Once and for All by Jeannie Watt Read Free Book Online Page B

the job done.
    He left the office and stepped into the milling swarms of kids in the hall. He caught sight of Beau standing next to a locker, talking to Marisa Brown, the perkiest of perky cheerleaders, and resisted the urge to push his way through the crowd and tell him he needed to focus on school, not women.
    Instead Sam continued to follow a stream of kids until he got to the exit. He’d fight that battle, along with several others, tonight. Right now he wanted to get his first call—the Barton ranch—over and done with.

    J ODIE GOT UP EARLY and checked the bull—thankfully he wasn’t belly up—then sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and staring out the picture window at the snowy fields with the pastel-blue mountains behind them.
    She was grateful Sam had come the night before, grateful that he was doing what he could…but this was her father’s prize bull. She had to do everything she could, so she’d put in another call to Eriksson’s office, hoping to leave a message on voice mail for a call back. Instead she got the same recording as the time she’d called for advice about Bronson. Dr. Eriksson was out of the office for yet another week.
    What kind of vet took two -week vacations? Didn’t he realize that people needed him? Now?
    “Lucas said Sam is coming back this morning,” Margarite said as she sat down on the other side of the table with a crossword puzzle book and a cup of tea.
    “Yes.”
    “Thank goodness. I don’t want your dad to blame Lucas if the bull dies.” She spoke offhandedly, opening the book and finding where she’d left off, but her words made Jodie’s temples throb.
    “The bull isn’t going to die.”
    “All the same…” Margarite said in an unconvinced tone.
    My father won’t blame Lucas. He’s more reasonable than that.
    Jodie looked back out the window, the words unspoken. Margarite was no one’s fool. She lived on the ranch full-time and saw things Jodie didn’t. But that didn’t mean she was interpreting them correctly.
    “Lucas hasn’t been here long enough to be responsible,” Jodie finally said. “I’ll make sure my dad knows the truth. And since Lucas did me a favor and came back, I’ll do my best to see that Dad keeps him on…if he wants to stay, that is.” Granted, her father wasn’t a big believer in second chances, but he would listen to reason—especially economic reason. And if no other local person would work for him during the winter months, as both Mike and Margarite intimated, keeping Lucas made sense.
    “Good luck,” the housekeeper said in a way that made Jodie feel oddly weary. Her dad had developed one heck of a rep with people who just didn’t get how he operated. People who didn’t see how much he had accomplished in life through strength of character and his no-excuses attitude. “Is Sam going to be on call if Lucas needs help when the heifers calve?”
    “Is he likely to need help?” Jodie certainly hoped not. She’d been so damned fortunate to get Sam to come out here as many times as she had. It seemed unlikely that her luck would hold.
    Margarite looked up after fitting a few letters into the puzzle. “You do know that heifers are first-time mothers, right?”
    “Yes.” One of the few bits of cattle knowledge she had.
    “Well, because of that, it takes them longer to come back into season after they give birth, so they’re bred to calve early. That gives them time to get pregnant again. The bad part is that it’s colder and nastier when they have their babies. Plus they have weaker calves and less colostrum, so, yes, there’s a good chance we’ll need a vet.”
    “Wonderful.”
    “On the bright side, it’s not muddy, so there’re not as many cases of scours.”
    Jodie had no idea what Margarite was talking about, and she didn’t ask for clarification. The word scours had an ominous ring to it.
    “Joe’s been at this for three years, so he understands the reality, but…”
    “He’s a