“Call your vet?” the stranger asked.
“I would’ve, but I don’t have a cell.”
“Here,” he said, standing and passing off the wire cutters. “Use Doc Matthews?”
“Yes, but—” Before she could finish her question as to how he even knew the local horse and cattle expert, the stranger was halfway to his truck. Focusing on the task at hand, she figured on grilling the man about his identity later. After Honey was out of the proverbial woods.
“Doc’s on his way,” the man said a short while later, cell tucked in the chest pocket of his tan, denim work jacket. “And from the looks of this little fella, the sooner Doc gets here, the better.”
Jess snipped the last of the wire from Honey’s right foreleg, breathing easier now that the colt at least had a fighting chance. He’d lost a lot of blood, and the possibility of an infection would be a worry, but for the moment, all she could do was sit beside him, rubbing between his ears. “I can’t thank you enough for stopping.”
“It’s what anyone would’ve done.”
“Yes, well…” Words were hard to get past the burning knot in her throat. “Thanks.”
The grim-faced stranger nodded, then went back to his truck bed for a saddle blanket he gently settled over the colt. “It’s powerful cold out here. I’d like to go ahead and get him to your barn, but without the doc first checking the extent of his injuries—”
“I agree,” she said. “It’s probably best I wait here for him. But you go on to wherever you were headed. Your family’s no doubt missing you.”
His only answer was a grunt.
Turning the collar up on his jacket, eyeing her oversize coat, he asked, “Warm enough?”
“Fine,” she lied, wondering if it was a bad sign that she could hardly feel her toes.
They sat in silence for a spell, icy wind pummeling their backs, Jess at the colt’s head, the stranger at the animal’s left flank.
“Name’s Gage,” he said after a while. “Gage Moore.”
“J-Jess Cummings.” Teeth chattering, she held out her gloved hand for him to shake, but quickly thought better. A nasty cut, rust-colored with dried blood, ran the length of his right forefinger. His left pinkie hadn’t fared much better. Both palms were crisscrossed with smaller cuts, and a frighteningly large amount of blood. “You need a doctor yourself.”
He shrugged. “I’ve suffered worse.”
The shadows behind his eyes told her he wasn’t just talking about his current physical pain.
“Still. If you’d like to follow me and Doc Matthews back to the house, I’ve got a first-aid kit. Least I can do is bandage you up.”
He answered with another shrug.
“Some of those look pretty deep. You may need stitches.”
“I’m good,” he said, gazing at the colt.
Jess knew the man was far from good, but seeing as how the vet had pulled his truck and trailer alongside them, she let the matter slide.
“Little one,” the kindly old vet said to Honey on his approach, raising bushy white eyebrows and shaking his head, “you’ve been nothing but trouble since the day you were born.”
Black leather medical kit beside him, Doc Matthews knelt to perform a perfunctory examination. He wasn’t kidding about Honey having been into his fair share of mischief. He’d given his momma, Buttercup, a rough breech labor, then had proceeded along his rowdy ways to gallop right into a hornet’s nest, bite into an unopened feed bag and eat himself into quite a bellyache, and now, this.
“He going to be all right?” Jess was almost afraid to ask. “You know how attached the girls are. I don’t know how I’d break it to them if—”
“Don’t you worry,” Doc said. “This guy’s tougher than he looks. I’m going to give him something for pain, have Gage help settle him and his momma in my trailer and out of this chill. Then we’ll get them back to the barn so I can stitch up the little guy and salve these wounds. After that, with antibiotics and rest, he should be right as rain.”
Relieved tears stung her eyes, but still Jess wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of breaking down.
“How’d you get all the way out here?” Doc asked her after he and Gage gingerly placed Honey and her still-agitated momma in the horse trailer attached to the vet’s old Ford. He did a quick search for Jess’s truck, or Smoky Joe—the paint she’d been riding since her sixteenth birthday.
In all the excitement, Jess realized she hadn’t tethered Smoky, meaning by now, he was probably back at the barn. With a wry smile, she said, “Looks like I’ve been abandoned. You know Smoky, he’s never been a big fan of cold or Honey’s brand of adventure.”
“Yup.” Doc laughed. “Ask me, he’s the smartest one in the bunch.” Sighing, heading for his pickup with Matthews’s Veterinary Services painted on the doors, he said, “Oh, well, hop in the cab with me, and we’ll warm up while catching up.”
“Shouldn’t I ride in back with the patient?”
“Relax. After the shot I gave him, he’ll be happy for a while, already dreaming of the next time he gives you and I a coronary.”
“Should I, ah, head back to your place?” Gage asked.
“Nope,” Doc said. “Martha wanted to keep you with us ’til after the holidays, but I figure now’s as good a time as any for you and Jess to get better acquainted.”
“Mind telling me what that’s supposed to mean?” Jess asked once she and Doc were in his truck. She’d removed her gloves and fastened her seat belt, and now held cold-stiffened fingers in front of the blasting heat vents.
“What?”
“Don’t act all innocent with me. You know exactly, what. Have you and my father been matchmaking again? If so, I—”
“Settle yourself right on down, little lady. Trust me, we learned our lesson after Pete Clayton told us you ran him off your place with a loaded shotgun.”
“He tried kissing me.”
“Can you blame him?” the older man said with a chuckle. “If you weren’t young enough to be my granddaughter, you’re pretty enough I might have a try at you myself.”
Lips pursed, Jess shook her head. “Dwayne’s only been gone—”
“Barely over a year. I know, Jess. We all know. But you’re a bright and beautiful—and very much alive—young woman with two rowdy girls to raise. Dwayne wouldn’t want you living like you do, with one foot practically in your own grave.”
“As usual, you’re being melodramatic. Me and the girls are happy as can be expected, thank you very much. I have no interest in dating—especially not another cowboy you and my daddy come up with.”
“Understood,” he said, turning into her gravel drive. “Which is why Gage’s only in town to help you out around the ranch.”
“What?” Popping off her seat belt, she angled on the seat to cast Doc her most fearsome glare.
“Simmer down. Everyone who loves you is worried. There’s too much work here to handle on your own—especially with foaling season right around the corner. We’ve taken up a collection, and paid Gage his first few months’ wages.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but before getting a word in edgewise, Doc was holding out his hand to cut off her protestations.
“While you’ve been off checking fences this past week, your momma and my Martha