“So when’s the big day?” Donna asked.
Try never, as it would be difficult to be married to a woman who lived seventeen hundred miles away. “The reports of my”-
Adam snorted.
Dell checked the puppy’s teeth to make sure they were properly aligned, then inspected her eyes, examined her skin, and palpated her hips.
“Is she okay?”
Dell set her on the scale, having to keep a hand on her because her legs were scrambling for purchase. She had places to go, things to explore. “She’s slightly underweight, but she’s looking strong.”
Both Donna and Joe looked relieved. “That’s the one my daughter wants to keep,” Joe said.
“We’re going to wrap her up in a white silky bow on the day of the wedding,” Donna said. Her voice went sly. “Maybe you’d like us to save you one for your wedding?”
Adam grinned and looked at him. “How sweet.”
Dell resisted the urge to punch him and busied himself checking for defects the Mooreland’s might not have recognized, like heart murmurs. He found nothing ominous, and after the longest ten minutes of his life he managed to escape. He strode toward his office, taking a quick glance out front.
Jade sat at the front desk, talking on the phone while simultaneously working on the computer, checking someone in, and checking two people out. She sat there, an oasis in the middle of a circus. As if she sensed him, she glanced up. And if he wasn’t mistaken, she grimaced slightly.
He raised a brow.
She bit her lower lip but didn’t look away.
Adam, hot on his heels, leaned in and whispered, “Think we should tell your fiancee that you’re allergic to commitment? That you have abandonment issues? And, oh yeah, that you’re never going to let your guard down enough to actually marry anyone?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“So are you.”
Dell sighed. “Yeah,” he said as Adam walked away. “But knowing it is half the battle.”
By noon Jade had checked in and out a dizzying number of patients while managing to avoid being alone with Dell. He’d seen a bulldog with an ingrown tail, a duck with a mysterious throat infection that turned out to be a swallowed quarter, and a kitten with acne. He’d performed four surgeries.
Jade had grabbed the sandwich from her bagged lunch and walked outside, needing a moment of sunshine.
A soft nicker from the horse pen caught her attention.
Reno. He was close to the fencing and flirting with her. She reached out to touch him and he snapped at her fingers. It was so unexpected that she jumped back and fell to the dirt. She scrambled back to her feet as a big hand settled on the nape of her neck.
She screamed and whirled around and would have fallen again if Dell hadn’t caught her. “Just me,” he said calmly. “You okay?”
They both knew she wasn’t but she nodded. “Reno tried to bite me.”
Dell didn’t say anything for a moment, just slid an arm around her, making her realize she was backing away from both the horses and the man. “What do you know about horses?” he asked quietly, his delicious warmth seeping into her.
“I know that the porcelain horse collection I had as a child wasn’t made to be played with,” she said, trying to lighten the tension. “But I did it, anyway, and kept breaking off their legs. My grandmother got fed up and stopped buying them.”
“The grandmother you were named after?”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of his hand on the small of her back. Comforting but something else, too. Her heart rate should have slowed by now from her fright, but it was still racing-for another reason entirely now. “They wanted me to be strong and tough like her.”
“It worked. You’re the strongest, toughest woman I know.”
She managed to choke back her startled laugh at that.
“It’s true.” He paused. “Do you know anything about
“I know Reno used to like me.”
“He still likes you.” He stroked his hand up her back, letting it settle at the nape of her neck again. “It’s important with any animal, especially a spooked one, to be calm, assertive. Dominant.”
“Okay.”
“A horse’s emotions depend on its surroundings and also on the emotions of its human counterparts.”
She went still. “Are you saying that my emotions caused Reno to try to bite me?”
His silence said he was going to let her wrestle with that one. “Relax your arms,” he said, making her realize she was hugging herself tight. She dropped them to her sides with effort.
“And breathe,” he said.
He was right, she wasn’t breathing. She sucked in some air.
“Better,” he said, and leaned past her to rub Reno’s neck the way he was rubbing hers.
Reno gave a snort of pleasure and shifted closer.
“It’s calming,” Dell said.
Yes. It was calming as hell. If he kept it up, she’d do as Reno just had and make sounds of pleasure and shift even closer, too. “You have a bond with him,” she said, managing to sound like she still had bones in her legs.
“Yes, and so do you. You just have to find it, and use your touch and voice to assure the animal that you’re not going to let anything harm him.”
His hand was slowly moving up and down her back now. And she got the message.
He wasn’t going to let anything harm her, either.
“Jade.”
She closed her eyes. “I still don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Ever.”
The sun was warm on her face, telling her that even though it was fall, summer hadn’t quite given up the fight yet. She could almost pretend that they weren’t having a conversation she didn’t want to have.
“Ever is a long time,” Dell said.
“I mean it.”
“I know.” He nodded. “I felt the same.”
She shook her head. This didn’t compute. “What are you talking about?”
“I know what it’s like to suffer a trauma. What it’s like to struggle to get past it.”
Deny, deny, deny. “I’m not struggling.”
He just looked at her, and she blew out a breath. “Okay, so sometimes I struggle, but don’t change the subject! You’re six foot two and outweigh me by at least sixty pounds. How were you ever a…”
“Victim?” His smile was grim. “I wasn’t always thirty-two and built like a linebacker, you know. Actually, I started off more like a pipe cleaner with eyes.”
That surprised a laugh out of her and she sidled him a glance. No one in their right mind would confuse that well defined, tough, rugged body with a pipe cleaner. “Come on.”
“Jade, trust me when I tell you that in my freshman year I was five foot three and weighed a buck twenty soaking wet. I got my ass kicked every which way, every single day.”
An ache built in her chest for the boy he’d been. “Why?”
“Because I couldn’t keep my mouth closed to save my life. I was a punk-ass kid whose mother had walked away and whose dad had died. I had a chip on top of the chip on my shoulder.”
His mother had been Native American. According to Lilah, when the woman had been a teenager, she’d fallen for a white kid-a big offense in her family. She’d run off with him, but after having her second baby-Dell-she’d run off again, back to the reservation. When the boys’ father had died several years later, she hadn’t wanted her sons back.
Jade and her own mother had some issues, basically control issues, but Jade had never once doubted that she’d been wanted, cherished and fully, one hundred percent loved.
