Kate finished mucking out the stall, pushed the cart away from the stall, dropped the pitchfork into the cart and then walked outside to think. It was a blue sky day, not one cloud, and it was warm, just how she liked it. Hands on her hips, Kate ran several ideas through her head before she finally landed on her first move.
“I’ll be upstairs in the office if you need me,” Kate told two of her regular stable hands. Whenever she conducted business, she liked to sit at her desk in the office above the barn. Sitting at her desk now, with the view of the flat expanse of the pastures abutting the mountains in the background, Kate was always reminded that she was blessed to be living in paradise. But even paradise came with a price.
“He-llo.”
The way Liam answered his phone always made her smile.
“Hi, Dr. Brand. It’s Kate.”
“Hi, Kate King,” Liam greeted her enthusiastically. “So, we’re back to Dr. Brand, are we?”
Kate touched her fingers to her lips, the lips this man had kissed several nights before. It was a kiss, so fleeting, that hadn’t been far from her mind.
“This is a business call.”
“And here I thought you had finally come to your senses and were calling to ask me out on a date.”
He was teasing her—at least in part, he was—and it took her a moment to catch up with him. He had a way of catching her off guard with his humor and his kisses. He spoke before she had a chance to regroup.
“I’m thinkin’ that this call is about Dr. McGee retiring?”
“Yes.” The words came out of the blue, but the minute Liam echoed the news, Kate felt tears, unbidden, fill her eyes and fall onto her cheeks.
Not wanting Liam to hear her crying, Kate quickly wiped off her cheeks, steeled herself against the sadness she was feeling and focused on the business at hand.
“I’ve obviously been beaten to the punch,” she added.
“Look, Kate.” Liam said, his voice reassuringly strong and steady. “If you need me, I’m gonna be there for you. So you can take that worry right off your shoulders.”
Relieved, she dropped her head into her hand. “Thank you. You know how important it is to have a support system in place.”
“I do,” Liam said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
Their phone call was cut short, making Kate wish that they had more time—he had arrived at his next client and she was hosting a clinic for a group of owners and horses. But just from that brief phone call, Liam had made her feel better. She felt that it was going to be easier to face her day without the worry about who she was going to call if one of the horses in her charge took ill or got injured. Now she knew that she could call Dr. Brand. Liam.
* * *
When word got out that Dr. McGee, a most beloved fixture in the Bozeman area horse scene, was retiring, it wasn’t long before a retirement party was organized. Kate, who didn’t typically take the time out of her business life to go to parties, carved time out of her schedule to attend. Callie and Kate washed up, put on some clean jeans and boots, and then loaded into one of the King Ranch trucks to head into town.
“I should drive.” Callie always said the same thing when they headed off King property. Callie drove, under supervision, on the ranch and, since they owned thousands of acres, she had plenty of dirt roads to drive. But she hadn’t been able to pass the driver’s license test that would allow her to drive off property and her daughter couldn’t seem to accept it.
“You know what I love about you, Calico?” Kate pulled onto the road that would take them into Bozeman.
“Everything?” Callie laughed with a broad smile.
“That’s right.” Kate reached over and squeezed her daughter’s arm. “Everything.”
They arrived at The Baxter Downtown, a venue often used in Bozeman for weddings, special events and, in this case, a retirement party. Dr. McGee’s wife and staff had reserved the Wilson Suite, a smaller, cozier room accented with dark wood fit for a dignified man.
“Dr. McGee isn’t going to like all of this fuss,” Kate whispered to her daughter. “At least on the surface.”
So many people gathered in the small space while Dr. McGee sat at the head table with his wife and closest staff members; she knew the man well enough to know that he was touched by the turnout, even though she had heard him blustering about all of his friends acting like he was about to be pushing-up daisies when he wasn’t ready to go quietly into that good night just yet.
“Is this seat taken?”
The minute Kate heard the sound of Liam’s voice, her body responded in the most unusual way. Her heart started to beat a little faster, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
“No.” Kate found herself smiling at the handsome vet. “Be our guest.”
Callie jumped out of her chair and threw her arms around Liam. “Hi, Dr. B-Brand!”
Kate watched Liam closely—he treated her daughter with so much respect and dignity, every time, that she couldn’t deny that this was a part of this new feeling she was experiencing for the man.
“Hi, Calico.” Liam started to take the seat on the other side of her daughter, but Callie shook her head and sat down in the chair instead.
“You should sit next to Mommy.”
“Callie.” Kate glanced around quickly, knowing that people were paying attention. “Let Dr. Brand sit where he wants.”
“Okay,” Callie said sullenly.
Liam took a moment, waited for the mother and daughter to negotiate the situation before he took the seat between them.
He leaned over to say, in that low, baritone voice of his, “This is where I wanted to sit.”
Kate wasn’t someone who embarrassed easily; she was a woman in a world still dominated by men. But she felt her cheeks grow hot, and she knew that if anyone was watching her face closely, the pleasure she felt by that simple comment was right there in her eyes and the small smile on her lips.
Two of the biggest gossips in Bozeman were sitting directly across from them at the banquet table. The Mendelsohn widows, Beatrice and Emma, were very interested in the new “dynamic” of the handsome eligible veterinarian and the relationship-skittish horse trainer.
“How long have the two of you been courting?” Beatrice got straight to the point.
“We aren’t.” Kate crinkled her brow a bit. Was it that obvious that she felt “something” akin to happy nerves sitting next to Liam?
“Not yet,” Liam added after he took a large sip of his water without ice.
“They make a very handsome couple,” Emma told her sister.
“They do,” Beatrice agreed. “Very handsome.”
“Everyone always said that about John and I,” Emma continued. “That we were a handsome couple. Of course, Beatrice was always the prettier one of the two of us. But even my sister has had to admit that my John was the most handsome man—so tall and straight.”
Beatrice put down her teacup with a small smile. “Don’t pay a bit of attention to Emma. I’ve never admitted to such a thing.”
Emma raised her eyebrows at her sister, puckered her lips a bit and then turned