He worked quickly, adjusting the foal’s position, clearing her airway, then inserting a needle between her ribs to allow air trapped around the lung to escape. He held his finger just above the end of the hollow needle, monitoring the flow of air. The barn was cold—Montana cold, the kind that crept through your jacket and settled in your bones—but Dillon barely registered it. When he was working, the world narrowed to the animal in front of him and nothing else existed.
Lexi hated that about me?—
He pushed the thought away and focused on the foal. After several tense minutes, air finally stopped coming out of the needle, and the filly’s breathing deepened and steadied. She blinked up at him with huge, dark eyes and made a sound halfway between a sigh and a whimper. He removed the needle gently.
“There you go,” he murmured. “That’s better.”
He stayed on his knees beside her for another fifteen minutes, monitoring her vitals, watching the rise and fall of her ribs, making sure the lung was holding. When he was finally satisfied, he sat back on his heels and let out a long breath.
“She’s going to be fine,” he told Tom. “Keep her warm, make sure she nurses within the next hour, and call me if anything changes. I’ll come back tomorrow to check on her.”
Tom’s face split into a grin that knocked ten years off him. “What do I owe you?”
“We’ll worry about that later.” Dillon knew Tom was having a thin year. The hay crop had been poor, and feed prices were way up. A vet bill right now likely meant making a choice between electricity and running water. “Just call me if anything seems off.”
“Doc, you gotta let me pay you something?—”
“Later, Tom.” He clapped the old man on the shoulder. “Get some sleep.”
He packed his kit in his truck and sat behind the wheel for a moment, letting the heater blast against his cold hands. Three-forty-seven in the morning. He’d been out here since midnight when Tom’s call had pulled him out of a dead sleep.
This was his life. Phone calls in the dark. Frozen barns. Animals that needed him at the worst possible hours. The quiet drive home afterward, when the adrenaline drained away and the silence around him felt lonely and exhausting.
His headlights cut through the blackness of the night. A light snow was falling, dusting the road with fine white powder that sparkled in his high beams.
Usually his mind sifted through his current patients, cataloguing next steps in their care as he drove home to his cold bed and overdue sleep. Tonight, though, his mind went somewhere it had no business going.
You must be Tessa.
He’d known who she was the moment he saw her. Fern had described her daughter-in-law often enough, always with a mixture of exasperation and grudging respect. “She’s got style, I’ll give her that. Could freeze a man at fifty paces with one of those looks of hers. And the girl dresses like she’s going to a magazine shoot.”
Fern hadn’t been wrong. Tessa had stood there in that fellowship hall looking like she’d stepped out of a catalog for expensive, tasteful things regular people couldn’t afford. Pearls. Heels. Hair that probably cost more per month than he spent on diesel.
And those eyes. Sharp. Guarded. The color of good whiskey and twice as likely to burn.
She’s not your type. She’s nobody’s type around here. She’s?—
Lexi.
The name landed in his chest like a stone dropped down a deep well.
He’d been down this road before. Fallen for a beautiful woman with money and polish and expectations he could never meet. He’d married her. Watched her grow restless with his irregular hours, job-first priorities, and stubborn refusal to be anything other than what he was.
He’d listened to that woman tell him, on her way out the door with her suitcases and her lawyer’s card, that he was so obsessed with taking care of animals he had nothing left inside him for taking care of a woman.
He’d believed her then. Still did, most days.
Which was why the fact that he was thinking about Tessa at all annoyed him considerably. He’d been rude to her. He knew that. He’d seen her standing there with her perfect manicure and polished smile and every alarm bell in his body had gone off. He’d done what he always did when he felt cornered—he’d gotten blunt. Borderline rude.
Could’ve fooled me.
Smooth, Dillon. Real smooth.
But she’d given as good as she got. Better, actually. That line about learning animal medicine herself before she’d call him? He’d had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud.
She was sharp. He’d give her that. Fern had always said Tessa was scary smart, and Fern wasn’t easily impressed.
None of which matters, because she’s exactly the kind of woman you have no business thinking about.
