MIDNIGHT CINDERELLA

by Eileen Wilks

  Hannah sat on one of the battered brown benches that matched the counter, and watched Nate pace.

  He'd hardly spoken since they arrived twenty minutes ago. He'd sit for a minute or two, then get up and pace, then sit again. Then pace. He'd been pacing for five minutes now, and would undoubtedly try sitting again soon.

  Hannah couldn't stand it. "Trixie will be all right, Nate. I really believe that. The bleeding had stopped by the time we got here."

  He stopped and stared at her as if she'd said something unbelievably foolish. "She'd lost too much blood already. You said yourself, it looked like the bullet hit a vein."

  "A vein, not an artery." She'd told him that twice already—once when she first reached him, and again when they loaded Trixie in the back of his truck for the ride into town. "The blood wasn't spurting. And you kept pressure on it all the way in." Hannah had driven them here because Nate wouldn't let her ride in the back of the pickup with Trixie. He'd done that himself.

  "She lost enough blood to go into shock."

  "That's why we wrapped her in a blanket before we left the house."

  Nate looked at the door that led to the interior of the clinic. He'd carried Trixie in her bloody blanket down the short hall on the other side of that door. The three drops of blood had come from the blanket. He'd wanted to stay back there with her, but Hannah had persuaded him to come out to the waiting room with her. The treatment room was small, and the vet had wanted them out of his way.

  Nate's hands clenched at his sides, then opened again. "What's taking him so long? What are they doing in there?"

  "Dr. Axell said he was going to get an I.V. started to plump out her veins. Shock constricts them, you know. That's why it's dangerous. But he's taking care of that now. It just takes a while."

  "How long?"

  She had no answer for him, and shook her head.

  "Maybe he's operating." Nate's hands opened and closed, opened and closed.

  "I don't think they do that right away."

  "But he'll have to do something. Her leg is a mess. The bullet tore it up, broke the bone—he'll have to fix it." He turned blind eyes on Hannah. "Trixie has to be able to run. It just wouldn't be right if she couldn't run anymore."

  She couldn't stand it. She stood and went to him and put her arms around him. He didn't move. "She'll be able to run," she promised softly. "Even if it's on three legs, she'll run again."

  "No, he has to fix her leg." Nate stood there stiffly as if he were unsure how to go about accepting comfort. "Do you think we got her here in time?"

  Hannah blinked back the tears that were trying to fill her eyes. She wished he would go ahead and cry. Maybe then she wouldn't have to. "I think so."

  "It's my fault," he said.

  "What?"

  "They were trying to shoot my bull, and they shot my dog."

  "How does that make it your fault? And anyway, we don't know what they were after. José said it didn't look like King Lear was hurt."

  "There's not much on that side of the barn for them to shoot at. Just the paddock where King Lear spends his days—and where he was spending the night this one time."

  She leaned back, holding his arms. "Well, that proves one thing. You have to call the sheriff."

  He shook his head. "He can't do anything." His eyes turned hard and cold. "I can."

  Her heart stumbled. "Nate, let the law handle this."

  "The law concerns itself with evidence, not justice."

  She was not scared, Hannah told herself, because Nate had too much sense to do something stupid that would end up with him behind bars again. "You're not going to go beat anyone up," she told him firmly. "You don't even know who did it."

  "I can guess." He pulled away and started to pace again.

  "Sheriff Thompson is already looking for whoever has been shooting the cattle around here."

  "It may not be the same person. All the other cattle were shot from the highway. Tonight, someone went way out of their way to shoot, not just a cow, but a bull worth thousands of dollars."

  "But you just said they couldn't have known the bull would be out in the paddock where they could get to it."

  "Maybe they didn't care what they shot, as long as it was something that would hurt me."

  Because that seemed possible, she was silenced for a moment. She watched him start his blasted pacing again. "So who do you think did it?"

  "I'm not sure. If I knew for sure…" His fists clenched again. "It might have been Ben Rydell. He hates my guts, and he's convinced I'm the one who shot his cows. He might have decided to even the score on his own. The only thing is…"

  It did sound plausible. "What?"

  "Rydell keeps three or four dogs around his place all the time. Hell, the man rescues strays. It's hard to imagine him shooting Trixie."

  How could anyone shoot a dog? Especially someone who loved animals. "Then it couldn't be him."

  "If Trixie was coming at him like she meant business, he could have panicked. He might not have thought he had any choice but to shoot. Then there's Bustamante."

  "Who?"

  He looked impatient. "Mario Bustamante. The creep who keeps hassling you. He didn't like the way I took him down in front of his buddies the other day, and he's the sort who wouldn't mind killing an innocent animal to get back at someone who had humiliated him."

  "And how do you plan to find out which of them it was—if it was one of them?" She moved closer to him. "Nate, call the sheriff and let him do his job."

  "Dammit, he can't do anything! If they'd shot my bull, then, yeah—King Lear is worth enough to put someone behind bars. But a dog?" He shook his head. "Thompson isn't going to be able to do a damn thing."

  "He might!" Anger, frustration and fear made a sick lump in the pit of her stomach, because Nate was right. The law didn't punish a person for killing a beloved pet—just for destroying property. "Look, I don't blame you for wanting to make someone pay, but I don't want you going to jail."

  "I'm not going to go to jail."

  "Oh, so you're not going to do anything about this?"

  He didn't answer.

  That was answer enough. She walked over to the counter. Behind it, on the desktop, sat an old-fashioned black rotary phone. She moved the phone so she could open the thin phone book that rested beneath it.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "Looking up the number for the sheriff." She found it and picked up the receiver.

  "Hang up."

  Hannah looked at the raw anger in his face. She didn't hang up, but she didn't start dialing, either. "What is it you're thinking? That as long as you don't talk to the sheriff, you can go beat up whoever did this and he won't know you did it?" She shook her head. "You're not usually an idiot, Nate."

  For another instant he glared at her. Then, all at once, the fury drained out of him. He rubbed his hand over his face like the tired, worried man that he was. "You're right. Thompson will hear about this whether I talk to him or not. I'm not thinking. I just…" His gaze drifted once more to the door to the treatment room. "They've been back there a long time. If things were going well, it wouldn't take this long, would it?"

  "It might. The vet said it would take a while to stabilize her. And as long as they're back there, still working on Trixie, we know she's alive."

  He didn't turn around. "I guess I might as well talk to the sheriff while I'm waiting."

  She started dialing.

  * * *

  Sheriff Thompson was a slender man, a couple of inches shorter than Hannah. He had dark hair, a tidy mustache and knife-edged creases in his khaki-colored slacks. He took Nate's statement first, and by the time he'd finished, he obviously shared Hannah's opinion of Nate's intentions. He closed his notebook and fixed Nate with a warning stare. "You stay away from Rydell, Jones. Keep away from young Bustamante, too. I'll check them out."

  Nate's expression was stony. "Just be sure you do your job."

  If the sheriff was intimida
ted by the fact that Nate was nearly a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier, it didn't show. "I always do. I'll talk to Rydell tonight. In the morning, when it's light, I'll send a deputy out to your ranch. You think it was a .22 he used?"

  "Yeah. I heard the second shot clearly."

  "We'll try to recover the bullet or bullets, then. We've had ballistics run on the bullets we've recovered from the cattle that have been shot, so we'll be able to find out if this was done by the same person. If so, he'll probably be charged with shooting the cattle rather than with shooting your dog—unless we can get him for shooting at your bull, even though he missed. I'll have to run the possibility by the DA."

  "If you get him."

  "Oh, I'll get him, sooner or later. And if it's the same shooter, you'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing he's locked up. Did the bullet lodge in your animal?"

  "No. It hit her hind leg, breaking the bone." For about the fourteenth time since the sheriff arrived, he glanced at the closed door to the treatment room.

  The sheriff turned to Hannah. "You didn't see the vehicle the shooter drove?"

  She shook her head. "It was too dark, and the driveway is too far from the barn. But I don't think it was a truck. The headlights were too low, more where a car's lights would be."

  "Mr. Jones said that when he responded to the first shot fired, he saw you go into the barn. Why were you out there?"

  "Because of Trixie. I'd stepped outside to feed her some scraps. She must have heard something, because…" Without warning, Hannah's eyes filled. She could see that half-eaten bowl of scraps waiting back at the house. Her voice broke. "She didn't get to finish her treat."

  At that moment, the door Nate had been watching for so long opened. A fiftyish man in jeans, a beard, a ponytail and a green scrub top came into the waiting area. He looked pleased. "You folks can go on home."

  Nate took one quick step toward the vet. "Is she—?"

  "She's out of danger. Her color's good—the mucous membranes in the mouth, you know, turn pale when a dog is shocky. Her blood pressure is up where it should be and holding steady. I'll keep her here, of course. She needs to be stable for twenty-four hours before I can operate on that leg."

  Hannah saw the strain and relief on Nate's face, and read love there, helpless and mute. Because he couldn't find his voice, she spoke for him. "What about her leg?"

  "The bullet fractured the femur in mid-shaft, which means I can't cast it. I'll have to use plates and pins."

  "But will she run? Once she heals, I mean. Will Trixie be able to run?"

  Dr. Axell smiled at them through his salt-and-pepper beard. "She's young. She'll heal fast. If I do my job right, she'll be running all over the place in six weeks."

  Relief didn't exactly transform Nate's expression. For a second, he closed his eyes. She thought she saw his lips move, and his chest rose and fell in a single deep breath. Hannah had no idea how she could tell, from those small signs, that the relief sweeping through him was as vast and very nearly as desperate as his worry had been. She just knew.

  She knew something else, too. Soft as a whisper, sure as a sunrise, the truth drifted into her mind. That "funny feeling" wasn't just in her stomach. It was in every part of her—blood and bone, muscle and sinew. And heart. And it was too late to worry about falling in love with this man. Much too late.

  * * *

  The sheriff agreed that his deputy could ask Hannah any further questions when he came out the next day, and Nate and Hannah were free to leave.

  It was only a quarter past nine, but she felt as if it were after midnight by the time she climbed into the truck and pulled the door closed. Nate already sat behind the wheel. "Whew," she said, pushing her hair out of her face. "I don't know about you, but I'm wiped out. That was as nerve-racking as any visit I've ever paid to an emergency room."

  "You have a kind heart."

  His words startled her. She looked over at him. He sat in the darkness with his arms crossed over the steering wheel. He hadn't started the truck. She put her hand on his arm. "Are you okay?"

  He didn't look at her. "It's stupid to get this worked up over a dog."

  "Why?" Her fingers curled around his arm.

  "They don't live long. You can't afford to get attached. That's what my father always…" Suddenly he sat back, releasing the steering wheel and pulling away from her touch. "God, I didn't think I'd hung on to much of anything from him, but I guess I did." He shook his head. "The old man wouldn't let me have a dog. He thought a rancher who got sentimental about animals was a fool. After he was gone—I was married by then, and Jenny didn't want pets. She said it was because we were planning to have kids right away, and the pets would be neglected when we had babies to take care of."

  "You don't think that was the reason?"

  "Hell, no. She didn't want children." He leaned forward and started the truck. The air that blew from the vents was cold. "Oh, she said she did. For a year after we got married, I thought we were trying to have a baby—right up until the day I found the birth control pills she'd hidden. She'd been taking them all along. I was worrying that maybe one of us was infertile, while she—" He put the truck in gear. "As it turned out, she was right. We were much better off not having children."

  She was quiet as he pulled out of the parking lot.

  The veterinary clinic was situated just north of Bitter Creek. A few houses dribbled out from town along the narrow blacktop road, but those lights were few and scattered. Hannah looked out the window beside her, and saw little but darkness.

  Nate might say that it was better he and Jenny hadn't had children. He might even believe that, but she thought part of him grieved for the children he didn't have. Just as part of her grieved for the boy who hadn't been allowed to love a pet. "Is Trixie the first dog you ever owned?"

  "Yes."

  "She's going to be all right, you know."

  Nate was silent until he'd turned off the quiet blacktop road onto the highway that led to the ranch. "I got her as a pup. She was a real handful at first, but she's turned into a good dog."

  "She sure has. She saved your bull."

  "Dammit, I didn't want her to do that! I didn't get her so she could go get herself shot. I didn't want that."

  "I know." She wanted to reassure him, and didn't know how. "How did you decide on her, anyway?"

  "When I decided to get a dog, I read up about the different breeds."

  "Labradors are often used as hunting dogs, aren't they? Did you train her to—"

  "I don't hunt."

  That's right. He couldn't own a gun. So … Nate had carefully researched the breeds before buying his first dog and he'd chosen a Labrador, but not because he intended to hunt. It must have been some of the breed's other characteristics he'd been attracted to—like intelligence, playfulness, loyalty, a loving nature.

  Labs weren't loners.

  Hannah rubbed her chest. He was making her heart hurt. "It's okay for you to love your dog."

  "I don't … I'm used to her, that's all. Attached."

  He couldn't admit to the word, but he was more than capable of the feeling. "How old is Trixie?" How long had it been after his unloving father and his crazy wife were out of his life before Nate took a chance on caring for something again?

  "Only two. That's why I wanted the vet to fix her leg. She's young. She needs to be able to run."

  Only two. A band tightened around her heart. That meant it had taken Nate four years to take the risk of caring about a dog. How much longer would it be before he was ready to gamble on a woman?

  And was she sure she wanted him to?

  Dammit, she hadn't planned on this. She had goals. Hadn't she spent seven years digging herself out of the hole she'd fallen into the first time she'd been in love? But what she felt now was so different from the jumble of cravings and dreams she'd bestowed on her nineteen-year-old bridegroom all those years ago. And Nate was nothing like Barry.

  She looked over at him. The light fr
om the dash cast a greenish glow on his face. He drove with both hands on the wheel, his eyes straight ahead, and his mind, from what she could tell, a thousand miles away.

  He was a straightforward kind of man. She liked that. There were so many things she liked … the strength that had carried him through the last six years and the integrity that had made him tell her about the night he caused a man's death.

  Then there was his body.

  Hannah had to smile at the way her pulse picked up when she thought about Nate's body. No doubt it was shockingly superficial of her, but she couldn't deny it—she was fascinated with the man's body. But love? How could she love a man she'd known such a short time?

  Yet how could she not love him? She remembered the day he'd saved her from Mario and the others when she'd tried to walk to the library. Even on the night they'd met, when he'd thought the worst of her, he'd moved quickly and surely to protect her from the creeps at the bus station. He was a man whose honor went bone-deep.

  She thought about the way he was with Trixie, and the way he had leaped at the chance to do something for his brother. Nate was also a man with so much love to give it kept him knotted up inside … even if he didn't know it. Even if he couldn't say the ward "love" without his mouth twisting in derision.

  What was she going to do?

  What was the right thing to do?

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  «^»

  Hannah had hardly spoken since they left the vet's. Nate hoped she was just tired, but he couldn't help wondering, as he parked the truck beside the house, if he'd managed to screw things up earlier. He sensed that she was considering changing her mind about him and her decision to come to him. And he wanted her. Tonight. He ached for her.

  Maybe he should apologize.

  Women put a lot of stock in words—pretty words, words of explanation and declaration. Nate didn't understand that. Actions didn't lie the way words could. Women wanted sweet words tied up in promises, and he had none to give. He had thought Hannah might be different, that maybe she could see behind the words he lacked to what he did have. He'd hoped … but Nate didn't approve of hope.