Page 16 of Bad Decisions & Back Roads

My scowl slid to Cody, who looked about to burst into laughter.He immediately sobered at my scowl.

For the next half hour, I stood there in simmering silence while she clipped fur and flushed several ugly gashes along the llama’s side and one leg.Grudgingly, I admitted she was good.I might venture to give her avery goodat her job.

She didn’t waste time with nervous chatter like some of the fill-in vets who talked too much when I glowered at them for taking too long.

Gia worked like she had somewhere better to be and resented that my homicidal livestock had delayed her.

She spoke once.“Looks like she tangled with something big.A coyote or mountain lion, perhaps.At least she’s good at violence when it counts.Do you think you can remove sutures from her without me sedating her again?”

I looked at Cody.

He looked at me.

We both looked at the llama, who was unconscious but somehow still looked mean.

“No,” I said.

Gia gave one curt nod.“I’ll bury what sutures I can under the skin and put in dissolvable suture for the rest.I’ll also draw blood since I bet that’s never been done.She’ll need antibiotics in her food for a while.Up to you if you think she needs pain meds.”

She finished fast—antibiotic and pain injections, blood draw, final check—and stepped back as the llama staggered upright like a drunk.The beast blinked, swayed, then cast me a filthy look as ifI’dbeen the one who darted her.She strutted off like she hadn’t spent a half hour face-down in the grass.

The second the llama resumed her day, I turned on Gia.“You can’t waltz back to Vision like nothing happened.I mean, yesterday...”When she didn’t immediately reply but her lips trembled as if she was about to burst into laughter, my blood pressure spiked.“Why are you back?Haven’t you wrecked enough of my life already?”I hadn’t intended to say that out loud.

“Yesterday…I wrecked you?”She gave me a look I remembered.Her green eyes flared.I was about to lose this fight in a way I’d never recover from.

She slowly unzipped her coveralls.My brain immediately abandoned ship.Not helped by the fact that traitorous memory chose this exact moment to replay yesterday’s rainstorm in vivid detail.

Meanwhile, in real time, she peeled the coveralls down and somehow stepped out of them while keeping her socks from touching the ground—a feat of female sorcery I could neither explain nor stop watching.

Underneath was a tight white shirt that clung in ways that should probably require a warning label, a permit, and possibly a pastor on standby.

My eyes briefly closed.Opened.She was still there.

Beside me, Cody made a small choking noise.

I cut him a glare.

He didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed.

Then—because she enjoyed cruelty—she lifted both arms and twisted her hair into a messy bun.Which did things.Terrible, magnificent things to her chest.

Her mouth curved like she knew exactly what she’d done.She pulled a scrub top out of the duffle and pulled it down over the tight shirt.Without a word, she packed the supplies into her duffel, casually picked up the dart rifle from the ground, and started walking up the hill like she hadn’t just detonated every functioning brain cell in a fifty-yard radius.

Then she tossed over her shoulder?—

“I’m back, Timothy Hurst.End of story.”A few steps later she said, “You’re welcome…for dealing with your dangerous llama.”

Cody stared after her.After a long silence, he said quietly, “I’d let her shoot me with a dart gun.”

I rubbed a hand over my face.“Get back to work, Cody.”

ChapterSix

GIA

The suffocatingfeeling started before I even turned onto the McClary driveway.By the end of the first quarter mile, it had teeth.I figured I was close enough, being on the Hurst property, to swing by and get this over with.

Each stretch of gravel under the work truck’s tires tightened something in my chest, like the place itself remembered me and was already closing in.Nothing had changed.The same endless line of barbed wire cut across the fields.It was meant to keep cattle in, but it had never been all that good at keeping anything else out.