Gena Dalton - Stranger At The Crossroads

“You’ll probably need to take off your gloves to carry the fluid bag,” Darcy said, “so it won’t slip. You’ll have to hold it above your head to get it to flow through the tubing.”

Jackson stood silent.

When she could look up, she glanced at him.

“You’ll have to carry it,” she said. “I’m too short to hold it high enough for gravity to work.”

He stared, almost glaring at her.

“I’ll carry it,” he snapped.

“Well, then,” she snapped back at him, “we don’t have to worry, do we?”

What an ill-tempered man! This could shape up to be the most nerve-racking foal watch of her entire career.

She should’ve kept on going south. She shouldn’t have stopped—she’d known that when she did it. This was just one more time when she should’ve followed her instincts.

But she had stopped, and this mare might’ve died if she hadn’t, so the thing to do was make the best of the situation and ignore the mercurial Jackson Whoever as much as possible. She’d simply do her Good Samaritan deed, deliver the foal and be on her way.

This mare is going to need IV antibiotics and fluids for days.

There it was again, her eternal, tormenting little voice of truth. Well, it was right. But that didn’t matter; as soon as this foal was on the ground, Jackson could call another veterinarian. A male veterinarian.

She ran a short IV line to the mare’s mane and tied it off. Then she drew up the antibiotic injection and pushed it in the catheter.

“Hold her here a second longer. I’ll get the antibiotic into her, then we’ll head for the barn.”

He didn’t say a word.

They stood in silence while she finished the injection.

“All right, that’s good,” she said, as she started putting things away. “We’re ready for the fluids now.”

Jackson didn’t reply, which roused her temper all over again.

“I didn’t mean to offend you by asking you to do something,” she said tartly, as she dropped her instruments into the container and picked up the bag. “But gravity is the key. Therefore, the bag has to be above the horse’s neck, and I’m not tall enough to hold it there.”

No answer to that, either.

Quickly, she placed the IV line into the port of the bag of fluids and ran the liquid out until all the air bubbles were gone.

She turned to the mare, holding the bag in one hand. Jackson stepped forward and took it from her, held it above Tara’s neck.

“Let’s go,” he said harshly.

Fury raced through her. Ungrateful wretch.

But she bit her tongue and did what she had to do, forcing her thoughts to focus on the mare, only the mare.

“Done,” she said.

Jackson kept the bag high with one hand and held the lead rope with the other as he began to walk away. Stubbornly, he still wore both gloves.

Darcy closed the lid of her box and turned to follow. Somehow, he seemed to know that without even looking at her.

“I’ll take Tara,” he said, throwing the words over his shoulder. “You bring the truck.”

Resentment flared in her blood. She opened her mouth to refuse—and not only to spite him, either. Her instinct was to stay with Tara the whole way and return for the truck once the mare was settled in a clean foaling stall.

He was right, though. She might need her instruments and medicines in a hurry, and he couldn’t run back for the truck if she needed to stay with the mare.

Maybe he was thinking the very same thing but didn’t want to say it. He’d proved sensitive to his physical limitations when she’d stopped on the road.

Or maybe he was such a take-charge kind of guy that he needed to control every move she made now that he’d given in to her request to treat the mare. She didn’t care. All she cared about was this good mare and her baby.

She ran to her truck, jerked open the door and jumped into the driver’s seat. For an instant, she sat there and watched him and Tara, veering off the road to head across the pasture.

People became emotional and crotchety and short-tempered and unreasonable when their favorite animals were sick. Jackson admired Tara and liked her, and apparently she was worth quite a bit as a brood-mare. Plus he’d had to steal her to get help for her. All that, with a tire blowout to boot, was enough to make him hard to deal with—that plus his prejudice about women equine veterinarians.

Jackson led the mare across the pasture toward the gate at a good, fast clip. At least, for him it was, now that lameness slowed his every step. He heard the motor start on Dr. Darcy Hart’s truck.

Thank goodness she couldn’t drive along beside him the whole way—she’d have to go around by the ranch road while he cut across the field. At least he’d have a few minutes of peace before they all reached the barn.

His blood chilled at the thought. What had he done, letting this pushy, interfering woman come onto his place, his refuge?

Just imagining her in his barn, perhaps even in his house—and no telling for how long—made him feel sick. It brought back the lurking nausea that had been his constant companion in those first horrid weeks of consciousness after the wreck. In a year and three months, the only person he’d allowed anywhere near his house and barn, his little corner of the Rocking M Ranch, was his mother.

And he’d never been gone very long from it himself. He’d learned it didn’t take long to become a hermit who had no use for other people.

“Don’t let that bag slip out of your grip,” Darcy Hart called as she drove slowly down the ranch road while he crossed the ditch. “Hold it above her neck and keep her moving.”

Know-it-all woman horse doctor.

His tongue itched to tell her to turn around, go out to the state road and keep driving, to get out of his sight and never come back. But Tara’s life was at stake.

“Fresh straw’s in the aisle,” he called. “Turn in at the barn nearest the house.”

Much as he needed the relief of being rid of her, he would force his raw nerves to cope. This mare was not going to die—she’d already been through far too much, and he was going to save her if it hare-lipped the governor. And the foal, too.

Dr. Darcy Hart moved on down the road, but slowly, as if hovering and watching every limping step he took would do some good somehow. The woman was a control freak.

But who cared? He didn’t. All that mattered to him was that she prove to be as skillful as she was stubborn.

That and getting Tara to a stall before she went down to foal.

He set his jaw and made his aching leg move faster.

By the time he reached the barn, the bright red truck was backed up at right angles to the door. He led Tara in and down the aisle, ignoring the discomfort that flooded him. Darcy had already invaded his private space. Another person, a stranger, was here with him, and he didn’t like that.

“I’m thinking this stall. Any objections?”

Darcy’s voice came from the center stall on the right, marked by its door swinging open. He stopped and looked in.

“No,” he said. “That’s fine. It’s the biggest.”

She was stretching up, standing on the folding ladder from the feed room, threading a piece of baling wire around a rafter. As he watched, she twisted the two ends of it together into a hook.

“It took me a minute to realize the stalls weren’t all the same size,” she said. “This barn is really old, isn’t it?”

He certainly wasn’t going to be drawn into a lot of idle palavering.

“Right,” he said brusquely.

“Hang the bag on this,” she said, just as brusquely, “and then we need some more straw. I just spread one bale in a hurry, for fear she’d be trying to go down as soon as you got her in here.”