A Cold Creek Noel. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ treated other people.

      “Okay, Luke. Just lie still, there’s a good boy.” He spoke in a low, calm voice. “We’re going to move you now. Easy. Easy.”

      He handed the stretcher across the cab to her and then reached for the transfer sheet. “I’m going to lift him slightly and then you can slide the board under him. Slowly. Yes. That’s it.”

      She had plenty of experience transferring injured animals. Years of experience. It bothered her to be treated as if she didn’t know the first thing about this kind of emergency care, but now didn’t seem the time to correct him.

      Together they carried the stretcher into the emergency treatment room and set the dog gingerly down on the exam table.

      She didn’t like the pain in Luke’s eyes. It reminded her a lot of how Lucky, her brother Taft’s little beagle cross, had looked right after the car accident that had nearly killed him.

      Now Lucky was happy as a pig in clover, she reminded herself. He lived with Taft and Laura and their two children at Taft’s house near the mouth of Cold Creek Canyon and thought he ruled the universe. If Lucky could survive his brush with death, she couldn’t see any reason for Luke to do otherwise.

      “That’s a nasty puncture wound. At least an inch or two deep. I’m surprised it’s not deeper.”

      That could be because she had managed to pull Luke to safety before Festus could finish taking his bad mood out on a helpless dog.

      “What about the leg? Can you save it?”

      “I’m going to have to x-ray before I can answer that. How far are you prepared to go for his care?”

      It took her a moment to realize what he was asking in his blunt way. A difficult part of life as a vet was the knowledge that, although a vet might have the power to treat an animal successfully, sometimes the owner’s ability—or willingness, for that matter—to pay was the ultimate decision maker.

      “Whatever is necessary,” she answered stiffly. “I don’t care about the cost. Just do what you have to do.”

      He nodded, his attention still on her dog, and she wanted to think his hard expression thawed slightly, like a tiny crackle of ice on the edge of a much deeper lake.

      “Regardless of what the X-ray shows, his treatment is going to take a few hours. You can go. Leave your number with Joni and I’ll have her call you when I know more.”

      “No. I’ll wait.”

      That surprise in his blue eyes annoyed the heck out of her. Did he think she would just abandon her dog here with a stranger for a couple of hours while she went off to have her hair done?

      “Your choice.”

      “I can help you back here. I’ve...had some training and I often helped Doc Harris. I actually worked here when I was a teenager.”

      If her life had gone a little more according to plan, she might have been the one taking over Doc Harris’s clinic, though she hoped she wouldn’t be as surly and unlikable as this new veterinarian.

      “That won’t be necessary.” Dr. Caldwell dismissed all her hopes and dreams and volunteer work at the clinic as if they meant nothing. “Joni and I can handle it. If you insist on waiting, you can go ahead and have a seat in the waiting room.”

      What a jerk. She could push the matter. She was paying for the treatment here, after all. If she wanted to stay with her dog, there was nothing Dr. Ben No-Bedside-Manner Caldwell could do about it. But she didn’t want to waste time and possibly jeopardize Luke’s treatment.

      “Fine,” she muttered. She turned and pushed through the doors into the waiting room, seething with frustration.

      After quickly sending a message to Ridge updating him on the situation and reminding her brother he would have to pick his daughter, Destry, up from the bus stop, she plopped onto one of the uncomfortable gray benches and grabbed a magazine off the side table.

      She was leafing through it, barely even registering the headlines in her worry over her dog, when the bells on the door chimed and a little boy of about five burst through, followed a little more slowly by an older girl.

      “Daaad! We’re here!”

      “Hush.” A round, cheerful-looking woman who looked to be in her early sixties followed more slowly. “You know better than that, young man. Your father might be in the middle of a procedure.”

      “Can I go back and find him?” the girl asked.

      “Because Joni isn’t out here either, they must both be busy. He won’t want to be bothered. You two sit down here and I’ll go back to let him know we’re here.”

      “I could go,” the girl said a little sulkily, but she plopped onto the bench across from Caidy. Like father, like daughter, she thought. This was obviously the new vet’s family, and his daughter, at least, seemed to share more than blue eyes with her father.

      “Sit down,” the girl ordered her brother. The boy didn’t quite stick his tongue out at his sister, but it was a close one. Instead, he ignored her—probably a much worse insult, if Caidy remembered her own childhood with three pesky brothers—and wandered over to stand directly in front of Caidy.

      The little boy had a widow’s peak in his brown hair and huge dark-lashed blue eyes. A Caldwell trait, apparently.

      “Hi.” He beamed at her. “I’m Jack Caldwell. My sister’s name is Ava. Who are you?”

      “My name is Caidy,” she answered.

      “My dad’s a dog doctor.”

      “Not just dogs,” the girl corrected. “He’s also a cat doctor. And sometimes even horses and cows.”

      “I know,” Caidy answered. “That’s why I’m here.”

      “Is your dog sick?” Jack asked her.

      “In a way. He was hurt on our ranch. Your dad is working on him now.”

      “He’s really good,” the girl said with obvious pride. “I bet your dog will be just fine.”

      “I hope so.”

      “Our dog was hit by a car once and my dad fixed him and now he’s all better,” Jack said. “Well, except he only has three legs. His name is Tri. My dad says it’s ’cause he always tries hard, even though he only has three legs.”

      Despite her worry, she managed a smile, more than a little charmed by the boy—and by the idea of the taciturn veterinarian showing any hint of sweetness.

      “Tri means three,” Ava informed her in a haughty sort of tone. “You know, like a tricycle has three wheels.”

      “Good to know.”

      Before the children could say anything else, the older woman came back through the door leading out of the treatment room, her features set in a rueful smile.

      “Looks like we’re on our own for СКАЧАТЬ