The Wrangler's Last Chance. Jessica Keller

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       Chapter One

      Wing Crosby wasn’t breathing.

      Shannon Jarrett had charged into the water and scooped out her beloved pet goose when she spotted him floating upside down in the small pond in front of the staff bunkhouses at Red Dog Ranch. Now she dropped to her knees on the damp ground and ran her fingers down the goose’s body. His little white-feathered head lolled to the side. His normally bright blue gaze was completely lidded.

      “No. Wing. Please, don’t do this.” Her fingers trembled as she tried to feel for a heartbeat near his keel bone, but her fingers were shaking too much. She couldn’t feel anything.

      “Please don’t die.” She croaked out the words. “I can’t lose you.”

      Not Wing. Not the little goose she had raised.

       Please don’t take him.

      After everything she had been through the past year, she couldn’t stand another loss. She wasn’t certain she could survive another heartbreak.

      Hot tears blinded her for a second.

      Was it possible to perform CPR on a goose? She knew their bones were different, hollow. If his heart wasn’t beating, could she give him chest compressions without shattering his sternum? She had no idea. Maybe she would make things far worse.

      Yet another situation in her life she would handle entirely wrong.

      She had collected a lot of those lately.

      A shiver rattled through her body. Being sopping wet at the end of March was a bad idea, even in Texas. But being cold was the least of her worries right now.

       Move. Do something. Save him.

      Blinking fiercely, she scanned the large ranch where most of her family lived. The ranch house was too far from where she was. Even if her eldest brother, Rhett, was inside, she would never make it to him in time. Not that he would necessarily know what to do anyway; he loved the dogs that hunted waterfowl, not the birds. Her brother Wade and his new wife, Cassidy, lived with their young daughter even farther across the ranch in the house they had recently finished building. Despite the fact that Wade only ever referred to Wing as Thanksgiving Dinner, she knew her twin brother would never hesitate to help her.

      But there was no time.

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