with clean, crisp linen. The mattress and pillows were surprisingly soft. Magically soft.
Soft enough that despite her emotional upheaval, despite the fact that it was barely seven o’clock, she was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
But reality didn’t go away. She woke up with a jolt in the small hours, and remembered where she was, and remembered her life was pretty much over.
Okay, maybe she was exaggerating, she decided, as she stared bleakly into the darkness. She had the money to have a holiday. She could go back to Sydney, do some sightseeing, head back to New York and tell everyone she’d been conned.
Her friends had been derisive when she’d told them what she was doing. ‘You? On an outback station? Man-of-all-work as well as vet for stockhorses? Get real, Alex, you’re too blonde.’
The teasing had been good-natured but she’d heard the serious incredulity behind it. No one would be surprised when she came home.
And then what? Her thoughts were growing bleaker. If this low-life cowboy kicked her off this farm …
He didn’t have to kick her off. There was no way she’d stay here, with this ramshackle house, without a bathroom, with his chauvinistic attitudes.
Bleak-R-Us.
The silence was deafening. She was used to city sounds, city lights filtering through the drapes. Here, there was nothing.
If there was nothing, she had to leave.
Okay. She could do what her mother wanted, she thought. Concede defeat. Get a job caring for New York’s pampered pooches. Her mother had all sorts of contacts who could get her such a job. Unlike her dad, who’d loved the idea of her working with horses, and who’d used the only contact he had. Which just happened to be forty years out of date.
And for a son, not for a daughter.
Her thoughts were all over the place, but suddenly she was back with her dad. Why did it make a difference? She’d never been able to figure why her dad wasn’t happy with the son he had; why he’d been desperate to have another.
Like she couldn’t figure why it was so important to Jack Connor that she was male.
He’d cooked her an egg.
It was a small thing. In the face of his boorish behaviour it was inconsequential, yet somehow it made a difference.
He was used to invalid cookery, she thought. Maria had made meals like that for her when she was ill. The fact that Jack had done it …
It meant nothing. One egg does not a silk purse make. He was still, very much, a sow’s ear. A sow’s ear she’d be seeing the last of tomorrow morning. Or this morning.
She checked her watch: 3:00 a.m. Four hours before she could stalk away from this place and never come back.
Admit defeat?
Yes, she told her pillow. Yes, because she had no choice.
She rolled over in bed and saw a flicker of light behind the curtains.
Jack, heading for the outhouse?
The outhouse was on the other side of the house.
Someone was out there.
So what? She shoved her pillow over her head and tried to sleep.
It was midday in Manhattan. She was wide awake.
The light.
Ignore it. Go to sleep.
Her legs were twitchy. She’d spent too long on too many planes.
So what? Go to sleep.
Or what?
Sancha was one of the stud’s prize mares. This was her second foaling. He hadn’t expected trouble.
At two-thirty he’d known things were happening but the signs were normal. He’d checked the foal had a nice healthy heartbeat. He’d brought in thick fresh straw, then sat back and waited. Foaling was normally explosively fast. Horses usually delivered within half an hour.
She didn’t.
She was in trouble.
So was the foal. The presentation was all wrong. The heartbeat was becoming erratic.
He need a vet. Now.
He had one in the house. But …
He wasn’t all that sure he trusted her credentials. Besides, he’d sacked her. He could hardly ask her to help.
But if he didn’t … it’d take an hour to get the local vet here and that heartbeat meant he didn’t have an hour.
He swallowed his pride and thought, Thank heaven he’d made the girl an egg.
She hauled on her fleecy bathrobe and headed out to the veranda. Just to see. Just because staying in bed was unbearable. She could see lightning in the distance but the storm was past. It had stopped raining. The air felt cool and crisp and clean. She needed cool air to clear her head.
She walked out the back door, and barrelled straight into Jack.
He caught her, steadied her, but it took a moment longer for her breath to steady. He was so big…. It was the middle of the night. This place was creepy.
He was big.
‘Are you really a vet?’ he demanded, and she stiffened and hauled away.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes,’ he said curtly. ‘I’ve a mare with dystocia. She’s been labouring for at least an hour and nothing’s happened. I can’t get the presentation right—there are hooves everywhere. I’ll lose her.’
‘My vet bag’s in the car,’ she snapped. ‘Get it and show me where she is.’
She was cute, blonde, female. She was wearing a pink, fuzzy bathrobe.
She was a veterinarian.
From the time she entered the stables, her entire attention was on the mare. He was there only to answer curt questions she snapped at him as she examined her.
‘How long since you found her? Was she distressed then? Has she foaled before?’
‘With no problem. I’m sure it’s the presentation. I can’t fix it.’
She hauled off her bathrobe, shoved her arm in the bucket of soapy water and performed a fast double-check. She didn’t trust him.
Why should she?
The mare was deeply distressed. She’d been moving round, agitated, lying, rolling, standing again. Alex moved with her as she examined her, not putting herself at risk but doing what had to be done, fast.
Her examination was swift, and so was her conclusion.
‘After an hour’s labour, there’s no way we’ll get it out naturally from the position it’s in and it’s too risky to try and manoeuvre it. The alternative’s a caesarean, but I’d need help and I’d need equipment.’
‘I have equipment and I can help,’ he said steadily, but he was thinking, Did he have enough? And … to do a caesarean, here? He knew the drill. What they needed was an equipped surgery, sterile environs, equipment and drugs to make this possible. Even the thought of moving the mare and holding her seemed impossible. If he had another strong guy …
He had a petite blonde, in a cute bathrobe.
But she hadn’t seemed to notice that she was totally unsuited for the job at hand. She was checking the beams overhead.
‘Are you squeamish?’
What, him? ‘No,’ he snapped, revolted.
‘I’d need ropes and more water. I’d need decent lights. I’d need warmed blankets—get a heater out here,