Cattleman's Courtship Page 3

  And then she left. Aunt Lori had come upstairs and had sat beside Cara, not saying anything, simply holding her close, letting Cara’s tears drench the front of her shirt.

  When Cara turned fifteen, everything changed. Cara’s mother was killed flying into the Congo to help yet another group of lost and broken children.

  And Cara was alone.

  Uncle Alan and Aunt Lori were named her guardians. They paid for all her expenses, bought her a car. Put her through vet school and Uncle Alan offered her a job when she was done.

  She started working for her uncle, met Nicholas and she thought her life had finally come to the place she’d been yearning for since she was a young girl.

  A home of her own. A family of her own.

  And now, her uncle lay in a hospital bed and Nicholas was more removed from her than ever.

  “How are you doing?” Cara asked, reaching over and covering her aunt’s icy hands with hers.

  “I’m tired. And I’m scared.” Lori looked up at Cara. “Will you pray with me?”

  Cara was taken momentarily aback. How could her aunt talk about praying after what had just happened? What good would it do?

  But she wasn’t about to take what little comfort her aunt might derive from praying, away from her.

  “Sure. I’ll pray with you.” Cara folded her hands over her aunt’s and bowed her head.

  Cara waited, then realized her aunt wanted her to do the praying.

  Her heart fluttered in panic. What was she going to say? But her aunt squeezed her hands, signaling her need. So Cara cleared her throat and began.

  “Dear Lord, Thank You for today…” She paused there, wondering what she could be thankful about when her uncle was so ill, but she carried on. “Thank You that we could worship with Your people in Your house…” She stopped, hearing the inauthentic words in her own ears.

  She glanced up in time to see Aunt Lori looking over at her.

  “Why did you stop, honey?”

  Cara sighed. “I sound like Uncle Alan.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  Cara gave her aunt a quick smile. “No, but…”

  “It’s not from your heart.” Aunt Lori finished the sentence for her.

  “I don’t know if I can pray from my heart.” Cara tightened her grip on her aunt’s hands.

  “Why not?” Aunt Lori asked, her smile sad.

  Cara sighed lightly, knowing she would have to be honest with her aunt. “I don’t think I’ve been able to pray since…”

  “Audra died?” Aunt Lori stroked Cara’s hand with her thumbs.

  “Mom’s death was the beginning.”

  “And what was the end?”

  Cara looked down, working her lower lip between her teeth. “I know it sounds kind of funny now, maybe even a bit childish, but after Nicholas and I broke up, I haven’t been able to pray at all.”

  “That was a hard time for you.”

  “Not as hard as what you’re dealing with right now.”

  “I still have Alan’s love. I know how much you cared for Nicholas and I know the hurt he caused in your life made you pull further away from God.” Aunt Lori looked down at their joined hands, her thumbs still making their soothing circles around Cara’s hand. “I hoped that by asking you to pray, you would be able to at least let God’s love fill you. Let God break down that barrier you’ve put up between you and Him.”

  “He was the one that put it up, Aunt Lori,” Cara whispered.

  “God always seeks us,” Aunt Lori assured her. “He never puts up walls. We do.”

  Cara’s soul twisted and turned. “Love hurts, Aunt Lori. It hurts so much.”

  Her aunt reached out and cupped her cheek. “That’s the risk of loving, my dear girl.”

  Cara let the words settle into the wrenching of her soul. She knew her aunt was right, but she also knew, for now, she wasn’t going to take the chance of getting hurt again.

  “I’ll pray this time,” Aunt Lori said, taking her hands.

  Cara bowed her head and let her aunt’s prayer wash over her. And for the merest moment, she felt a nudging against the walls she’d put around her heart.

  She knew that everything had changed. In the space of a heartbeat, or lack of a heartbeat, her world had spun around.

  There was no way she could wander around the streets of Malta knowing that her uncle, the man she thought of as her father, lay helpless and recuperating from a devastating heart attack.

  She had no choice now. She would have to cancel her trip and stay in Cochrane to support her aunt. Even if it meant running the risk of seeing Nicholas and having her pain reinforced.

  Though she had told her aunt she didn’t pray much, she caught herself praying that when the time came she would be able to leave with her heart still intact.

  Nicholas pulled up to his father’s house and slammed on the brakes, dust swirling around his truck as it fishtailed then abruptly stopped. He was being juvenile and he knew it, but his anger and frustration had to find some release and driving like a fool seemed to be a part of it.

  The events of the past days piled on top of each other. Seeing Cara in at the clinic then at church. She acted so cool. So remote. He knew part of it was his own fault. He’d put up his own barriers to her and he had to remind himself to keep them up.

  Like you did at the hospital?

  For a brief moment, when he and Cara had seen Alan lying on the hospital bed, he thought she might lean on him just a little longer. But she had quickly pulled herself together and had drawn away from his support.

  Nicholas grabbed his tie from the seat and opened the door, his anger fading with each moment. He felt tired and drained. In the next couple of weeks he had to get fences fixed, his haying done and then get ready for another work trip overseas.

  He sighed as he trudged up the sidewalk. He wished he could stay home, at the ranch. Wished he could get on his horse and head up into the mountains.

  He thought of Cara’s past insistence that he not go back to work and the ensuing fight that had sent her running.

  Nicholas stopped at the top step of the house and, turning, let his eyes drift over the valley spread out before him. Cattle dotted the pasture near the house. His purebred herd painstakingly built up by him and his father over the past five years, had been paid for by the work he did.

  Beyond this valley lay the land he and his father had purchased back from the bank after his parents’ divorce. When missed payments led to foreclosure, this, too, had been paid for by his work. He had focused his entire life on this ranch.

  He could have found work closer by, but it wouldn’t have paid near what he got from working on oil rigs. The time off gave him the opportunity to work on the ranch. His father managed the ranch while he was gone. All in all it had been a convenient and lucrative arrangement.

  One he wasn’t in a position to change. Not yet. He knew the beating his father’s pride took when they had to go, hat in hand, to the bank to refinance the ranch.

  Four generations of Chapmans had farmed and ranched on this land and each generation had added to it and expanded it. Nicholas was the fifth generation and he wasn’t going to let the ranch fail on his watch.

  He knew Cara couldn’t understand. She didn’t have his attachment to the land. She didn’t have the continuity of family and community he had. Though he didn’t appreciate his father’s puzzling antagonism toward Cara, he did agree with his father on one point.

  Cara’s lack of strong roots made it hard for her to appreciate the generations of sweat equity poured into this place. She couldn’t understand how important the ranch was to him and to his father.

  And if she didn’t get that, then she wasn’t the girl for him. Logically he knew his father was right about that.

  He just had to convince his heart.

  Chapter Three

  “And how’s Uncle Alan?” Cara asked, shifting the phone to her other hand as she slowed the car down and steered it around a tight cor
ner. Dust from the gravel road swirled in a cloud behind her.

  “He’s still very tired, but the doctor says that’s normal. How are you doing?” Aunt Lori sounded tired herself.

  “I’m fine, busy, but things are going well. I’m on my way to take a stick out of a horse.”

  “Just another day at a vet practice,” Aunt Lori said with a small laugh. “Uncle Alan asked me to remind Anita to do the supply checklist. He thinks the clinic is running low on—”

  “You tell Uncle Alan that Anita has already sent in the order and everything at the clinic is under control.” Except my driving, she thought, as she pushed the accelerator down, hoping she didn’t hit any washboard on her way to the next call.

  The Chapman ranch.

  The last call she’d been on had taken too long. A sheep with trouble delivering her lambs. Something that could have been dealt with at the clinic, but the woman insisted someone come out to look at it.

  Then the woman wanted her to check out her dog’s gums and have a quick peek at her laying hens.

  Which now meant that in spite of keeping the accelerator floored, she was twenty minutes late.

  So it was easier to blame her heavily beating heart on the pressure of trying to get there on time rather than possibly seeing Nicholas again.

  “But I gotta run, Aunty Lori. Tell Uncle Alan I’ll be there tonight and give him a full report of how things are going.”

  “You take care, sweetie. I’ll have supper ready for you when you come.”

  Cara smiled as she hung up. She was busy, sure, but there was a lot to be said for coming home after a hard day of work to supper cooking on the stove.

  While she enjoyed cooking, many of her suppers back in Vancouver consisted of pizza or a bowl of cereal in front of the television. Hardly nutritious, despite the claims of the cereal manufacturers.

  Cara made the last turn up the winding road leading to the ranch. She allowed herself a quick look at the mountains edging the fields. The bright spring sun turned the snowcapped peaks a brilliant white, creating a sharp relief against the achingly blue sky.

  When she and Nicholas were dating, they seldom came to the ranch. This suited Cara just fine. Every time she came, she received the silent treatment from Nicholas’s father, which created a heavy discomfort. Cara knew Nicholas’s father didn’t approve of her, though she was never exactly sure why.

  All she knew was each time she saw Dale he glowered at her from beneath his heavy brows and said nothing at all.

  So she and Nicholas usually went to a movie, hung out at her uncle and aunt’s place or visited Nicholas’s best friend, Lorne Hughes.

  So when she found out the call came from Dale Chapman, she was already dreading the visit, and running late just made it more so.

  She parked the car and, as she got out, she heard Dale Chapman speaking.

  She grabbed a container with the supplies she thought she might need out of the trunk of the car. Then she headed around the barn to the corrals, following the sound of Mr. Chapman’s voice.

  Dale was holding the horse’s head, talking in an unfamiliar gentle tone to his horse.

  Just for a moment, Cara was caught unawares. She wasn’t used to gentleness from Dale Chapman in any form.

  “Good morning, Dale. Sorry I’m late.”

  His cowboy hat was pulled low on his head, shading his eyes, but when he looked up, his mouth was set in grim lines.

  “I came as soon as I could.” Cara knew trying to explain to him about unexpected problems with her previous case would be a waste of time.

  Cara set the kit down in what seemed to be a safe place, pulled a pair of latex gloves out and slipped them on as she walked toward the horse.

  She knew from the phone call that Dale had found the animal with a stick puncturing the muscles of its leg.

  From here she could see the stick hanging down between his front legs. As she bent over to get a closer took, her mind skimmed frantically through her anatomy lessons, trying to picture which muscles the stick could have injured.

  Watching the horse to gauge its reaction, she gently touched the leg, feeling for heat. But he didn’t flinch.

  “When did this happen?” she asked, looking up at the wound. There was surprising little blood on the stick, which led her to believe it hadn’t punctured anything important.

  “Um…let’s see…” Mr. Chapman hesitated, as if trying to recall.

  “I found Duke this morning in the new pasture.”

  The deep voice behind her reverberated across her senses. Then Nicholas crouched down beside her and she caught the scent of hay and the faintest hint of soap and aftershave.

  She couldn’t stop the quick flashback to another time when she was at the ranch watching her uncle working on one of Nicholas’s horses. It was the first time she met him.

  Too easily she recalled how attracted she had been to him. And when his eyes had turned to her, the feeling of instant connection that had arced between them.

  And right behind that came the memory of his father, watching her with narrowed eyes. He still doesn’t like me, she thought, wondering once again why.

  Not that it mattered. The way Nicholas acted around her, she was sure the son and the father were finally on the same page as far as she was concerned.

  “Doesn’t look like any veins or arteries are punctured,” Cara said, gently touching the stick. It slid easily to one side. “I’m guessing it slipped between the muscles.”

  Duke shifted its weight and the stick moved down a bit more.

  “I’m going to pull this out, but before I do, I want to give him some anesthetic,” she said as she went back to the kit for a syringe and a needle. “How heavy is he—”

  But as she spoke, Nicholas gave her the weight, as if anticipating her question.

  She drew up the proper amount, pleased to see her hand held steady. She walked back to the horse but Nicholas was already at the Duke’s head, brushing the mane back, giving her a clear injection site.

  “Are you sure you should just pull that stick out?” Dale’s voice said over her shoulder as she found a site for the needle. “That’s going to be trouble.”

  “The stick is simply inserted between the sheaths housing the muscles. Pulling it out won’t cause more problems.”

  Cara stifled her momentary irritation with Nicholas’s father. When she had worked for her uncle before, she had occasionally encountered resistance from people who didn’t think a woman was tough enough to do large animal work. And while she knew Nicholas’s father never particularly cared for her, she didn’t think that dislike extended to her capabilities as a vet.

  “You haven’t been doing this for a while—”

  “I’ll need a hose and water,” Cara said, interrupting his questions. “Could you get that for me, Mr. Chapman?” she asked, gently tugging on the stick.

  He grumbled a moment, but left, giving Cara room to breathe.

  Cara eased the stick the rest of the way out, moving more carefully than she might have with someone else’s horse, with someone else watching. She wanted to prove herself to Nicholas—to prove she wasn’t as incompetent as his father seemed to think.

  The stick came out without too much exertion. It was exactly as she had said. It had slipped between the muscles and had only punctured the skin.

  “Thankfully the injury isn’t major.” She stood up and held out the stick to Nicholas, who took it from her without a word.

  She got a large jug of distilled water and a bottle with a squirt cap from the car.

  She gently ran her hands over the wound, then, pulling apart the skin, began to rinse. “I’m just doing an initial cleaning of the wound to make sure everything is okay,” she said, intent on her task. “The rest will have to be done with a hose.”

  “Won’t that be too cold?” Nicholas asked.

  Cara shook her head, gently cleaning away a few bits of wood she had rinsed out of the wound. “The cold water will probably be soothing and hel
p reduce any inflammation.”

  “And it will heal on its own? You’re not going to stitch it up?”

  “The wound needs to stay open so you can irrigate it. It will heal better that way.”

  “Really?”

  “Are you questioning my abilities, as well?” she asked, as an edge entered her voice.

  “What do you mean, ‘as well’?”

  Cara didn’t reply. The words had spilled out in a wave of frustration with Mr. Chapman and Nicholas, but mostly with herself for her silly reactions to their presence.

  “Duke is my father’s favorite roping horse. You can’t blame him for making sure he’s being taken good care of.” Nicholas frowned at her. He seemed surprised at her anger.

  And he should be. When they were dating, she never lost her temper. She had always done what was expected. Been the one to keep the peace.

  Fat lot of good that had done her.

  Now, despite her simmering anger, she still couldn’t break an age-old habit of avoiding confrontation, so instead of defending herself, she simply turned back to her patient and kept working.

  “Here’s the hose,” Dale called out as he climbed over the corral fence. “You sure this will work?”

  Cara didn’t bother to answer. She just held her hand out for the end.

  “You want to be careful with the angle of the hose. You don’t want to be streaming the water directly upward into the wound,” Cara said, demonstrating what she meant. “And keep the pressure low. You don’t want to reinjure any regenerating tissue.” She handed the hose to Nicholas and straightened, easing the crick out of her back.

  “How will I know when I’m done?”

  “Just do it for about ten minutes at a time. You’ll also want to rinse the edges of the wound to keep it clean and to prevent it from scabbing over.”

  “It will never grow together.” Dale planted his hands on his hips as if challenging her expertise. “You’ll need to stitch it.”

  “I’ve seen a horse with a foot-long gash in its side that healed up on its own,” Cara replied. “It’s quite surprising how the body heals.”