Kitabı oku: «A Cold Creek Noel»

Chapter One

“Come on, Luke. Come on, buddy. Hang in there.”

Her wipers beat back the sleet and snow as Caidy Bowman drove through the streets of Pine Gulch, Idaho, on a stormy December afternoon. Only a few inches had fallen but the roads were still dangerous, slick as spit. For only a moment, she risked lifting one hand off the steering wheel of her truck and patting the furry shape whimpering on the seat beside her.

“We’re almost there. We’ll get you fixed up, I swear it. Just hang on, bud. A few more minutes. That’s all.”

The young border collie looked at her with a trust she didn’t deserve in his black eyes and she frowned, her guilt as bitter and salty as the solution the snowplows had put down on the roads.

Luke’s injuries were her fault. She should have been watching him. She knew the half-grown pup had a curious streak a mile wide—and a tendency not to listen to her when he had an itch to investigate something.

She was working on that obedience issue and they had made good strides the past few weeks, but one moment of inattention could be disastrous, as the past hour had amply demonstrated. She didn’t know if it was arrogance on her part, thinking her training of him was enough, or just irresponsibility. Either way, she should have kept him far away from Festus’s pen. The bull was ornery as a rattlesnake on a hot skillet and didn’t take kindly to curious young border collies nosing around his turf.

Alerted by Luke’s barking and then the bull’s angry snort, she had raced to old Festus’s pen just in time to watch Luke jig the wrong way and the bull stomp down hard on his haunches with a sickening crunch of bone.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and she cursed under her breath as the last light before the vet’s office turned yellow when she was still too far away to gun through it. She was almost tempted to keep going. Even if she were nabbed for running a red light by Pine Gulch’s finest, she could probably talk her way out of a ticket, considering her brother was the police chief and would certainly understand this was an emergency. If she were pulled over, though, it would mean an inevitable delay and she just didn’t have time for that.

The light finally changed and she took off fast, the back tires fishtailing on the icy road. She would just have to trust the salt bags she carried for traction in the bed of the pickup would do the job. Even the four-wheel drive of the truck was useless against black ice.

Finally, she reached the small square building that held the Pine Gulch Veterinary Clinic and pulled the pickup to the side doors where she knew it was only a short transfer inside to the treatment area.

She briefly considered carrying him in by herself, but it had taken the careful efforts of both her and her brother Ridge to slide a blanket under Luke and lift him into the seat of her pickup. They could bring out the stretcher and cart, she decided.

She rubbed Luke’s white neck. “I’m going to go get some help, okay? You just hold tight.”

He made a small whimper of pain and she bit down hard on her lip as her insides clenched with fear. She loved the little guy, even if he was nosy as a crow and even smarter, which was probably why his stubbornness was such a frustration.

He trusted her to take care of him and she refused to let him die.

She hurried to the front door, barely noticing the wind-driven sleet that gouged at her even under her Stetson.

Warm air washed over her when she opened the door, familiar with the scent of animals and antiseptic mixed in a stomach-churning sort of way with new paint.

“Hey, Caidy.” A woman in green scrubs rushed to the door. “You made good time from the River Bow.”

“Hi, Joni. I may have broken a few traffic laws, but this is an emergency.”

“After you called, I warned Ben you were on your way and what the situation was. He’s been getting ready for you. I’ll let him know you’ve arrived.”

Caidy waited, feeling the weight of each second ticking away. The new vet had only been in town a few weeks and already he had made changes to the clinic. Maybe she was just being contrary, but she had liked things better when Doc Harris ran the place. The whole reception area looked different. The cheerful yellow walls had been painted over with a boring white and the weathered, comfortable, old eighties-era couch and chairs were gone, replaced by modern benches covered in a slate vinyl that probably deflected anything a veterinarian’s patients could leak on it. A display of Christmas gifts appropriate for pets, including a massive stocking filled to the top with toys and a giant rawhide bone that looked as if it came from a dinosaur, hung in one corner.

Most significant, the reception area used to sit out in the open but it was now stuck behind a solid half wall topped with a glass partition.

It made sense to modernize from an efficiency point of view, but she had found the comfortably worn look of the office before more appealing.

Not that she cared about any of that right now, with Luke lying out in her truck, cold and hurt and probably afraid.

She shifted impatiently. Where was the man? Trimming his blasted nails? Only a few moments had passed but every second delay was too much. Just when she was about call out to Joni to see what was taking so long, the door into the treatment area opened and the new vet appeared.

“Where’s the dog?” he asked abruptly, and she had only a vague impression of a frowning dark-haired man in blue scrubs.

“Still out in my truck.”

He narrowed his gaze. “Why? I can’t treat him out there.”

She wanted to take that giant rawhide bone out of that stocking and bean him with it. “Yes, I’m aware of that,” she said, fighting down her frustration. “I didn’t want to move him. I’m afraid something might be broken.”

“I thought he was gored.”

She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she had said in that frantic call to let Joni know she was on her way.

“He did end up on the business end of a bull at some point. I’m not sure if that was before or after that bull stepped on him.”

His mouth tightened. “A young dog has no business running wild in the same vicinity as a dangerous bull.”

His criticism stung far too close to her own guilt for comfort. “We’re a working ranch at the River Bow, Dr. Caldwell. Accidents like this can happen.”

“They shouldn’t,” he snapped before turning around and heading back through the treatment area. She followed him, heartily wishing for Doc Harris right now. The grizzled old vet had taken care of every dog she had ever owned, from her very first border collie and best friend, Sadie, whom she still had.

Doc Harris was her friend and mentor. If he had been here, he would have wrapped her in a warm hug that smelled of liniment and cherry Life Savers and promised her everything would be all right.

Dr. Ben Caldwell was nothing like Dr. Harris. He was abrasive and arrogant and she already heartily disliked him.

His eyes narrowed with surprise and displeasure when he saw she had followed him from the waiting room to the clinic area.

“This way is quicker,” she explained. “I’m parked by the side door. I thought it would be easier to transport him on the stretcher from there.”

He didn’t say anything, only charged through the side door she indicated. She trotted after him, wondering how the Pine Gulch animal kingdom would get along without the kindness and compassion Dr. Harris had been renowned for.

Without waiting for her, he opened the door of the truck. As she watched, it was as if a different man had suddenly taken over. His harsh, set features seemed to ease and even the stiff set of his shoulders relaxed.

“Hello there,” he crooned from the open vehicle door to the dog. “You’ve got yourself into a mess, haven’t you?”

Even through his pain, Luke responded to the gentle-sounding stranger by trying hard to wag his tail. There was no room for both of them on the passenger side, so she went around to the driver’s side and opened that door, intent on helping to lift the dog from there. By the time she made it that short distance, Dr. Caldwell had already slipped a transfer sheet under the dog and was gripping the edges.

His hands were big, she noticed, with a little light area of skin where a wedding ring once had been.

She knew a little about him from the gossip around town. It was hard to miss it when he was currently staying at the Cold Creek Inn—owned and operated by her sister-in-law Laura, married to Caidy’s brother Taft.

Though Laura usually didn’t gossip about her guests, over dinner last week her other brother, Trace—who made it his business as police chief to find out about everyone moving into Pine Gulch—had interrogated her so skillfully, Laura probably didn’t realize what she had revealed.

From that conversation, Caidy had learned Ben Caldwell had two children, a girl and a boy, ages nine and five, respectively, and he had been a widower for two years.

Why on earth he had suddenly pulled up stakes to settle in a quiet town like Pine Gulch was a mystery to everyone. In her experience, people who came to this little corner of Idaho in the shadow of the Tetons were either looking for something or running away.

None of that was her business, she reminded herself. The only thing she cared about was the way he treated her dogs. Judging by how carefully he moved his hands over Luke’s injuries, he appeared competent and even kind, at least to animals—something she generally considered a far more important character indicator than how a man 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 dinner, kids. Your dad is busy fixing an injured dog and he’s going to be a while. We’ll just go catch some dinner and then head back to the hotel for homework and bed.”

“You’re staying at the Cold Creek Inn, aren’t you?” Caidy asked.

The other woman looked a bit wary as she nodded. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”

“I’m Caidy Bowman. My sister-in-law Laura runs the inn.”

“You’re Chief Bowman’s sister?” There was a definite warmth in the woman’s voice now, Caidy noticed wryly. Her charmer of a brother often had that effect on those of the female persuasion, no matter their age.

“I am. Both Chief Bowmans.” With one brother who was the police chief and the other who headed up the fire department, not much exciting happened in town without someone in her family being in the thick of it.

“How nice to meet you. I’m Anne Michaels. I’m Dr. Caldwell’s housekeeper. Or I will be when he finally gets into his house. With the maids at the inn cleaning our rooms for us, there’s not much for me to do in that department. Right now I’m just the nanny, I suppose.”

“Oh?”

The woman apparently didn’t need any more encouragement than that simple syllable. “Dr. Caldwell is building a house on Cold Creek Road. He was supposed to close on it last week, but the contractor ran into some problems and here we are, still staying at the inn. Which is lovely, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still a hotel. After three weeks, all of us are a little tired of it. And now it looks like we’ll be there until after the New Year. Christmas in a hotel. Can you imagine such a thing?”

Maybe that explained the man’s grouchiness. She felt a little pang of sympathy, then she remembered how he had basically shoved her out of the treatment area. No, he was probably born with that temperament. He and Festus would get along just fine.

“It must be very frustrating for all of you.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Two children in a hotel, even a couple of rooms, for all those weeks is just too much. They need space to run. All children do. Why, in San Jose, the children had a huge backyard, complete with a pool and a swing set that rivaled the equipment at the nearest park.”

“Is that where you’re from, then? California?”

Anne Michaels nodded and Caidy thought she saw a note of wistfulness in the woman’s eyes that didn’t bode well for the chances of Dr. Caldwell’s housekeeper-slash-nanny sticking around in Pine Gulch.

Anne watched the children, who were paying them no heed as they played a game on an electronic device Ava had pulled out of her backpack.

“Yes. I’m from California, born and bred. Not Dr. Caldwell. He’s from back East. Chicago way. But he left everything without a backward look to head west for veterinary school at UC-Davis and that’s where he met the late Mrs. Caldwell. They hired me to help out around the house when she was pregnant with little Jack there and I’ve been with them ever since. Those poor children needed me more than ever after their mother died. Dr. Caldwell too. That was a terrible time, I tell you.”

“I’m sure.”

“When he decided to move here to Idaho, he gave me the option of leaving his employment with a glowing recommendation, but I just couldn’t do it. I love those children, you know?”

Caidy could relate. She loved her niece Destry as fiercely as if the girl were her own. Stepping in to help raise her after her mother walked out on Ridge and their daughter had created a powerful bond between them as unshakable as the Tetons.

“I’m sure you do.”

Anne Michaels gave a rueful shake of her head. “Look at me, going on to a perfect stranger. Staying at that hotel all these weeks is making me batty!”

“Perhaps you could find a temporary rental situation until the house is finished,” she suggested.

“That’s what I wanted to do but Ben doesn’t think we can find anyone willing to rent us a place for only a few weeks, especially over the holidays.”

Caidy thought of the foreman’s cottage, empty for the past six months since the young married couple Ridge had hired to help around the ranch had moved on to take a job at a Texas ranch.

It was furnished with three bedrooms and would probably fit the Caldwells’ needs perfectly, but she was hesitant to mention it. She didn’t like the man. Why on earth would she want him living only a quarter mile away?

“I could ask around for you if you’d like. We have a few vacation rentals in town that might be available. At least it might give you a little breathing space over the holidays until the house is finished.”

“How kind you are!” Mrs. Michaels exclaimed.

A fine guilt pinched at her. If she were truly kind, she would immediately offer the foreman’s cottage.

“Everyone here in Pine Gulch has been so nice and welcoming to us,” the woman went on.

“I hope you feel at home here.”

Again that wistfulness drifted across the woman’s features like an autumn leaf tossed by the breeze, but she blinked it away. “I’m guessing the dog Dr. Caldwell is working on back there is yours, then.”

Caidy nodded. “He had a run-in with a bull. When you pit a forty-pound dog against a ton of beef, the bull usually wins.”

She should be back there with him. Darn it. If she were better at handling confrontations, she would have told Dr. Arrogant that she wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, she was sitting out here fretting.

“He’s a wonderful veterinarian, my dear. I’m sure your pet will be better before you know it.”

The border collies at the River Bow Ranch weren’t exactly pets—they were a vital part of the workload. Except for Sadie, anyway, who was too old to work the cattle anymore. She didn’t bother to correct the woman, nor did she express any of her own doubts about the new veterinarian’s competence.

“I’m hungry, Mrs. Michaels. When are we going to eat?” Bored with the game apparently, Jack had wandered back to them.

“I think your father is going to be busy for a while yet. Why don’t you and Ava and I go find something? Perhaps dinner at the café tonight would be fun and we can pick something up for your father for later.”

“Can I have one of the sweet rolls?” he asked, his eyes lighting up as if it were already Christmas morning.

The housekeeper laughed. “We’ll have to see about that. I’d say the café’s business in sweet rolls has tripled since we came to town, thanks to you alone.”

“They are delish,” Caidy agreed, smiling at the very cute boy.

Mrs. Michaels rose to her feet with a creak and a pop of some joint. “It was lovely to meet you, Caidy Bowman.”

“I’m happy to meet you too. And I’ll keep my eye out for a suitable vacation rental.”

“You’ll need to take that up with Dr. Caldwell, but thank you.”

The woman seemed to be efficient, Caidy thought as she watched her herd the children out the door.

The reception room seemed even more bleak and colorless after the trio left. Though it was just past six, the night was already dark on this, one of the shortest days of the year. Caidy fidgeted, leafing aimlessly through her magazine for a few moments longer, then finally closed it with a rustle of pages and tossed it back onto the pile.

Darn it. That was her dog back there. She couldn’t sit out here doing nothing. At the very least she deserved to know what was going on. She gathered her courage, took a deep breath and pushed through the door.