Sun Kissed (7 page)

Parker came to set the bowl of salad on the table. He stooped low to examine her bruise. “It’s taken down the swelling some,” he pronounced. “A few more minutes ought to do it.”

The security system chimed just then, yet another sign of her family’s devotion to her safety and well-being. The moment she’d kicked Steve out, the alarm system had been installed, and now, an entire year later, her dad still phoned her every evening at dark to make sure she remembered to set it.

The sound of the front door closing echoed through the house. A moment later Samantha heard her father’s distinctive footsteps echoing on the hardwood floor.

When he appeared in the doorway, hat in hand, she said, “Mission accomplished?”

“Mostly,” he replied, the expression on his burnished countenance unabashed. “And don’t start,” he warned. “I did what I needed to do, and whether you approve or not, there’ll be no discussin’ it.”

It had been a long day, and Samantha was too weary to argue.

“What’d you think of Coulter?” Zach asked.

“I like him.” Frank raked his fingers through his hair, trying to comb away the hat ring. Age had streaked the strands with silver at his temples, but they were otherwise as black as his children’s. “I found him outside the ER, probably waitin’ for a ride. He’s a clean-cut, polite young fellow.” He shot Samantha a sidelong glance. “Tall, sturdy. Good-lookin’, too, in my estimation, even if he is
sportin’ two black eyes. I figure the other guy probably feels worse than he does.”

“We can only hope. Sammy laid down the law.” Quincy grinned at his sister. “If we go anywhere near the jail, she’s gonna kick our butts.”

“I think Coulter took care of the paybacks for us,” Frank said, patting his shirt pocket. “And one good turn deserves another. I got his card. Reckon I’ll steer a little business his way, maybe even some of my own.”

“That’s a good idea, Dad,” Clint remarked. “Old Doc Washburn will be retiring soon. Having a young vet on line who knows his stuff can’t hurt.”

“Just because he took up for me doesn’t mean he knows his stuff,” Samantha pointed out.

Hooking his Stetson over the finial of a tall-backed chair, Frank sat down next to her. Even at sixty-one, he was as fit and trim as a thirty-year-old, testimony to a lifetime of hard work. Though semiretired now, he could still run circles around men half his age.

“You’re absolutely right, Samantha Jane. And you know me: I don’t let just any vet touch one of my horses.”

“So why consider recommending him to others or giving him business yourself?” she asked.

“On the way home, I did some callin’ around to check him out,” Frank replied. “Thought the name Coulter sounded familiar. Now I know why. He’s that new fellow old Jim Ralston has been braggin’ about. I trust Jim’s opinion. He claims the boy is flat amazing with horses.”

“How so?” Parker asked.

“Not afraid of ’em, for starters. That’s important in a vet.”

A rumble of general agreement urged Frank to continue.

“More important, Jim says the boy has a gift.”

Samantha recalled Tucker’s talking about his rapport with equines. “How do you mean?”

Frank’s brow furrowed in thought. “Jim says the young man can calm a frightened horse like nobody he’s ever seen, as if he communicates with the animal in a way most folks can’t.”

Samantha knew firsthand how charming Tucker Coulter could be.

“Jim had a filly go lame on him,” Frank went on. “Thought she had real promise as a cuttin’ horse, and he’d hoped to put her with a professional trainer. But all of a sudden she developed a limp. He took her to a couple of other vets. They prescribed confinement and inactivity to let the foreleg heal. But she kept goin’ lame again as soon as Jim let her resume normal activity. He finally took her to Tucker Coulter, and now that filly is fit as a fiddle.”

“What’d Coulter do to fix her up?” Clint asked.

“Come to find out,” Frank continued, “there was nothin’ wrong with her foreleg. Coulter X-rayed it and discovered Jim’s farrier was trimming her hoof wrong. Too much inward slope. It was puttin’ a strain on the tendon, and every time she got the least bit active, the swelling and tenderness returned.”

“And the other two vets didn’t find that?”

“Never bothered to X-ray the hoof and leg.” Frank chuckled and shook his head. “Can’t find somethin’ if you don’t look for it, now, can you?”

The conversation turned to veterinarians—stories
about good ones and bad ones and all the mediocre ones in between. When supper was finally on the table, all talking came to a halt. Frank began the blessing by making the sign of the cross, and the six of them quickly recited the prayer that they’d been saying before meals for as long as Samantha could remember.

“Boy howdy, Clint, you’ve surpassed yourself. This soup is superb,” Frank observed after taking a bite. “You got any wine, sweetheart? We’re celebrating Blue’s big win tonight. An occasion like this calls for a toast.”

Samantha left the table to get wineglasses and a bottle of merlot. As she set the bottle on the table and started to open it, Parker snatched the corkscrew from her hands. “Here, let me.”

“I do know how to open a bottle of wine,” Samantha reminded him.

If Parker heard her, he gave no sign of it. She circled the table to resume her seat. The wine was soon poured, and Frank passed her a glass.

“To the finest breeder and trainer this side of the Mississippi,” her dad said with a lift of his goblet. “Congratulations, sweetheart. Blue Blazes is a horse to be proud of.”

“Hear, hear!” her brothers said, and each took a swallow of merlot.

“Present company excluded, of course,” Zach said with a grin. “About you being the finest breeder and trainer, I mean. On that count, I think we all run neck and neck.”

Another toast was made to Blue, the finest cutting horse this side of the Mississippi, which prompted Zach
to once again say, “Present company excluded, of course.”

There followed hoots of laughter when Parker said, “Speak for yourself. I’m not a horse.”

Clint seconded that with, “Me, neither.”

When the laughter abated, Clint was complimented yet again on the soup.

“It’s all that cheese he puts in it,” Quincy, the health nut, complained. “You can make anything taste good if you put in enough cheese.”

“You ever stop to think that God gave us cheese?” Zach protested.

“Not to mention our taste buds,” Parker tacked on. “They regenerate every four days. Seems to me we’re supposed to enjoy the taste of our food.”

“You can enjoy your food without clogging all your arteries,” Quincy countered. “Do you have any inkling how much fat is in just one of those sausages?”

And so it went, the members of her family arguing good-naturedly back and forth as they enjoyed the meal. The tension eased from Samantha’s shoulders, and a slight smile touched her lips as she attended the conversation. There would be time enough later to worry about her difficulties with them. Tonight she wanted only to relax and enjoy being together.

T
he log walls of Jake’s living room shimmered in the light like polished amber. Tucker, replete after a fabulous steak dinner, relaxed from being pampered, and kicked back in a leather recliner with an ice pack on his nose, was considering the possibility of a short nap. With half his face covered and still partly numb from the Novocain injections, he couldn’t comfortably engage in the after-supper conversation taking place between his dad and elder brother, so he stared at the open rafters above him instead, only half listening to the debate on all the possible causes of mad cow disease. Occasionally when Harv and Jake were both dead wrong, he thought about putting in his two cents’ worth, but the wine he’d had with his meal was making him feel too sleepy.

That was one of the things he liked about Jake’s log house: its relaxed atmosphere. Shortly after Jake’s marriage to Molly, a cute, whiskey-haired woman no taller than Tucker’s mother and almost as round, the original structure had burned to the ground. Tucker had expected the identical new house to take on a different character
with Molly in charge of decorating. But somehow she’d managed to put her stamp on every room without altering the rustic theme. Handmade furniture, an array of Western paintings by local artists, and a collection of antique farming and ranching implements worked together with more feminine accents to create an appealing space where a man could sprawl in a comfortable, oversize chair and not worry about his boots soiling the upholstery.

Tucker liked his own house, a two-story Victorian surrounded by English gardens and a white picket fence. He’d had the spacious interior professionally decorated, and every room was the antithesis of what he’d known as a kid. The furniture had fine upholstery and lots of curlicues in the wood, the dishes were dainty, patterned with tea roses and trimmed in gold, and almost every room sported an imported area rug that had cost the earth. He’d loved it all at first and determinedly ignored the ceaseless ribbing from his brothers, who were all men’s men with rugged tastes. Tucker loved fine things, and he was confident enough in his masculinity to surround himself with them.

Only now that the newness had worn off, he wondered sometimes if he’d made the right choices for long-term living. Yes, crystal decanters and fine bone china appealed to him, but practically speaking, they weren’t things he wanted to use on a daily or even monthly basis. His finger wouldn’t fit through the handles of the teacups. The decanters dribbled out booze when he preferred a generous slosh, and when he wanted a mixed drink in the evening, he always sought out a sturdy tumbler. For his
library, he’d also broken down and bought a comfortable chair, which looked blockish and far too massive for the room, rather like Tucker himself.

In short, he was a bull living in a dollhouse with a huge, graceless rottweiler named Max as a roommate. Max chewed knucklebones on the fine area rugs, his black fur constantly drifted on the currents of circulating air, and the teacups on the rack in the formal dining room performed the singular purpose of collecting dust. It wasn’t a wholly practical situation, and Tucker had been toying with the idea of making a change, the only problem being all the merciless teasing by his brothers that he would have to endure if he sold his Victorian home and bought a place on a larger acreage better suited to his lifestyle.

“The mad cow threat makes a man afraid to eat beef,” Tucker’s father said. “I wish we still raised our own. Buying meat at the supermarket, I could wake up some mornin’ mad as a hatter and drooling at the mouth.”

“Just don’t eat the brains, spinal tissue, or vital organs,” Tucker muttered. It wasn’t easy to speak clearly around an ice pack, especially with a numb upper lip. “Not much danger otherwise.”

“I’m still not talking to you,” Jake said, his voice laced with teasing gruffness. “My one big chance to meet Frank Harrigan, and you didn’t even think to introduce me. You knew I was right upstairs in the cafeteria.”

“I’m sorry,” Tucker said, not for the first time. “I don’t know where my head was.”

And that was the truth. Tucker hadn’t felt so nervous since going to pick up a girl on his first date. What had
her name been? His head was too foggy to remember. He recalled only being so tense that he stuttered and tripped over his own feet.

Until this afternoon, he’d believed himself to be over that awkward stage. But meeting Frank Harrigan had plunged him back into it, leaving him uncertain what to say and worrying about the impression he’d made. How crazy was that?

Tucker wondered if his numb lip had wandered all over his face when he smiled. And had he gripped Harrigan’s hand firmly enough? Ranchers judged a man by his handshake. And—
oh, damn
—had he really been leafing through a fashion article, looking at the best- and worst-dressed people of the year, when Samantha’s father approached?

Why Tucker cared, he didn’t know. Then he decided he was lying to himself. He was taken with Samantha, and it was important that her father approved of him. How else could he hope to make any headway with the woman?

Cheyenne Lee, Jake’s fifteen-month-old daughter, let loose with a shriek from somewhere upstairs, followed by the sound of running footsteps. “Young lady, you get back here!” Molly cried.

The next thing Tucker knew, his baby niece stood on the landing overlooking the living room, her plump, naked body rosy from her bath, damp chocolate curls framing her cherubic face. Peering down at him through the log railing, which had been constructed for toddler safety, she grinned broadly, flashing eight new pearly whites.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Tucker called up to her.

She jabbered something and then giggled as if she’d just told a joke. The punch line was yet to come. She assumed a suddenly intent expression and started to pee, the stream running down her chubby thighs to puddle on the floor.

“Jake!” Tucker called, exercising a childless uncle’s prerogative to call on the parent when accidents occurred. “She’s taking a leak without a diaper.”

But the call came too late. The puddle cascaded over the edge of the landing to rain on Tucker, the recliner, and the floor. The ice pack went in one direction and Tucker in another as he scrambled to escape the downpour, wondering how a quarter cup of urine could sprinkle such a large area.

He cursed under his breath and swatted at his jeans. A chortle of delight came from above, and Cheyenne stomped her chubby feet, clearly pleased with the ruckus she had caused.

Tucker growled, doing an imitation of an angry bear, and charged up the stairs. His intended victim screeched in delight and launched a counterattack, running toward him instead of away, making him increase speed considerably to reach the unlatched safety gate at the top of the staircase before she did.

“Gotcha!” he yelled. “You wet on your uncle Tucker. Now you gotta pay.”

Cheyenne giggled as Tucker snatched her up, growled again, and pretended to devour her, paying special attention to her most ticklish spots. He made sure to avoid nibbling on any part of her from the knees down, however,
namely her ankles or toes, which were transferring their wetness onto his shirt.

The tiny girl suddenly went quiet and still. Tucker stopped tickling her and raised his head. Solemnly, she reached out a pink, dimpled hand to touch the bandage over his nose.

“Owee,” she said.

“Yes, a big owee,” Tucker agreed, “but the doctor made it feel all better.”

Molly appeared behind her daughter, holding aloft a cream-colored bath towel. Short, generously curvaceous, and almost as cute as her little girl, she flashed Tucker a radiant smile as she enveloped the baby in terry cloth and scooped her out of his arms.

“She had an accident.” Tucker pointed to the wetness. “It spilled over and got the floor, me, and the recliner downstairs.”

Molly followed his gaze. “Uh-oh. Another bath for you, young lady.” Leaning over the railing, she called, “Daddy, cleanup time.”

Jake had already gone to the downstairs bathroom for a damp towel and a spray bottle of disinfectant. Looking like the Marlboro Man on a mission, he gave his wife a mock salute as he advanced on the target area. “Yes, ma’am, got it covered.”

Molly grinned. “I love it when he calls me ma’am. It’s so sexy.”

Jake chuckled as he crouched to clean up the mess. “I’ll remember that.”

“Say, ‘Bye-bye, Uncle Tucker,’” Molly instructed her
daughter, grabbing the baby’s pudgy wrist to show her how to wave.

Tucker wiggled his fingers in farewell. Gazing after Molly as she disappeared through a doorway along the hall, he felt funny inside, sort of hollow and lost. He wanted what all his brothers had found, one special woman with whom he could build a life. His youngest brother had a second child on the way, and Tucker wasn’t even married yet. Even worse, he had no prospects and wasn’t sure he ever would.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. He dated regularly. Hell, he’d even traveled to Colorado in June, thinking he might get lucky if he returned to the place where this branch of the Coulter clan had first begun. Sadly, he’d found no magic in No Name, Colorado, only some weathered headstones and a handful of bewildered distant relatives who could never quite grasp why he’d gone to such lengths to find them.

In retrospect, Tucker wasn’t sure, either, and felt a little foolish. Love wasn’t like gold or buried treasure, something tangible that you could search for and unearth. And you weren’t more likely to find it simply because you traveled to a different place. If you were fortunate, love just happened, most times when you least expected it, according to his mother.

His thoughts circled back to the afternoon and that first moment when he’d seen Samantha Harrigan. He’d felt something when he was with her today—an expectant feeling he’d never experienced before. Had she felt it, too? Or was it just wishful thinking? She was a pretty lady, and he’d found a lot in her to admire during their
short acquaintance. But chances were he’d never see her again.

The stable phone started to ring just as Samantha offered Blue the last of his apples and oatmeal. She allowed the stallion to nibble her palm clean before leaving the stall to answer the call.

“Hi, Dad,” she said without waiting to find out who it was. “No, I haven’t set the alarm yet. Yes, I’m out in the stable after dark. I’ll be going in and battening down the hatches in about ten minutes.”

Her father said nothing for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat and replied, “I’ll give you a call back in ten minutes, then.”

Samantha gritted her teeth. As much as she appreciated her father’s concern for her safety, his habit of constantly checking in with her was a pain in the neck. If she decided to have a long soak in the bathtub after calling it a day, she had to make sure she took the portable phone into the bathroom with her. If she needed something from the store and made an evening grocery run, God forbid that she forgot to let him know.

“I’ll be all right, Dad. Jerome is right upstairs in the stable apartment if I need him, and Steve hasn’t shown his face around here in over a year.”

Frank said, “I know that, Sammy, and chances are good that he never will again. But there’s still no harm in playing it safe.”

Samantha mouthed the words,
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,
while her father recited the
familiar refrain in her ear. When he finished speaking, she said, “I love you, Dad.”

“I love you, too. Make sure you lock up tight when you go in the house.”

“I will,” she promised.

“And if you hear any odd noises, don’t hesitate to call me.”

“I won’t.”

“There’s my good girl.”

As she broke the connection, Samantha said, “That’s me, Daddy’s good girl.” Replacing the phone in its cradle, she returned to Blue’s stall. Looping her arms around the stallion’s neck, she pressed her face against his salt-and-pepper coat and soothed herself by breathing in his smell.

“Am I horrible, Blue?” She sighed wearily, wishing the horse could respond. He was her best friend, after all, and that was what friends were for, to give advice. “I just want a little privacy once in a while. Is that so wrong?”

Blue nudged her with his nose, bumping her off balance. She laughed and patted his shoulder. “I know, I know. I’m an ungrateful brat. The ranch, the house, and the very dirt I’m standing on were gifts from him. He even lent me the money to pay Steve off so I wouldn’t lose this place, and he never says a word about me paying him back. I should be more appreciative.”

The stallion snorted and dipped his head as if he were nodding. Maybe, Samantha decided, he could impart some advice after all. As she left the stall and closed the gate, she glanced at the telephone, tempted to call her father back. But, no. He’d be calling again in precisely—
she glanced at her watch—six minutes. She’d just make it a point to be nice when she answered.

As she crossed the indoor arena, she called good-night to Oregano and Nutmeg, promising to bring them treats in the morning. At the personnel door she stopped to look back at the forty spacious stalls that lined the riding area before she turned out the light. A gift, her early inheritance, a dream come true. If her last name weren’t Harrigan, she would have none of it. She needed to remember that and try to be more patient with her father.

Once outside the building, Samantha stopped for a moment to enjoy the beautiful evening. The moon hung in the sky like a curved quarter shard of a broken supper plate, and stars twinkled around it like sequins that had been tossed willy-nilly onto dark blue velvet. When she breathed deeply she could smell alfalfa, freshly cut grass hay left to dry in the fields, and the faint perfume of wild clover.