Seducing the Bachelor (The Bachelor Auction Returns Book 3) (11 page)

Colt continued to eye the dog narrowly. She could practically hear his thoughts. That dog did not have an anxious family missing her. She was skinny, ragged with her fur pulled out in patches, and filthy. She looked like she’d been in a fight with something recently, possibly the emu. Blood coated her sides and now she was prone, panting, eyes rolling. Her stomach was hard and distended. Serious worms or disease or pregnancy, Talon thought with despair.

“It’s all right, baby.” Talon began to speak softly. Nonsense words. Sweet words, letting her voice slow and soften and deepen. The dog kept its eyes on her as she approached, ears flattened, tail down, sides heaving as she sucked in air. Talon slowed her own breathing, lowered her eyes so she didn’t make contact, and continued slowly but steadily. She tapped her hand lightly on her leg, slower and slower, keeping a soft beat, all the time talking.

The dog stopped pulling so hard to get away, and instead looked at her more beseechingly than terrified.

“Yes, that’s right, baby. We’re going to free you, and stitch you up, and then give you something delicious to eat. Are you hungry? I bet you are. Just another minute.”

The sound of fast footfalls cut through the calm she was trying to weave, and Talon held her hand out behind her. Parker slowed.

She was closer now, almost to touching. She crouched down.

“Parker, give the cone to me and the wire cutters and blanket to Colt. Put my bag down on the ground and scoot it to me. Don’t come too close.”

She sang a lullaby that her friend Jenna used to sing to Parker when he’d been a baby.

Without her telling him to, Colt dropped to a crouch and began to ease the blanket down flat, his eyes on the ground but clearly eyeing the dog briefly in his peripheral vision.

“Closer,” she whispered.

He leaned towards the dog, and immediately her attentions shifted to him. Talon slid the collar around the dog’s neck and pressed the Velcro in place.

“Okay, slide the blanket under her.”

He did while she drew up a shot of pain meds.

“She’s going to also need an IV.” She pulled out a bag of fluid. She was really lucky Noah let her keep a stash of medical supplies at her house, in case she reached a call first where some minor interventions would make a difference. She ran her hands over the dog’s limbs feeling for breaks and sighing in relief when she felt none.

The dog thrashed, but Colt had wrapped the blanket around the dog’s limbs, and its struggles were weaker.

“Okay, cut her free,” she said.

Colt cut and slowly peeled back the fence, as Talon gently freed the dog’s lacerations. The dog thrashed more, tried to turn over and yelped, and Talon appreciated how Colt kept the wire free and didn’t freak out when the dog’s head crashed into his knee. A mouth full of sharp canines could be intimidating even with the cone restraint, but he didn’t even blink or try to jump out of the way.

“Thank you,” she said. “Can you pick her up, keeping her in the blanket?” she asked.

Yes, the dog was quite thin, but she was a large breed.

“Can,” he said, his voice had a touch of the same playful tone he’d shared at the platform. Talon caught her breath and looked up quickly, just to catch a glint of humor before he stood with the seventy to eighty pound dog as easily as if it were a Chihuahua.

“Where to?”

“That’s a lovely question for a woman to hear.” Talon grabbed her bag. “If you keep talking so sweetly and lifting heavy objects, I might have to keep you.”

“I’m on loan,” he said.

“And, bam, in walked reality,” Talon said, trying to stuff the disappointment back to where it had unexpectedly welled up from. She knew he was only here helping his coach. That he had a job and a life elsewhere. And probably a line of women around the block.

She tripped over her own feet. “You’re still being perfect,” she said.

“Haven’t started.”

“She seems pretty calm.” Talon noted. “Take her to the house please, Superman.”

“I always wanted a red cape,” he said, but Talon was curious why his tone had gone cool and curt. And his fabulous square jaw, the one with the cleft that made her stare and fantasize about licking it, was tighter than usual.

“You’d look good in red.” She teased, hoping to see that light in his eyes again.

“Can we keep her mom, can we keep her?”

“Let’s focus on seeing to her injuries and getting her fed,” Talon said, dragging her attention away from Colt and her flirty thoughts.

Really? Like she didn’t have anything else to do except lust after a man who was going to be gone in few weeks. And with her son present.

“You want to take the dog to the house, not the barn?” He fell into step with her, and she liked how his voice was curious, not critical.

“We’ll keep her in the mudroom for now. I don’t have clean straw, or wood to close up the space between the slats enough to keep her in one of the birthing pens.”

“Are you planning to keep her?” Again with the neutral voice, only soft, so Parker, running ahead, couldn’t hear their conversation.

Definitely a keeper
.

“Heal her and see if we can find her ranch or her family.” She sighed and reached out to touch the dog through the blanket. She could feel the deep trembling. “Parker will want to keep her, of course, and I’d love to, but I’m not home enough for a dog with my shifts at the diner and interning with Noah, the vet in town.” She smiled. “But once I’m done with school and working in a vet practice, Parker and I will be able to have a dog and I’m hoping to take in other animals to have kind of an animal sanctuary where school kids or veterans could volunteer, and it could be a therapeutic experience for them. I think taking care of others, people and animals or a garden, is so important. So healing, don’t you think?”

His golden eyes swept over her, lingered. Then he nodded. She wished she could see into his mind right at that minute. What made him tick? What did he want?

“Do you like animals?” she asked.

“Haven’t thought about it.”

“Really?” she asked, walking into the house as Parker held open the door.

“As a child, I didn’t want to kill them.”

“Well, there’s a start.” She couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“Hunting,” he said. “I didn’t want to hunt. My uncle did. Common in this town. My aversion was not.”

She thought she heard him mutter “ironic”, but wasn’t sure what to make of that, and his tone was more than a red flag that he was done with this conversation, and Parker was dancing, one foot to the other, dragging more blankets out of the linen closet and sliding them across the floor to make a bed inside the storage bench. He’d already partially propped the lid open with a roll of duct tape.

“That’s smart thinking, Parker,” Talon said.

“It’s like a nest, mom, don’t you think?”

Talon braced for a sarcastic comment from Colt about how he was holding a dog, not a bird, but once again he surprised her.

“Looks good, Parker. Help me hand her in. I have her head.”

Talon whispered, “Thank you.”

“What do you need? Water? Towels?”

She did want water and cloths to clean the wounds and Parker ran around being helpful and enthusiastic, directing Colt where everything was and suggesting that maybe they’d all want some of his mother’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. Colt took him up on that and when Talon looked back at them, leaning against the laundry sink as the mud room was also the utility/laundry room, both of them were munching a cookie and fisting two others each, her heart flipped in a crazy way.

Something so normal, like seeing Parker munching on a cookie looking up and smiling at a man and talking a mile a minute shouldn’t hurt. Shouldn’t make her feel sad. But Parker didn’t have a dad. And he might never have one. She deliberately kept all men at a long arm’s length. Between Parker, school, and work, she didn’t have time or the inclination. She was building their life. And it was safer that way. She didn’t want to bring men in and out of Parker’s life. But for the first time it hit her that by not even trying, she was ensuring that Parker would never have a dad. Or siblings. And that if something happened to her, he’d be in the foster system. Just like what had happened to her. And to his mom, Jenna.

She turned back to the dog, trying to shut down the negative thoughts. Yes, life wasn’t fair, and bad things happened, and she had to roll with it. But Parker couldn’t be so unlucky as to have a dad who walked away, a mom killed in a car accident, and then his adopted mom…what? She didn’t want to think about it. Life was also full of good things, too. Lucking out on the living arrangements with Mr. Meizner for the last year and a half of his life had definitely qualified to be in the very, very good column of life her and Parker’s life.

Talon cleaned the dog as much as possible without giving it a full bath, sterilized and stitched all the deeper gouges and tears, before what she’d been worried about for the past half hour became obvious even to Colt and Parker.

Parker began fist pumping and jumping around the small cluttered room. Colt muttered “When it rains it pours. Parker, settle down. Dog’s freaked out enough.”

“Oh, right,” he whispered. “Can I watch?”

“Ask your mom.”

Talon watched the beginnings of a very active labor. And blew out a breath. It wasn’t that she hadn’t observed a birth before. She’d helped deliver stuck sheep, calves, foals, llamas and alpacas, and a couple of prized bulls when Noah had been called out either because the ranch was understaffed or too busy or worried because the animal in trouble was more prized for its breeding capabilities. It was just she didn’t know this dog. How sick it was. And because of the malnutrition, it was possible that some or all of the puppies could be stillborn or that the mom wouldn’t have the strength to deliver or nurse. With her schedule, she couldn’t bottle feed puppies.

“Parker, I think we should all keep a safe distance at this point. I’m going to have to take her cone off so that she’ll be able to smell and clean and bond with the puppies, but she’s pretty sick, and, Parker, some of the puppies might not make it.” She forced herself to say it.

“They might.”

“Yes. They might.” She smiled.

She’d always been called Sunnyside Up in the group homes she’d bounced around; especially by the teen years, many girls in long term foster care had a tendency to be sullen, angry, thinking the world owed them something. Her view had not been embraced by anyone but Jenna, which was why they’d probably bonded. Jenna had been positive that “this time it was going to work out and be perfect.” Even though she hadn’t told Talon about Parker’s father, she had been sure he would return for both of them, and each rodeo she’d dragged the two of them around to, she’d always dressed up and looked around with such an expectant air it had broken Talon’s heart, but she hadn’t been able to let her go alone. She knew what it was like to hope, and it seemed like Parker had inherited that as well as his mother’s thick, straight, black hair.

Four years later, and she still thought about Jenna every day. Missed her.

“What do you need me to do?” Colt asked. “Is this bench thing a good long term option? Should I figure a way to safely contain her in case she gets over protective?”

“There’re a few large animal crates in the barn that Noah stores there, but I hate to lock her up.”

“Leave the door open. We’ll put it in the barn. I’ll find some wood to close off one of the pens. She can move, but the pups, if any survive”—he looked at Parker—“will be safe. Parker, want to help me clean up a crate.”

“Awesome.” Parker jumped up from his crouched position.

Colt looked at him a bit bemused. He mouthed awesome at Talon and she laughed.

“Careful, his enthusiasm is contagious.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

Talon watched the progress of the birth and wished over and over that the dog could have held on a few days so she could have gotten some nutrition in her. At least she’d have the bag of fluids although there was plenty of water access this time of year. She prepared some towels, warm water if they needed to clean any surviving pups and then rummaged through her fridge to see what she could give the dog to eat if she were later inclined. She also made a list of supplies she’d need from town. And tried not to think of the cost. Or how they’d take care of one dog and then any resulting puppies.

“One thing at a time.” She reminded herself. “The list.”

Talon finished the list. Grabbed a few more old towels and a heating pad to make an easily washed bed in the crate and happened to glance out the kitchen window. Parker was enthusiastically spraying the crate, while Colt stepped far out of range.

“Smart man.” She breathed, thinking of all the times she’d been hit with Parker’s overly thorough cleaning bouts. Although she would have loved a little of the spray to hit Colt. Okay, to be honest, soak his shirt so she could see the thin fabric plastered to his body. She wondered if he had any tats. Heat pooled low just at the thought of ink on his taut skin, how the ink would flex with his movement, follow the contours of his cut body. He must have ink. She wanted to check it out. Hear the story about each one.

Parker turned off the hose and then Colt lifted the crate high, nearly over his head, but out away from his body, and Talon sighed to watch the flex of his muscles across his back and digging in, defining his arms. He vigorously shook it. Droplets flew everywhere and she could see the breadth of his shoulders narrow down to a V at his hips and she didn’t even bothering trying to distract herself.

My God, he was beautifully made. Did his work in the army keep him so fit? And how was she going to be around all that amazing maleness and deny herself, and why should she? They were adults. He wasn’t staying around long, and he said he didn’t have anyone special. Opportunities this fine and uncomplicated didn’t come around very often. How could she say no? Or get him to say yes?

If she could persuade him to stay in the cabin…her stomach flipped at the idea of having him so close, so accessible although with her dinner shifts at the Main Street Diner and work with Noah and studies she didn’t have a lot of time, but a little time was better than no time.