“Jackson, I’m going to do my very best to save your horses.”

He met her straight look with one of his own.

“Thank you, Darcy.”

“We’ll have to pray as hard as we work,” she said, “but, God willing, we’ll have them on their feet and on the mend in a week or so.”

Jackson shook his head. He looked down at the soda can in his hands.

“I’ll do the work. You’ll have to say the prayers.”

Then suddenly, almost as if against his will, he blurted, “Mine wouldn’t rise above the treetops.”

“Why do you think that?” she said.

“I know it,” he said, in a tone of complete finality. “I lost my faith a long time ago.”

GENA DALTON

has wanted to be a professional writer ever since she learned to read at the age of four. However, she became a secondary teacher and then a college professor/dean of women instead, and only began to write after she was married and a stay-at-home mother. She entered an essay contest, which resulted in a newspaper publication that gave her confidence she could achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a “real writer.”

Gena lives in Oklahoma with her husband of twenty-four years. Now that their son is grown, their only companions are two dogs, two house cats, one barn cat and one cat who belongs to the neighbors but won’t go home.

She loves to hear from readers. She can be reached c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42nd Street, 6th floor, New York, NY 10017.

Stranger at the Crossroads
Gena Dalton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion when he saw him. He went up and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. He then lifted him on to his own mount, carried him to the inn and looked after him.

—Luke 10:33-34

This story is dedicated to God, Who, as always,

gave me the book, and to my friends Karen and

Paula, who helped me listen for the words.

I would also like to thank my friend Jill Peale,

DVM, who advised me on all matters veterinary.

Any mistakes are mine alone.

Dear Reader,

This story of veterinarian Darcy Hart and reclusive rancher Jackson McMahan may be my very favorite of all my books. Any of us can find ourselves called by God to help a stranger who is more wounded by life than we are, and in giving that help receive love in return.

That kind of giving and receiving began on the side of a narrow Texas road the day Darcy ran away from Oklahoma, fleeing from her grief. That same early morning Jackson was compelled to rescue a neglected, pregnant mare he used to own. Once Darcy stopped to help him, their journeys would never be separate again.

While you hold Stranger at the Crossroads in your hands, I’m back in the Texas Hill country on the McMahan Ranch, the Rocking M, following the love stories of Jackson’s brothers, Clint and Monte, to their own happy endings. I hope you will look for them, too.

Please let me know how you like this book. I would love to hear from you. You can reach me c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42nd St., New York, NY 10017.

Warm wishes,

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Stealing a horse wasn’t easy. At least not this one.

Jackson McMahan put the halter and lead rope behind his back and tried to soothe the mare with his voice while he slowly moved closer to her.

“Settle down, now, girl,” he crooned, “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Finally, ten or fifteen minutes after he’d driven onto Blake Collier’s ranch by the back road so he wouldn’t have to pass the house, he maneuvered the nervous animal into a corner. He shifted off his good leg onto his lame one and, ignoring the sudden pain in his knee that made his gait even more awkward, stepped up to her head without spooking her.

Her big belly slowed her down, and too little food had made her weak, so he managed to get his arm around her neck, and then the rope, just before she tried to break away again. He let out a sigh of relief that he hadn’t known he was holding.

“Come on home with me, Mama, and get a square meal,” he said, while he slipped the halter onto her head and buckled it with his clumsy gloved hands. “You want your baby to have all its parts, don’t you?”

It was way too late to affect that, though, he decided, glancing over his shoulder as he led her out of the pen and toward the trailer’s open door. From the looks of her distended sides with the ribs standing out under her skin, this foal would be on the ground, alive or dead, before it had a chance to absorb very many days’ worth of nutrients.

He had brought the three-horse trailer with the ramp so she wouldn’t have to make the short leap up into it, but that didn’t help much. She refused to have anything to do with the trailer. She balked and pawed the ground and swung side to side every time he tried to lead her forward.

Jackson glanced over his shoulder toward the house. No sign of life.

That was good, because Blake Collier would be much more likely to shoot a horse thief than to call the sheriff.

He smooched to the mare again, waited, and smooched again. When she took a tiny step forward, he started up the ramp as if he thought that was what she’d intended to do. Suddenly docile, she walked beside him. He led her into a slot, ran the rope through the ring and, willing his fingers not to fumble too much, tied her off. His heart lifted as he fastened the divider and hurried to close the door and raise the ramp.

Shooting danger aside, any fight with Blake would be a toss-up now that Jackson’s body was so unreliable—and an unnecessary delay, to boot. It was past time to get out of here.

Darcy Hart didn’t recognize herself when she glanced in the rearview mirror. Wild green eyes stared back at her, unseeing, and her auburn curls whipped and tangled madly in the wind. She looked like an Orphan Annie doll scared half to death.

She didn’t care. She had to have the fresh air. With the window rolled up, she couldn’t even breathe.

It was almost cool this morning, with a nice October breeze blowing, but her cheeks felt burning hot. Well, then, they’d really feel hot in Mexico.

If she wound up in Mexico.

The sound and the rhythm of the tires against the pavement soothed her a little. She wouldn’t have to stop again for awhile, since she’d filled the truck with gasoline before she stopped at last night’s motel. She had no desire to eat, either.

Being on the move helped. It helped a lot. The dreams that had wakened her at 3:00 a.m. were fading again. Every mile seemed to put them farther away.

Not the sorrow, though. It was part of her now, as much as her stomach and her veins and her fingers and toes, since it filled them all with its cold cement.

She prayed her constant and only prayer.

Dear God, please give me the strength to bear it.

Then she added a postscript.

You can see by where I am this morning that I don’t have enough. More strength, Lord. More strength.

Never did she dare to pray for the sorrow to be taken away—then she would truly be alone.

The truck swerved on a narrow curve, and she set her gaze on the road again. She’d better be trying to hold it between the ditches if she didn’t want to end up in one.

Actually, she didn’t much care. Her life still wasn’t worth living. It had been a year. A year that had been a hundred times longer without her dear, dear Todd to hold her in his arms every night and her precious baby boy, Daniel, with his huge dark eyes to gaze into with her own.

Grief rushed into her heart, fresh as ever.

Time heals, they’d all told her. You’ll start looking to the future one of these days. Well, at this rate, since she’d made precious little progress in a year, she’d have to be the oldest woman on the planet before she lost even a little of her longing for the past. To get to that point, God would have to give her all His own strength.

At that instant, a cross appeared in the heavens. Up ahead, on the right. A white cross shining in the sun against the blue morning sky.

Darcy stared, not caring that the truck swerved into the opposite lane. Her eyes were glued to that cross. Could it be a visible answer to her prayer?

She blinked and looked again as she straightened her steering. No, the cross wasn’t floating in the sky. It rested atop an adobe building that vaguely reminded her of the Alamo. Ancient and small and run-down, it must be a church, or maybe even a private chapel, judging by the size. No miracles today.

Something flashed in the corner of her eye, something closer. A glint of silver, then she saw the shape of the horse trailer, and her focus came back to earth.

No one with a grain of sense would pull onto the side of a two-lane road with no shoulder like this one unless there was trouble. That spot was steep enough to tilt the trailer sideways.

The ramp was down, and the trailer door hung open, swaying a little over the deep ditch.

Maybe the driver was just checking on a horse that had been kicking the side or putting hay in the hay bag that he’d forgotten. It probably wasn’t an emergency at all. At least, not a medical one.

She prepared to pull over to give a wider berth as she drew closer to the rig.

It was a blowout on a trailer tire. The trailer sat tilted sideways not just because of the terrain. One wheel rested on the ground because the tire had disintegrated. Darcy glimpsed pieces of rubber scattered over the road, but she couldn’t look at anything but that open door. Was the horse hurt?

It surged into view at that moment, backing up fast and in a zigzag line. A man appeared, holding the lead rope, struggling to keep it from being jerked out of his hands, fighting to stay with the terrified animal as it plunged down the ramp.

A pregnant mare. Very pregnant. As she hit the ground with her hind feet, she lost purchase on the blacktop pavement and, scrabbling, half rearing, she slipped off the edge of the ditch and kept on sliding down the incline, reaching with her front legs for balance in the air.

The man held onto her, but it couldn’t have been easy. He had something badly wrong with one leg and could barely keep on his feet and stay with the desperate mare. She reared mightily as the fear rushed through her, hauling the rope through his gloved hands so fast that he came within a heartbeat of losing it. He had all he could do to stay out from under her raised forefeet, but he did it. Darcy pulled even with them.

The mare was huge with the foal that had obviously sapped every bit of her resources. It was a miracle she even had the strength to rush out of the trailer and try to get away, much less fight to stay out of the ditch. The red dun mare had spirit, that was for sure.

She wasn’t hurt, though. She didn’t appear to be hurt.

“Don’t stop,” Darcy said to herself out loud. “Do. Not. Stop.”

She stopped.

The trembling, sweating mare, her eyes rolling into the whites, stretched impossibly higher against the early morning sky, then threw herself backward into the bottom of the ditch.

“Hang on,” Darcy called, through the open passenger window. “I’ll help you.”

She pulled off the road in front of the man’s new Ford dually, killed the engine, leaped out and ran to him and the mare. He whirled on his heel and glared at her. He was furious. Absolutely furious.

And handsome as any man she’d ever seen. He had a strange intensity about him that held her eye, and it wasn’t just the anger. Blue eyes like flames in a fire and black hair. Weathered and tanned face, chiseled and lined some from wind and sun, but she doubted he was more than thirty-five.

Why was she even noticing anything about him? She’d stopped because of the horse.

“Get back on the road,” he said, before she’d reached him. “Get out of here.”

He barked the order in a tone hateful enough to drive anyone away. Anyone who cared.

“I’d love nothing more,” Darcy said.

It was true. She couldn’t handle her own affairs, and here she was meddling in somebody else’s. She didn’t want to be around anyone, especially not such a venomous someone, because what she wanted, what she needed, was to be alone to think about her own problems.

Stopping had been a stupid thing to do when she was supposed to be running away—from her profession as well as from the rest of her life. She looked into the ditch.

The little red dun was wedged on her left side in the narrow space, struggling to find her feet but unable to get up or even move her legs much at all. She was cast. It’d be impossible for her to get her feet under her and get up without help.

It wouldn’t be long, either, until the mare ran out of strength to help them help her.

Darcy heaved a huge sigh. She had taken an oath, after all.

“We’ve got to get her out of there pretty quick. I’ll help you. I’m Dr. Darcy Hart. I’m a veterinarian.”

“I saw the vet box,” he snapped.

“So,” she said, just as sharply. “Be grateful I happened along.”

“Go back to Oklahoma.”

“You’re pretty observant for a man with a sick, cast horse in a ditch on the side of the road.”

“It’s hard not to notice a bossy woman veterinarian hollering orders at a perfect stranger.”

Darcy felt a stab of anger.

“Hang on?” she said sarcastically. “I’ll help you? That’s all I said. You call that hollering orders?”

He pulled his straw hat down and impaled her with his bright blue gaze.

“Get on down the road,” he said harshly. “I don’t need any pity assistance.”

She had to think about it, because she wasn’t quite sure what he meant, at first. Then she knew. His leg. He thought she’d stopped because he was physically disabled.

Darcy looked him straight in the eye for another long beat. He wasn’t the kind of man to seek or accept help from a woman. He was, no doubt, a typical male of the cowboy kind. Those men had the desire and duty and determination to protect and take care of any female bred right into their bones.

“I wouldn’t waste my pity on you, mister,” she said evenly, “although you deserve a truckload of it for being mean as a snake. My only concern here is the mare and foal.”

He tried to hide it, but she saw a flash of surprise in his blazing eyes. And maybe…even a twitch of humorous appreciation at the corner of his mouth?

That gave her a tiny satisfaction.

Her blood was pulsing with urgency to help the mare, but she waited. He needed to decide what to do. He needed to be the one to give the orders if they weren’t going to waste any more time arguing.

He was the kind of man she thought he was. He was a horseman, and the horse came first.

“I’ll get a rope,” he said. “Scoot down in there by her head and see if you can calm her a little.”

Darcy started down into the ditch as he turned to his trailer.

“What’s her name?” she called.

“Tara.”

“What’s yours?”

He hesitated for an instant, as if she had a lot of nerve to ask, but finally he answered.

“Jackson.”

Whether that was his first name or his last, Darcy couldn’t tell. But what did she care? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t the reason she was here.

Tara had stopped struggling for the moment, but her eyes were still showing fear, and she was looking over her shoulder at her flank. Darcy slid down the incline to her head and began stroking it and talking to her.

It helped a little. She struggled once again, hard, and then stopped.

Her breathing sounded wheezy, and it wasn’t just from the fall. Since her eyes and nose were runny, there was every likelihood that the stress of the developing foal on such short rations had probably lowered her immune system and caused her to contract a respiratory virus.

Darcy’s heart clutched as she sat on her haunches there, stroking the pretty head, looking into one of the big soft eyes of the mare. The foal would most likely be sickly, too, if it wasn’t stillborn.

Jackson came back with a length of soft rope in his hands and managed, a bit precariously, to half-walk, half-slide into the ditch behind Tara. He talked to her soothingly so she’d know he was there and stepped sideways along the near side of it to reach her, all the while forming a loop in the rope with his gloved hands. Darcy thought vaguely that that would be easier to do without gloves.

Quickly, almost before she knew it, he had the rope around all four of Tara’s feet and was making his way around her to the lower side of the ditch. He had a little trouble with the terrain, but he made it, and as Darcy got to her feet, ready to help, he set his heels into the ground as best he could, braced himself and pulled. Talking to the mare in a surprisingly soothing voice, he quickly pulled her feet over her massive belly so that she could stand.

“I’ll get it,” he said hatefully, hurrying around to take the rope off.

“All right.”

When he had it off, Darcy backed up to give Tara some room and pulled up on the lead rope to help her. Jackson gave her hindquarters a little help. Heavily, awkwardly, the mare got to her feet.

“Now,” Darcy said, “let’s get her out of the ditch and I’ll look her over….”

“No need of that,” he said, and he came past the mare to take the lead from her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Darcy snapped.

She tried to think, tried to control the sudden anger that took her. Here he had a volunteer veterinarian for a horse in danger and he wasn’t even going to let her take care of the animal. How could he be such an ungrateful wretch?

The question stopped her short. The man didn’t matter. The mare did.

She put a conscious effort into trying to control her temper. He had every right to send her away, and if she wanted this mare to have care, she had to get his permission.

“Jackson, you’re a good horseman, I can tell,” she said. “And this clearly is a good horse, even if she does look as if she’s been turned out during a seven-year drought.”

Jackson didn’t answer. He led Tara out of the ditch and onto the side of the road.

Darcy followed.

“When you had the blowout, did you call anyone to come get her? She needs…”

“I had just had the blowout when you came along.”

His tone said that was the end of the conversation.

“Well, while you wait for someone to come for her, let me check her…”

“I’ll walk her home,” he said harshly. “That’s my barn over there.”

He gestured toward a small barn and house that she hadn’t noticed in the near distance, not far past the chapel. The place was within easy walking distance across a pasture.

The mare could make it that far, and Darcy could meet them there. If she could get him to agree.

A thought struck her. Maybe his infuriating attitude stemmed from worries about money. Yet his truck was expensive and new. His place wasn’t, though.

“This is a new experience for me,” she said. “Most of the time, people are trying to get free veterinary care instead of turning it down.”

Still wheezing, Tara looked at her flanks as they walked toward the trailer, then lifted her head and looked straight at Darcy as if she knew she was trying to help her. Her tail lifted and switched back and forth restlessly. She was obviously in early labor and ready to foal.

Darcy patted her sweaty side and tried again.

“If you want her to get through this foaling alive, she’s going to need some help.”

Then it hit her.

“You don’t want a woman veterinarian, do you? You’re that narrow-minded!”

She bit her tongue. This was no way to get him to let her treat the mare.

It made him talk, though.

“I don’t know why women are always trying to be equine vets when they’re not strong enough to do half of what needs to be done,” he said bitterly.

His blue eyes blazed at her again.

“And you’re smaller than most.”

“And you’re more two-faced than most,” she said, blazing back at him. “You act like a real horseman, yet you starve a fine mare. And then you deny her medical care.”

Jackson opened the tack room door of the trailer. He flicked a careless glance at her as if her opinion meant absolutely nothing to him.

“If you want a job so bad,” he said, “hold her a minute while I get a better halter.”

He handed Darcy the lead rope, opened the door and stepped into the neatly arranged tack room. Its contents included several expensive saddles on built-in racks. He could certainly afford a veterinarian.

Tara moved around uneasily, and Darcy turned her attention to the mare. Her tail was going like a metronome, switching back and forth. Back and forth. Then she dropped her head and seemed to be looking for a spot to lie down.

Dear Lord, don’t let this mare foal right here in the road.

She was so angry with this strange, contradictory man she could scream. But she had to control her temper and her tongue or she’d never be able to help this good mare through her hard time coming.

Maybe she could be friendlier and accomplish more.

To calm herself and Tara, she stroked the horse’s cheek some more. Her fingernail caught in one of the ravelings of the halter. It was nothing but a ragged remnant of a halter, truly not safe to use.

“Why did you ever put this one on her?” she called.

“I was in a hurry,” he said, his voice muffled by the wall. “It was all I could find.”

“Were you hauling her to the vet?”

When he didn’t answer, she turned to look at him. He was stepping down from the trailer, favoring the weaker leg as he reached the ground.

“No,” he said. “I was stealing her.”

Darcy stared at him. He appeared to be perfectly serious.

He walked toward her with a good halter, new, high-quality and embroidered along the side. It fit with the truck and the saddles but not with the looks of the place. She read it as he slipped off the old one and slid the new one on.

Rocking M Ranch, it said, and beneath that was the brand.

“Is the Rocking M mainly a horse-stealing out-fit?” she said, trying for a lightly charming tone.

She smiled at him as she checked Tara’s respiratory rate. It was twice what it should be, and the mare was sweating more than ever. Darcy flipped the mare’s lip up to reveal pale, pasty gums. This horse was in trouble.

“Not usually.”

He growled the words but he looked straight at her, his eyes and mouth holding that hint of humor again. His gaze lingered on hers for a long moment, too—almost as if he were seeing her for the first time.

“Tara’s a special case,” he said. “I don’t make a habit of stealing just any horse.”

“Why’d you pick her?”

He adjusted the halter and buckled it.

“We bred her on the Rocking M and sold her as a two-year-old. She won a lot in reining and she gave her all every time—she beat a lot of more talented horses. Her heart’s as big as Texas.”

He took the lead from her, and she thought he was going to walk away.

“What about the consequences of being a horse thief?” she said quickly.

He shrugged.

“He may come after me, but I doubt it.”

“Who?”

“The worthless neighbor of mine who won her papers in a poker game. He neglected her. I warned him twice.”

Tara’s side rippled, and she turned to look at it. Again, she smelled the ground and thought about lying down.

“Well, God sent you to get her this morning,” Darcy said. “She’s in first stage labor. She would’ve died foaling over there.”

“God has bigger things to do,” Jackson snapped, his voice so bitter it chilled her.

Then, in a slightly nicer tone, he added, “Thanks for your help in getting her out of the ditch. I’ll take her home now.”

“You know,” she said, “I should just wrap that tail for you and scrub and dry the—”

“I’ve foaled out many a mare,” he said.

Darcy’s control snapped.

“Then how come you can’t see that she’s sick, as well as in labor? That she’s sweating like mad and acting as if she’s going down? Her mucous membranes are as white as a sheet, she can barely breathe with those raspy lungs and she’s dehydrated.”

Jackson bristled and glared at Darcy.

Tara made her decision and lay down, half-on, half-off the road.

As soon as he felt the tug on the lead, he tried his best to keep her up, but she went down too fast.

Darcy wanted to scream with frustration, but then she was glad. Maybe this stubborn man would see that he needed help.

“Well, at least there’s not a whole lot of traffic along here,” she said sweetly. “In case you can’t get her up, I mean.”

Jackson threw her a furious frown, then he pulled and pushed, smooched and begged, but Tara ignored all that and looked at herself as if wondering what was going on inside her.

“If you’re determined to let her foal here in the road,” Darcy said, in a professional tone, “it’ll be hard to have clean bedding for her if you can’t leave her to go get some.”

Jackson ignored that.

“Then there’s the problem of keeping her from being run over, of course.”

He gave her that frown again.

“Will you cut the sarcasm?” he said.

Something about the way he said it sounded as if they were old friends instead of strangers.

Darcy turned toward her truck. She might as well go. She had better go, for her own sake, now that she’d started hallucinating.

“Sometimes, this early in the process, they lie down just for short periods of time,” she said, speaking over her shoulder. “She’ll probably get up in a minute.”

After a beat, she turned and added, “But then, you already know that because you’ve foaled out many a mare.”

He glowered at her, then set his eyes on the mare. He dropped to his haunches, although his injured leg wouldn’t bend well, then lifted Tara’s head.

“I doubt she’d stay down long, anyhow, because even though it’s early yet, this pavement isn’t exactly cool.”

She waited another moment.

“But then there’s the fact that she’s so sick she might just lie down and die.”

“Will you just get over there, get your kit and get to work?” he snapped. “Instead of standing around all morning running your mouth?”

A great thrill of victory raced through Darcy’s veins.

“Are you asking me to attend this mare as a veterinarian or as a woman?”

He looked at her, pushed his hat back so he could look at her with those fierce blue eyes of his. As his gaze moved over her body, she felt it as surely as the warm caress of a hand on her skin.

And she felt a curious desire to brush the hair that had fallen from beneath his hat onto his forehead. He had a farmer’s tan—white skin where his hat had been that showed a clear line against his sun-darkened face.

After a long moment, he spoke.

“I reckon as both,” he said dryly. “You’ve got no quit in you, just like Tara, and she’s gonna need that more than anything. I’ll supply the muscle power.”

Chapter Two

Darcy turned and ran for her truck, her heart pounding because of Jackson’s permission to treat the mare. She was thrilled to have won this battle, not only for the sake of the mare and foal, but also for the challenge of saving them. God willing, the struggle might take over her mind completely and let her forget about everything else.

Her heart was not beating so hard from the powerful way Jackson had looked at her. Yet she could still feel his gaze moving over her in that very assessing kind of look.

Well, if he’d been trying to judge whether she would respond to him as a man, she could tell him right now that she was not interested. Not in any man.

Despite that surprising, insane urge she’d felt— the desire to touch his face and brush his hair that had come over her when his eyes met hers?

Her little voice of truth wouldn’t let her get by with anything.

She punched in the handle of her equipment box and twisted it, then threw up the lid. A horse’s life, no, two of them, depended on her right now, and she needed to get her mind on her business.

Automatically, her hands flew to the necessary compartments and began to make selections. First, the IV catheter, needle holders, suture, cordless clippers and a handful of Betadine solution packets, gauze sponges and a bottle of alcohol. Then both her hands were full. She’d have to come back for the antibiotic injection and the bag of fluids.

No. Good heavens, she couldn’t even think straight! Everything would go much faster if they brought the mare to the truck.

Tara’s hooves scrabbled against the pavement. Darcy heard Jackson kiss to her in encouragement, and when she glanced over her shoulder, the mare was regaining her feet.

“Bring her over here,” Darcy called. “I want to get a dose of antibiotic in her and start some fluids before we walk her home.”

He frowned.

“You’re the one saying she’ll foal any minute,” he said, leading Tara toward her. “Can’t it wait until we get her to the barn?”

That annoyed Darcy thoroughly, although it was a natural enough question.

“I thought you hired me to make these decisions,” she said. Then, less sharply, she added, “Hold her right here, please, with her head as still as possible.”

Jackson did as she asked.

“This won’t take a minute,” Darcy said, quickly clipping a small patch of hair over the mare’s jugular vein.

She scrubbed the site with Betadine, judged the best spot and, in a fluid motion, jabbed the IV catheter into the vein. She began to sew it in place. Tara’s hooves moved restlessly in the gravel at the side of the road but, like most horses, she didn’t seem too bothered by the procedure. Jackson murmured to her in his low, rich voice and stroked her with his gloved hand.

“You’ll probably need to take off your gloves to carry the fluid bag,” Darcy said, “so it won’t slip. You’ll have to hold it above your head to get it to flow through the tubing.”

Jackson stood silent.

When she could look up, she glanced at him.

“You’ll have to carry it,” she said. “I’m too short to hold it high enough for gravity to work.”

He stared, almost glaring at her.

“I’ll carry it,” he snapped.

“Well, then,” she snapped back at him, “we don’t have to worry, do we?”

What an ill-tempered man! This could shape up to be the most nerve-racking foal watch of her entire career.

She should’ve kept on going south. She shouldn’t have stopped—she’d known that when she did it. This was just one more time when she should’ve followed her instincts.

But she had stopped, and this mare might’ve died if she hadn’t, so the thing to do was make the best of the situation and ignore the mercurial Jackson Whoever as much as possible. She’d simply do her Good Samaritan deed, deliver the foal and be on her way.

This mare is going to need IV antibiotics and fluids for days.

There it was again, her eternal, tormenting little voice of truth. Well, it was right. But that didn’t matter; as soon as this foal was on the ground, Jackson could call another veterinarian. A male veterinarian.

She ran a short IV line to the mare’s mane and tied it off. Then she drew up the antibiotic injection and pushed it in the catheter.

“Hold her here a second longer. I’ll get the antibiotic into her, then we’ll head for the barn.”

He didn’t say a word.

They stood in silence while she finished the injection.

“All right, that’s good,” she said, as she started putting things away. “We’re ready for the fluids now.”

Jackson didn’t reply, which roused her temper all over again.

“I didn’t mean to offend you by asking you to do something,” she said tartly, as she dropped her instruments into the container and picked up the bag. “But gravity is the key. Therefore, the bag has to be above the horse’s neck, and I’m not tall enough to hold it there.”

No answer to that, either.

Quickly, she placed the IV line into the port of the bag of fluids and ran the liquid out until all the air bubbles were gone.

She turned to the mare, holding the bag in one hand. Jackson stepped forward and took it from her, held it above Tara’s neck.

“Let’s go,” he said harshly.

Fury raced through her. Ungrateful wretch.

But she bit her tongue and did what she had to do, forcing her thoughts to focus on the mare, only the mare.

“Done,” she said.

Jackson kept the bag high with one hand and held the lead rope with the other as he began to walk away. Stubbornly, he still wore both gloves.

Darcy closed the lid of her box and turned to follow. Somehow, he seemed to know that without even looking at her.

“I’ll take Tara,” he said, throwing the words over his shoulder. “You bring the truck.”

Resentment flared in her blood. She opened her mouth to refuse—and not only to spite him, either. Her instinct was to stay with Tara the whole way and return for the truck once the mare was settled in a clean foaling stall.

He was right, though. She might need her instruments and medicines in a hurry, and he couldn’t run back for the truck if she needed to stay with the mare.

Maybe he was thinking the very same thing but didn’t want to say it. He’d proved sensitive to his physical limitations when she’d stopped on the road.

Or maybe he was such a take-charge kind of guy that he needed to control every move she made now that he’d given in to her request to treat the mare. She didn’t care. All she cared about was this good mare and her baby.

She ran to her truck, jerked open the door and jumped into the driver’s seat. For an instant, she sat there and watched him and Tara, veering off the road to head across the pasture.

People became emotional and crotchety and short-tempered and unreasonable when their favorite animals were sick. Jackson admired Tara and liked her, and apparently she was worth quite a bit as a brood-mare. Plus he’d had to steal her to get help for her. All that, with a tire blowout to boot, was enough to make him hard to deal with—that plus his prejudice about women equine veterinarians.

Jackson led the mare across the pasture toward the gate at a good, fast clip. At least, for him it was, now that lameness slowed his every step. He heard the motor start on Dr. Darcy Hart’s truck.

Thank goodness she couldn’t drive along beside him the whole way—she’d have to go around by the ranch road while he cut across the field. At least he’d have a few minutes of peace before they all reached the barn.

His blood chilled at the thought. What had he done, letting this pushy, interfering woman come onto his place, his refuge?

Just imagining her in his barn, perhaps even in his house—and no telling for how long—made him feel sick. It brought back the lurking nausea that had been his constant companion in those first horrid weeks of consciousness after the wreck. In a year and three months, the only person he’d allowed anywhere near his house and barn, his little corner of the Rocking M Ranch, was his mother.

And he’d never been gone very long from it himself. He’d learned it didn’t take long to become a hermit who had no use for other people.

“Don’t let that bag slip out of your grip,” Darcy Hart called as she drove slowly down the ranch road while he crossed the ditch. “Hold it above her neck and keep her moving.”

Know-it-all woman horse doctor.

His tongue itched to tell her to turn around, go out to the state road and keep driving, to get out of his sight and never come back. But Tara’s life was at stake.

“Fresh straw’s in the aisle,” he called. “Turn in at the barn nearest the house.”

Much as he needed the relief of being rid of her, he would force his raw nerves to cope. This mare was not going to die—she’d already been through far too much, and he was going to save her if it hare-lipped the governor. And the foal, too.

Dr. Darcy Hart moved on down the road, but slowly, as if hovering and watching every limping step he took would do some good somehow. The woman was a control freak.

But who cared? He didn’t. All that mattered to him was that she prove to be as skillful as she was stubborn.

That and getting Tara to a stall before she went down to foal.

He set his jaw and made his aching leg move faster.

By the time he reached the barn, the bright red truck was backed up at right angles to the door. He led Tara in and down the aisle, ignoring the discomfort that flooded him. Darcy had already invaded his private space. Another person, a stranger, was here with him, and he didn’t like that.

“I’m thinking this stall. Any objections?”

Darcy’s voice came from the center stall on the right, marked by its door swinging open. He stopped and looked in.

“No,” he said. “That’s fine. It’s the biggest.”

She was stretching up, standing on the folding ladder from the feed room, threading a piece of baling wire around a rafter. As he watched, she twisted the two ends of it together into a hook.

“It took me a minute to realize the stalls weren’t all the same size,” she said. “This barn is really old, isn’t it?”

He certainly wasn’t going to be drawn into a lot of idle palavering.

“Right,” he said brusquely.

“Hang the bag on this,” she said, just as brusquely, “and then we need some more straw. I just spread one bale in a hurry, for fear she’d be trying to go down as soon as you got her in here.”

He felt a vague irritation that he had read her wrong. Evidently, she didn’t want any idle palavering, either.

“I’ll get some more,” he said, “I like it deep.”

He’d show her that he did, indeed, know how to foal out a mare. He led Tara into the stall, tied her, hung the fluids bag and went for more bedding.

“I think her water’s about to break,” Darcy called, running past him toward her truck. “I’ve got to wash her and wrap her tail.”

He grabbed the first bale and reached for the wire cutters, then threw the straw into the stall with one hand. He tossed in another bale and another, following to spread them nearly before they landed. He clipped the wire on all of them as fast as he could with his clumsy fingers and started spreading the bedding with his feet, as always.

The game leg buckled beneath his full weight, and he had to grab the bars at the top of the stall wall to keep from falling. Instinctively, he glanced toward the door, wondering whether the woman doctor had seen.

Then anger surged through him—anger directed at himself. Why did he even care whether she saw and pitied him?

He set his jaw and took the manure fork from its hook on the wall. He never should’ve let her come onto his place.

He hurried into the stall and used the fork to spread the straw. Tara moved restlessly, tried to turn her head to look at him and kicked at the wall.

Jackson took a minute to pet and talk to her.

“This’ll only take a minute—I should’ve done it out on the road,” Darcy said, as she ran down the aisle.

She slowed at the door of the stall and came in more calmly, so as not to agitate Tara any further, then set her kit and an open canvas bag on the floor. A roll of vet wrap bulged in the back pocket of her jeans.

“But then, you may still be in the first stage, right, Miss Tara?”

She crooned to the mare, running her hand over Tara’s hip and then gathering her tail to be wrapped. Jackson reached for it and held it while Darcy quickly tore open the package and wrapped the tail securely.

“You may only be wanting to go down and roll around and get right back up, but we’re taking no chances, Missy,” she said. “We’re a careful bunch here on the Rocking M.”

Jackson felt her glance at him. For a moment, he expected her to ask something about the ranch name or make some remark about it, but she surprised him again.

“Would you get me some water in that basin, please, Jackson?”

He took the basin and went to the pump.

We’re a careful bunch, here on the Rocking M.

We. That was silly crooning to a horse, nothing more. The good doctor Darcy Hart didn’t mean anything by it. She wasn’t invading the place or implying any connection to the ranch, and it was stupid to feel that she was. He was losing his mind.

Having her—or anybody else—here was going to make him crazier than he already was, but the alternative was worse. He was going to save this mare if it was the last good thing he ever did.

He carried the basin to the stall, his awkward gait sloshing a little of the water out with each step. Doc was squatting down just inside the door getting something from her kit, and he splashed a little on her as he lurched into the stall.

Heat rushed into his face.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“No problem.”

She stood and turned to him.

“Hold that for me, will you? This won’t take long, and then we’ll untie her.”

He had to stand close to her with the basin of water, and then, with her between him and the mare, he had to look down at her—at least, at the top of her head. Her hair caught the sunlight streaming in through the window and shot flashes of red flame into the air.

Its color wasn’t exactly red, though. It was more of an auburn and it was definitely, uncontrollably curly. The wind had whipped it in all directions, but she gave no indication that she knew or cared.

If that had been Rhonda, she would’ve gone to the house and fixed her hair, no matter how soon this mare might be foaling. For the first time in more than a year, the thought of Rhonda made him smile. She would never have become a veterinarian because the job might’ve caused her to break one of her perfectly painted fingernails.

Dr. Darcy’s nails were short and plain, her hands small and sure.

Her scent was very different, too, almost like new grass or a fresh wind. Rhonda wore a perfume—

He stopped his feeble brain in its tracks.

If he needed any proof of his weakened mental state, that was it, right there. Comparing a woman who had been his fiancée with a woman he’d just met was nothing short of insane.

“Done,” she said, throwing a towel onto her canvas bag. “Thanks.”

“Glad to help,” he said.

But for a moment, he couldn’t quite force his feet to work, couldn’t step away from her. Honestly, he wanted to reach out and touch her.

She glanced at him, her green eyes wide. For a long moment, her penetrating gaze searched his face while he stared into her eyes. The look held them immobile until Darcy finally moved back.

“We may have a little time,” she said. “If this baby’s sick, too, and even if it’s not, this treatment’s going to be terribly expensive. You may want to call your own veterinarian.”

Well. That was clear enough. Had his feelings been so obvious?

He tried to conceal the embarrassment that suddenly struck him silent by turning toward the window of the stall. With an unnecessary amount of force, he threw out the water still left in the basin.

“I would’ve sworn you were begging for this job not half an hour ago.”

She didn’t answer.

He turned on his heel as best he could and took the pan to her, made himself look her in the eye. Just because a man was no longer attractive to women was no reason to duck his head to them.

“I was,” she said calmly. “I’m just trying to give you an out if you want one.”

That made him feel a little better. Maybe she had interpreted the look as regret that he’d asked her to stay. Maybe she hadn’t recognized the attraction he’d felt, after all.

“The only vet around here that I’d trust with this mare is speaking at a conference in Albuquerque today. And I don’t care what it costs.”

“Very well, then,” she said briskly, “it’s you and me. Let’s get this foal on the ground.”

She untied the mare and unsnapped the lead rope.

Immediately, Tara went to the middle of the stall, circled and started to go down.

“Don’t you need to unhook that fluid line?”

“No, it won’t tangle,” Darcy said, moving past him toward the mare with the same quiet efficiency she’d used before. “This coiled type doesn’t.”

Tara lay down, rolled from side to side, then struggled to her feet. She stood for only a short time, then went down again. This time, after two halfhearted tries, she lay there on her side.

Darcy went onto her knees to examine her.

“It’s an almost undetectable stream,” she said, “but her water has broken. She’s in second stage labor now.”

Tara groaned and tried to push.

“She heard what you said and she’s acting the part.”

Darcy looked at Tara.

“Let’s hope her acting gets results.”

A sharp fear stung him.

“You think she’s too weak?”

“We may have to help her.”

That wasn’t a direct answer, but he didn’t press for one. What did he want—assurance that the mare couldn’t live through this because he’d waited too long to take her away from Blake Collier?

He set his jaw. Maybe he had made yet another of his famous mistakes in judgment, but this was one time he was going to win.

“What do you want me to do?”

Darcy glanced at him, then sat back on her heels and stared at Tara. Her face plainly showed that she was worried, yet there was a calmness about her that hadn’t been there out on the road when she was insisting on treating the mare.

“Go get a bunch of towels,” she said. “This baby may be sick, too, and we’ll have to keep it warm. Blankets.”

“Should I boil any water?” he said dryly. “Sterilize the scissors? Tear the sheets into strips?”

That made her look at him, and he realized, with a little shock, that that had been his intention all along. She smiled, and he felt positively triumphant.

“No,” she said. “My stuff is in sterile surgical packets. But if there’s anything else, I’ll let you know.”

Then she set her attention on the mare again, and Jackson felt lost. He turned and left the barn for the house, trying not to think about the deep green of Darcy’s eyes.

It took him a few minutes to ransack the cabinets—he just threw his towels in the washer and used the same ones over and over without ever looking to see what supplies were in the house. His grandfather had been the last person to live there before him, and he’d probably done the same.

In a cupboard in the bathroom he found stacks of towels his mother must’ve brought over—recently or in Old Clint’s time he had no idea. He grabbed one batch of them and two blankets from the old armoire in the bedroom, then hurried to the barn. Sometimes he’d give the ranch to be able to run across the yard again.

But at least he was alive, as his mother was fond of reminding him whenever she dropped by on one of her infrequent visits. Maybe someday he’d be glad of that.

He heard Tara’s groans before he entered the barn, and they made him forget all about himself. The tortured sound was so dreadful that it hardened his will even more. Tara—and her baby—would live if he had to send the ranch plane to fly Dr. Ward Lincoln back from Albuquerque.

Even as he had the thought, he knew it was as foolish as a desperate child’s. This would all be decided in the next thirty minutes, and this woman horse doctor was the only veterinarian of any kind, much less an equine one, in fifty miles.

And there she was, at her truck, getting something from her vet box.

“She’s getting nowhere,” she said, when she saw Jackson. “It’s uterine inertia.”

Jackson’s heart thudded painfully.

“What can we do?”

“Add calcium supplements to the IV fluids. She’s so weak we’ll probably have to get hold of that foal.”

She turned to the barn with her hands full of supplies.

“Let me put these things down and I’ll help you,” Jackson said.

“Not necessary,” Darcy said. “Let’s go.”

By the time he’d piled the blankets and towels in the corner of the stall, she was standing still, watching Tara thoughtfully.

“Let’s wait a little longer,” she said. “Maybe she’ll get a second wind and deliver on her own.”

Thirty minutes later, after three more valiant tries on the mare’s part accomplished nothing, Darcy spoke.

“She can’t take much more of this, and neither can I.”

She began pulling on a long, plastic sleeve. “Here,” she said, tossing one to him. “Put it on just in case I need you.”

For a second, his anger flared. He couldn’t fit his glove inside the plastic sleeve, and he wasn’t going to try.

“Don’t do it all yourself,” he said sarcastically.

“I’m not,” she snapped, flashing him a surprised look. “You’ll get your chance to be a hero.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

There was a trace of hurt in her voice. Guilt nagged at him. She had no way of knowing what his hands looked like or why he wouldn’t take off his gloves.

Tara groaned again and strained terribly, but there was no visible sign that the baby moved.

“It’s always better not to pull a foal,” Darcy said. “But we don’t want to let her get too weak.”

She went down on her knees behind the mare and gently inserted her plastic-sheathed arm.

Jackson waited, watching her face, but it told him nothing.

“There’s a front leg,” she said, at last. “Now, where’s the other one?”

Finally, after an eternity, she nodded, and Jackson let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“All right,” she said, “there it is, and there’s the nose—and, thank goodness, the sucking motion that says it’s alive. Let me get that muzzle tucked in between those little legs and out you come, baby.”

She worked for a bit, then pulled gently. Once. Twice.

“We’re getting him out, Miss Tara,” she said. “Come on, can you help me, girl?”

Tara groaned and tried again to respond, but she was clearly getting weaker.

Jackson awkwardly lowered himself to a half-sitting, half-kneeling position beside the veterinarian.

“Why don’t you let me help?”

“Because you would keep on saying women aren’t strong enough for this job,” she said, through clenched teeth.

She gave the foal another pull.

Sweat stood on her forehead.

“No, I won’t,” Jackson said. “Because you’ve nearly got him out, and I admit, right now, that you can do the rest. Let me help you.”

“All right,” she said.

She moved over, and he took hold of the small hoof that was visible through the blood and gelatin-like straw-colored fluid coming from the mare. He grasped it firmly.

“Ready?” he said.

“Just a second.”

Darcy reached inside to position the other forefoot behind the first one.

“To reduce the shoulders in diameter,” she said, “Tara will thank us.”

She took a deep breath.

“Now. Gently, gently.”

Together they pulled the baby out.

“Too little,” Jackson said, as they broke the sac surrounding it so it could breathe. “Not big as a minute.”

“Pretty head,” Darcy muttered, and reached for her tools. “Let’s clean out your nose, little one.”

She used a turkey baster from her bag to clear the foal’s nostrils.

“Towels,” she said. “Let’s get him dry and keep him warm.”

Jackson reached for the towels and began rubbing the colt. Darcy stepped back as he started trying to get to his feet. He wobbled and wavered, but finally he made it to a tremulous four-legged stance.

“Little or not, he’s got a lot of try,” Jackson said.

She craned her neck to look at the baby all over.

“Little colt,” she said. “How’s he bred?”

“Some backyard stud that got in with her at the wrong time of year.”

“That’s for sure,” Darcy said. “I heard on the truck radio the first cold front’s due in here today or tomorrow.”

She stripped off the plastic sleeve and reached for a towel.

“Lots of rubbing,” she said. “Keep going. I’ll help you.”

He handed her a towel.

“My stars!” Darcy said. “Jackson, these are fine, expensive towels you’ve brought out here! And they’re brand new, to boot!”

“Only ones I could find,” he said.

She smiled at him while her small hands moved the thick fabric firmly over the wet colt.

“Spoken like a true bachelor,” she said. “I’m guessing, but I’m sure.”

He nodded.

“Be sure,” he said.

Then he wondered why he’d said that. It didn’t matter one whit between them whether he was married or not.

Was she?

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