Zeph Undercover (6 page)

The liquid in her glass sloshed dangerously. She set it on the small table at her elbow. What if Zeph had come here to investigate her father? Of course he was innocent, but nightmare visions of heartless inquisitions and reputation-destroying rumors gripped her. So many people believed that where there was smoke one found fire.

Maybe Zeph had come here specifically to investigate her father.

She stared at him through narrowed eyes, as if she could read his mind if she looked hard enough, but could only see the red of her fury. He’d come here to use her.

Buried under the anger, a tiny voice of logic said that of course he had to investigate everyone involved. An even tinier whisper told her not to get angry. Hot emotions might melt the ice she’d put around her feelings.

Chapter 3

A man could get used to Martha’s cooking, Zeph decided the next morning. Comfortably full of pecan waffles and the best coffee he’d ever tasted, he strolled through the front door of Allie’s clinic.

She came through her office door like a bullet and slammed into him.

He rocked back, delight booming through him. The one remaining thing to make this a perfect day. “I missed you, too,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and enjoying the warm weight of her against him. “Good morning.”

She stepped back. “Let go of me. I thought you were an emergency patient. I don’t have any appointments this morning.”

“I have a morning emergency you could hel—”

“Don’t you dare.”

If he’d thought she’d been frosty yesterday, today was polar ice cap. Doubled, squared, and cubed. So many of his women would have melted. And helped with his morning problem. But Allie… With surprise, he realized her distaste made him feel a little sleazy. He let go. “I apologize. What are we doing today?”

“I have some house calls to make this morning. Office hours this afternoon.”

“House calls? Don’t you mean barn calls?”

One corner of her mouth crimped. Almost a smile? The thought gave him hope. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to Betty’s to give her cat his annual vaccinations—”

“Cat? Why doesn’t she just bring it in?”

“Because she’s at work. Cooking all those yummy things you like to eat, remember?”

Hope shriveled with frostbite.

“And I can swing by her place on the way to Monty’s ranch to examine a horse that’s off his feed,” she continued. “You have a problem with that?”

“Nope. Just curious.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Come with you?” he said with the off-center grin that usually got him what he wanted.

“I thought you had to talk to people. There won’t be anyone around either place. Betty and Monty will both be at work, and they couldn’t be suspects anyway. Oh, wait. I almost forgot. You suspect everyone. Not to mention that this is about making it look good. Right?”

No, this is about me wanting to spend the day with you.
“Of course.”

“All right. Let’s go.” Allie brushed past him to put the CLOSED—MAKING CALLS sign with its emergency number in the window and lock the door. She headed out back to her truck at a business-like pace.

“Allie, I really—”

“Forget it.”

Not in a million years.

She didn’t pause and he jerked into motion to follow, enjoying the hell out of her trim rear. Something about a well-shaped woman in jeans... And when you actually liked the woman to boot, well…

Forty minutes later, Betty’s cat had been vaccinated, inoculated, immunized, and protected against things Zeph never knew existed. While Allie packed her gear, he took a quick tour through the house, pausing at Betty’s desk.

“What are you doing?” Allie stood in the doorway, hands on hips.

“I’m—”

“Investigating. I know,” she said with disgust. “Come on.” She motioned him to precede her out of the house. “You don’t even suspect Betty.”

“Just checking.” He climbed into the truck and dabbed at the scratches on his hand with what had been a pristine handkerchief.

“Don’t sulk. It’s unattractive,” Allie told him.

“It hurts.” Not much, but he wouldn’t mind a little womanly sympathy. “And it was a cat. In the house. Animals belong outdoors. Or in the refrigerator.”

“I advise you not to repeat that. Some people here like their pets.”

“Cats, dogs, horses. They’re as bad as bears. Wolves. Dinosaurs. I don’t do animals. Especially killer cats.”

“Big brave detective, remember? This is just a little scratch. What if it had been a bullet?”

That was last month. It hurt like hell but the hospital gave me drugs and the nurses provided a lot of sympathy.
“I’d get you to kiss it and make it well? You owe me. I told you I couldn’t hold the damn thing.”

“I’ll give you a Band Aid.”

Zeph looked at the rip across the back of his hand. “So much for womanly sympathy.” At least she’d washed his wounds, and for all her cavalier talk, she’d looked so carefully at the scratches that he’d had to ask if he’d get rabies or some other hideous disease.

“The bleeding should stop in a few minutes. I’ll put some more salve on it when we get to Monty’s.”

“Gee, thanks.”

At Monty’s ranch, she parked by the barn and rummaged in the back of the truck for a box that held animal medications. He hoped they were safe for humans. But her soft hand holding his, her cool fingers smoothing over the back of his hand, made the whole thing worthwhile.

She capped the tube and put it away. “Okay. Time to go to work,” she said, and led the way into the barn.

A black and white horse stood in the first stall.

“You might want to stand out of the way. I’m going to bring him out in the light so I can look him over.”

Horses. Why did it always have to be horses? He got out of the way while she tied the animal in the doorway. She peered at its eyes and ears and feet, into its mouth and more personal parts, then ran her hands over it.

“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t know. Hmm. I wonder...” She pulled out her phone. “Monty? I’m not finding anything wrong with this guy. But I was wondering...he’s usually out in the pasture with that paint mare and I don’t see her here.”

Zeph could hear Monty’s voice rumbling but couldn’t make out the words.

“Well, I think that’s your answer. This guy’s missing his friend. He’s lonely.” She listened for a moment, then laughed. “That’s great. He’ll probably start eating as soon as she’s back. I’ll put him out in the pasture to wait for her return.” After she’d done that, she said, “Come on, I’ll show you the other horses.”

Why? But he followed along. Fortunately there were only four. They all looked alike. Big. Smelly. Dangerous.

“And this is Dancer,” Allie said, stopping at the last stall.

“Ah…it’s big?” he ventured, taking a step back. While he tried to think of something more intelligent than “It’s a different color,” Allie looked into the stall. “Uh oh,” she said, and yanked the half-door open.

“What?” Zeph said.

“Help me,” she demanded, disappearing inside.

Visions of delivering babies in taxis and emergency appendectomies on kitchen tables danced through his head. He could handle those, at least the delivering babies ones, but horses?

“Now.”

The urgency in her voice yanked him into action and he dashed into the stall, wary of the smelly piles that seemed to be unavoidable whenever horses were in the vicinity. But only clean straw met his anxious gaze.

Allie tugged on the leather straps around the horse’s head, apparently trying to lead him outside. Zeph approached reluctantly, ready to help, but leaped away when the horse kicked at its belly. The hollow thunk it made had him flinching. The horse’s rear end sank toward the ground.

“Don’t let him get down,” Allie panted. “Yell. Flap your coat at him. Hurry.”

Her urgency infected him. He ripped off his jacket and flapped, yelling like a maniac and feeling like an idiot. The horse stopped sinking and let Allie haul him outside.

She kept going, out of the barn and around the stable yard. He walked outside to join her. “What’s going on?”

“Colic.”

“What?”

“He’s got colic.”

Human babies got colic. He’d heard people in the office complaining about walking the floor all night. Big deal. Everyone was sleepless, but not worried, not like Allie with that life-or-death wrinkle in her forehead. “Like a baby?”

Allie’s expression didn’t alter. “Like a baby. His stomach hurts,” she said. “But horses can’t throw up, so whatever’s wrong in there just stays put. It can be fairly minor, or lethal, or anywhere in between.”

“You’re a vet. Is he…?”

“Don’t know yet. And vets can’t always fix colic.” Her mouth set in a grim line, totally unlike its usual soft, tempting curve. “Go to my truck and get...” She reeled off a list of things. “Hurry.”

He hurried. When he got back, she had him stir together a mess that looked like nothing a living creature would ever eat. “Yech.”

“Bran, molasses, and oil. We hope it will grease the skids. So to speak.”

Somehow she got the stuff into the horse and went back to walking it, looking marginally more hopeful.

“Now what?” he asked.

She put the horse back in its stall, leaving the door open with only an inadequate looking rope across the opening to keep it inside. “Now we wait. And watch.” She got a couple of folding chairs out of the barn and set them up way too close to the open door and the horse inside. She pulled her phone out of a pocket and called Monty to report.

Zeph scooted his chair closer to Allie’s and took her hand. Her laser focus on the horse didn’t waver while she took it back, and there he was, running second best to a damned horse.

Again. Just the way it had been all summer when they tried to meet at the horse shows which were the only reason Allie ever left this isolated whistle stop. Except for school, of course.

Her voice broke into his unhappy thoughts. “Are those the only shoes you brought?”

Of course not. Along with the dress shoes he never traveled without, he’d brought casual shoes for this trip: two pairs of loafers, running shoes… “No.”

“Boots?”

“No.”

“You’d better get some. Those things will get ruined in no time.”

‘Those things’ had cost a small fortune. “Okay.” Her concern warmed him. Maybe she didn’t hate him. Maybe the icy shoulder business was an act.

He leaned back in his chair and considered the possibility that he’d fallen into an alternate universe. That must be it, the only way he could explain that he, Zephram Granger, sitting in the middle of a stable on a chair that belonged in a dump, didn’t hate being here. In fact, actually enjoyed the moment.

At least, he enjoyed it until the horse started biting and kicking at its stomach again, and Allie leaped up to start the walking all over again.

He thought about what he’d like to do with Allie, about the excellent bed in his room, and sighed. No hope there, even if she were willing. Not with her father around.

Eventually Allie tied the horse up and put her ear on its belly. Zeph half rose. Shit, what if it started that kicking thing again? Her head was right where its foot would get her. But she smiled and came to sit next to him. “What was that all about?” he asked, curious in spite of himself.

“Something’s going on in there,” she said. “When we first got here, his belly was quiet.”

That verged on too much information, an unusual feeling for a detective.

When she got up and started walking it around again, he moved the chairs out of the way and walked beside her. “Why don’t I get us a couple of bottles of water from the truck?”

Her attention flicked from the horse to him. “Great. Thanks.”

“Be right back.” He got the drinks and picked his way across the stable yard to intercept her. His route brought him closer to the horse than he liked, and if he’d been thinking about anything except Allie, he’d surely have detoured. One minute she and the horse were walking away from him. In the next second, everything had turned into a cartoon panel. The horse stopped. Allie yelled something about not walking in back of horses.

Before he could say, “What?” the odor he’d learned to identify as fresh manure hit him like a fist, and his shoes, his brand new, perfectly polished Berlutis, his brand new, expensive Berlutis, were covered in the horse poop that mounded around his ankles.

****

Zeph stepped up onto the clinic porch. He looked at his new boots and sighed. After yesterday’s debacle, he’d given up and spent the morning buying footwear suitable for life in the slow, manure-laden lane.

The phone rang inside. A minute later, Allie ran through the door and headed for her truck. “Stay here.” she flung over her shoulder. “Luke and Hannah said they’d stop by later, and I might not be back.”

So two hours later, here he sat, on the front porch of Allie’s clinic with Luke and a bottle of beer while Hannah bought groceries and Allie did—whatever.

“Where’s Allie?” Luke asked.

“Emergency call.”

“You’d know about those, I’d guess.”