Star Valley Winter Read online

  She flipped the remote, making funny comments about every station she passed until stumbling on an old Alfred Hitchcock film with Jimmy Stewart.

  “Here we go. Rear Window. This is what I call real entertainment. Could Grace Kelly dress or what?”

  Ellie settled on the couch, the seductive warmth from the fireplace combining with the turkey put her into a pleasant haze.

  She couldn’t remember enjoying a meal more. The food had been delicious. And with the exception of the strange tension between her and Matt, the company had been great, too.

  Their banter and teasing and memories of other holidays had been a revelation. This was what a family was all about, and if she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend she was a part of it.

  One strange thing, though. For all their reminiscing, they hadn’t brought up Lucy’s mother one single time. It was almost as if the woman had never existed. Come to think of it, nobody had ever mentioned the mystery woman to Ellie.

  “What happened to Lucy’s mother?”

  She didn’t realize she had asked the blunt question out loud until Cassidy’s relaxed smile froze, and she shot a quick glance at her niece. Ellie winced, appalled at herself. When would she ever learn to think before she opened her big mouth? At least neither of the girls was paying any attention to them, Ellie saw with relief.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said quickly. “That was terribly rude of me. It just slipped out. It’s none of my business, really. You don’t have to answer.”

  “No. It’s just a…a raw subject.” She looked at her niece again, and Ellie thought she saw guilt flicker in her blue eyes, then she flashed a bitter smile. She lowered her voice so the girls couldn’t hear. “Melanie ran off with my…with one of our ranch hands. Lucy wasn’t even three months old.”

  Ellie’s jaw dropped. She tried to picture Matt in the role of abandoned husband and couldn’t. Her heart twisted with sympathy when she imagined him taking care of a newborn on his own—late-night feedings, teething and all.

  What kind of woman could simply abandon her own child like that? She thought of those first few months after Dylan was born, when she had been on her own and so very frightened about what the future might hold for the two of them.

  Despite her fear, she had been completely in awe of the precious gift she’d been handed. Some nights she would lie awake in that grimy two-room apartment, just staring at Dylan’s tiny, squishy features, listening to her breathe and wondering what she had done to deserve such a miracle.

  She couldn’t even comprehend a woman who would walk away from something so amazing.

  Or from a man like Matt Harte.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, knowing the words were terribly inadequate.

  Cassidy shrugged and looked toward the girls. From the raw emotion exposed on her features like a winter-bare tree branch, Ellie had the odd suspicion there was more to the story than losing a sister-in-law.

  “It was a long time ago,” Cassie said quietly. “Anyway, Matt’s much better off without her. He’d be the first to tell you that. Melanie hated it here. She hated the ranch, she hated Wyoming, she hated being a mother. I was amazed she stuck around as long as she did.”

  Why on earth would he marry a woman who hated ranch life? Ellie wondered. For a man like Matt who so obviously belonged here—on this land he loved so much—it must have been a bitter rejection seeing it scorned by the woman he married.

  She must have been very beautiful for him to marry her in the first place and bring her here. Ellie didn’t even want to think about why the thought depressed her so much.

  Cassie quickly turned the conversation to the Hitchcock movie, but even after Ellie tried to shift her attention to the television, her mind refused to leave thoughts of Matt and the wife who had deserted him with a tiny daughter.

  As much as she hated bringing up such an obviously painful topic, she had to admit she was grateful for the insight it provided into a man she was discovering she wanted to understand.

  No wonder he sometimes seemed so gruff, so cold. Had he always been that way or had his wife’s desertion hardened him? Had he once been like Jesse, all charm and flirtatiousness? She couldn’t imagine it. Good grief, the man was devastating enough with his habitual scowl!

  After a moment, Cassie turned the tables. “What about Dylan’s father?” she asked suddenly. “Is he still in the picture?”

  “He was never in the picture. Not really,” Ellie answered calmly. After so many years the scab over her heart had completely healed. “Our relationship ended when Kurt saw that plus sign on the pregnancy test.”

  He had been so furious at her for being stupid enough to get pregnant, as if it were entirely her fault the protection they used had failed. He could lose his job over this, he had hissed at her, that handsome, intelligent face dark with anger. Professors who impregnated their star students tended to be passed over when tenures were being tossed around. Didn’t she understand what this could do to him?

  It had always been about him. Always. She had only come to understand that immutable fact through the filter of time and experience. In the midst of their relationship, she had been so amazed that someone of Kurt’s charisma—not to mention professional standing—would deign to take her under his wing, first as a mentor and adviser, then as a friend, then as a lover during her final year of undergraduate work.

  She might have seen him more clearly had she not been seduced by the one thing she had needed so desperately those days—approbation. He had told her she had talent, that she would be a brilliant, dedicated doctor of veterinary medicine one day.

  No one else had believed in her. She had fought so hard every step of the way, and he was the only one who seemed to think she could do it. She had lapped up his carefully doled-out praise like a puppy starving for attention.

  She thought she had loved him passionately and had given him everything she had, while to him she had been one more in a long string of silly, awestruck students.

  It was a hard lesson, but her hurt and betrayal had lasted only until Dylan was born. As she held her child in her arms—hers alone—she realized she didn’t care anymore what had led her to that moment; she was only amazed at the unconditional love she felt for her baby.

  “So you raised Dylan completely on your own while you were finishing vet school?” Cassie asked.

  She nodded. “I took her to class half the time because I couldn’t find a sitter, but somehow we did it.”

  Cassie shook her head in sympathetic disgust. “Men are pigs, aren’t they?” she muttered, just as Jesse entered the great room.

  He plopped next to Ellie on the couch, scowling at his sister. “Hey, I resent that. Especially since it just took two of us the better part of an hour to clean up the mess you made in the kitchen.”

  “I meant that figuratively,” she retorted. “When it comes to knowing what a woman needs and wants out of a relationship, most of you have about as much sense as a bucket of spit.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Doc. My baby sister has always been far too cynical for her own good.”

  Jesse grabbed Ellie’s hand, and for one horrified second she thought he was going to bring it to his lips. To her vast relief, he just squeezed it, looking deep into her eyes. “Not all men are pigs. I, for one, always give a woman exactly what she wants. And what she needs.”

  His knowing smile fell just a few inches short of a leer, and she felt hot color crawl across her cheekbones at finding herself on the receiving end of it, especially from a man as dangerously attractive as Jesse James Harte.

  Before she could come up with a reply, his little sister gave an inelegant snort. “See? What did I tell you? A bucket of spit.”

  Ellie smiled, charmed beyond words by both of them and their easy acceptance of her. Before she could answer, she felt the heat of someone’s gaze on her. She turned around and
found Matt standing in the doorway, arms crossed and shoulder propped against the jamb as he watched his brother’s flirting with an unreadable look in those vivid blue eyes.

  The heated blush Jesse had sparked spread even higher, until she thought her face must look as bright as the autumn leaves in his sister’s centerpiece.

  What was it about that single look that sent her nerves lurching and tumbling to her stomach, that affected her a thousand times more intensely than Jesse’s teasing?

  His daughter spotted him at almost the same time she did. “Daddy, come play with us,” she demanded from the pool table.

  He shifted his gaze from Ellie to the girls, his mouth twisting into a soft smile that did funny, twirly things to her insides. “I will in a bit, Lucy Goose. I have to go out and check on Mystic first, okay?”

  “Mystic?” Ellie’s question came out as a squeak that nobody but her seemed to notice.

  “One of our mares,” Matt answered.

  “Mystic Mountain Moon,” Lucy said. “That’s her full name.”

  “She’s pregnant with her first foal and she’s tried to lose it a couple times,” Matt said.

  “She’s a real beauty.” Cassie joined in. “Moon Ranger out of Mystic Diamond Lil. One heck of a great cutting horse. Matt tried her out in a few local rodeos last summer, and she blew everybody away.”

  “Her foal’s going to be a winner, too,” Matt said. “If she can hang on to it for a few more months, anyway.”

  He paused and looked at Ellie again. “You, uh, wouldn’t want to come out and check on her with me, would you?”

  She stared at him, astonished at the awkward invitation, an offer she sensed surprised him as much as it had her. She opened her mouth to answer just as he shook his head. “I guess you’re not really dressed to go mucking around in the barn. Forget it.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “These boots are sturdier than they look. I would love to.” She suddenly discovered she wanted fiercely to go with him, to see more of the Diamond Harte and his beauty of a mare.

  “Let me just grab my coat.” She jumped up before he could rescind the invitation. Whatever impulse had prompted him to ask her to accompany him, she sensed he was offering her more than just a visit to his barn. He was inviting her into this part of his life, lowering at least some of the walls between them.

  She wasn’t about to blow it.

  “Okay then.” He cast his eyes around the room for a moment as if trying to figure out what to do next, then his gaze stopped on his daughter, pool cue in her hand.

  “We shouldn’t be long,” he said. “I promise I’ll be back in just a little while to whup both of your behinds.”

  The girls barely heard him, Ellie saw, too busy sharing another one of those conspiratorial looks that were really beginning to make her nervous. “You two take your time, Dad,” Lucy said in an exaggerated voice. “Really, we can use all the practice we can get.”

  He looked vaguely startled by her insistence, then gave her another one of those soft smiles before turning to Ellie. “I’ll go get your coat.”

  A few moments later, he returned wearing that black Stetson and a heavy ranch jacket and holding out her coat. He helped her into it and then led the way into the snow that still fluttered down halfheartedly.

  Though it was still technically afternoon, she had discovered night came early this time of year in Wyoming. The sun had already begun to sink behind the Salt River mountains, and the dying light was the same color as lilac blossoms in the spring.

  Her chest ached at the loveliness of it, at the play of light on the skiff of snow and the rosy glow of his outbuildings in the twilight. There was a quiet reverence here as night descended on the mountains. As if no one else existed but the two of them and the snow and the night.

  He seemed as reluctant as she to break the hushed beauty of the scene. They walked in silence toward the huge red barn a few hundred yards from the house. When he finally spoke, it was in a low voice to match the magic of the evening. “Mystic likes to be outside, even as cold as it’s been. I’ll check to see if she’s still in the pasture before we go inside the barn. You can wait here if you want.”

  “No. I’ll come with you,” she said in that same hushed voice.

  They crunched through snow to the other side, with Matt just a few steps ahead of her. She was looking at her feet so she didn’t fall in the slick snow when he growled a harsh oath.

  She jerked her gaze up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  He pointed to the pasture. For a moment, she couldn’t figure out what had upset him, then her gaze sharpened and she saw it.

  Bright red bloodstains speckled the snow in a vivid, ugly trail leading to the barn.

  CHAPTER 7

  Dread clutched at her stomach. “Do you think it was a coyote?”

  “I doubt it,” he said tersely. “Not this close to the house and not in the middle of the day. They tend to stay away from the horses, anyway.”

  “What, then?”

  “Mystic, I’d guess. She’s probably lost the foal. Damn.”

  If the mare was hemorrhaging already, it was probably too late to save the foal, and Matt obviously knew it as well as she did. He jumped the fence easily and followed the trail of blood. Without a moment’s hesitation, she hiked her skirt above her knees and climbed over the snow-slicked rails as well, then quickly caught up with him.

  With that frown and his jaw set, he looked hard and dangerous, like the Wild West outlaw he was named after.

  “I’m sorry,” she offered softly.

  He blew out a breath. “It happens. Probably nothing we can do at this point. I had high hopes for Mystic’s foal, though. The sire is one hell of a cutter, just like—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, they heard a high, distressed whinny from inside the barn, and both picked up their pace to a run. He beat her inside, but she followed just a few seconds later. She had a quick impression of a clean, well-lit stall, then her attention immediately shifted to the misty-gray quarter horse pacing restlessly in the small space.

  A quick visual check told her the blood they saw in the snow was from a large cut on the horse’s belly, probably from kicking at herself in an attempt to rid her body of what she thought was bothering her—the foal.

  It relieved her mind some, but not much. “She hasn’t lost it yet,” she said.

  Matt looked distracted as he ran his hands over the horse. “She’s going to, though, isn’t she?”

  “Probably. I’m sorry,” she said again. She had seen the signs before. The sweat soaking the withers, the distress, the bared teeth as pain racked the mare.

  All her professional instincts screamed at her to do something, not just stand here helplessly. To soothe, to heal. But Mystic wasn’t hers to care for, and her owner didn’t trust Ellie or her methods.

  Still, she had to try. “Will you let me examine her?”

  She held her breath as he studied her from across the stall, praying he would consent. The reluctance in his eyes shouldn’t have hurt her. He had made no secret of his opinions. But she still had to dig her fingers into the wood rail at the deep, slicing pain.

  He blew out a breath. “I don’t know…”

  “I’m a good vet, Matt. Please. Just let me look at her. I won’t do anything against your wishes.”

  His hard, masculine face tense and worried, he studied Ellie for several seconds until Mystic broke away from him with another long, frantic whinny.

  “Okay,” Matt said finally. “Do what you can for her.”

  “My bag’s in the pickup. It will just take me a minute to get it.”

  Her heart pounding, she ran as fast as she dared out of the barn and across the snow toward the house, cursing the constricting skirt as she went. This was exactly why she preferred to stick to jeans and work shirts. Of course she h
ad to choose today, of all days, to go outside her comfort zone just for vanity’s sake.

  She slipped on a hidden patch of ice under the bare, spreading branches of a huge elm, and her legs almost went out from under her. At the last minute, she steadied herself on the trunk of the tree and paused for just an instant to catch her breath before hurrying on, anxious for the frightened little mare.

  She hated seeing any animal in distress, always had. That was her first concern and the thought uppermost in her head. At the same time, on a smaller, purely selfish level that shamed her to admit it to herself, part of her wanted Matt to see firsthand that she knew what she was doing, that she would try anything in her power to save that foal.

  At last she reached her truck, fumbled with the handle, then fought the urge to bang her head against it several times. Locked. Rats! And her keys were in her purse, inside the house.

  With another oath at herself for not learning her lesson the night he had to thaw out her locks, she hurried up the porch steps and through the front door. She was rifling for her purse on the hall table, conscious that with every second of delay the foal’s chances grew ever more dim, when Cassie walked out of the family room.

  Matt’s sister stopped short, frowning. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  “Mystic,” Ellie answered grimly. “She’s losing the foal. I’m just after my bag in the truck. Naturally, it’s locked.”

  “Oh, no. What a relief that you’re here, though! Can you save it?”

  As she usually did before treating an animal, Ellie felt the heavy weight of responsibility settle on her shoulders. “I don’t know. I’m going to try. Listen, we might be a while. Is Dylan okay in here without me?”

  “Sure. She and Lucy have ganged up on Jess at the pool table. They haven’t even noticed you’ve been gone. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Pray your stubborn brother will let me do more than look. Ellie kept the thought to herself and shook her head. “Just don’t let Dylan eat too much pie.”