Pamela Britton - Cowboy Vet

“Nope. Just the muffins,” he answered gruffly, back to his usual surly self.

“Coming right up.” She tucked her pencil behind her ear, much easier to do ever since she’d chopped off all her red hair. “Rancher’s Special with a side of bacon and English muffins,” Jessie called out, slipping the order sheet into the spinner, then flicking it toward Frank. “Extra arsenic,” she muttered under her breath.

But as she moved about the Kleenex box-shaped diner, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing in Rand Sheppard’s direction. It seemed every unmarried woman in town had set her cap for him—and failed to win him. And while Jessie knew better than to form a crush on the man, a part of her still wished he’d treat her as kindly as he treated everybody else. But that would never happen, she thought, watching as a man from the Diamond W slid into the booth across from Rand. Jessie had one of the worst reputations in town, one that had started when she’d—supposedly—ruined Rand’s cousin’s life.

“She only lasted two days,” she heard Rand say, over the clinking of dishes and silverware. “Shortest vet tech career at Sheppard Veterinary.”

Vet tech? He’d hired a new vet tech? What had happened to Sandy Anders, his old one? The woman was an icon at Sheppard Veterinary, almost as much a fixture as the ancient wagon wheels that guarded the clinic’s gate.

“So what are you going to do?” she heard the wrangler—Pete, she thought his name was—ask. Jessie picked up a hot plate while straining to listen. “You need help.”

“I know,” Rand answered.

She set the plate down in front of Hank, the smell of cooked bell peppers and cheese wafting up to her.

“Can I have some salt?” Hank was one of her regulars, a crusty old cowboy with a beat-up straw hat.

Jessie handed him the sugar.

“I said salt, Jessie.” He tapped the scarred white laminate turned yellow with age.

She blinked. “Oh, yeah. Sure, Hank. Salt. Sorry.”

She grabbed one of the forty salt-and-pepper sets on the bar beside the old-fashioned pie display, all the while listening in.

“You going to run another ad?” Pete asked.

“Guess I’ll have to. But I don’t hold out much hope of finding someone soon. You know how it is. Five hundred people want to work with animals, but only a few are qualified. Then they find out we’re out in the sticks and, well…”

They didn’t want to commute from the city. Jessie knew how it was. For three years she’d done the opposite commute from Los Molinos to the city—the nearby Bay Area. It’d taken her three years of night school and days of working in the diner, but she’d gotten her degree in animal science.

What Rand Sheppard didn’t know was that she, Jessie the Jezebel, was a certified veterinary technician.

And she was about to ask Rand Sheppard for a job.

FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER Pete had left, Rand didn’t know what surprised him more, how hot the damn coffee was that Jessie Monroe served him, or that she slid into his booth after pouring him a cup.

“Mmph,” he mumbled, as some of the coffee dribbled back onto his chin.

“Too hot, I know,” she said.

And, as always happened when he looked at Jessie Monroe, he was struck by her eyes. Huge. And green, so green they looked like the new leaves that sprouted up around town. So green he found himself wondering yet again how the heck they could be such an impossible color. And then, as he always did when he caught himself staring, he remembered who she was.

“You could have told me it was hot,” he said, whipping the paper napkin off his place mat, the silverware tinkling as it spilled onto the Formica table.

“Why warn you? You’ve eaten here enough times to know it’s hot, and that it doesn’t taste very good.”

He did. And that irritated him all the more. She riled him. She always had—even before she’d been responsible for his cousin going to jail.

“Look,” she said, peeking over her shoulder toward the kitchen where Frank flipped bacon, oblivious to his employee’s defection, “I need to talk to you.”

Rand leaned back, his hand crumpling the napkin beneath the table. His whole body tensed, although truth be told he’d been on edge ever since he’d seen who his server was.

“What about?” he asked, his fingers digging into the paper.

“I want to work for you.”

If she’d told him she was about to rip her clothes off and dance naked, he couldn’t have been more surprised. “What?” he asked.

Actually, he might like that….

“I want to interview for your vet tech job,” she said, glancing at Frank again, the pink dress she wore gaping open as she leaned forward.

“But you’re not qualified,” he protested. Good Lord, the thought of Jessie Monroe coming to work for him…

“Actually,” she said, lifting her chin, “I am. I have a degree in animal science.”

What? “How?”

“Lots of late hours at the coffee shop while commuting to the Bay Area.”

“Which college?”

“Gavilan,” she said.

Something in his eyes must have made her think he wasn’t impressed, because she added, “It’s one of the top junior colleges in the state.”

“I know it is,” he said. It wasn’t the college she’d gone to, it was that she wanted to work as his veterinary assistant. Her. Jessie Monroe. Who as a wild-child teenager had let Tommy take the rap for her.

Rand absolutely would not hire her.

“Look, Jessie,” he said, “I’ve had hundreds of applicants—”

“Qualified applicants?” she asked, having obviously overheard him talking to Pete.

Rand tipped his head. “Some, yeah. My point being that there are people who’ve applied already, people I need to consider ahead of you.”

“But I might be better qualified than them,” she said. Her eyes seemed to shimmer. “Something you won’t know unless you interview me.”

“Nah. I’ve already looked over the applicants. A few of them have actual work experience, Jessie, not a bunch of college credits and a few lab classes under their belt.”

“How do you know that’s all I’ve got?”

“Educated guess.”

She leaned toward him. “Sometimes the most highly educated individuals are incompetent.”

“You got more than that?”

“Actually, I do,” she said proudly. “I’ve been interning at a breeding farm in the Bay Area part-time.”

“Then why don’t you go work for them?”

“Because the commute is killing me.”

He looked up at her. He didn’t really believe that excuse. “Then move to the Bay Area.”

“I don’t want to move. I like this town.”

“Jessie—”

“You just don’t want to hire me,” she interrupted.

“No. That’s not it—”

“Bull,” she said, slipping out of the booth. “Your refusal to interview me has nothing to do with my qualifications and everything to do with your cousin.”

“Well, yeah,” Rand said. “I’m not going to lie to you.”

She stared, and he could have sworn he saw hurt in her eyes. “You still think those drugs were mine?”

“With your reputation, why would I think that?”

“Because people are innocent until proven guilty.”

“There was nothing innocent about you.”

“And Tommy Lockford, cousin to the great Rand Sheppard, was a saint.”

“More of a saint than you were.” Rand took another sip of coffee, even though the topic of conversation all but turned his stomach.

“So you think.”

“So I know,” he said, throwing her words back in her face.

She shook her head, her bangs falling in her eyes. She pushed them away impatiently. “Why did I think you might give me a shot?” she muttered under her breath. “You wouldn’t hire me if I held a degree in veterinary medicine from UC Davis.”