My gaze drifts there anyway.
From where I’m sitting, I have a perfect view of the paddocks set up for the Highland Games. And of the auburn-haired woman leaning over a horse inside one of the enclosures.
She isn’t alone.
Jamie MacNeil—tall, broad-shouldered, annoyingly comfortable in his own skin—is standing beside her. They work together with an easy synchronization that twists my stomach into knots.
Don’t look.
It’s none of your business.
I drag my eyes away and grab my consultation logbook, but concentrating is impossible.
The morning passes in a blur of mechanical appointments. I feel like a medical robot: diagnosis, treatment, next patient.
Meanwhile, my brain remains stuck a hundred yards away near the paddocks where Mary and Jamie continue their little reunion tour.
“Dr. McLeod?”
I jerk upright.
A young woman is holding out her bandaged wrist.
“Sorry,” I mutter, forcing myself to focus. “Let me see.”
Around noon, Ragnar arrives.
The authoritarian, temperamental sheep who hates everyone except me—for reasons I still don’t understand—crosses theGames grounds like he owns the entire estate, completely ignores three children trying to pet him, and marches directly to my medical tent.
Then he stares at me.
I stare back.
“What are you doing here?” I ask quietly.
As if I didn’t already have enough issues without adding talks to sheep to the list directly beneath grumpy.
Ragnar, unsurprisingly, does not answer.
He simply settles at my feet beside my chair and refuses to move.
“You know I’m busy, right? People require medical attention.”
The sheep gives me a look that clearly says: I do not care.
And he stays there, pressed against me like a stubborn wool-covered shadow.
It’s ridiculous.
Embarrassing.
And strangely… comforting?
No.
It’s just weird.
The next patient, a teenage boy with a mild sprain, walks into the tent, sees Ragnar, and stops dead.
