The male voice hesitated. “So you’ve been out here before and know where to go?”
That was the understatement of the year, and the whole sad situation still made her heart ache. “I’m just leaving a ranch north of Pine Bend. I’ll be there in—” she consulted the GPS on the dashboard of her truck “—roughly thirty-five minutes. Are you the foreman?”
“In a matter of speaking.” His short laugh wasn’t very convincing. “Temporarily, anyhow.”
He ended the call before she could ask his name.
By the time she arrived and pulled to a stop in front of the horse barn, she’d lectured herself back into the calm, professional persona of the good veterinarian she was.
This was simply another vet call. No personal issues. No anger over the past. Nothing could change what had happened, after all. And the man who’d called her was just some employee who’d had nothing to do with Gus Langford’s actions, so he certainly didn’t deserve any snarky comments from her.
But she still wished she could give the late Gus Langford a piece of her mind.
She surveyed the two-story log house at the far side of the parking area in front of the barns, where she’d stayed for long stretches during the school year, whenever her parents had temporarily split up over one ruckus or another, plus every summer until she graduated from high school. Aunt Millie and Uncle Warren had been like a second set of parents in a stable, warm and loving home.
But even from here she could see the wraparound porch was sagging and the roof needed repair, and as she pivoted to look at the barns, they seemed to be in even worse shape.
Langford, rest his soul, had been one of the richest ranchers in the county. If he’d been so determined to steal this place from her aunt and uncle, why hadn’t he bothered with maintenance afterward?
He’d probably cared only about gaining the additional grazing land for his vast herds of cattle. And nothing about the love and dreams and backbreaking work that had gone into making this place a home, which made the situation seem even worse. She’d been a classmate to Tate Langford, one of Gus’s sons, and had seen his two older brothers around town while growing up. They’d all been decent kids, far as she knew, but over the years they’d probably grown up to be just like their father.
Grabbing her satchel from the seat next to her, she rounded the back of her truck and swiftly added extra supplies from the various doors in the vet box. Sutures. Surgical equipment. IV sedative. Antibiotics. Sterile saline for flushing the wounds. Bandaging materials.
No one had come out of the house, the machine shed or the two barns to greet her when she arrived, so she headed straight for the horse barn. The tractor-wide double doors were closed against the mid-February bite in the air, so she opened the smaller walk door and stepped inside to the sound of an old country song blaring on the radio.
A wave of nostalgia washed over her as she took in the long cement aisle flanked with a dozen box stalls on each side. Pine paneling rose halfway up each stall front and its sliding door, with vertical metal pipes forming the barrier along the top half of the stalls for ventilation and visibility.
Partway down, a young sorrel stood cross-tied in the middle of the aisle with a broad-shouldered man in jeans and black shirt hunkered down at its side. He was expertly wrapping one of its front legs.
“Hello, there,” she called out. “I’m Dr. Branson. Someone called, and—”
The man finished the last wrap of the bandage around the leg, stood abruptly and turned to face her, his expression stunned. “Sara?”
“Tate?” Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. She felt as stunned as he looked, and it took a moment to find her voice with so many painful high school memories crashing through her thoughts.
Guilt.
Remorse.
Heartache.
In high school, the first time he’d angled a heart-stopping grin in her direction she’d felt herself falling, falling into the depths of his silver-blue gaze, too mesmerized to even speak, even though she’d known he was way too wild and irresponsible—a magnet for the popular, flirty girls. Not a guy who’d want a plain, ordinary nerd like her.
But nothing had ever been predictable where Tate Langford was concerned.
“W-what are you doing here?”
He blinked. “That was you on the phone?”
“Calls roll over to my cell phone if the clinic receptionist is on another line.” She tipped her head slightly. “Guess I forgot to introduce myself.”
“As did I.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It’s been a long time.”
“Fourteen years.” She felt a flare of warmth in her cheeks, realizing it sounded as if she had been actually paying close attention to that passage of time all these years, like some lovesick puppy. “I mean—since high school graduation.”
“And now you’re the vet in town.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Quite an improvement over the crotchety old buzzard who owned the clinic years ago. Knowing what he was like, I’m sure he drove a hard bargain.”
“I don’t know. The vet who bought the practice from him left to join her fiancé’s practice in Idaho. I signed the papers a few weeks ago.”
“I thought your parents wanted you to go to med school, like they did.”
“Adamantly. But I had a change of heart.” Coupled with a surge of rebellion leading to an estrangement that still hadn’t fully healed.
Life hadn’t been any easier for Tate, though, given his father’s reputation as a controlling, volatile man who never backed down. In high school, Tate had once told her that he hated the ranch and couldn’t wait to leave. And once he did, he was never, ever coming back.
She cocked her head and studied him. “I remember your dad wanted every one of his sons to stay on the ranch. But by the time I left for college I heard all of you had left. For good.”
“Yeah, my dad’s plans didn’t work out so well, either. All of us dreamed of escaping the ranch, and we did.” A corner of Tate’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Devlin went into the Marines, Jess left to rodeo and then I followed suit. When we disrupted Dad’s plans for building his ranching dynasty, he was so riled that he told us to never come back. He was not a forgiving man.”
She furrowed her brow, thinking. “I’ve only been back a few weeks, but I think I might have seen Jess around town.”
“Probably. When Dad got Parkinson’s he wasn’t happy about swallowing his pride and asking Jess to come back. Ironic, because Jess had been saving his rodeo earnings for vet school, and gave up his own dreams to take over the ranch. Dad died a year later, and I doubt he ever thanked Jess for coming home.”
“What about Devlin?”
“He was severely injured in a bomb blast, and got a medical discharge from the Marines. He moved back last spring. Now he’s an active partner in the ranch.”
“So you and your
