Читать книгу Bittersweet - Laura Browning - Страница 4

Chapter 1

The cellphone on Anna’s hip buzzed. She had turned off the ring in the hope that Becca, nestled in her carseat in the backseat of the pickup, would stay asleep at least for a short while. Days and nights of colic had drained them both. The programmable swing at home wasn’t a luxury but a necessity. Miles of uninterrupted driving making farm calls also seemed to soothe her daughter. Saturday night dinnertime had already come and gone, both hers and Becca’s, and Anna felt the pressure to nurse. She had been about to pull over to feed her when the phone had vibrated against her hip. Not now. Just this once.

“Dr. Barlow,” she murmured into the phone as she slowed the truck and pulled to one side of the secondary road. The clinic answering service secretary was on the line with an emergency farm call. Anna jotted the address and the directions the operator gave her. Still somewhat new to the area, she was learning her way around, so directions were a must. Getting lost on her way to an emergency was not an option. And at this hour on a Saturday evening, no one called a veterinarian for anything routine, but the nature of the emergency wasn’t what made this call different. The owner’s name made her stomach jump with nerves.

“Please let Mr. Stevenson know I’ll be there in five minutes.” Anna hung up, checked there was no traffic and pulled onto the road. She found the first available driveway to turn around and head back the way she had come. She glanced at the address again. Main barn, Fincastle Farm. Of course she had heard of it. Who hadn’t? The farm had been the signature of the Stevenson family for several generations.

She had held hope that Fincastle would never appear on her client list. Naive of her to think she wouldn’t see him. Some sort of veterinary call had been bound to happen sooner or later. Later would have been much better. Never even more so. Maybe she’d luck out and the Mr. Stevenson in this instance would be father rather than son.

Anna swallowed as she turned down the long driveway bordered on each side by tall, white-paneled fences. In the paddocks left and right, high-dollar horses grazed in the glow of the spring moon. Ahead lay a long, pristine white barn. A darker color trimmed the doors and windows. It would be green, she recalled. Forest green, like the curtains around the Fincastle tack stalls at shows. Light blazed from one barn, which must be her destination. Most barns would already be settled for the night.

Okay. She was headed into the lion’s den. Chris Stevenson, the man she so did not want to meet. Anna hoped he wouldn’t be there. Sure, she’d known the possibility of meeting existed when she took the job in Redfield. Let him not be there. Not tonight, when she was tired and needed to nurse Becca to the point that her breasts ached. The show season had started, after all, so he should already be on the road at some of the smaller warm-up shows.

She took a deep breath and let it out. It didn’t matter. She could do this.

After she parked in front of the barn, Anna shoved two more nursing pads inside her bra and muttered a quick prayer she and Becca could wait a while longer. One glance over her shoulder showed her infant daughter still slumbered in the carseat. She rolled down the windows before she got out and checked on the baby one more time. A gentle tug brought Becca’s blanket back to where it belonged. After releasing a soft sigh, Anna straightened away from the truck. She pulled the zipper higher on her cotton coveralls and threw her stethoscope around her neck.

“Dr. Barlow?” someone inquired in a deep, masculine voice.

For an instant, she swayed. That voice. So much for being on the show circuit. Anna stepped around the back of the pickup into the view of the man who had emerged from the lighted doorway of the barn. Even as one part of her brain told her it was him, she shook her head in denial. Not with his reputation, and not on a Saturday night. There must be some horse show groupie somewhere who was willing to jump his bones, and that would take precedence over actual work.

“You’re not Dr. Barlow? Where is he?” the silhouetted figure asked. Anna could not see his face, or much else, since the light behind him cast his front in shadow. As much as she might have tried, she would never forget his voice. She didn’t need to see his face to know the speaker was Chris Stevenson.

Now, though, irritation kicked in. Where was he? She sighed. In this day and age, women veterinarians were more the norm than the exception. Of course, her height, or lack thereof, also played a role. She had encountered similar questions before, so she shouldn’t have been surprised when it came from a man like Stevenson.

“Sorry, my mind was on something else. I am Dr. Barlow. I understand you have a horse in need of stitches.” Anna’s jaw hardened as she sensed his reluctance as well as his outright hostility. “If it will make you feel better, I would be happy to show you my credentials, Mr.…” That was a nice touch. She’d make him think she had no idea who he was.

“Stevenson. Chris Stevenson.”

“The man himself.” As soon as Anna voiced it, she wanted to kick herself. She hadn’t meant to say that aloud. He had half-turned, and in the glow from the barn, she saw his frown at her tone, but she was not going to back down now. Stevenson was nothing to her. Not anymore. Not ever. Once he’d been her hero, the object of teenage fantasies. But that was in the past. There was an injured animal to treat, she had a hungry daughter to feed and a painful need to feed her that only increased as time passed. She’d do her job, get the hell out of there and be done with it.

“May I take a look at the injury, or would you like me to call the answering service to see if someone else is available to take the call?” At the moment, she couldn’t care less that Fincastle was one of the clinic’s biggest clients. She was tired and wanted to go home, so if he wanted a different vet, that was fine with her.

She braced herself as they walked into the light of the barn. As the fluorescent lights illuminated his lean features and fair hair, she realized he looked different. He was harder, but also healthier. The dissoluteness that had begun to leave its mark last summer was gone.

“You’ll do,” he grunted in response. “Follow me.”

Anna cocked one eyebrow at Stevenson’s retreating back. At least he was polite enough not to sigh as he said it. Still, what an arrogant jerk! Thank God she need have nothing to do with him outside of professional calls, and thank God he appeared to draw a total blank when he looked at her.

She supposed she should be used to people questioning her abilities because of her petite size. She had received odd looks through veterinary school, and even had to answer some pretty pointed questions when she talked to people about joining their large animal practices. Just over five feet tall, she was slender to boot, and at the time, she had been very pregnant. At least the vets at Redfield were able to overlook her appearance in favor of the credentials she’d set in front of them.

Her biggest relief was Chris seemed not to recognize her. She shouldn’t be surprised. She knew she looked a lot different than when he’d seen her, but part of her hardened with hurt and anger. What was she hoping, that he would remember the night they met? He would fall at her feet like the prince with Cinderella? There was no reason for it to stand out in his memory, not like it forever would in hers. He spent plenty of nights bedding besotted bimbos. She’d been another in a long line.

Stevenson stopped so abruptly in front of the stall midway down the aisle that Anna almost walked into his backside. Quivering at the rear of the stall was one of the biggest Thoroughbreds she had ever seen. The horse snorted and rolled his eyes. On his right hip, she saw a jagged tear about eight inches long, a messy wound that would require careful stitching.

Stevenson turned to look at her, his eyes challenging. “Still ready to take this on?” he asked with a sardonic twist to his lips.

Anna gazed at him without batting an eyelash. “I’ll get my supplies. Would you prefer to bring him in the aisle or would you like me to do that when I return, since he seems a bit rattled?” Her tone dripped ice.

Stevenson looked her up and down. “I’ll bring him. He’s a stud, and I give you fair warning, he’s always had more than his share of attitude.”

Anna bit back the retort on the tip of her tongue about him having something in common with the horse besides their hind ends and nodded before spinning on her heel. She had dealt with bigger horses’ asses than this one, and she wasn’t referring to the horse.

She sighed with relief when she reached her truck and saw Becca still slept. “Bless you, sweetheart,” Anna whispered to the baby.

She checked to make sure her daughter was still dry and stroked a finger over her soft cheek. With one last sigh, Anna opened the tailgate. She always kept a plastic caddy ready to grab, which she stocked with the supplies most often needed. After picking it up, along with a few other items she’d need, she hurried along the aisle. Chris was snapping crossties on the stallion as she approached. The big horse stomped his front foot before kicking out with his right rear leg as if trying to dislodge whatever it was causing him pain. Anna set her supplies several feet away and slipped the syringe of sedative inside the front pocket of her coveralls.

As she approached the horse, she murmured to him, watching his ears flick backward and forward as she continued talking.

“You can release him, Mr. Stevenson,” Anna directed in the same even tone she used with the horse. Once he turned the halter loose, the horse quit stomping and stretched his nose toward her.

Anna stopped in front of him. Her face was scarcely higher than the horse’s flared nostrils. He puffed at her and she blew back. The horse’s head relaxed and both ears came forward.

“That’s it, big man. Why be scared of something as tiny as me?”

Anna touched him on the cheek before stepping to his side and stroking his neck. Before either the horse or the man was aware of it, she slipped the hypodermic with the sedative into the horse’s vein and delivered the drug. She continued to talk to the stallion as the horse’s eyes drooped.

Anna bent to look at Chris from under the tall Thoroughbred’s neck. “Do you have a step stool close by, Mr. Stevenson? If not, I can get the one I carry in the truck.”

Stevenson’s pale gray eyes had lost their sardonic expression, but not the hostility.

“Sure,” he responded in a clipped voice. He stepped away, returning in a couple of minutes with a lightweight mounting block. “Will this work?”

Anna smiled. “Perfect. Thank you.”

She sensed Chris’s critical gaze on her but dismissed it. He’d have to deal with his own hang-ups without her help. Right now she had a job to do. Anna worked with careful efficiency, first cleaning the wound before checking for any underlying tissue damage. She was relieved to see it was only a tear to the hide and did not involve any muscle.

“How did he do this?” She lifted a brow in inquiry. Even standing on the second step of the mounting block, she stood barely above eye level.

“A fool of a groom who was careless with the gate when he tried to bring him in tonight. Bart caught himself on the latch coming in.”

“That explains the tearing more than cutting,” Anna mused as she returned to her work. She used small, neat stitches, tying off the sutures as she finished each one. As she was knotting the last one, she heard Becca wail. Oh no! Just what she needed. She hoped she might be able to get away from the farm without Stevenson realizing there was a baby in the truck. A baby she preferred he didn’t see.

His head jerked toward the barn doorway. “What the hell?”

Anna felt the tingling in her breasts that signaled her milk letting down and knew she was leaking. Becca’s cry was like an instant trigger to nurse, and she was already long overdue. She hunched her shoulders and jumped off the mounting block. There was no way around it. At least he hadn’t recognized her, and at the moment, that was a plus she would accept with gratitude.

“My daughter. Your stallion should start to wake in the next fifteen minutes,” she explained even as she packed. “He should be fine to go in his stall. I’ll check on him in the morning.”

Anna shoved everything into the caddy and the buckets she had brought with her and turned to escape. The leaks from her breasts grew heavier as her daughter continued to cry. Her entire focus was on getting away and finding a place to nurse. She was not sure how long the nursing pads would hold.

“Whoa!” Stevenson commanded. Anna stopped, her mouth tightening. “I want you here until this horse recovers from the sedative.”

Anna frowned then looked along the aisle to the truck parked on the edge of the light spilling from the end of the barn, and the increasing volume of the hungry wails emanating from it.

Stevenson ran a hand through his sandy hair in obvious frustration. “This is my best stud. I want you here in case there’s a problem. Can’t you call your husband or boyfriend or someone to take her?”

Anna’s eyes narrowed. “No, I can’t. She’s not a puppy, Mr. Stevenson and she’s hungry now.” No way was she going to let him know there was no husband, not even a boyfriend.

He expelled his breath. “Go get her and bring her in.”

Nowhere had she heard a please, but what had she expected? Anna shifted. Now was not the time to worry about manners. “Fine,” she mumbled.

As distasteful as she found him and as tempting as it might be, Anna knew she couldn’t afford to anger one of her clinic’s biggest clients. The job was too new, she needed it too much, and if she alienated someone like Stevenson, it would leave the vets who owned the clinic little choice but to get rid of her. She might be excused for taking a tone with him after he questioned her identity and credentials, but ignoring his wishes about this was different.

She hurried from the barn. As soon as she picked up her daughter, the baby reached for her, making smacking noises with her lips. Anna laughed and felt everything inside her melt. As she cradled the baby in one arm, she used her other hand to unzip the coverall. She bared her swollen breast and leaned against the pickup with a sigh of relief as Becca latched on and suckled. Her tiny fingers pushed against Anna’s breast.

“Is everything okay?”

She almost jumped out of her skin as she heard Chris’s impatient voice. She threw the blanket dangling from her hand over her half-bared front. “She was hungry,” she replied in a somewhat shaky voice as she angled herself away from the man coming around the side of the truck.

“You can give her a bottle inside where it’s light,” Stevenson added as if he were granting her a huge favor.

“I’m nursing her, Mr. Stevenson. She won’t take a bottle.”

“Oh.”

Anna almost laughed as she saw him halt. He was tall enough his face was in the light showing from the barn over the top of the pickup. For the first time since she arrived at Fincastle, Chris appeared at a loss for words, and she felt a small spurt of cynical amusement. Of course he would be unprepared to deal with the normal result of the sex act. The only thing he was interested in was the performance, not any repercussions.

He cleared his throat and coughed, his gaze skittering away from her. He shifted his weight from one booted foot to the other, and if the light were better, Anna would have sworn a blush stained his tan cheeks.

“You may still come inside if you’d prefer. Sit in my office, and I’ll keep an eye on Bart.”

Anna darted another quick look at the man. Perhaps he was human. As soon as the thought popped into her head, she shook herself. No, not bloody likely. “Thank you.”

Stevenson looked anywhere but at her as he led the way to his office. It was spacious and furnished for comfort rather than style, with a large antique desk and a couple easy chairs in addition to the leather chair behind the desk.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he murmured with an automatic kind of politeness she was sure had been drummed into him, but the words cut off on a choked cough as Anna sat. The receiving blanket slipped, giving him a clear view of the baby nursing at her breast. She pulled the blanket back in place. Anna had long ago lost any embarrassment about feeding her child, and though she didn’t push her breast-feeding on people, she wasn’t going to apologize for it.

The door shut with a hasty click. Anna leaned back in the chair and sighed with relief. The pressure eased, at least on one side. Now Stevenson had disappeared, she removed the blanket, burped the baby and switched her to the other breast to get some relief there too. If there was one thing she had learned, her daughter had no problems nursing. The baby was strong and efficient. She had finished burping her again and put her own clothing to rights when he knocked on the door.

“Are you… Is the baby through…uh, nursing? Bart’s waking, and none too happy.”

The impatience was back in his voice, and it hit her the wrong way. Anna stood. The weariness of the long day was catching up with her, and she lost patience as well. As much as she wished to keep him at a distance, sometimes options ran out. “I can’t juggle him and my daughter. If you’ll hold Becca for a minute, I’ll get him settled and in his stall.”

Chris looked almost as if she had instructed–“here, take this large, poisonous snake and give it mouth to mouth.” To give him credit, he recovered in an instant and held out his arms, uncertainty plain on his face. Anna hesitated a moment before she put the baby on his shoulder, her gut clenching as she gazed at his sun-bronzed forearms and work-toughened hands that rose to cradle the infant. He hadn’t recognized her, so it should be safe to let him hold the baby this once. Beyond that, though, she didn’t want him near her daughter. She settled Becca’s bottom on his muscular forearm and placed his other hand at the back of the baby’s head.

“There you go.” She left him standing in the middle of the office, a nervous, almost frightened look on his face. Serves you right, Anna thought with a small spark of vindictive satisfaction as she walked away. The only thing that would make it better would be for Becca to either spit up or poop, both things she excelled at doing. Imagining such a scenario made Anna smile.

The horse’s ears swiveled forward when he saw her. He quit stomping once again and this time blew at her enough to make a small nicker. Anna’s smile widened. She loved horses—always had, and somehow they knew it. Without hesitation, she walked to the muscular animal, stroked his head before clipping on a lead shank, and unhooked the cross ties. To make sure he was steady on his feet and the stitches weren’t pulling, she walked him the length of the aisle a couple times before leading him to his own stall. The horse followed her and munched the hay in the feeder as soon as she escorted him inside the stall. After unclipping the lead and looping it in her hand, she shut the door and watched him for a couple more minutes. Finally glancing at her wristwatch, she hurried up the aisle to the office.

Chris stood rooted where she’d left him, as if he were afraid any movement might startle the tiny person in his arms. Curiosity had replaced his earlier frightened expression. Becca had her face turned toward him and watched him from her big, blue-gray eyes. Anna swallowed. The baby had a reputation for not liking strangers, so her daughter’s quiet observation of the man made Anna uneasy in a way she did not want to examine. Part of her had hoped Becca would scream bloody murder the moment he touched her, and at least her daughter could have covered him in spit up. Traitor.

“Thank you,” she said, reaching for her. “I can take her now.”

“I’ve never held a baby before.” Stevenson’s deep voice was rough, and he sounded a little embarrassed. He handed her the infant.

His awe made Anna drop her hostility. For just a moment, she felt like she glimpsed the man behind the public persona–and he appealed to her. When she smiled, she saw Stevenson’s eyes widen, then narrow with speculation. Her smile turned to a chuckle. “I know.”

His gaze swiveled from her to the baby and back. “That obvious?”

Anna pursed her lips. “Yes, but at least you were brave enough to take her.” She laughed again before quieting at the curious look he gave her.

Time to go. Right now. Curiosity was not good. The last thing she wanted to do was make Chris curious about her in any way. They had nothing in common, nor should they. She would not take such a risk.

She kept her tone cool. “I’ll stop by in the morning to check on your stallion. Good night, Mr. Stevenson.”

“Good night, Dr. Barlow.”

He turned back to the barn, and she gathered Becca and the rest of her things and headed toward the truck. That was it. He hadn’t recognized her. She was relieved. Of course she was relieved. It was the best thing. Her lip trembled and she clamped on it with her teeth until it hurt. He was a despicable human being, which she knew better than most people ever would. The farther she and Becca stayed away from him the better.