Once Touched (11 page)

When he cocked an eyebrow and said, “So, we should walk him, right?” she shook herself mentally, abruptly aware that she'd been staring at him. Linking him to the wolves in her mind was as foolish as it was romantic. Quinn could only imagine how hard Ethan would laugh if he had the slightest notion of her thoughts. For her part, she decided to blame them on worry. It could do a number on a normally sane mind.

“Thanks for sticking around.” She fell into step beside him.

“No reason to thank me. I owe your family. I could walk Tucker into December and I'd still be in your debt.”

That didn't sit well. “You don't owe us anything. We're friends. Besides, you're already earning your keep. And in my book, alerting me that something was wrong with Tucker puts me in
your
debt. How'd you find him?”

Ethan shrugged his left shoulder. “I was walking around down here. I do that sometimes. I happened to notice that Tucker wasn't sleeping like the other horses in the pasture. He wasn't even resting near them, and usually he likes to stand near his buddies, especially that big fellow—”

“Harper,” Quinn supplied.

“Yeah, and that bay, who's their sidekick.”

“Bristol. He and Harper have been Tucker's pasture buddies since he was cleared by Cooney—the ranch's vet—and allowed to mingle with the herd.” She reached out to stroke the chestnut's neck. It was too warm for her liking. Fever?

“The vet will come, Quinn,” he said quietly.

“I know.” She pushed back the fear for her horse.

Ethan began talking again. “Anyway, something about him caught my attention. He wasn't behaving normally. He's often restless, but then he settles down with his head near Bristol's withers, right?”

“Yeah. You've noticed a lot about him.” It didn't come as a great surprise. The man was observant. After all, he'd been able to identify each of her goats in a couple of days' time. She imagined he probably looked at things as if he were holding his camera and focusing his lens on them, seeing details others missed. “But why were you down at the pastures? I, uh, saw you go into your cabin after Josh and I…” Her voice trailed away.

“Kissed?” His tone was dry.

“Yeah. Sorry if we, um, disturbed you.”

“Why would I be disturbed? Who you kiss is your own business.”

Her cheeks went hot in the cool night. “Well, yeah…”

“I was out here because I couldn't sleep. That's all. It had nothing to do with you or Josh. I simply miscalculated.”

“Miscalculated?”

“I should have had two more shots of whiskey.”

It took her a second to understand. “That's what you take to sleep? Whiskey?”

“That's right. I'd rather chug Jack Daniel's over popping pills any day or night.” He brought Tucker to a halt. “Do you know what you're doing?”

His words rang in the sudden stillness. “What I'm doing? What do you mean?”

“With Josh,” he said with a trace of impatience.

“Oh.”

“Do you know what you're doing with him?”

No.
“Sure I do.”

A long moment passed. Then he shrugged. “To each his own.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Josh is nice.”

“Can't argue with that.”

“He's a really good dancer.”

His mouth flattened. “Essential, for sure.”

“And he knows how to kiss. Exceptionally well.” She was sure of it, never mind that his kiss hadn't done a whole lot for her. At least it hadn't sent her running for the hills. “So as far as I can see, there's no downside to my spending time with him.”

“Like I said, to each his own.”

She narrowed her eyes and would have pressed him to explain exactly what he meant by the obnoxious comment, but at that moment Tucker lowered his nose to the ground and folded his knees. “Oh God, he's going down. Pull on his lead. I'll poke him in the ribs. We can't let him roll.”

He'd lied to her.

A full day's work helping the ranch hands, followed by the exercise routine he'd devised in his cabin and topped off with a nightcap consisting of three shots of whiskey, should have been amply sufficient for the job of knocking him out for the count. A tried-and-true recipe, the combination of physical exhaustion and the anesthetizing properties of the alcohol let him pass at least a few hours in a dead-to-the-world sprawl on his bed. But seeing Josh wrap his arms about Quinn, cover her mouth with his, and then kiss her lingeringly had messed with Ethan's head. When he retreated to his cabin, the room had shrunk two sizes.

He'd remained inside until he couldn't take it anymore—and until he was sure they were gone. Escaping his cabin, he went out to breathe in deep draughts of the cold night air in the hopes it would quash the need to drive his fist into something that looked an awful lot like Josh's face. Deciding to walk off his anger, he headed toward the barns. All was quiet and shuttered for the night.

It was peaceful there, so he lingered by the pastures, following the dark line of fence until he reached a clump of horses sleeping together. Resting his forearms against the top rail, he stared into the night. By then his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and he noticed something was amiss with one of the horses. It was the chestnut that Quinn had adopted. The gelding kept lowering his head, but not in a natural way, more stiffly, and then shifting his weight from side to side. He'd never seen a horse do that repeatedly, fixedly.

For a fraction of a second he hesitated to go to Quinn's. What if the kiss had been a prelude? Damned if he wanted to interrupt any more scenes between her and Josh. But then he recalled the way Quinn's face lit up when she talked about Tucker. He turned on his boot heels and hustled up the road to her house.

That's when he was treated to his second torture of the night: Quinn answering the door clad in a gray T-shirt that had
THE MIGHTY QUINN
emblazoned across the front. The shirt's hem barely reached the top of her thighs, which left a whole lot of not just mighty but naked Quinn to admire.

She liked hot-pink panties. They played peek-a-boo with him as she ran back to her bedroom to change. He was pretty sure that image of Quinn with her long slim legs pumping and her panties flashing was forever burned into his retinas.

Other parts of him caught fire, too.

As he tamped down the unwanted flames that licked him, he kept his gaze fixed in the direction of her bedroom, half expecting a heavy-lidded and smug-looking Josh to stroll out from there. But only Quinn emerged. Dressed now, she tore past him, Sooner a furry streak at her heels.

If Quinn hadn't been so distracted by Tucker's colic, he was sure she'd have caught that he was lying through his teeth when he said that witnessing her and Josh's kiss hadn't caused tonight's bout of insomnia. She'd have certainly called bullshit when he blurted that tired line,
To each his own.

Except in Quinn's case it wasn't some trite truism—or shouldn't be.

She should be with someone who understood her and appreciated how exceptional, how simply and unfailingly wonderful she was.

But it wasn't his place to tell her that she was amazing and that Josh had more flash than substance, so he dodged her question. And then Tucker scared the shit out of them both by trying to drop to his knees in the middle of the crushed-stone courtyard.

Luckily, between his tugging on the lead and Quinn's jabbing him in the ribs, they got him moving again. For once Ethan didn't relish the silence, because it would allow Quinn to worry about how much pain Tucker was in.

“You cold?” he asked to distract her.

“No.” Her teeth clicked together, her body blatantly contradicting her words.

So Quinn Knowles wasn't good at being taken care of. Funny, that.

“Here.” He passed her the lead and shrugged out of his jean jacket. “Put this on. You're shivering. The last thing you need is to catch a chill.”

She must have been freezing, for she accepted it with a wan smile, shoving her arms into the sleeves as she walked. “With no rain, it's easy to forget it's November—almost Thanksgiving. You'll be here for the holiday?”

“Yeah.” Then, remembering he wanted her to talk, which meant he would have to as well, he said, “Why?”

The shoulders of his jacket flapped a bit when she shrugged. “I simply wondered whether you'd be traveling back east to see your parents or maybe a close friend.”

“No. I need to keep some distance from my family. They're okay now that I'm here. Less worried.” Another reason he owed the Knowleses. “But going back east involves…expectations.” Expectations that would inevitably lead to disappointments. Along with the messages from his parents wanting updates on how he was doing, he'd received a half dozen emails and texts from Erin Miller, his editor, asking about the photographs he'd taken in Afghanistan. She had a writer lined up for the introduction who was eager to work with him. But as he'd already told Erin, his agent, Roger Snowe, and his parents, the pictures weren't going to see the light of day, contract be damned.

Realizing the silence had gone on too long, he cleared his throat and said, “So what about you? You have plans for Thanksgiving? I remember your parents would pull out all the stops for the holiday.”

If she was surprised that he'd suddenly turned into a chatterbox, she didn't show it.

“Yeah. They love that stuff. I guess I do, too, but not when it comes to Thanksgiving. Knowing that forty-six million turkeys will meet their bloody demise isn't cause for celebration in my opinion.”

“So, no fighting over the drumstick for you. Vegetarian?” he guessed.

“Yup.” The set of her chin told him she was prepared for a snide comment.

“Makes sense.”

“It does? Well, yeah, of course it does,” she amended hurriedly. “Not many people see it that way, though. The cattle rancher's daughter, and all that.” She gave another shrug. “Anyway, the whole feasting-on-big-dead-birds thing isn't for me. And there's no friend you're going to leave brokenhearted by your absence?”

He looked at her and cocked an eyebrow. “Brokenhearted? Are you asking me if I have a girlfriend?”

“You mean am I being intrusive? Only fair, isn't it, after your sage comments about Josh? So, yes or no?”

His lips twitched but he suppressed his smile. “No girlfriend. Had one. Dara and I called it quits before I left for Afghanistan. We decided it was for the best.” And though he'd liked Dara a lot, he was relieved he didn't have to deal with her expectations any more than anyone else's. “Last time I heard from her she'd started dating a Spanish artist she represents.”

“Represents?”

“Dara owns the Brendel Gallery in New York City, where I've had some shows.”

She looked like she was about to ask him another question, but just then the rumble of a car engine reached them. Quinn checked her watch. “That must be Gary Cooney. Thank God.”

The vet examined Tucker from head to tail, checking his gums, probing his belly, listening for gut noises, taking his temperature, and then finally performing a rectal exam. Standing on either side, Ethan and Quinn had held the gelding steady throughout. It was no challenge at all.

Tucker's lack of resistance, lack of response in general, alarmed Quinn. She'd have actually welcomed a display of his normal skittishness.

Stepping back, Cooney removed the surgical gloves and cleaned his hands and arms off with antiseptic wipes.

“I felt a torsion in the small intestine, Quinn. I'm sorry, but he's going to need surgery.”

She stroked the side of Tucker's face. “I was worried that might be the case.”

“Colic surgery is not an inexpensive procedure. To give you a rough estimate, you're looking at a final bill of around ten thousand dollars. Maybe more,” Cooney said. “The success rate for surgery is higher than it used to be, but there can always be problems, and I've only been able to feel a part of the intestine. When I open Tucker up, I may discover he's in far worse shape than I anticipated. In which case you'll have to consider putting him down. Then, too, there are the possible post-operative complications, the long convalescence—”

Quinn cut him off. “I understand what you're saying, Gary, and how serious colic can be. I know what's involved, the costs as well as the risks. But I still want you to perform the surgery.” She had enough money in her savings account.

Cooney nodded. “That's what I thought you'd say. I'd be irresponsible if I didn't give you the complete picture. Okay, then. Let's get him to the clinic. I'll have my staff at the ready so we can start as soon as possible. Will you be able to load him?”

“He's too sick to flip out. The van's in the tractor shed.”

She turned to Ethan, but before she even opened her mouth, he said, “I'll help you take him to the clinic. Do you want to bring Sooner, too?”

In all of this, her dog had been crouched at the perimeter of the circle they'd been walking, waiting for Quinn to finish. And Ethan had the wits to think of him. Something clogged her throat, making speech impossible. With a nod, she turned and ran to the shed.

F
IVE HOURS LATER,
Quinn turned the empty horse van into the private road that led to Silver Creek Ranch. Ever since Gary Cooney pronounced the words
torsion,
small intestine,
and
surgery,
she had been functioning on automatic. She was used to animals in pain, their bodies bloodied and broken from being hit by a car, beaten by a human, or caught in the relentless jaws of a hunter's trap. Seeing Tucker suffering was different. Perhaps it was because when she'd adopted him, she vowed to keep him safe. Yet there he was, in agony once again, and it was possible that nothing might save him this time.

But now the surgery was over. The incision Gary Cooney had made along Tucker's abdomen was stitched, and the vet was guardedly optimistic about the gelding's chances for a recovery. With the attendants monitoring him for the next twenty-four hours, there was nothing else to do but climb into the van with Ethan and head back to the ranch. And now that she'd reached their destination, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her system fizzled, leaving her drained. She gripped the steering wheel tightly, certain that otherwise she would slide right off the seat to land in a heap by the pedals.

Ethan had already propped her up too many times. Propped her up and kept her from losing it completely. Were she to teeter on the edge again, as she had when they were walking Tucker together or later as she watched the clock's hands for hours in the clinic's waiting room, she knew he'd be there, murmuring something or laying his hand on her arm, the pressure light but somehow, like the rumble of his voice, instantly calming.

Her gaze slid to the right and took in the angles of his profile, his aquiline nose, the sharp slash of his cheekbones, the jut of his jaw. Why hadn't she seen it before? she wondered, irritated at herself. She supposed she'd been so taken aback by the grayness of his pallor and the toll inflicted by his injuries that she had missed what now struck her as obvious. Ethan Saunders was as strong as the planes of his face.

She wasn't dumb or naive. She recognized that what he'd lived through in Afghanistan must have been bad. Terrible.

But in seeing him more clearly now, she realized that the flesh wounds alone wouldn't be reason for him to turn his back on his normal life or to put away his camera. There must be a deeper trauma he'd suffered, a hurt so devastating it had made him seek refuge at Silver Creek. She now suspected that he wasn't convalescing so much as exiling himself.

She needed to discover what else had happened to him. Maybe there was a way to help him.

“Ethan?”

He'd been looking down at his knee, next to where Sooner's black muzzle rested—the dog was sitting in the space by Ethan's boots. At the sound of her voice, both males turned their heads. Only one spoke. “Yeah?” Ethan's gaze held hers for a second, and then it sharpened. “What's wrong? Are you okay?”

“About as okay as I can be. Why?”

“You look funny.”

Right. No empty flattery with Ethan. “I was only going to say—
Damn,
” she muttered under her breath, unable to finish her sentence. They'd reached the main lodge, and she saw her family hurrying through its carved double doors. Someone must have been keeping watch.

She braked, and they quickly surrounded the trailer. Accompanying her parents and brothers were Mia, Tess, and Roo Rodgers, the ranch's pastry chef. As she opened her door and slid to the ground, she caught Roo's Australian accent among the other voices as the questions came thick and fast:
What happened? What did Cooney say? Will Tucker be all right?
Why didn't you call? What can we do?

Despite her exhaustion, Quinn smiled. Her family could be as annoying as the best of them, but they were always there for her, ready to show how much they cared when she needed it. And she didn't need to walk into the lodge's enormous kitchen to know that Roo would have been engaged in some serious baking this morning or that Jeff would have whipped up some sort of veggie dish or frittata to ensure she had enough protein. They'd be plying her with comfort food for the next week.

She glanced around. No guests were wandering around, so she let out a piercing whistle. Her mother frowned but, like the rest of them, fell silent. Quinn knew to take advantage of the moment.

“We have Ethan to thank. He's the one who found Tucker. We were lucky enough to get him walking and call Cooney before the intestinal tissue started to die. Even so, he'd rolled—”

“So it was colic?” Ward asked.

“Yeah. Sorry I didn't text. I was…”
Too panicked to type,
she thought.

“Busy praying?” Mia supplied sympathetically.

“Pretty much.” She shared a small sad smile with Mia, who understood. She'd been through a very similar hell when her dog, Bruno, had been near death.

“What did Cooney find, sweetheart?” her dad asked.

“During his initial exam here, he found a small intestinal torsion. Unfortunately, there's more. Once he was able to open Tucker up, he discovered an impaction in the large colon. Tucker had ingested a fair amount of sand. He couldn't pass it.”

“Sand? But we put the hay on mats or use a feeder.”

Reid spoke up. “That's true, Dad, but I've seen Tucker nudge his hay around when he eats. A lot ends up on the ground. He and Gomez both do that.”

“That's what Cooney thought might have caused it,” Quinn said. “Thanks to the drought, the ground has turned into a giant sandlot. So from here on out we have to keep Gomez and Tucker from playing with their hay.”

“We'd better tell Pete to keep an eye on all the horses at feeding time, just to be safe,” her mother said.

“Cooney suggested that for the ones who insist on eating their hay on the ground, we should supplement their feed with psyllium.”

“I'll let Pete know. Damn, I hate this drought,” Ward said.

“It's even worse south of us,” her dad observed. Shifting his attention to Ethan, he said, “So our thanks are in order?”

She watched Ethan scan the faces encircling them.

“I simply found Tucker, that's all.” His tone was as guarded as his expression.

“Ethan did way more than that, Dad,” she contradicted. “Not everyone would have realized there was something off with Tucker—not with only the moonlight to go by. And he helped me walk him.”

“Tucker let you near him?” Reid asked.

“The horse was sick.”

Obstinate man,
Quinn thought. From the quick duck of Reid's dark blond head, she guessed he was amused by Ethan's refusal to take any credit for saving Tucker. Her parents were less circumspect. They were beaming at him. Naturally enough, they all remembered how Tucker had been when he first arrived at Silver Creek. He only allowed Ward to approach because her brother had a bucket from which he dribbled precious grain on the ground. Since then Tucker hadn't let men approach him, even the ones he saw every day.

“And Ethan also helped me load him in the van.”
Plus he kept me calm in the waiting room—as calm as I could be. And he instinctively knew that having Sooner there to stroke would soothe me,
she added silently. But her family and Roo didn't need to know how far Ethan's helpfulness had extended beyond getting Tucker to Gary Cooney's clinic, because then their expressions would become speculative, and a barrage of questions would ensue. Questions that would involve her. Questions she wasn't ready to answer.

“So what's Cooney's prognosis?”

Despite her fatigue, Quinn smiled at Ward. He was a bit of a control freak, her brother, always wanting to have the facts laid out so he could act accordingly. The trait would have been supremely annoying except it made him really good at running the guest ranch.

“Guardedly optimistic,” she replied. “Cooney was able to extract the sand from the colon and cut out the twisted portion of the intestine. Tucker was still under the effects of the anesthesia when he came out and talked to us. He wants Tucker to stay at the clinic for five days, maybe more. Then he'll come home to several weeks of stall rest. Cooney didn't sugarcoat the gravity of his condition or pretend he's out of the woods, but I figure Tucker's a survivor.” She was counting on it.

“And he's receiving the best of care,” her mom said.

“I'll talk to Pete about a stall for Tucker. I don't know how well he's going to handle being confined for that long,” Ward said.

“He might do better if he could have his buddies Harper and Bristol next to him,” Ethan said.

She was becoming familiar with the lump that would choke her whenever Ethan showed this part of himself. It was a big, messy clump of emotion. Sweet but scary. She swallowed hard.

Ward nodded. “Good idea.”

“Excellent one,” her dad said.

“So Gary will keep us updated, right, Quinn?” Reid said.

Her mother answered before she could open her mouth. Quinn was grateful, because now that the adrenaline had left her system, she was beginning to feel like crap. “Of course he will. He's a terrific vet and he knows how much Quinn cares about Tucker. I'm more worried about you, Quinn. You look terrible, darling.”

And to think some people claimed Adele Knowles was the soul of tact. “I'm fine, Mom.”

“Well, how about a cuppa, then? And Jeff and I made a special brekkie for you,” Roo said.

Quinn's stomach rumbled loudly.

“That's a yes, then.” Roo winked.

“And I'd love to take a photo of those maple walnut muffins for the website before they vanish. They look amazing,” Tess said.

“Of course they are. I made 'em, didn't I?” Roo said. Their colorful pastry chef was nothing if not confident of her talents. Deservedly so.

“Let's all go in,” her mom suggested.

“I might be coaxed into eating a muffin or two,” her dad said. “Come join us, Ethan.”

“Yes, Ethan, you must be starved,” her mom chimed in. Her parents hadn't become hoteliers for nothing.

“Thank you, but I'll take a pass. The goats need milking.” With a nod to the assembled group, he walked away.

She watched him head down the gravel road that led to the barns and corrals and beyond them the goat pen.

“I always liked that about Ethan. You give him a job and he sees it's done,” her dad said.

“That's true. Not many teenagers would have walked Quinn around on Jinx. He did it unfailingly and without complaining,” her mother said, slipping her arm around Daniel's waist. “Still, I'd have preferred to have him come and eat with us.”

She watched her dad press a kiss to her mom's forehead. “Next time, sweetheart.”

Quinn wasn't so sure. Ethan was determined to maintain his self-imposed exile. Good thing she was as dogged as they came.

Ethan had saved Hennie for last so that when he was done milking her, he could reward her by kicking around a ball. She was getting damned good at blocking. Though most of the soldiers at Camp Nathan Smith preferred football or vicious, elbow-swinging games of basketball during their downtime, he'd played some soccer with them, too. Ethan was pretty sure the soldiers would have dug having a goat for a goalie. He could imagine the raunchy comments that would fly as fast as the ball over the rocky patch of ground that served as a playing field. Aaron had been an amazing player; his moves left everyone literally standing in the dust.

Unbidden, the image of the last time he'd seen Aaron rose before him. Ethan squeezed his eyes shut.

“Hey, Ethan.”

He opened his eyes but kept his head lowered. Josh's heavy drawl was the only ID required. “Hey.”

“Hanging with the nannies, huh? Which one is that again?”

“Hennie,” he replied.

“Damn, but you're getting good at that milking.”

He didn't pause in the tempo he'd established, and for a moment the
swish swish
of the milk hitting the pail was the only sound. “You here for a reason, Josh? Or are you hoping to get some tips on your technique?”