One Night with a Red-Hot Rancher. Diana Palmer

back.

      Cappie flushed and moved back behind the counter, trying not to meet Gladys Hawkins’s eyes, because the old lady was almost crying, she was laughing so hard.

      “There, there,” Dr. King, the long-married senior veterinarian, said with a gentle smile. She patted Cappie on the shoulder. “You’ve done well. By the time she’d been here a month, Antonia was crying in the bathroom at least twice a day, and she never talked back to Dr. Rydel.”

      “I’ve never worked in such a place,” Cappie said blankly. “I mean, most veterinarians are like you—they’re nice and professional, and they don’t yell at the staff. And, of course, the staff doesn’t yell…”

      “Yes, they do,” Keely piped in, chuckling. “My husband made the remark that I was a glorified groomer, and the next time he came in here, our groomer gave him an earful about just what a groomer does.” She grinned. “Opened his eyes.”

      “They do a lot more than clip fur,” Dr. King agreed. “They’re our eyes and ears in between exams. Many times, our groomers have saved lives by noticing some small problem that could have turned fatal.”

      “Your husband is a dish,” Cappie told Keely shyly.

      Keely laughed. “Yes, he is, but he’s opinionated, hardheaded and temperamental with it.”

      “He was a tough one to tame, I’ll bet,” Dr. King mused.

      Keely leaned forward. “Not half as tough as Dr. Rydel is going to be.”

      “Amen. I pity the poor woman who takes him on.”

      “Trust me, she hasn’t been born yet,” Keely replied.

      “He likes you,” Cappie sighed.

      “I don’t challenge him,” Keely said simply. “And I’m younger than most of the staff. He thinks of me as a child.”

      Cappie’s eyes bulged.

      Keely patted her on the shoulder. “Some people do.” The smile faded. Keely was remembering her mother, who’d been killed by a friend of Keely’s father. The whole town had been talking about it. Keely had landed well, though, in Boone Sinclair’s strong arms.

      “I’m sorry about your mother,” Cappie said gently. “We all were.”

      “Thanks,” Keely replied. “We were just getting to know one another when she was…killed. My father plea-bargained himself down to a short jail term, but I don’t think he’ll be back this way. He’s too afraid of Sheriff Hayes.”

      “Now there’s a real dish,” Cappie said. “Handsome, brave…”

      “…suicidal,” Keely interjected.

      “Excuse me?”

      “He’s been shot twice, walking into gun battles,” Dr. King explained.

      “No guts, no glory,” Cappie said.

      Her companions chuckled. The phone rang, another customer walked in and the conversation turned to business.

      Cappie went home late. It was Friday and the place was packed with clients. Nobody escaped before six-thirty, not even the poor groomer who’d spent half a day on a Siberian husky. The animals had thick undercoats and it was a job to wash and brush them out. Dr. Rydel had been snippier than usual, too, glaring at Cappie as if she were responsible for the overflow of patients.

      “Cappie, is that you?” her brother called from the bedroom.

      “It’s me, Kell,” she called back. She put down her raincoat and purse and walked into the small, sparse bedroom where her older brother lay surrounded by magazines and books and a small laptop computer. He managed a smile for her.

      “Bad day?” she asked gently, sitting down beside him on the bed, softly so that she didn’t worsen the pain.

      He only nodded. His face was taut, the only sign of the pain that ate him alive every hour of the day. A journalist, he’d been on overseas assignment for a magazine when he was caught in a firefight and wounded by shrapnel. It had lodged in his spine where it was too dangerous for even the most advanced surgery. The doctors said someday, the shrapnel might shift into a location where it would be operable. But until then, Kell was basically paralyzed from the waist down. Oddly, the magazine hadn’t provided any sort of health care coverage for him, and equally oddly, he’d insisted that he wasn’t going to court to force them to pay up. Cappie had wondered at her brother being in such a profession in the first place. He’d been in the army for several years. When he came out, he’d become a journalist. He made an extraordinary living from it. She’d mentioned that to a friend in the newspaper business who’d been astonished. Most magazines didn’t pay that well, he’d noted, eyeing Kell’s new Jaguar.

      Well, at least they had Kell’s savings to keep them going, even if it did so frugally now, after he paid the worst of the medical bills. Her meager salary, although good, barely kept the utilities turned on and food in the aging refrigerator.

      “Taken your pain meds?” she added.

      He nodded.

      “Not helping?”

      “Not a lot. Not today, anyway,” he added with a forced grin. He was good-looking, with thick short hair even blonder than hers and those pale silvery-gray eyes. He was tall and muscular; or he had been, before he’d been wounded. He was in a wheelchair now.

      “Someday they’ll be able to operate,” she said.

      He sighed and managed a smile. “Before I die of old age, maybe.”

      “Stop that,” she chided softly, and bent to kiss his forehead. “You have to have hope.”

      “I guess.”

      “Want something to eat?”

      He shook his head. “Not hungry.”

      “I can make southwestern corn soup.” It was his favorite.

      He gave her a serious look. “I’m impacting your life. There are places for ex-military where I could stay…”

      “No!” she exploded.

      He winced. “Sis, it isn’t right. You’ll never find a man who’ll take you on with all this baggage,” he began.

      “We’ve had this argument for several months already,” she pointed out.

      “Yes, since you gave up your job and moved back here with me, after I got…wounded. If our cousin hadn’t died and left us this place, we wouldn’t even have a roof over our heads, stark as it is. It’s killing me, watching you try to cope.”

      “Don’t be melodramatic,” she chided. “Kell, all we have is each other,” she added somberly. “Don’t ask me to throw you out on the street so I can have a social life. I don’t even like men much, don’t you remember?”

      His face hardened. “I remember why, mostly.”

      She flushed. “Now, Kell,” she said. “We promised we wouldn’t talk about that anymore.”

      “He could have killed you,” he gritted. “I had to browbeat you just to make you press charges!”

      She averted her eyes. Her one boyfriend in her adult life had turned out to be a homicidal maniac when he drank. The first time it happened, Frank Bartlett had grabbed Cappie’s arm and left a black bruise. Kell advised her to get away from him, but she, infatuated and rationalizing, said that he hadn’t meant it. Kell knew better, but he couldn’t convince her. On their fourth date, the boy had taken her to a bar, had a few drinks, and when she gently tried to get him to stop, he’d dragged her outside and lit into her. The other patrons had come to her rescue and one of them had driven her home. The boy had come back, shamefaced and crying, begging for one more chance. Kell had put his foot down and said no, but Cappie was in love and wouldn’t listen. They were watching a