Sun Kissed (15 page)

Tucker grinned. “There, you see? Knowing the right people, anything’s possible.” He withdrew the marked vials of blood from his bag. Before handing them to Isaiah, he said, “I need a chemical and heavy-metal panel on Tabasco, and also a kidney and liver function.”

Isaiah accepted the first two vials and tucked them into a pocket of his lightweight jacket. “Got it.”

As Tucker handed over the third vial, he said, “All I need on this one is a drug panel.”

“You’re still thinking morphine?” Isaiah asked.

“I’m convinced of it now.” Tucker related the success of the experimental dose of naloxone. “Worked like a charm.” He gestured toward Blue’s stall across the arena. “He’s calm as can be now, and the sedative has long since worn off.”

Isaiah frowned and shook his head. “Why would any one want to dope a horse with an opiate? That’s brutal.”

Samantha remembered how Steve had laughed while telling her the story of the doped rodeo bronco. It had been a turning point in their marriage, a moment of revelation and clarity that had harshly exposed Steve’s complete lack of compassion for other living things. From that moment forward, she’d been forced to accept that she’d fallen in love with an illusion. The man she’d believed Steve Fisher to be had never existed except in her mind.

At the time, Samantha had honestly believed that nothing else she learned about Steve could ever hurt her more. How very young and pathetically naive she’d been back then. Now she understood that the heartbreak of her mar
riage had only just begun with that discovery and still hadn’t stopped, even now.

Her father’s greatest fear had come to pass, she realized with a shiver of apprehension. Steve Fisher had sneaked back onto the ranch to do her harm, just as her dad had always predicted, only instead of targeting Samantha, he’d taken aim at her horses. That was so like Steve. He had a mean streak a mile wide, unmitigated by any measure of empathy for anyone or anything. Inflicting pain on defenseless animals was just his style.

“You okay?”

The question brought Samantha’s head up. With a blink and a slight jerk of her shoulders, she found Tucker gazing worriedly down at her. “Yes. I’m…fine. I’m sorry. My mind wandered off for a moment, I guess.”

He searched her expression. Then he nodded. “I’m going to see Isaiah out. Be right back.”

“Good meeting you,” Isaiah said from where he stood at the gate. He lifted a large brown hand in farewell. “If all goes well I’ll be back with the test results before my dust completely settles.”

Samantha forced a smile. “I hope so. Thank you for being our gofer. I really appreciate it.”

After Tucker and Isaiah left, Samantha returned to Blue’s stall, settled herself on the hay, and pressed her back to the wall, prepared to divide her time between the two sick horses for the remainder of the night.

She’d been alone in the enclosure for only a couple of minutes when her father came in to crouch beside her. “I spoke to Clint. He’s sorry for mouthin’ off at you earlier.”

“He’s always sorry,” she said hollowly. “Why does he always talk
at
me, Dad, and never
to
me?”

Her father shook his head. The sadness in his eyes told Samantha how deeply it pained him to have two of his children on the outs. “I don’t have answers, honey. I only know he loves you, maybe more than you’ll ever know.”

Love.
In Samantha’s experience, people all too often used the emotion as an excuse to inflict pain. Almost before the thought took root in her mind, she felt guilty for entertaining it. Clint was many things—arrogant, infuriating, and domineering, to name only a few—but no one who knew him well would ever accuse him of being deliberately cruel. “I know he means well,” she settled for saying. That was the entire problem with Clint, wasn’t it? He always meant well.

“For all his faults, darlin’, he’s loyal to the marrow of his bones. Instead of goin’ home, he’s beddin’ down in an empty stall to grab some shut-eye so he can spell you and Tucker later.”

A knot of resentment formed at the base of Samantha’s throat. That was another problem with Clint. No matter how badly he behaved, he always managed to redeem himself in everyone’s eyes. “That’s good of him,” she pushed out. “I honestly doubt I’ll be able to rest, though.”

Her father nodded. “I know your heart’s hurtin’, honey. It’s a terrible thing Steve’s done.”

A chill moved through her. There it was, the acknowledgment they’d both been avoiding. Steve had done this. Mentally, she kept circling the truth of it, much as she might a coiled rattlesnake. Steve, her monstrous nemesis, had reared his ugly head again.

“Maybe it’s a mistake somehow,” she said softly.

“A mistake?”

“Yes. You know, an accident.” She turned aching eyes on her sire, wanting him to lie to her, yet knowing he wouldn’t. “Like Tucker mentioned earlier. Arsenic leaching from the wood, stuff like that. There’s no proof of a deliberate poisoning yet. Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions.”

Her father just stared at her, his look inexpressibly sad. “You know better than that, Samantha Jane.”

It was true; she did know better. She had nothing more to say. Quite simply, there were no words. The person she’d once believed she loved more than anyone else in the world was taking another stab at her, and this time, the blade had hit home in a way she’d never thought possible. Her horses.
Oh, God
. That was the trouble with intimate relationships: You revealed too much and made yourself vulnerable. Steve knew she’d rather cut off an arm than see harm come to one of her animals.

“The other boys are headin’ home to stretch out and sleep on a proper bed,” her father informed her softly. “Come mornin’, you and Jerome will be wiped out. The three of them will help keep things under control over here while you snooze for a few hours.”

“But they have their own ranches to run.”

“And they’ll run ’em,” her father assured her. “Between the three of ’em, they’ll also run things over here for a bit. It’s not that big a deal.” He pushed clumsily at her hair and then patted her shoulder. “I love you, honey,” he said gruffly. “I’m sorry it’s come to this. If I could change it for you, I would.”

Tears sprang to Samantha’s eyes. She blinked them away and tried to smile. “I love you, too, Dad.”

“You want me to go find the bastard and kill him for you? I’m an old fart. If they put me in jail and throw away the key, I’ve already had a damned good life.”

“It’s a tempting thought,” she said shakily. “But he isn’t worth it.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I can’t talk about it right now. I know we’ll have to discuss what should be done very soon. Just not right now.”

“I understand,” he whispered.

Only he didn’t, not really. Samantha doubted anyone could understand the myriad emotions that were at war within her right then, anger and regret struggling for supremacy, with a host of other feelings tangled inside her like a skein of yarn that had been batted about by a pair of kittens. She needed some quiet time—some thinking time. That was a luxury to be denied until Blue got through this crisis and she felt confident Tabasco was going to survive.

“I’m taking off,” her father whispered. He gestured with a swing of his head. “Jerome needs stitches. I’m taking him to the ER.”

Until that instant Samantha had forgotten all about the gash on her foreman’s forehead. “Oh, God,” she said faintly. “Where’s my mind at?”

“On important matters,” her dad replied. He gave her shoulder a hard squeeze as he pushed to his feet. “Jerome understands that. Go easy on yourself for once.”

Eighty-three minutes after the first injection of naloxone, Blue Blazes began to get fidgety. Tucker noted the
time on a small tablet, which he carried in his shirt pocket, and prepared a second shot. He heard rather than saw Samantha stir from her trancelike vigil.

“It’s working even better than I hoped,” he told her. “Naloxone’s period of action lasts anywhere from forty-five to ninety minutes. He’s gone almost a full ninety.” He administered the second dose of the drug, patted the stallion’s shoulder, and then sent the horse’s worried mistress a reassuring smile. “He’ll be fine now. Come morning there’ll be only the cuts on his legs to remind you it ever happened.”

She hugged her knees. Gazing down at her diminutive form, Tucker decided he’d never seen anyone more beautiful. He’d dated more striking women, to be sure, but by comparison, all of them had been fussy and artificial, all acrylic fingernails, artfully styled hair, and expensive clothes, with nothing natural about them. Samantha had bits of straw in her wildly curly hair, her clothing was wrinkled, and, God forgive him for noticing, she wore no bra. Without support, her breasts were more softly rounded under her shirt and jiggled just a bit when she moved, and her nipples were more readily visible when they hardened and jutted against the cotton.

“I am so grateful to you for saving him,” she said softly. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”

Tucker could think of a few ways she could settle the debt, but those were the kinds of thoughts a gentleman never shared with a lady. Not that he’d ever worried overmuch about being a gentleman. Maybe, he realized now, that had been because he’d always kept company with women who’d never expected that of him.

“Trust me,” he said, “you’ll feel the debt has been settled in full when you pay my bill.”

She smiled wanly. “I’d forgotten about that. You have a way about you that makes people think you do it all simply because you care. That’s a rare gift in a vet.”

“I do care,” he replied. “In a perfect world, I’d treat my patients for free, but in the real world, I have to eat and pay off a mortgage.”

Tucker plucked the tablet from his pocket again to jot down another note.

“You write in that a lot.”

He depressed the button on the pen to retract the tip before putting it back in his pocket along with the tablet. “I’m anal.”

She rewarded him with a laugh. He had almost forgotten how much he enjoyed the sound.

“Seriously. I’m a record keeper. When I return to the clinic, I’ll enter all this information into my computer. If you ever call me out to look at Blue or Tabasco again, I’ll have an accurate account of my last visit—all the drug info, what worked and what didn’t. Isaiah thinks I have a compulsive filing disorder.”

She laughed softly again. “Do you?”

“Depends on how you look at it, I guess. He’s totally disorganized. If he doesn’t have his nose in a thick tome, researching a disease, he’s treating animals.”

“Ah, the conjoined-twin syndrome again.”

He rolled his eyes. “Isaiah’s idea of filing something is to throw it in a drawer. That’s no syndrome; it’s laziness.” He winced and made a gesture as if to erase the words. “Strike that. It isn’t laziness, not really. More that he hy
perfocuses. He’s a fabulous vet, the best I’ve ever seen, next to myself.”

“There’s that phenomenal conceit again.”

Tucker grinned. “Guilty as charged. When it comes to my ability as a vet, I’m pretty high on myself.” He hunkered down to reorganize his satchel. “Only I like to think of it as confidence, not conceit.” He sent her a questioning look. “When it comes to breeding and training horses, don’t you feel absolutely confident? I only ask because I think you should. Your horses are incredibly well mannered, and they’ve got fabulous temperaments. Tabasco is a pretty sick boy right now. If ever a horse had reason to be crabby and difficult, it’s him. But he’s a big old baby. That’s impressive.”

Her small chin came up a notch. “I don’t feel absolutely confident,” she said thoughtfully, “but I do feel extremely proud. Breeding blue roans isn’t easy, and I’m beginning to make real strides in that. Training any horse to be unfailingly gentle takes a lot of hard work, too.”

Sensing that breeding horses might be one of her favorite topics, Tucker cocked his head. “What’s difficult about breeding blue roans?”

She loosened her arms from around her knees and settled back against the wall, treating him to another look at those soft, perfectly shaped breasts that he’d been trying so hard to ignore. Clearly enamored of the subject, she said, “A lot of people might tell you it isn’t difficult.” She puffed at the curls that lay in wild disarray over her forehead. “They’re the ones who don’t know what they’re doing, and as a result they sell supposed blue roans to others for outlandish prices, and the buyers eventually
end up with grays or some other color. Some of them never realize they’ve been gypped and perpetuate the mistake by breeding their horse to another supposedly true blue roan.”

She began citing genetic codes, which Tucker suspected made most people’s eyes roll back in their heads, but he found it interesting. The lady not only understood equine genetics, but could also recite all the various combinations that produced different colors of horses.

“To an untrained eye, a lot of horses look like blue roans,” she told him.

Biting back a smile, Tucker sat down and settled his back against the opposite wall. It was good to see her like this. Despite the exhaustion that had underscored her eyes with dark smudges and leached her face of color, her expression suddenly burned with passion. “How’s that?”

“Trust me, some grays look very much like blue roans. It takes an expert eye to see the difference. In a gray, the roaning extends up onto the head and down the legs and often into the tail.
That
is not a blue roan. It’s a gray.”