Dr. Colton's High-Stakes Fiancée. Cindy Dees

held out one hand expectantly.

      She gasped as she got a better look at his bloody blisters. “What happened to your hands?”

      “I helped Damien string fence today. Wasn’t expecting to have to scrub for surgery tonight. Had to take the skin off the blisters while I scrubbed up so no bacteria would hide underneath.”

      She stared. He’d torn up his hands like that for the dog? Awe at his dedication to his work flowed through her.

      For the next hour, the kitchen was quiet. Finn occasionally asked for something or passed her a bloody gauze pad. His concentration was total. And she had to admit he was giving it his best shot at saving this dog. He murmured soothingly to the animal, even though it was clear the dog was out cold from the injection Finn had given him.

      She couldn’t help glancing at the surgical site now and then. It appeared Finn was reconstructing the dog’s leg. He set the broken femur and then began a lengthy and meticulous job of suturing tendons and muscles and whatever else was in there that she couldn’t name and didn’t want to.

      Finally, when her head was growing light and she thought she might just faint on him in spite of her best efforts not to, Finn started to close up the wound. He stitched it shut in three different layers. Deep tissue, shallow tissue, and then, at long last, the ragged flesh.

      Her stove clock read nearly 2:00 a.m. before Finn straightened up and stretched out the kinks in his back. He rubbed the unconscious dog’s head absently. “All right. That’s got it. Now we just have to worry about blood loss and infection and the patient’s generally poor state of health. I’ll leave you some antibiotic tablets to get down him by whatever means you can. If he wakes up, you can start feeding him if he’s not too far gone to eat.”

      Although he continued to stroke the dog gently, Finn never once broke his doctor persona with her. He was cold and efficient and entirely impersonal. If she weren’t so relieved that he’d helped her, she’d have been bleeding directly from her heart to see him act like this. Again.

      She would never forget the last time he’d been this angry and cold and distant. It had been the night of his senior prom. She’d been waiting for him in the beautiful lemon-yellow chiffon dress her mother had slaved over for weeks making. She’d had a garland of daisies in her hair, the flowers from their garden woven with her father’s own hands. Finn had been acting strangely when he came to the door but was polite enough to her parents. Then he’d taken her to the dance, waited until they were standing in front of the entire senior class of Honey Creek High and told her in no uncertain terms how she was worthless trash and vowed he never wanted to see her again.

      He’d kept that promise until today. Well, and tonight, of course. Strange how he’d renewed his vow never to see her again within twenty-four hours of seeing her for the first time. She’d never known what had caused him to turn on her then, and she darned well didn’t know why he was so mad at her now. He was like Jekyll and Hyde. But mostly the monstrous one. Were it not so late, and she so tired and stressed out and blood covered, she might have asked him. But at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. They were so over.

      He plunked a brown plastic pill bottle on the counter. “Based on his weight, I’d say half a tablet every six hours for the next week or until he dies, whichever comes first.”

      She frowned at him. “That was uncalled for.”

      “I said I’d treat the damned dog. Not that I’d be nice about it.”

      “Well, you got that right. You’re being a giant jerk,” she snapped.

      Finn scooped the rest of his surgical instruments into his bag and swept toward the door. “Goodbye, Rachel. Have a nice life.”

      All of a sudden everything hit her. The shock and terror of the past few hours, the stress of the surgery and its gory sights, but most of all, the strain of having to be in the same room with Finn Colton. All that tension and unresolved anger hanging thick and suffocating between them. Watching him walk out of her life again. She replied tiredly, “Go to hell.”

      She thought she heard Finn mutter, “I’m already there.”

      But then he was gone. All his energy and male charisma. His command of the situation and his competence. And she was left with an unconscious dog lying in the corner of her kitchen, a bottle of pills, and a bloody mess to clean up.

      So exhausted she could barely stand, she mopped the kitchen and the porch with bleach and water. How Brown Dog had any blood left inside his body, she had no clue. She was pretty sure she’d cleaned up an entire dog’s worth of blood.

      Just as she was finishing, he whimpered. Now that his surgery was over, Finn had said it was safe for him to eat. Maybe she’d better start him off with something liquid, though. She pulled out a can of beef consommé that had been in the back of her cupboard for who knew how long and poured it into one of her mixing bowls. She thinned it with a little water and warmed it in the microwave before carrying it over to the groggy animal.

      “It’s just you and me now, Brownie boy.”

      She sat down on the floor beside him and used her mother’s turkey baster to dribble some of the broth into his mouth. At first he swallowed listlessly, but gradually he grew more enthusiastic about licking his chops and swallowing. By the time she finished the soup, he was actually sucking at the tip of the baster.

      “We’ll show Finn, won’t we, boy? We’re survivors, you and me.”

       Chapter 4

      Rachel came home at lunch to change the newspapers under Brownie, give him his antibiotics and use the turkey baster to squirt canned dog food puréed with water down his throat. He was still too weak to do much but thump his tail a time or two, but gratitude shone in his eyes as she tenderly cared for him.

      “What’s your story, boy? Where’d you get so beat up? Life sure can be tough, can’t it?”

      She settled him more comfortably in the corner of her kitchen in his nest of blankets and headed back to work. The afternoon passed with her finding more and more discrepancies in the Walsh Oil Drilling Corporation records. She’d be worried about it if she weren’t so tired from last night and so concerned about the wounded animal in her kitchen. So when Lester Atkins called her and asked her to come to Mr. Warner’s office, she merely grabbed her latest evidence of the embezzlement and headed upstairs.

      But when she stepped into the office, she pulled up short. Wes Colton, in full sheriff garb, was standing beside Craig Warner’s desk. Wes’s arms were crossed. And he was glaring at her. Good lord. What had Finn told him when he’d gone back to the ranch last night? Had Finn sicced Wes on her to get her fired?

      “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she managed to choke past her panic.

      “Have a seat, Miss Grant,” Craig started.

      Oh, God. This was an exit interview. Wes was here to escort her out of the building. The sheriff parked one hip on the corner of Warner’s massive desk, but he still loomed over her. The guy was even bigger and broader than Finn.

      “How are you feeling today, Miss Grant?” Wes rumbled.

      “Tired, actually. I’m sure Finn told you about my rather adventurous evening last night.”

      “He did. Any idea who shot your dog?”

      She shook her head. “I’ve got no idea. He just wandered up to my porch already shot. I never saw the dog before last night.”

      “Kind of you to go to all that trouble to help him,” Wes murmured.

      Was that skepticism in his voice, or was she just being paranoid? She shrugged and waited in resignation for this travesty to proceed.

      On cue, Craig spoke quietly. “Miss Grant, I’d like you to tell Sheriff Colton what you told me on Friday.”

      She