Marion Lennox - Taming the Brooding Cattleman

She wasn’t making sense, even to herself. She should make herself stand up, head back to her allotted bedroom and go to sleep. And then get out of here.

Instead she cradled her mug of hot tea and stared at the worn surface of the table and did nothing.

She wasn’t all that sure her legs would let her do anything else.

Jack was at the stove. He had his back to her. She wasn’t sure what he was doing and she didn’t care.

She’d wanted this so badly….

Why?

Veterinary Science hadn’t been a problem for her. She’d dreamed of taking care of horses since she was a child. She’d put her head down and worked, and she’d succeeded.

Getting a job, though, was a sight harder. Horse medicine was hard, physically tough. The guys in college who were good at it were those who came from farms, who were built tough and big, who knew how to handle themselves. But she’d done it. She’d trained in equestrian care, she’d proved she could do what the guys did; she used brains instead of brawn, got fast at avoiding flying hooves, learned a bit of horse whispering.

It worked until she hit the real world, the world of employment, when no rancher wanted a five-feet-four-inch, willow-thin, blonde, twenty-five-year-old girl vet.

Like this guy didn’t want her.

Her dad had organised this job for her. She’d been humiliated that she’d had to sink to using family connections, and now it seemed even family connections weren’t enough.

What now?

Go back to New York? Find herself a nice little job caring for Manhattan pets? Her mother would be delighted.

Her dad?

He loved that she was a vet. He loved it that she wanted to treat horses.

He’d have loved it better if she was a son.

‘Let’s see if this suits you better,’ Jack said, and slid another plate in front of her.

She looked—and looked again.

No sausages. Instead she was facing a small, fine china plate, with a piece of thin, golden toast, cut into four neat triangles. On the side was one perfectly rounded, perfectly poached egg.

She stared down at the egg and it was as much as she could do not to burst into tears.

‘You’re beat,’ he said gently. ‘Eat that and get to bed. Things will look better in the morning.’

She looked up at him, stunned by this gesture. This plate … it was like invalid cooking, designed to appeal to someone with the most jaded appetite. Where had this man …?

‘Don’t mind me, but I’m going back to my sausages,’ he said, and hauled them out of the oven and did just that.

She’d thought she was too upset to eat, that she’d gone past hunger. He stayed silent, concentrating on his own meal. Left to herself, she managed to clean her plate.

He made her a second mug of tea. She finished that, too. She wasn’t feeling strong enough to speak, to argue, to think about the situation she was in. She’d sleep, she thought. Then … then …

‘There’s not a lot I can’t do that a guy can do,’ she said, not very coherently but it was the best she could manage at the end of the meal.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But you wouldn’t want to stay here.’

‘Neither would any male vet I trained with.’

He nodded. ‘I shouldn’t have let anyone come.’

‘You need me, why?’

‘I don’t need you.’

‘Right,’ she said, and rose. ‘I guess that’s it, then. Maybe I should say thank-you for the egg but I won’t. I’ve just paid the airfare to come halfway round the world for a job that doesn’t exist. Compared to that … well, it does seem an egg is pretty lousy wages.’

THE bedroom was a faded approximation to her dreams. It had once been beautiful, large and gracious, with gorgeous flowered wallpaper, rich, tasselled drapes, a high ceiling, wide windows and a bed wide enough to fit three of her. It still was beautiful—sort of. She could ignore the faded wallpaper, the shredded drapes. For despite the air of neglect and decay, her bed was made up with clean, crisp linen. The mattress and pillows were surprisingly soft. Magically soft.

Soft enough that despite her emotional upheaval, despite the fact that it was barely seven o’clock, she was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

But reality didn’t go away. She woke up with a jolt in the small hours, and remembered where she was, and remembered her life was pretty much over.

Okay, maybe she was exaggerating, she decided, as she stared bleakly into the darkness. She had the money to have a holiday. She could go back to Sydney, do some sightseeing, head back to New York and tell everyone she’d been conned.

Her friends had been derisive when she’d told them what she was doing. ‘You? On an outback station? Man-of-all-work as well as vet for stockhorses? Get real, Alex, you’re too blonde.’

The teasing had been good-natured but she’d heard the serious incredulity behind it. No one would be surprised when she came home.

And then what? Her thoughts were growing bleaker. If this low-life cowboy kicked her off this farm …

He didn’t have to kick her off. There was no way she’d stay here, with this ramshackle house, without a bathroom, with his chauvinistic attitudes.

Bleak-R-Us.

The silence was deafening. She was used to city sounds, city lights filtering through the drapes. Here, there was nothing.

If there was nothing, she had to leave.

Okay. She could do what her mother wanted, she thought. Concede defeat. Get a job caring for New York’s pampered pooches. Her mother had all sorts of contacts who could get her such a job. Unlike her dad, who’d loved the idea of her working with horses, and who’d used the only contact he had. Which just happened to be forty years out of date.

And for a son, not for a daughter.

Her thoughts were all over the place, but suddenly she was back with her dad. Why did it make a difference? She’d never been able to figure why her dad wasn’t happy with the son he had; why he’d been desperate to have another.

Like she couldn’t figure why it was so important to Jack Connor that she was male.

He’d cooked her an egg.

It was a small thing. In the face of his boorish behaviour it was inconsequential, yet somehow it made a difference.

He was used to invalid cookery, she thought. Maria had made meals like that for her when she was ill. The fact that Jack had done it …

It meant nothing. One egg does not a silk purse make. He was still, very much, a sow’s ear. A sow’s ear she’d be seeing the last of tomorrow morning. Or this morning.

She checked her watch: 3:00 a.m. Four hours before she could stalk away from this place and never come back.

Admit defeat?

Yes, she told her pillow. Yes, because she had no choice.

She rolled over in bed and saw a flicker of light behind the curtains.

Jack, heading for the outhouse?

The outhouse was on the other side of the house.

Someone was out there.

So what? She shoved her pillow over her head and tried to sleep.

It was midday in Manhattan. She was wide awake.

The light.

Ignore it. Go to sleep.

Her legs were twitchy. She’d spent too long on too many planes.

So what? Go to sleep.

Or what?

Sancha was one of the stud’s prize mares. This was her second foaling. He hadn’t expected trouble.

At two-thirty he’d known things were happening but the signs were normal. He’d checked the foal had a nice healthy heartbeat. He’d brought in thick fresh straw, then sat back and waited. Foaling was normally explosively fast. Horses usually delivered within half an hour.

She didn’t.

She was in trouble.

So was the foal. The presentation was all wrong. The heartbeat was becoming erratic.