner rather than later for me, coming back here and settling down.”

  He swigged the last of the liquid from the can. “Truth is, Bill, I’d like to do exactly what you’re doing someday, only instead of Arabs, I’d breed and train quarter horses for rodeo stock.”

  Bill nodded. “Raising any kind of livestock’s a tough racket these days, but Carol and I dreamed of having a breeding stable from the day we got married five years ago. We’re carrying a hefty mortgage on both this ranch and on our stock,” he confided forthrightly, “but if we can make it through these first couple years, we’ll survive.” He reached an arm over to the chair beside him where Carol sat and draped it across her shoulders. “Not too many conveniences way out here, but we like it fine, don’t we, sweetheart?”

  Carol’s affection for her husband was patently clear in the loving way she fondled the work roughened hand cradling her neck and turned her head to give him a smile full of love. “It’s the best sort of life I could ever imagine,” she said.

  Sara felt a strange constriction in her chest, not envy, but wistful recognition of something rare and beautiful as she watched Bill and Carol Forgie. Here was a couple with a common dream and a wealth of love for each other that literally shone around them like an aura.

  Would she find that kind of relationship someday? Her eyes drifted down to the rounded shape of Carol’s pregnant middle under the blue gingham smock. How wonderful it must be to carry a child for the man you loved, to create that child from shared passion, bear it, watch it grow and develop.

  The memory of a recent kiss made her hotly aware of the man sitting across the table from her, and she glanced at Mitch, lounging casually back on his wooden chair.

  She found him watching her intently. It made her uncomfortable because she had the uncanny feeling that he was reading her thoughts and remembering the intensity of their embrace just as she was doing.

  He raised one eyebrow at her quizzically.

  She had the strangest feeling he was asking a silent question.

  Chapter Four

  Sara was an early riser. She made a practice of arriving at the veterinary clinic before 8:00 a.m.

  It was only seven twenty-nine the next morning when she pulled up in front of the old house Doc rented as a clinic and parked on the deserted main street of the small town of Plains. It was Saturday, which usually meant fewer calls to attend to at outlying farms and more drop-in clients with small pet problems.

  It also meant Floyd wouldn’t make it in until late, and when he finally did appear, he’d be nursing a monstrous Friday night hangover.

  Unlocking the back door of the wood-frame building, she was greeted by a chorus of mewing as the three clinic cats converged on her demanding breakfast. Sylvester, as usual, was firmly in charge of the two females, Tinker and Agnes.

  “You disgraceful bully,” Sara chided him, crouching down to give each of them a rub and a comforting scratch behind their ears, holding Sylvester firmly back with a foot so the girls could share in the affection.

  “I swear it’s never dawned on you that you’re neutered and ought to be growing fat and lazy,” she murmured to the battle-scarred orange reprobate when his turn came. She had to laugh as he hissed menacingly, thinking he was intimidating the females.

  “Just wait until the girls find out you’re all talk and no action, buster.”

  Sara opened cans of cat food for them and then filled the coffee maker and set it to brew. Her eyes felt grainy from lack of sleep, but conversely, the same strange sense of exhilaration and ridiculous excitement that had kept her awake most of the night went right on bubbling inside her this morning.

  No use pretending it had much to do wit
h the safe delivery of the Forgies’ foal, either, she admitted, washing out grimy mugs at the sink and wondering if Floyd ever cleaned anything up after himself. He methodically used every single mug there was in the cupboard, abandoning them anywhere in the building he happened to be when the last drop of his corrosively strong tea was drained. What in heaven’s name must his apartment look like?

  She rinsed the dishes with boiling water from the kettle and wondered idly if Mitch was tidy. Why did every thought pattern she’d had in the past twelve hours revert to Mitch, resulting in a mental image of his tall frame, his unruly, soft dark hair, his green eyes? Not to mention his kisses.

  Her imagination stubbornly ended up every time with her being held tightly in his arms. Leaning her bottom against the sink, she folded her arms across her middle and took stock.

  Face it, Wingate, you’ve allowed yourself to get all dreamy and distracted over this guy. A person would think you’d never been kissed before, the way you’re mooning about. Now get your tail in gear, there’s work to be done, and Mitch Carter’s wasting your time.

  Sara hurried into the room off the kitchen that Doc Stone had set aside as an infirmary and set about briskly cleaning out cages and feeding and watering the few patients in residence. The job was actually Floyd’s, but animals couldn’t be expected to wait around until his hangover abated enough for him to finally come to work. Sara had taken over their morning care shortly after she’d started working at the clinic.

  In the other room, the coffee maker belched loudly, signaling that it was ready just as Sara reached the last cage. The inhabitant was Daisy, a small, pampered terrier scheduled for surgery later in the morning. Daisy was to have what her delicate lady owner referred to as “correction of a female problem.” Sara had tacked a more succinct note on the cage.

  Spay: No Food or Water.

  Daisy whined piteously, and Sara paused to talk to the nervous little animal for a moment before going into the kitchen to pour herself her first cup of coffee. The hot, strong liquid was both comforting and revitalizing, reminding her of that cup of coffee yesterday after the safe delivery of the foal.