Czytaj książkę: «Snowbound With The Cowboy»

Chapter One

“Got it. A two-year-old gelding, lacerations to the pastern and fetlock.” Sara Branson stared down at the clipboard braced against the steering wheel of her vet truck and tried to rein in her roiling emotions. “But tell me again. This is where?”

“It’s part of the Langford Ranch—but go three miles past the main gate, then turn west.” The male voice seemed vaguely familiar. “This section of the ranch used to be the old Branson place. The house and barns are—”

“Two miles from the highway, at the end of a long, curving lane.” Where a backdrop of pine-blanketed foothills climbed up to the base of the Montana Rockies, and the sun dropped behind those rugged, snow-covered peaks every night.

She knew the property very well.

But to her, it wasn’t part of the Langford Ranch and never would be. It had been her aunt and uncle’s ranch until eight years ago, when the bank abruptly foreclosed and Gus Langford snapped it up under shady circumstances.

“Uh…right.” The male voice hesitated. “So you’ve been out here before and know where to go?”

That was the understatement of the year, and the whole sad situation still made her heart ache. “I’m just leaving a ranch north of Pine Bend. I’ll be there in—” she consulted the GPS on the dashboard of her truck “—roughly thirty-five minutes. Are you the foreman?”

“In a matter of speaking.” His short laugh wasn’t very convincing. “Temporarily, anyhow.”

He ended the call before she could ask his name.

By the time she arrived and pulled to a stop in front of the horse barn, she’d lectured herself back into the calm, professional persona of the good veterinarian she was.

This was simply another vet call. No personal issues. No anger over the past. Nothing could change what had happened, after all. And the man who’d called her was just some employee who’d had nothing to do with Gus Langford’s actions, so he certainly didn’t deserve any snarky comments from her.

But she still wished she could give the late Gus Langford a piece of her mind.

She surveyed the two-story log house at the far side of the parking area in front of the barns, where she’d stayed for long stretches during the school year, whenever her parents had temporarily split up over one ruckus or another, plus every summer until she graduated from high school. Aunt Millie and Uncle Warren had been like a second set of parents in a stable, warm and loving home.

But even from here she could see the wraparound porch was sagging and the roof needed repair, and as she pivoted to look at the barns, they seemed to be in even worse shape.

Langford, rest his soul, had been one of the richest ranchers in the county. If he’d been so determined to steal this place from her aunt and uncle, why hadn’t he bothered with maintenance afterward?

He’d probably cared only about gaining the additional grazing land for his vast herds of cattle. And nothing about the love and dreams and backbreaking work that had gone into making this place a home, which made the situation seem even worse. She’d been a classmate to Tate Langford, one of Gus’s sons, and had seen his two older brothers around town while growing up. They’d all been decent kids, far as she knew, but over the years they’d probably grown up to be just like their father.

Grabbing her satchel from the seat next to her, she rounded the back of her truck and swiftly added extra supplies from the various doors in the vet box. Sutures. Surgical equipment. IV sedative. Antibiotics. Sterile saline for flushing the wounds. Bandaging materials.

No one had come out of the house, the machine shed or the two barns to greet her when she arrived, so she headed straight for the horse barn. The tractor-wide double doors were closed against the mid-February bite in the air, so she opened the smaller walk door and stepped inside to the sound of an old country song blaring on the radio.

A wave of nostalgia washed over her as she took in the long cement aisle flanked with a dozen box stalls on each side. Pine paneling rose halfway up each stall front and its sliding door, with vertical metal pipes forming the barrier along the top half of the stalls for ventilation and visibility.

Partway down, a young sorrel stood cross-tied in the middle of the aisle with a broad-shouldered man in jeans and black shirt hunkered down at its side. He was expertly wrapping one of its front legs.

“Hello, there,” she called out. “I’m Dr. Branson. Someone called, and—”

The man finished the last wrap of the bandage around the leg, stood abruptly and turned to face her, his expression stunned. “Sara?”

“Tate?” Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. She felt as stunned as he looked, and it took a moment to find her voice with so many painful high school memories crashing through her thoughts.

Guilt.

Remorse.

Heartache.

In high school, the first time he’d angled a heart-stopping grin in her direction she’d felt herself falling, falling into the depths of his silver-blue gaze, too mesmerized to even speak, even though she’d known he was way too wild and irresponsible—a magnet for the popular, flirty girls. Not a guy who’d want a plain, ordinary nerd like her.

But nothing had ever been predictable where Tate Langford was concerned.

“W-what are you doing here?”

He blinked. “That was you on the phone?”

“Calls roll over to my cell phone if the clinic receptionist is on another line.” She tipped her head slightly. “Guess I forgot to introduce myself.”

“As did I.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It’s been a long time.”

“Fourteen years.” She felt a flare of warmth in her cheeks, realizing it sounded as if she had been actually paying close attention to that passage of time all these years, like some lovesick puppy. “I mean—since high school graduation.”

“And now you’re the vet in town.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Quite an improvement over the crotchety old buzzard who owned the clinic years ago. Knowing what he was like, I’m sure he drove a hard bargain.”

“I don’t know. The vet who bought the practice from him left to join her fiancé’s practice in Idaho. I signed the papers a few weeks ago.”

“I thought your parents wanted you to go to med school, like they did.”

“Adamantly. But I had a change of heart.” Coupled with a surge of rebellion leading to an estrangement that still hadn’t fully healed.

Life hadn’t been any easier for Tate, though, given his father’s reputation as a controlling, volatile man who never backed down. In high school, Tate had once told her that he hated the ranch and couldn’t wait to leave. And once he did, he was never, ever coming back.

She cocked her head and studied him. “I remember your dad wanted every one of his sons to stay on the ranch. But by the time I left for college I heard all of you had left. For good.”

“Yeah, my dad’s plans didn’t work out so well, either. All of us dreamed of escaping the ranch, and we did.” A corner of Tate’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Devlin went into the Marines, Jess left to rodeo and then I followed suit. When we disrupted Dad’s plans for building his ranching dynasty, he was so riled that he told us to never come back. He was not a forgiving man.”

She furrowed her brow, thinking. “I’ve only been back a few weeks, but I think I might have seen Jess around town.”

“Probably. When Dad got Parkinson’s he wasn’t happy about swallowing his pride and asking Jess to come back. Ironic, because Jess had been saving his rodeo earnings for vet school, and gave up his own dreams to take over the ranch. Dad died a year later, and I doubt he ever thanked Jess for coming home.”

“What about Devlin?”

“He was severely injured in a bomb blast, and got a medical discharge from the Marines. He moved back last spring. Now he’s an active partner in the ranch.”

“So you and your brothers ended up ranching after all.”

Tate rested a hand on the gelding’s sleek neck. “Not me. I came back a few days ago, and I’ll be home for just a few months. Too many bad memories here to suit me.”

“I don’t blame you.”

In grade school, he’d lost a younger sister in a tragic accident, and less than a year later his mother died. The whole town knew how harsh Gus had been with his sons after that. For all of their land and wealth, no one would’ve wanted to be in their shoes.

Which made her own behavior toward Tate in high school seem all the worse. Maybe he didn’t remember anything about it, after all these years, but seeing him again made that emotional baggage weigh heavily on her heart.

She swallowed hard and shook off her thoughts as she approached the two-year-old gelding, ran a comforting hand down his neck and shoulder and carefully unwrapped the leg. “You’ve done a good job of keeping this leg clean. He’s up to date on all of his vaccinations, right? Including tetanus?”

Tate nodded. “I checked his records. All good.”

“What happened?”

“Barbwire,” he said with disgust. “If I was going to stay here longer, I’d have time to replace all of it with something safer—at least around the horse pastures. Some cattle went through the fence last night. At least a hundred head of Angus were in the horse pasture this morning, and by then, this colt had gotten tangled up in the downed wire.”

“The cattle probably didn’t even see the fence during that heavy snowfall. Did you get them all rounded up?”

“Yep. At least they were contained in an adjoining pasture. My brothers came over to help drive them back.”

She administered an intravenous sedative, and waited until the gelding’s head sleepily lowered. After injecting some anesthetic, she examined the edges of the lacerations, flushed them with sterile saline and probed the depths of the wounds.

She retrieved suture materials from her satchel and got to work. “I’m only suturing the cannon bone area,” she said without looking away from the leg. “Fortunately, the wounds on the pastern are minor. In that area, sutures tend to pull out when the joint flexes. I’d have to do something more involved.”

When she finished, she wrapped the leg in gauze, then fluffy white sheet cotton, followed by stretchy Vetrap to thoroughly stabilize the dressing.

After she’d administered an injection of IM antibiotics, she stowed her gear back into the satchel and pulled off her vinyl gloves. “Stall rest only. I need to see this horse in three or four days, and then a week or two after that. Will someone be around, say, on Thursday morning around eleven?”

“Sure. Just give me a call if anything changes.” He slowly led the injured gelding into a stall and unbuckled his halter, then stepped out and slid the door shut.

A wave of memories washed over her as she breathed in the familiar scents of sawdust bedding and good mixed alfalfa and grass hay. “I was…surprised to be called out here. Has anyone lived here since my aunt and uncle lost the place?” She’d tried to still the edge in her voice but apparently hadn’t succeeded, because she saw a flash of sympathy in Tate’s eyes.

“I’d left for college and then the rodeo circuit before that, but by the looks of the house, I don’t think anyone has lived here in years. So what happened to your aunt and uncle?”

“Years of drought, low livestock prices. Mounting medical bills for Millie’s cancer. They took out loans against the ranch to try to hang on, but they ended up sinking in debt they couldn’t repay.” She dredged up a weak smile. “Yet they still kept sending me a little money every month to help with my rent. I was away at college and they never said a word about how bad things were. They didn’t want me to worry. When I learned the truth it just about broke my heart.”

“Sounds like there was no hope of recovering.”

“Warren was sure they could’ve rallied if only they’d had just a few more months. But the bank abruptly called in their loans and wouldn’t even talk about an extension. And your dad—” She bit back the sharp words on her lips.

She would never believe there hadn’t been something fishy going on between the bank president and Gus Langford to precipitate that sudden foreclosure and sale. But there was no going back. Gus was dead and the whole situation was past history.

And none of it was Tate’s fault.

“Some folks said Dad was like a vulture. He never missed a chance to grab what he wanted.” A faint, sad smile touched a corner of Tate’s mouth. “Where are your aunt and uncle now?”

“After the foreclosure they had just enough equity to pay off their legal fees, settle their debts, and scrape together the money for a small, remote cabin. They live in town now, though.”

She gave Tate a cool nod of farewell, but he followed her out to her truck anyway and opened the door for her, then stepped back as she lifted the satchel onto the front seat and climbed behind the steering wheel.

He closed the door for her. “Thanks, Sara. I appreciate you coming by so quickly.”

“No problem.” She glanced over at him through the open window and their eyes locked for a moment too long before she jerked her gaze away and started the engine.

He’d changed a lot since she’d last seen him at high school graduation. He was much taller, his shoulders had broadened. His voice was deeper.

He still had those trademark Langford eyes, though. The dark, sweeping eyebrows and stunning silver-blue eyes with long dark lashes. With that black hair and an easy, lopsided grin that deepened the slash of a dimple in his left cheek, he could probably charm any woman with a pulse from nine to ninety.

Every one of the brothers was perfect material for the cover of GQ magazine, though their saving grace was that none of them had ever seemed to realize it.

She’d fallen under his spell in high school, but that was long over. Even if she felt the smallest twinge of attraction now, the Langfords had destroyed the two people who loved her most. And after that, empty charm and stunning good looks didn’t matter—not to her. There’d be no point at any rate. Tate intended to leave town.

But Pine Bend was now her permanent home, and she never would.

Jess tossed another bale of hay off of the hayrack hitched to his truck and grinned down at Tate. “So the new vet in town is your old girlfriend, right? Did she ask you out on a date?”

Tate hefted the bale and carried it into the horse barn. “Not my old girlfriend,” he called over his shoulder. “It was a class of thirty. We all knew each other.”

“Not how I remember it.” Jess threw off another bale. “Seems to me you two dated for a while, your senior year. I remember, because I’d already left for college but I was a tad jealous when I heard about it. A pretty girl like that—a guy like you—it sure didn’t make sense to me. And she was a doctor’s daughter, to boot. High-class. How did you manage it, anyway?”

Ignoring him, Tate hauled the bale into the barn and tossed it up to Devlin, who was standing on top of the stack in the rapidly filling hay stall just inside the door.

Devlin leveled a cocky look down at him. “I’m real curious too. Of course, back then you hadn’t gone off to rodeo just yet. You didn’t hobble around like Methuselah.”

“Like you?” Tate retorted, then immediately wished he could call his teasing words back.

Devlin had been through countless surgeries and rounds of physical therapy before receiving a medical discharge from the Marines. Even if they were all just taunting each other right now, Dev deserved only respect for all he’d been through.

But Dev just grinned back at him. “So, she’s coming back this morning to check on that injured gelding. Right? Will we get to see romantic sparks fly? Hey, Jess, look—Tate’s blushing.”

“Am not,” Tate shot back. “With luck, you’ll both be gone by then. You’re gonna embarrass that poor woman to death.”

“Us?” Jess tossed two more bales off the truck and melodramatically flapped a hand against his chest. “We don’t want to kid around with her—we want to make sure she has good intentions toward our baby brother.”

“Yep,” Dev concurred gravely. “You’re still not married at thirty-two, so you obviously need our help.”

Tate snickered. “Maybe you two needed mine. Jess didn’t get married till last June, and you didn’t even get engaged till that same weekend. You two weren’t exactly speedy, either.”

Twenty more bales flew off the hayrack in rapid succession, a brief pause, then the final ten. Jess climbed off the empty rack and helped Tate toss the rest of the bales up to Devlin.

When the job was done, Tate stood back, took off his leather gloves and slapped them against his thigh to knock off the hay dust. The hay stall was full. Up in the hayloft, there wasn’t room for another bale, and outside, rows of big round bales of hay were stored for the cows.

“Thanks, guys. I’d forgotten about what a good feeling it is to have a barn full of hay.”

“Now we just need to get you to stay for good,” Jess said dryly. “What are the chances of you changing your mind?”

“Still pretty much zero.” He’d once been a top money earner, but ten years of rodeo injuries had taken a relentless physical toll and his days of competing were over. “I still plan to buy that rodeo stock contractor’s company at his dispersal sale on May 2nd. Livestock, equipment and all. It has one of the best reputations in the country, so I could step in and get right back to following the rodeo circuit. I miss that life.”

Devlin lifted an eyebrow. “You were a competitor, sure. But what do you know about producing rodeos?”

“I’m not interested in producing the whole event. Just contracting to supply all of the livestock they need, then hauling it to the various rodeo grounds.”

“If you care for cattle that much, you have plenty of livestock right here.”

Tate snorted. “Beef cattle and bucking bulls aren’t the same.”

“On what planet? They all moo.” The corner of Devlin’s mouth quirked up in a grin at his own lame joke. “And here you’ve got a fine house to live in, on a spread with a stellar view of the Rockies…an old girlfriend coming to call…”

“Have you looked in that house? It’s been an adventure, from the first day I moved in.”

“No, but…”

“Jess?”

“Uh…no. Not since I came back to Montana to help dad out. A couple years, now. With a broom and a little dusting…”

“Oh, I cleaned it up the best I could when I moved in. But please, let me give you a tour.” Tate led them across the wide parking area to the tumbledown picket fence surrounding the yard, then to the rickety wooden steps leading up to the sagging wraparound covered porch. “Watch your step. Some of these boards are—”

One of the porch floorboards splintered under Devlin’s boot and he nimbly stepped to one side. “Challenging?”

“Dangerous.” Tate opened the back screen door and ushered them into the large country kitchen, with its yellowed linoleum flooring curling at the edges and Harvest Gold appliances dating back to the 1970s. “The fridge runs at around fifty degrees and two of the stove burners don’t work. The furnace is so old that I try to avoid starting it, so thank goodness the fireplace checked out all right.”

“Nice and cozy, then.”

“Sheer practicality. I had to turn the water back on when I moved in, so when the outside temp drops into the thirties I have to light a fire to keep the pipes from freezing.”

Jess looked at the faded, peeling wallpaper and cleared his throat. “A month or two of work and—”

“No, really. Just keep going.” Tate waved them on toward the living room, where an open staircase led up to the bedrooms. “You haven’t experienced this place until you’ve seen the water damage on the ceilings upstairs. Some are actually bowing downward. Oh, and the breeze whistles right through those window frames. It’s mighty chilly.”

Upstairs, the brothers roamed through the three bedrooms and the solitary bathroom, where the squeaky floor hinted at rotting floorboards beneath a shabby avocado shag carpet. The house was a disaster—Tate couldn’t deny it. Yet, as he glanced around, he imagined Sara living here with her loving aunt and uncle. Conversation around the dinner table. Christmas celebrations. The kind of warm family life he’d longed for after his mother died. How could he let it all go to ruin?

“I get the drift,” Devlin muttered. “The place is a wreck. Apparently Dad didn’t figure the place was worth saving.”

“But it is,” Tate countered. “The house has good bones. It just needs work. Though if the problems aren’t dealt with soon, it will be nothing but a pile of firewood.”

“Exactly.” Devlin prodded at the musty carpeting with the toe of his boot. “I vote for demolition.”

Jess studied the stained ceiling above the top of the stairs. “Tate?”

“Hiring a remodeling company would cost a fortune. You probably couldn’t even find one willing to come out this far.” Tate rested a hand on the wobbly staircase banister and gave it a light shake. “The rodeo contractor’s dispersal sale is the beginning of May, so I won’t be here long enough to get everything done. But, Jess, you gave up the career you wanted, to take over the ranch. And, Dev, you came back too. I owe you guys, and I want to do all I can to help. I haven’t been around to do my share.”

Jess started down the stairs. “So what do you propose?”

“I can pull together some numbers on what has to be done, the materials and how much it will cost. If you two agree, I’ll tackle as much as I can while I’m here. For some of the labor I might need extra hands, if one of you can spare the time.”

“Both of us can, but Dev is handier than I am. Since coming home, he renovated two of the three cabins over at the home place.” A sly grin lifted a corner of Jess’s mouth. “And who knows? Dev thought he was just gonna stay awhile, then move on. Now he’s running the adjoining Cavanaugh spread that Dad bought years ago. You might end up staying too. Maybe even here on the Branson place.”

Tate laughed at the suggestion, though it brought the past slamming into his thoughts. The last place he’d ever want to live was on a part of the Langford Ranch, where bad memories were lurking at every corner, and his old guilt and anger could resurface without warning.

How did Jess and Devlin cope? Had they somehow buried the past too deeply to even notice anymore?

That seemed impossible.

“Say you do manage to buy that company and its bucking stock.” Jess pursed his lips as he surveyed the living room before moving on to the kitchen. “You’ll still need time to develop your business plan, advertise and start to schedule rodeo dates for next year. Maybe you’ll need to stay here longer than you think—at least until you get on your feet.”