and I’ll be home for just a few months. Too many bad memories here to suit me.”
“I don’t blame you.”
In grade school, he’d lost a younger sister in a tragic accident, and less than a year later his mother died. The whole town knew how harsh Gus had been with his sons after that. For all of their land and wealth, no one would’ve wanted to be in their shoes.
Which made her own behavior toward Tate in high school seem all the worse. Maybe he didn’t remember anything about it, after all these years, but seeing him again made that emotional baggage weigh heavily on her heart.
She swallowed hard and shook off her thoughts as she approached the two-year-old gelding, ran a comforting hand down his neck and shoulder and carefully unwrapped the leg. “You’ve done a good job of keeping this leg clean. He’s up to date on all of his vaccinations, right? Including tetanus?”
Tate nodded. “I checked his records. All good.”
“What happened?”
“Barbwire,” he said with disgust. “If I was going to stay here longer, I’d have time to replace all of it with something safer—at least around the horse pastures. Some cattle went through the fence last night. At least a hundred head of Angus were in the horse pasture this morning, and by then, this colt had gotten tangled up in the downed wire.”
“The cattle probably didn’t even see the fence during that heavy snowfall. Did you get them all rounded up?”
“Yep. At least they were contained in an adjoining pasture. My brothers came over to help drive them back.”
She administered an intravenous sedative, and waited until the gelding’s head sleepily lowered. After injecting some anesthetic, she examined the edges of the lacerations, flushed them with sterile saline and probed the depths of the wounds.
She retrieved suture materials from her satchel and got to work. “I’m only suturing the cannon bone area,” she said without looking away from the leg. “Fortunately, the wounds on the pastern are minor. In that area, sutures tend to pull out when the joint flexes. I’d have to do something more involved.”
When she finished, she wrapped the leg in gauze, then fluffy white sheet cotton, followed by stretchy Vetrap to thoroughly stabilize the dressing.
After she’d administered an injection of IM antibiotics, she stowed her gear back into the satchel and pulled off her vinyl gloves. “Stall rest only. I need to see this horse in three or four days, and then a week or two after that. Will someone be around, say, on Thursday morning around eleven?”
“Sure. Just give me a call if anything changes.” He slowly led the injured gelding into a stall and unbuckled his halter, then stepped out and slid the door shut.
A wave of memories washed over her as she breathed in the familiar scents of sawdust bedding and good mixed alfalfa and grass hay. “I was…surprised to be called out here. Has anyone lived here since my aunt and uncle lost the place?” She’d tried to still the edge in her voice but apparently hadn’t succeeded, because she saw a flash of sympathy in Tate’s eyes.
“I’d left for college and then the rodeo circuit before that, but by the looks of the house, I don’t think anyone has lived here in years. So what happened to your aunt and uncle?”
“Years of drought, low livestock prices. Mounting medical bills for Millie’s cancer. They took out loans against the ranch to try to hang on, but they ended up sinking in debt they couldn’t repay.” She dredged up a weak smile. “Yet they still kept sending me a little money every month to help with my rent. I was away at college and they never said a word about how bad things were. They didn’t want me to worry. When I learned the truth it just about broke my heart.”
“Sounds like there was no hope of recovering.”
“Warren was sure they could’ve rallied if only they’d had just a few more months. But the bank abruptly called in their loans and wouldn’t even talk about an extension. And your dad—” She bit back the sharp words on her lips.
She would never believe there hadn’t been something fishy going on between the bank president and Gus Langford to precipitate that sudden foreclosure and sale. But there was no going back. Gus was dead and the whole situation was past history.
And none of it was Tate’s fault.
“Some folks said Dad was like a vulture. He never missed a chance to grab what he wanted.” A faint, sad smile touched a corner of Tate’s mouth. “Where are your aunt and uncle now?”
“After the foreclosure they had just enough equity to pay off their legal fees, settle their debts, and scrape together the money for a small, remote cabin. They live in town now, though.”
She gave Tate a cool nod of farewell, but he followed her out to her truck anyway and opened the door for her, then stepped back as she lifted the satchel onto the front seat and climbed behind the steering wheel.
He closed the door for her. “Thanks, Sara. I appreciate you coming by so quickly.”
“No problem.” She glanced over at him through the open window and their eyes locked for a moment too long before she jerked her gaze away and started the engine.
He’d changed a lot since she’d last seen him at high school graduation. He was much taller, his shoulders had broadened. His voice was deeper.
He still had those trademark Langford eyes, though. The dark, sweeping eyebrows and stunning silver-blue eyes with long dark lashes. With that black hair and an easy, lopsided grin that deepened the slash of a dimple in his left cheek, he could probably charm any woman with a pulse from nine to ninety.
Every one of the brothers was perfect material for the cover of GQ magazine, though their saving grace was that none of them had ever seemed to realize it.
She’d fallen under his spell in high school, but that was long over. Even if she felt the smallest twinge of attraction now, the Langfords had destroyed the two people who loved her most. And after that, empty charm and stunning good looks didn’t matter—not to her. There’d be no point at any rate. Tate intended to leave town.
But Pine Bend was now her permanent home, and she never would.
Jess tossed another bale of hay off of the hayrack hitched to his truck and grinned down at Tate. “So the new vet in town is your old girlfriend, right? Did she ask you out on a date?”
Tate hefted the bale and carried it into the horse barn. “Not my old girlfriend,” he called over his shoulder. “It was a class of thirty. We all knew each other.”
“Not how I remember it.” Jess threw off another bale. “Seems to me you two dated for a while, your senior year. I remember, because I’d already left for college but I was a tad jealous when I heard about it. A pretty girl like that—a guy like you—it sure didn’t make sense to me. And she was a doctor’s daughter, to boot. High-class. How did you manage it, anyway?”
Ignoring him, Tate hauled the bale into the barn and tossed it up to Devlin, who was standing on top of the stack in the rapidly filling hay stall just inside the door.
