Her Cowboy Boss

Chapter Three

As tired as he was, Stark had a difficult time dropping off to sleep between the hourly alarms set on his phone. He’d been too long without rest and knew his judgment would be impaired without it, but he couldn’t get Meredith Billings out of his mind. If she’d been male or fifty or as ugly as a mud fence, he’d have hired her with gratitude last night, but he had no room in his life, such as it was, for a pretty little thing like her.

No, the last thing he needed underfoot was an attractive female like Meri. He couldn’t afford to take a chance that one or the other of them might form an attachment. After losing Cathy, he was never going there again. He’d never survive a second loss like that. Truthfully, he hadn’t really survived the first one. All that was left of him was an empty husk and the work. He tried to concentrate on the latter and ignore everything else.

The horse seemed unchanged when Stark checked around four in the morning. He considered belting back one of the energy drinks that he lived on but decided against it. Instead, he stretched out on his bedroll again. The next thing he knew a woman’s shrieking voice woke him.

“Stark! He’s not breathing! Stark!”

The smell of strong black coffee cut through the odors of the stable, but he didn’t have time to think about it as he all but vaulted the stable gate. Meredith stood at Soldier’s head, her expression one of sheer horror. The horse’s head hung almost to the floor. Only the sling kept the animal upright. Stark grabbed his kit and found his stethoscope. After a quick examination, he was able to think.

“His heart’s still beating, but I don’t know how long he’s been without oxygen.” Stark began palpating the horse’s windpipe and giving orders. “Quick. I need a trach kit. Right side of the bag. And lay out a sterile sheet. Blue.”

Kneeling in the stall, Meredith worked swiftly, pulling on gloves and following instructions to the letter while Stark suited up. They had the tube in place in less than two minutes. Immediately Soldier twitched his ears and rasped in air. Holding the tracheotomy tube with one hand, Stark reached up to mop his brow with the other wrist, but Meredith beat him to it, blotting his forehead with a gauze pad. When he looked down, she had the suture kit open. As soon as he picked up the curved needle with the sewing silk threaded through it, she squirted antiseptic around the incision holding the breathing tube. It was as if the woman could read his mind.

Working quickly, Stark secured the breathing tube, while a lightly sedated Soldier swayed on his hooves, occasionally flicking his ears. Finally, Stark stepped back, satisfied with the work and the result.

He peeled off his gloves and tore off the coverall, saying grimly, “Get your brother while I clean up.” Shucking her gloves, Meredith dropped them onto the blue plastic sheet. “Meri,” he said, as she edged past him. She paused. It cost him, but he had to say it. “Good work.” She shot him a smile. “That doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods,” he warned.

Nodding soberly, she took off at a trot. Stark used the stethoscope once more, listening to the faint rattle in Soldier’s lungs.

By the time Meredith returned to the stable with Rex, Stark had bundled up the detritus from the tracheotomy and deposited it in the trash. He’d also zipped up his kit and performed a more thorough examination of the horse.

“Swelling in the retropharyngeal lymph nodes.” He showed Rex the bulging on the undersides of the horse’s jaws. “It doesn’t always happen with encephalitis, but it’s not that unusual.”

“So what do we do now?” Meredith asked worriedly.

Stark rubbed his chin, rough with three days’ growth of beard. Meredith had been a great help. She’d kept a very cool head during what had been a true emergency and had anticipated his every need as he’d worked. He couldn’t help being impressed by that. Now he was going to have to count on her to tend the horse while he was away, because he simply could not be in two places at one time. That was a fact with which he often had to deal, but it was seldom more essential than now.

“Basically, we watch him like a hawk,” Stark said. “We were sure lucky you woke me when you did.”

Almost as one, the brother and sister said, “I don’t believe in luck.”

That rocked Stark back. “You don’t believe in luck?”

“Not a bit of it,” Meredith told him firmly. She smiled at her brother, saying, “We believe in divine providence.”

Smiling, Rex wrapped an arm around his little sister’s shoulders and hugged her. “I thank God you walked in when you did.”

Stark clamped his jaw. He was well aware of the Christian teaching of divine providence, but he didn’t believe it for a moment. To believe that God tended to the personal lives of the average person was to believe that God had allowed Stark’s family to die, and that Stark could not—would not—accept.

He licked his lips and said, “Be that as it may, we’re working with a heap of negatives here. Encephalitis. Lymph node inflammation severe enough to cut off the air passage. And, from the sound of his breathing, pneumonia.”

“Oh, no,” Rex said, pushing a hand over his face.

“So that’s it?” Meredith demanded pugnaciously, parking her hands at her waist, and quite a neat little waist it was, too. In fact, she curved nicely in all the right places, which just made Stark want to run right out of there. “You’re going to recommend putting him down, aren’t you?”

Stark was trying so hard not to look at her that he almost didn’t hear her. When her words finally registered, he welcomed them and the anger that they stirred. “No, Miss High-and-Mighty. I have to admit that his chances have diminished, but I’m not ready to give up on him yet. Are you?”

“Of course not,” she retorted, sounding both relieved and affronted.

“Good. Then you won’t mind babysitting him while I’m gone.” Stark reached down and snatched up his kit.

“H-how long will you be away?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he all but snarled, shouldering the kit. The woman sure had a way of getting under his skin. He took a deep breath. “It depends on how many other patients I have.” He pulled two syringes from his shirt pocket and held them out to her. “One in the IV plug every four hours. There’s an extra IV bag next to my bedroll. Change it out when this one is down to the last mark. These big bags are tricky to estimate, so pull the bottom out like this to make sure how much is in it.” He demonstrated with both hands. “Watch the flow rate. If it dumps too fast, it’ll wash out all the medication, so check periodically.”

Meredith nodded. “Got it.”

“Don’t try to feed or water him today. If he starts to struggle, coughs or collapses, call me at once. Think you can handle all that?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“I hope so, because the alternative is to try to get him to a clinic, and, frankly, I doubt he’d survive the trip.”

She looked stricken at that.

Rex said, “I don’t think we should tell Dad just how bad it is. Not yet.”

Meredith nodded, then looked at Stark as if asking for his input. The very idea made him break out in gooseflesh. He shook his head.

“None of my business. I take care of the horse. Wes is your father. Y’all take care of him.”

She looked to her brother, saying, “Whatever you think best.”

Those words slugged Stark in the chest, echoing down through the years.

Whatever you think best, sweetheart. We’ll leave whenever you’re ready.

Stark practically ran after that, getting out of there as fast as he could. No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn’t escape the memories. Throwing his gear into his truck, he all but dove behind the wheel. Then he sat there for several long minutes, shuddering at the sounds in his mind of screeching tires and clanging metal. When at last the empty silence returned, he started the truck and, with shaking hands, went doggedly on his way. His lonely, tortured way.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Dean argued quietly the next evening, his handsome blond head shaking. “I think you’re wrong.” A custom farmer, he’d come straight from the harvest to make his case, having neither showered nor eaten, so strongly did he feel. The weather forecast hinted at rain, which made for a long day for the harvesters. “When my granddad was ill, I learned quick that he resented more than anything for me and Grandma to try to protect him,” Dean said. “Grandpa said it robbed him of his pride and his manhood. Even though he was dying, I learned that the best thing I could do was sit down and talk man-to-man with him about whatever problems we were having.”

“And you were, what,” Ann asked, sitting beside him on the porch swing, “all of fifteen? Those must’ve been tough times for you, darling.” She brushed dust from his knee.

He nodded, wrapping his hand around hers. “They were. Now I have every hope that Wes is going to recover, but I’m not sure he’ll be happy if you keep this from him.”

“I have to agree,” Ann said, but then she was so in love with her husband that he could say the moon was made of seaweed and she would at least try to believe it.

Rex leaned against the porch railing, folding his arms. They’d convened this little family conference on the porch in order to be well out of Wes’s hearing, but they were still keeping their voices low. As he had recently proved, Wes was far from deaf.

“Dad’s so weak,” Rex mused, “and he loves that old horse. I—I just don’t know if we should tell him how serious the situation is. I feel we need to give Dad as much incentive as we can to live right now.”

“Maybe we could wait a day or two,” Callie suggested, sliding an arm around Rex’s waist.

Somewhere in the dark, an owl hooted. It was such a lonely sound, exactly how Meredith felt, standing here surrounded on a moonless October night by her siblings and their spouses. Still, it was better than sitting locked in her apartment with only her cat for company.

“Maybe Dr. Burns can give us some insight,” she said.

“Why don’t you go ask him?” Ann suggested.

Meredith caught—and ignored—the slightly suggestive undertone in her sister’s voice. “All right.” She turned away from the house. “He should’ve had time to make a full assessment of the horse by now.”

He had arrived well over an hour earlier, his usual bag from the local diner in tow. At some point during the day, he had taken the time to shower, shave and change clothes. He’d even shown up wearing a different hat, a cleaner, better version of his usual black felt Stetson. The sight had done strange, unwelcome things to her breathing, so she’d scampered out of the stable as quickly as she could, but she wouldn’t let that keep her from seeking him out now. She might not like Stark Burns, but he was in no way a danger to her. She knew that, had always known it, by sheer instinct.

Stepping off the porch, she walked down the well-beaten path beneath the trees. Behind her, she heard the thin wail of a tiny voice. Bodie was teething again, and sleep seemed to be eluding her. Meredith heard the screen door creak as her sister-in-law went into the house to see to the child. Ann and Dean had left Donovan at home with Dean’s grandmother.

Meri heard Ann say, “We ought to be getting back. Dean’s tired. Call me later.”

Rex replied something to that, but Meredith couldn’t make it out as she was moving farther from the house. She hopped over the bar ditch and out onto the dirt road. The vapor lamp atop the pole at the edge of the big red barn cast a wide circle of faint light over Stark’s truck. Cream colored, it looked gray in the light. The magnetic sign on its door read, Burns Veterinary Services, with a phone number beneath, followed by the words, War Bonnet, Oklahoma. He hadn’t bothered to include an address. War Bonnet was so small that a short drive around town would quickly locate the veterinary office on its outskirts, just past the Feed & Grain owned by Callie’s father.

Walking past the truck, Meredith stepped out of the circle of dim light and into the darkness once more before crossing the second bar ditch on the opposite side of the road, then crawling through the corral fence. There was a gate, but no one used it except to let horses in or out or drive truckloads of feed inside. As usual, except in the very coldest part of winter, the stable door stood open.

Meredith walked through the door and knew at once that Stark wasn’t inside.

She had no idea why he’d stepped out, but obviously he had. He couldn’t have gone far, though. His truck was still parked at the side of the road.

Going to Soldier, she checked his tracheotomy then the IV, the catheter first, followed by the bag. Wanting an accurate measurement, she tried to do it just the way Stark had shown her, pulling on the bottom of the big, heavy bag.

Suddenly, two arms came around her, trapping her, and two hands covered hers. Meredith screamed and jerked backward, colliding with a warm, strong body. Panicked, she threw first one elbow then the other and tore free, stumbling into the stall and throwing up her hands in defense.

“No! Let go! I’ll fight!”

Stark stood there, his arms held up, hands shoulder high and spread wide. “It’s okay,” he said gently.

Meri’s heart pounded so hard she thought she might be sick. Clasping a hand over the scar on her chest, she doubled over, gasping and swallowing down air.

“I thought you knew I was there,” he told her evenly, rubbing his ribs. “I just stepped out to enjoy the cool air for a minute. I followed you in. Didn’t mean to surprise you.”

She tried to stop shaking, memories of the assault flashing over her, a dark night, a quiet place... She heard his voice telling her to shut up and do as she was told, saw the knife flash, felt it slice into her flesh. He’d dragged her backward between two cars.

“I...” Not another word would come.

“I was just going to correct your hand position,” Stark said conversationally, reaching for the bag. “You need to pull on the tabs. Like this.” He demonstrated how to properly get a measurement of the liquid left in the bag.

Meredith glanced over at him and nodded, gulping down air to settle her stomach. “I’m sorry,” she finally managed.

“For what?” he asked. “You didn’t scare me. I scared you. I should apologize.” Very sincerely, his hand placed flat against the center of his chest, he said, “I’m sorry.”

She knew that he was apologizing for more than scaring her, for something that he had not even done. Tears filled her eyes. She shook her head, waved a hand, tried to make light of it.

“It was silly.”

But it wasn’t silly. It would never be silly. She pushed it down, closed it off, as she had done from the beginning, and tilted her chin at the horse.

“How is he?”

“I feel he’s improved,” Stark said, easily shifting subjects. “I can’t quantify that, mind you. Just a feeling I have.”

Blowing out a breath, Meredith tried to smile, to feel better. It didn’t work. Fear had its claws in her now, and she knew from experience that it would be slow to let go.

“That’s...” She tried to swallow the knot strangling her. “That’s good. W-we have to decide what to tell Dad. Ann and Dean think he’ll resent being kept in the dark, but Rex and I don’t want to worry him unnecessarily.”

Stark shrugged. “None of my business either way, but I’ll happily talk to Wes if it’ll help.”

“All right. Thanks. I’ll let you know.”

She looked toward the door and the darkness beyond, suddenly dreading what now seemed like a long and very frightening walk back to the house. Gulping down the lump in her throat, she sucked in a deep breath, squared her shoulders and prepared to say that she would leave. He beat her to it.

“I need to get something from my truck,” he announced. “If you’re ready, I’ll, uh, walk you out.”

He knew. He knew she was frightened. And at least suspected why. A sliver of the old shame pricked her, but she was too glad of the escort to pay it much mind at the moment.

Push it down. Pack it away. Think of other things.

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable...

Nodding, she clasped her hands together and walked as casually as she could manage out into the aisle of the stable. He fell into step beside her, his hands tucked into the back pockets of his jeans.

As they reached the door, he said, “You’ve really been a lot of help.”

She felt herself relax incrementally. “That’s nice to hear.”

To her surprise, he turned to the right, taking a path that would carry them behind the stable, rather than to the left, the shorter path.

“I go this way,” he said, “because of the light.”

It was true that the vapor light shined over here. She hadn’t thought of it before, always choosing the shorter path, but then she hadn’t been frightened until now. Silently she trailed along in his wake. He climbed the fence. She crawled through. He didn’t try to help her, just waited for her to reach the other side. They crossed the bar ditch. She leaped, but it was hardly out of stride for him. As they walked over the dirt road, he didn’t even look at his truck, just moved on toward the house.

“I was wondering what sort of hours you were looking for,” he said. “In a job, I mean.”

Meredith caught her breath and had to focus to keep from stumbling. “I’m adaptable,” she answered carefully. “I’m used to shift work, after all.”

“Mmm. And pay? Nurses make good wages, better than you’re likely to find around here.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have to pay rent,” she said quickly, “or utilities or even buy groceries, if I don’t want to. And gasoline is certainly cheaper, not to mention insurance, and then there’s fees. You’ve no idea how many fees are involved in nursing. So I could settle for less than I’m used to.”

“Uh-huh. Anything else in particular you’re looking for?”

“It’d be nice if I could wear scrubs, at least initially.” She wrinkled her nose, admitting, “I really don’t have that many clothes anymore. I mean, where would I wear them? It’s not like I go out. I work. I go to church when I can. That’s it.” Embarrassed, she looked down at her boots, realizing only then that they’d come to a halt on the pathway beneath the trees.

“There’d be a learning curve, you know.”

Meredith looked up, elated. So he really was thinking about hiring her. “I understand, but I’m a fast learner, and I love animals. I really do.”

“That might not be as much of a plus as you think.” He strolled onward. “Animals can’t tell us where or how it hurts, but they do suffer, and when they suffer, it’s obvious.”

“I understand,” she told him softly.

“Do you? They suffer, Meri, and sometimes they die. And too often there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s just the fact of it.”

They had reached the house. She lifted a hand to the porch column, looking up at him. “Why do you try to discourage me?”

“Why do you want it so badly?” he countered. “You don’t even like me. Doesn’t make sense that you want to work for me.”

She could have lied to him, could’ve batted her lashes and even flirted a little, but that wasn’t her way.

“I may not always like you,” she said bluntly, “but I have come to respect you. And you’re my only option.” She ducked her head, adding softly, “I’ve never felt safe there. I’ve never been happy there. I don’t want to go back.”

He said nothing for a long while. Then, when she looked up, he abruptly glanced away.

“I’ll think on it,” he told her, stepping away from her.

Meredith smiled, turned, climbed up onto the porch and went into the house. He’d given her hope at least.

Tonight had shown her that she couldn’t go back. She just couldn’t.

She’d thought she was past it. After all the counseling and all the precautions, she’d held on there as long as anyone could possibly expect. In the back of her mind, she’d thought that this respite, this sojourn at home, would at least prepare her to return to the City and her work there, but it had done the opposite. Her time here had shown her that she could never go back. She should be free now to find peace and safety. At home.

Please, God. She just wanted to come home to stay.

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