RaeAnne Thayne - The Valentine Two-Step

Ellie said.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re feeling sorry for the poor little foster girl playing make-believe. I did just fine.”

“I never said otherwise,” Matt said gruffly.

“You didn’t have to say a word. I can see what you’re thinking clear as day. I’ve seen pity plenty of times. But I’ve done just fine,” Ellie insisted, lifting her chin. “And I don’t care what you think about me, Harte.”

“Good. Then it won’t bother you when I tell you I think about you all the time. Or,” he finished quietly, “when I tell you that I think you’re just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen standing in my barn.”

Ellie’s jaw sagged open, and she stared at him, wide-eyed.

“Close your mouth, Doc,” he murmured wryly.

She snapped it shut, knowing exactly what he was going to do….

www.millsandboon.co.uk

lives in a crumbling old Victorian house in northern Utah with her husband and two young children. She loves being able to write surrounded by rugged mountains and real cowboys.

To Lyndsey Thomas, for saving my life and my sanity more times than I can count!

Special thanks to Dr. Ronald Hamm, D.V.M., animal healer extraordinaire, for sharing so generously of his expertise.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

“It’s absolutely perfect.” Dylan Webster held her hands out imploringly to her best friend, Lucy Harte. “Don’t you see? It’s the only way!”

Lucy frowned in that serious way of hers, her gray eyes troubled. In the dim, dusty light inside their secret place—a hollowed-out hideaway behind the stacked hay bales of the Diamond Harte barn loft—her forehead looked all wrinkly. Kind of like a shar-pei puppy Dylan had seen once at her mom’s office back in California.

“I don’t know…” she began.

“Come on, Luce. You said it yourself. We should have been sisters, not just best friends. We were born on exactly the same day, we both love horses and despise long division and we both want to be vets like my mom when we grow up, right?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“If my mom married your dad, we really would be sisters. It would be like having a sleepover all the time. I could ride the school bus with you and everything, and I just know my mom would let me have my own horse if we lived out here on the ranch.”

Lucy nibbled her lip. “But, Dylan…”

“You want a mom of your own as much as I want a dad, don’t you? Even though you have your aunt Cassie to look after you, it’s not the same. You know it’s not.”

It was exactly the right button to push, and she knew it. Before her very eyes, Lucy sighed, and her expression went all dreamy. Dylan felt a little pinch of guilt at using her best friend’s most cherished dream to her own advantage, but she worked hard to ignore it.

Her plan would never work if she couldn’t convince Lucy how brilliant it was. Both of them had to be one-hundred-percent behind it. “We’d be sisters, Luce,” she said. “Sisters for real. Wouldn’t it be awesome?”

“Sisters.” Lucy burrowed deeper into the hay, her gray eyes closed as if, like Dylan, she was imagining family vacations and noisy Christmas mornings and never again having to miss a daddy-daughter party at school. Or in Lucy’s case, a mother-daughter party.

“It would be awesome.” That shar-pei look suddenly came back to her forehead, and she sat up. “But Dylan, why would they ever get married? I don’t think they even like each other very much.”

“Who?”

“My dad and your mom.”

Doubt came galloping back like one of Lucy’s dad’s horses after a stray dogie. Lucy was absolutely right. They didn’t like each other much. Just the other day, she heard her mom tell SueAnn that Matt Harte was a stubborn old man in a younger man’s body.

“But what a body it is,” her mom’s assistant at the clinic had replied, with a rumbly laugh like grown-ups make when they’re talking about sexy stuff. “Matt Harte and his brother have always been the most gorgeous men in town.”

Her mom had laughed, too, and she’d even turned a little bit pink, like a strawberry shake. “Shame on you. You’re a happily married woman, Sue.”

“Married doesn’t mean dead. Or crazy, for that matter.”

Her mom had scrunched up her face. “Even if he is…attractive…in a macho kind of way, a great body doesn’t make up for having the personality of an ornery bull.”

Dylan winced, remembering. Okay, so Lucy’s dad and her mom hadn’t exactly gotten along since the Websters moved to Star Valley. Still, her mom thought he was good-looking and had a great body. That had to count for something.

Dylan gave Lucy what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “They just haven’t had a chance to get to know each other.”

Lucy looked doubtful. “My dad told Aunt Cassie just last week he wouldn’t let that city quack near any of his livestock. I think he meant your mom.”

Dylan narrowed her eyes. “My mom’s not a quack.”

“I know she’s not. I think your mom’s just about the greatest vet around. I’m only telling you what he said.”

“We just have to change his mind. We have to figure out some way to push them together. Once they get to know each other, they’ll have to see that they belong together.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Dylan blew out a breath that made her auburn bangs flutter. Lucy was the best friend anybody could ask for—the best friend she’d ever had. These last three months since they’d moved here had been so great. Staying overnight at the ranch, riding Lucy’s horses, trading secrets and dreams here behind the hay bales.

They were beyond best, best, best friends, and Dylan loved her to death, but sometimes Lucy worried too much. Like about spelling tests and missing the bus and letting her desk get too messy.

She just had to convince her the idea would work. It would be so totally cool if they could pull this off. She wanted a dad in the worst way, and she figured Matt Harte—with his big hands and slow smile and kind eyes—would be absolutely perfect. Having Lucy for a sister would be like the biggest bonus she could think of.

Dylan would just have to try harder.

“It’s going to work. Trust me. I know it’s going to work.” She grabbed Lucy’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Before you know it, we’ll be walking down the aisle wearing flowers in our hair and me and my mom will be living here all the time. See, I have this plan….”

“They did what?”

Ellie Webster and the big, gruff rancher seated beside her spoke in unison. She spared a glance at Matt Harte and saw he looked like he’d just been smacked upside the head with a two-by-four.

“Oh, dear. I was afraid of this.” Sarah McKenzie gave a tiny, apologetic smile to both of them.

With her long blond hair and soft, wary brown eyes, her daughter’s teacher always made Ellie think of a skittish palomino colt, ready to lunge away at the first provocation. Now, though, she was effectively hobbled into place behind her big wooden schoolteacher’s desk. “You’re telling me you both didn’t agree to serve on the committee for the Valentine’s Day carnival?”