Bittersweet. Laura Browning

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      As he crossed the ring to Wynter and Nelson, he stroked the mare’s neck and lifted his eyes to catch Anna Barlow standing in the shade outside the barn. Had she watched the entire time? Even from this distance, tension vibrated in every line of her body. Her hands were shoved deep into the pockets of her coveralls until her shoulders appeared almost hunched, and her blue eyes dominated her heart-shaped face. Their gazes locked for an instant, but in the next moment she hurried away.

      Chris frowned. What was with that? She acted as if she’d seen a ghost. He shook his head and jumped to the ground. A groom came to take the mare and untack her. Chris dismissed Anna from his thoughts and turned his attention to Nelson and Wynter.

      “How much?”

      “Fifty.” Wynter priced her, as Nelson stood next to her.

      “A little steep for a green, untested mare,” Chris observed.

      Wynter shrugged. “That’s what the owner wants, and Thomas says he’s not sure she’ll budge. He gets the feeling she’s reluctant to sell, even though she knows it’s for the best.”

      As the mare retreated, Chris pursed his lips. “Have the vet check her. I want x-rays and everything. If she passes, I’ll buy her.”

      Wynter grinned and glanced at her husband’s profile. “I told Nelson you’d like her.”

      Chris laughed. “Smart woman. That must be why he married you.”

      “Oh no,” Wynter said, “I’m sure the scads of money I brought into our relationship was the real reason.”

      They laughed. Wynter had been homeless and trying to gain admission to Duke on scholarships and loans when Nelson met her.

      At the other end of the aisle, Anna squatted with a clipboard, putting in information and sketching the horse they were examining before they drew blood to ship off to the lab for a Coggins test.

      “She sure is a tiny thing,” Wynter remarked as they walked down the aisle. “You say you already met her?”

      Chris scowled. “She stitched Bart after that groom let him injure himself.”

      Anna glanced in their direction before turning her attention to her work. She did look pale. She was working too hard. Between running around in the heat doing barn calls and trying to nurse and care for a baby by herself, she would make herself sick. When would she realize there was no such thing as Superwoman? By the time they drew parallel to Anna, she returned his glare with one of her own, her delicate jaw clenching and letting him know she was raring to fight if he just said the word. Irritating woman!

      “Jim,” Wynter inquired, apparently choosing to ignore the undercurrents Chris knew she felt swirling around them, “I know you’ve got a lot on your plate today, but can you fit in a vet check on the gray mare that came in? We need films too.”

      “Anna? You up for it?” Jim said in a quiet tone, looking over the top of the horse’s neck.

      Something like pain flashed across her face before she ducked her head. When she lifted her face, her expression was blank.

      “Sure, Jim. It’s not a problem.”

      Chris tossed the conversation around in his head as he drove to Fincastle later on. Something was going on with Anna Barlow, and it puzzled him. There was the feeling he kept getting as well, as if he should know her from somewhere and couldn’t quite place her. Chris hated mysteries.

      Thinking she might have been on some of the show circuits a few years ago, he went through back issues of The Journal. She was small enough and young enough that she might have been showing ponies on the circuit, but everything he checked came up blank. He saw the name Barlow mentioned, but only as a couple references to a Preston Barlow-Barrett at some function or another, but there were never any pictures. Preston Barrett…hadn’t he met her somewhere? Of course he’d heard of the family. Who hadn’t? They were in the same league as Nelson, only the Barretts’ fortune had been built on newspapers not computers. He shook his head at that connection. Beside the difference in the names, he remembered hearing the whole family was built on the mold of Nordic gods: tall, blond, lean and mean. Hardly a description of Anna Barlow. Maybe the mean part.

      He would ask her tomorrow. He had scheduled a recheck for his stallion to evaluate how he was healing. The worst she could do was snap his head off, which she’d already done. But he didn’t get the chance. When he arrived at the barn, Jim Douglas was exiting the truck.

      “Hey, Jim,” Chris commented, “I was expecting your new vet, Dr. Barlow.”

      “She got called to an emergency on the other side of the county. One of the local hog farmers having some problems with a prize boar in this heat.”

      Chris raised his eyebrows and tried to hide a grin. Somehow he had a hard time picturing tiny Anna Barlow dealing with an overheated boar. The whole idea still had him grinning as he led the way to Bart’s stall. The stallion pinned his ears and shook his head at them.

      “Pleasant as ever, I see,” Jim remarked.

      “I’ll get him for you.”

      The stallion continued to misbehave until the veterinarian suggested, “Let me take the edge off him a bit. I’d like him to be still for me to get a good look at the incision to make sure everything’s still holding together before we pull those stitches.”

      Chris nodded, but he thought back to how Anna had calmed the stallion and stood on that damn mounting block in complete faith the horse would behave while she’d pushed and prodded at his wound. The even more amazing thing was the stallion had never put a foot wrong the whole time.

      “She is an amazing vet,” Jim said as much to himself as to Chris, almost as if he had been privy to his thoughts. “This scar is worthy of a plastic surgeon. A few months, and you won’t even be able to tell it’s there.”

      “Mm.”

      “She was top of her class at Penn State,” Jim continued, “and had a great offer at an equine-only practice in Virginia, near DC, but she refused it.”

      “Really?” Chris kept his tone neutral, but he was so curious to find out more about Anna he would take any tidbits offered.

      The vet shrugged. “Their loss, our gain.” He checked the area around the wound for any signs of swelling or infection as he added, “Of course, there might have been a lot more offers if she hadn’t been pregnant as she was interviewing. There was also one professor who was not high on her, claimed she was a dilettante with a bad work ethic, but she’s busted her ass for us.”

      “I see.” It was time to change the subject. As much as he wanted to know more, it somehow felt underhanded, as though he was sneaking around behind her back instead of doing the logical thing by asking her. “How did the mare do on the vet check?” he asked to change gears.

      “Passed. Flying colors. I’m sure Wynter will call you.”

      She did, around lunchtime, so Chris hooked the two-horse trailer to go to Pheasant Run. About halfway, he stopped at a country store to grab a bottle of water. As he came back, Anna, or someone who appeared to be her, was headed inside.

      Chris started to say something sarcastic СКАЧАТЬ