Renegade Father (8 page)

“How is she?”

He looked up. “I can't tell. She seems a little better. What did Graham say?”

The local vet, Graham Thacker, lived just a few miles from the Double C, on the other side of the Broken Spur. She shrugged. “He couldn't diagnose her over the phone so he's going to come by and take a look at her. Said it would be easier than having both of us drive into the clinic in town.”

“Makes sense.”

She folded to her knees beside the little border collie, conscious of Joe's gaze on her.

“How are
you
doing?” he asked softly.

The sting behind her eyes became a full-fledged burning ache. She
wouldn't
break down. She wouldn't. Even if that tender concern in his voice was just about sweetest thing she'd ever heard.

She swallowed hard and looked down at Dolly's head in her lap. “I'll be okay.”

He didn't say anything for several moments and the only sound in the room was the dog's soft panting and the crackle and hiss of the fire, then Joe reached out and cupped her shoulder. Just that, the simple comfort of his touch, sent a tear slipping out before she could stop it.

Thank heavens her back was to him and he couldn't
see her being such a blubber baby. He gave her one quick, comforting squeeze, then withdrew his warmth and strength. “I need to go back to the barn to take care of the horses.”

He'd been in the middle of putting on their tack and had come running when she found Dolly, she realized. “I completely forgot about them. I'm glad you remembered.”

“I'll come back to the house when I'm done, okay?”

She looked up to meet his questioning gaze. He was asking if she wanted his help and she didn't know how to answer. She should be able to handle this by herself. She'd handled much, much worse, hadn't she?

She almost told him to go on home, back to his warm fire and his book and his hot cocoa. The words hovered on her tongue for a few moments but in the end she couldn't bring herself to utter them.

She needed him.

Whether she liked it or not, she just couldn't face the many grim possibilities the vet might offer all by herself.

“Thank you,” she murmured again, and forced a smile of gratitude. “You're a good friend, Joe. I don't know what I'd do without you.”

An odd, almost bitter expression flashed in his eyes, then he shoved his Stetson back onto his dark hair and headed out into the night.

B
y the time Joe finished with the horses and returned to the house, he was relieved to see the vet's pickup already parked in front of the house. Thacker was a good man. He'd be willing to bet there weren't too many veterinarians willing to climb out of a warm bed in the middle of the night to make a house call on an old, ailing dog.

Thacker was also damn good at his job, and Joe figured Annie's dog would be back on her feet before they knew it.

Not wanting to wake the kids, he didn't bother to knock, just let himself in. As soon as he walked through the quiet house to the family room, he knew something was drastically wrong. Thacker wore a worried frown that made his wrinkled face resemble a bulldog even more than it usually did and Annie looked like she'd just taken a fist to the gut.

“What is it?” he asked.

Both of them turned at his voice. Annie spoke first, her voice flat, empty, and in sharp contrast to the stark emotion in her features. “Graham thinks Dolly has been poisoned.”

He whipped his gaze from her toward the dog still quivering in front of the fire then to the veterinarian. “Doc, are you sure about this?”

Thacker returned a stethoscope to the big leather bag he always carried. “Can't be a hundred percent. Not without blood tests. But that's what my gut is telling me.”

“What makes you even suspect that?”

“Once you've seen a dog with metaldehyde poisoning, you don't easily forget it. She's got classic symptoms. The convulsions are the real giveaway.”

“Metaldehyde?” Joe asked.

“Slug bait. I've seen a few other cases through the years, but it's not something we run into too often. We don't have much of a slug problem around here so it's not a poison people generally leave lying around for their pets to get into. You wouldn't happen to have used some this year, have you?”

Annie shook her head. “I have plenty of aphids in my garden but never slugs. Anyway, all the fertilizers and insecticides we use on the ranch are locked up in one of the sheds. She couldn't possibly get to them.”

“So you think somebody did this on purpose?” Joe asked.

The vet's bushy gray eyebrows drew together when he frowned. “I don't know what else to think. But I'd bet my practice that when I run the blood sample, we'll find slug bait in her system.”

Annie looked near tears as she gazed at the little collie. “Why? Why would somebody do this?”

The vet frowned again. “You tell me.”

Annie's eyes were wide and frightened when she raised her gaze. “I have no idea,” she said, but then her eyes drifted away. For some reason Joe had the distinct impression she was lying.

Before he could puzzle it out, the vet spoke again. “In most cases like this, it turns out to be an angry neighbor or relative. You made anybody mad lately? Anything else strange been happening around here?”

Annie's eyes darkened to the color of pine needles and she opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, then she snapped it shut again and shook her head.

Joe could easily read her thoughts in her expression. She would be trying to figure out who would hate her enough to do this and she would probably be blaming herself.

Hadn't she been through enough? Who was vicious enough to lash out at her by using an innocent animal?

Charlie.

He hissed in a breath. No. No damn way. Not that he didn't think his half brother was capable of it—hell, he knew better than most that Charlie was capable of just about anything—but it couldn't be him. Charlie was gone and he wouldn't dare come back.

Joe had done his best to make damn sure of that.

His brother knew that if he ever set foot on the Double C, he would find himself in one of two places, depending on who got to him first, Joe or the sheriff.

If he tangled with the law first, he would end up behind bars for a long, long time after his last vicious attack on Annie left her with two broken ribs and a broken arm that still bothered her when it rained.

And Joe had left his big brother with absolutely no
doubt that if
he
found him first, Charlie would end up right where he belonged.

In hell.

No, Charlie wouldn't be coming back. Either the vet was mistaken about Dolly being poisoned or someone else had done it.

“So what do we do for her now?” Annie asked from her position on the floor.

“She should be out of it most of the night. Just watch her closely. If there's any change in her condition—anything at all—give me a buzz. I'll stop by first thing in the morning to see how she is.”

“Do you think I should call the police?”

Graham snapped his bag shut. “Might not hurt to give Sheriff Douglas a heads-up. But I'll warn you now, nonfatal dog poisonings probably won't be a real big priority with him. Especially when we don't have any proof a crime actually occurred.”

Joe showed Graham out of the family room. “So what's the prognosis?” he asked quietly once they were out of Annie's hearing. “Do you really think she'll make it, or were you just saying that for her benefit?”

“I think she'll be okay. It's lucky you found her when you did before she went into full-fledged seizures. I'll keep her snookered for a couple days until the toxin works its way out of her system but I don't anticipate any lasting effects.”

“And you're sure it's slug bait?”

Graham nodded regretfully. “I wish I could say it was something else, something that just imitates all the symptoms. Maybe I'll find something else when I run the tests, but I doubt it. I hate the idea that somebody might have done this to her on purpose.”

He shrugged into his coat. “Of course, there's always
a possibility she found a stash somewhere on one of the neighbors' places, but I really doubt it. Like I said, it's pretty rare around here.”

After Joe said goodbye to the vet, he returned to the family room to find Annie in the same position, hovering protectively over the sedated animal. She looked up when he came into the room and he frowned when he saw how pale and frightened she looked.

Still, she forced a smile. “I really appreciate all the help you've given me.” Her voice had clear dismissal in it. “I think I have everything under control now so you can go on back to the cottage and get some sleep.”

He crossed his arms across his chest. “Save it, Annie. I'm not going anywhere.”

“You need some rest.”

“And you don't?”

That soft cupid's bow of a mouth tightened. “Go home, Joe.”

“I'm staying. We can take turns. One of us can watch over her while the other one sleeps.”

“You don't have to do that. I can take care of her.”

He started to argue, then he saw the defeated exhaustion in the droop of her shoulders and the fine lines bracketing her mouth, and he decided to take another route.

“I want to help,” he answered. “If you won't accept it for yourself, at least take it for Dolly. You're not going to do her any good if you're completely worn out.”

“You've done enough. You already gave up your whole evening to help me and I want you to know I sincerely appreciate it. But I can't keep turning to you every time something goes wrong in my life.”

He would give anything he had to fix things so noth
ing else ever went wrong in her life. Since he didn't have that kind of power—and she wouldn't have let him use it, even if he had—he focused on what he
could
do.

“Not every time,” he agreed quietly. “Just tonight.”

She opened her mouth, probably gearing up for more arguments, but whatever she planned to say was lost amid a giant yawn she tried unsuccessfully to hide.

Joe pressed his point. “You're exhausted and even though you might want to, you just can't stay up all night with her. It wouldn't be good for either one of you. Besides, Dolly's completely out of it. She won't be waking up any time soon and she won't even know either one of us is here.”

He pointed toward the couch. “I'll take the first watch. Why don't you stretch out and try to get some rest?”

“I couldn't possibly sleep.”

“Try. For me.”

She sent him a sidelong look and he could tell she was wondering how hard he would fight her on this, then she sighed. “I'll lie down because I know you'll hound me about it all night if I don't. But I can tell you right now, I'm not going to nod off.”

Ten minutes later, she was as out of it as Dolly. He watched her for a long time, the rise and fall of her chest and the way her lips parted slightly with every breath she took.

She looked delicate, ethereal, with milky-white skin and her fine-boned features, and he wished again that things might have turned out differently between them.

If only he hadn't run away from her all those years ago. If only he had stayed and fought for what he didn't even dare admit to himself he wanted instead of letting
all the vast differences he saw between them chase him away.

Now it was too late. Much, much too late.

He knew he had nothing to offer her back then—she was the heiress to a vast, wealthy cattle ranch and he was the son of a drunk bully who was only able to support the family he menaced by the skin of his teeth and the benevolence of his employer.

And what had changed in the past thirteen years? Now she was the
owner
of that cattle ranch and he was the owner of a prison record and precious little else, other than a pickup truck he still had fourteen payments on.

By necessity, he had put his feelings for her away when he came back to Madison Valley, had shoved them way down deep in the recesses of his heart. What else could he do? She had married his brother—his
brother,
of all people—and had given birth to two children.

But sometimes his feelings emerged. Sometimes they bubbled up like boiling water, until they were a hot, heavy ache in his chest. Guilt and love and betrayal all wrapped up in one messy package.

He rubbed at the ache, willing it to subside. Annie could never be his. And if it took moving six hundred miles away to get that through his thick skull, that's what he would have to do.

 

She awoke an hour before dawn.

Disoriented, she blinked a few times, trying to figure out why she would have been stupid enough to fall asleep on the couch again instead of in her own comfortable bed upstairs.

Her neck had a nasty kink and the room was cold.
She twisted her neck back and forth trying to ease the tightness, then looked toward the woodstove to check the status of the fire.

The sight she found there brought all the events of the previous night rushing back. Joe was sprawled out in the recliner, eyes closed and one hand on the fur of Dolly's back.

He probably dozed off petting her, she thought with a small, tender smile.

The crisis seemed to be over. Dolly slept peacefully, her breathing deep and even. To reassure herself, Annie crossed the room and knelt beside the little collie, moving as slowly and quietly as she could so she didn't wake either the man or the dog.

She ran a quiet hand over Dolly's fur. The dog snuffled in her sleep but didn't awaken. All seemed to be fine, as far as she could tell. Dolly's sides expanded and contracted evenly with each breath, with no sign at all of convulsions.

Annie whispered a prayer of gratitude, fighting the urge to bury her face in Dolly's fur. What would she have done if they hadn't found her in time? If she hadn't gone into the tack room or if Joe hadn't been there to keep her calm or if Graham hadn't been able to come so quickly to sedate her and lessen the seizure's effects?

Annie didn't even want to think about it. She knew Dolly wouldn't be around forever but she couldn't bear the idea that the dog had suffered—and might have died—because of such a vicious, unconscionable act.

Poison.

She shivered at the thought. Graham had to be wrong. He
had
to be. Who would possibly want to poison an innocent dog? What could anyone hope to gain?

It was exactly the kind of thing Charlie would have
done to teach her one of his innumerable lessons. But Charlie was gone, so it had to be someone else. Maybe the same person who had taken that photograph and slipped it under her door.

Dolly's poisoning forced her to rethink her conclusion that the photo was an isolated event, a prank. A chill climbed up her spine again. Were the two incidents related? She couldn't ignore the possibility, not now.

But what could anybody hope to gain, other then terrorizing her? It was a sobering thought, that she might have enemies somewhere out there she wasn't even aware of.

Joe made a low noise in his sleep and she shifted her gaze to him, welcoming the diversion from the ugliness of her thoughts.

He looked so different in sleep, more like the quiet boy she had loved as a child than the hard, forbidding man he had become.

He had taken off his boots some time in the night and he looked strangely vulnerable in his thick wool socks. The right one had a little hole in the toe and she wished she could think of some way to offer to fix it without offending him.

She didn't have the chance to watch him in this kind of unguarded moment very often. After a furtive glance under her eyelashes to make sure he still slept soundly, she decided to allow herself this one harmless indulgence.

And it was definitely an indulgence. Like eating a whole box of chocolates by herself or taking Rio up the High Lonesome trail on a summer day just for the sheer joy of it.

This, though. This was worlds better than any of her other guilty pleasures. Joe was raw, masculine beauty,
all chiseled features and hard-hewn man, and she loved looking at him.

She wasn't going to have many more opportunities like this. The days seemed to be slipping away from her—he would be taking his new job in less than five weeks now.