“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.