“Stop fussing, Meredith,” Wes Billings rasped. “You look as tired as I feel and need to rest now.”
Meri sighed and smoothed the covers over her father’s chest once more. The weeklong trip to Oklahoma City for his final scheduled chemotherapy treatment had been grueling, and, no doubt, he was as glad as she was to be back at Straight Arrow Ranch.
She prayed that the drugs, which had followed extensive surgery, had done their work and rid her father’s rangy six-foot-four-inch body of any remaining cancer. Only time and tests would tell, as Meri, a nurse, well knew. Still, time seemed to slip through her fingers with alarming speed. Her leave of absence from her job at the hospital in the city would soon end, and she would be forced to return there to work.
The irony struck deep as she bent and kissed her dad’s bald head through the paper mask that she wore. Meredith had never wanted to leave home. She’d settled on nursing after her mother’s unexpected death more than four years earlier, only to discover that her chosen career left her few employment options within driving distance of the tiny town of War Bonnet, some six miles from the ranch. Neither her older brother nor her sister had intended to return permanently to their hometown, yet they’d both recently married locally and settled in to live there, while Meri had come up empty—again—in her search for a job that would allow her to remain near her family.
She disliked living in a large city for many reasons. The summers were hotter and the winters dirtier. Everything was more expensive. Green spaces were few and far too formal. She’d never thought to miss a red-dirt road so much. As time had passed, the hundred miles between War Bonnet and Oklahoma City had started to seem like thousands to her. Moreover, the quality and quantity of medical care to be found there had robbed the smaller communities of hospitals and clinics even this far out, which meant that she couldn’t find a job closer to home.
How she hated to think of going back! The traffic and the noise grated on her, and the crime... She shuddered, touching the scar just above her left breast through her blouse.
If help had arrived even a minute later, she doubted she’d be here. In the city, when not working, she felt virtually trapped in her apartment with her cats.
Make that cat. She still grieved the loss of Tux, her black-and-white tom.
“Call out if you need me,” she said to her dad, stripping off the mask and gloves. She wore the protective gear to care for her father since his infusions had temporarily demolished his immune system. She dropped them into the receptacle beside the door and left the room, stepping into the back hallway of the sprawling old ranch house where she, her siblings and their father before them had grown to adulthood.
Her five-year-old nephew, Donovan, jumped down from his seat at the kitchen table and raced across the room, throwing himself at her, his fiery red head a blur. “Is Grandpa okay? Did you go shopping? Christmas is coming, ya know, and it’s my birthday.” It was only October, but Donovan was already counting the days to his next birthday.
“I might’ve done some shopping,” she answered cagily, sliding a narrowed gaze at the table, where she expected to find his parents. Her eyes snagged instead on the dark head of Stark Burns. Before she could catch them, the words that had popped into her mind slid right out of her mouth. “What’s he doing here?”
She didn’t like Stark Burns. She didn’t trust him. In her opinion, he’d let her cat Tux die after it had been injured the day of Rex’s wedding. Yes, the cat had been seriously wounded, but she believed that careful surgery and nursing care could have saved it. She’d heard that some veterinarians were too quick to put down animals with serious injuries and that large-animal vets were especially hasty in giving up on small animals. Both of those criticisms seemed to apply to Dr. Burns. Still, her brother, Rex, counted him a friend, and Wes paid him well to look after the livestock on the ranch.
And she’d just been rude. Again. Meri was never rude, except when it came to Dr. Stark Burns. She pulled in a deep breath.
“I—I mean, is there a problem with one of the animals?”
Rex frowned at her as Burns hitched around in his seat, hanging one long arm over the chair back and turning his head to cut his dark eyes at her. No one could say he wasn’t a good-looking man, with that thick, coal-black hair and brooding, hawkish features. Plus, he had to be at least as tall as her dad and looked every bit as comfortable in jeans and boots. He was more slender than either her brother or brother-in-law, and he looked just as fine in a hat, which he had the good manners not to wear at the table. She’d always thought sideburns a ridiculous affectation in a man—and given his last name she’d have advised him against them—but somehow they worked on him, which just made her dislike him all the more.
“Yes,” Rex said in reply to her question, shooting a look at their father’s closed bedroom door.
Obviously, Rex didn’t want to worry Dad. Meri couldn’t argue with that. She turned Donovan around and walked the boy to the table. The veterinarian’s silent gaze tracked her the whole way. Warily she pulled out a chair and sat, while her sister, Ann, sent Donovan into the living room to play with his little cousin, Bodie. Meredith didn’t know if that was because the other adults didn’t want Donovan to overhear their conversation or because Stark Burns didn’t like children. She’d noticed before that he went out of his way to avoid them.
That way of thinking was foreign to the Billings family. Bodie’s natural father had died in a flood before she was even born, and Donovan’s mother had abandoned him at birth, but the children were part of the Billings family now. Rex had considered himself Bo’s father from the moment he’d married her mom, Callie, and Ann had delighted in playing Donovan’s mom even before she’d married his dad, Dean, and become his mother in fact.
“What’s going on?” Meredith asked, glancing at the solemn faces around the table.
“It’s Soldier,” Rex said, referring to their father’s beloved stud horse.
They’d loaned the handsome sorrel stud to a friend, another rancher down in Texas, who had mares to breed. The horse had been scheduled to return to the ranch before Wes did. Had he not shown up, failed to perform or returned injured?
Callie, who had come to the ranch as the housekeeper, set a fork and a plate overflowing with apple pie in front of Meri. Smiling her thanks, Meredith picked up her fork. Stark Burns followed suit, his pie already half finished. Meri took a bite, humming in appreciation as she glanced at her sister, Ann. Dean, Ann’s husband of two months, snugged an arm around Ann’s waist, his chin nuzzling her long red hair. The expressions on their faces were serious enough to have Meri putting down her fork again.
“How bad is it?”
“Soldier didn’t look too steady when we got him back from Texas,” Ann explained. “Then we found him down this morning.”
“Oh, no.” A horse that couldn’t rise to its feet on its own strength could quickly die, because its organs wouldn’t function properly, especially its lungs. A horrible fear struck her. If that horse was dead... She abruptly sat forward again and faced Stark Burns. “What did you do?”
He set down his fork, swallowed and calmly wiped his mouth with a paper napkin before bracing his forearms on the tabletop. “I slung him,” he said.
Meri blinked. “Slung him?”
Sitting back, Stark crossed his long legs. “I brought in a hoist and a specially designed sling, got him to his feet, drew some blood for testing and set him up on IV fluids.” He crumpled the napkin in his hand and tossed it onto his plate. “It’s encephalitis, a particularly virulent strain I’ve been reading they have down in Texas.”
Meri’s heart thunked. Encephalitis was a deadly disease. She cast a desperate glance around the table. “Don’t we vaccinate for that?”
“Yes,”