Page 15 of Bad Decisions & Back Roads

“Maybe Valentine’s Day if he paces himself.”

I threw a couch pillow at her head.

ChapterFive

TIMOTHY

I marchedout to the far pasture after getting a suspiciously vague text from my dairy manager.

Cody:Carol injured.Vet here.

No details.No explanation.Just enough information to make a man rush from the unfinished early morning evaluation of a build site’s progress and storm across a hill like he was marching into battle.

Apparently, someone from the clinic was already on-site.I knew it wasn’t Erika or Josh.There sure as hell better not be a McClary on my land.

Unfortunately, a weak, morally bankrupt corner of my brain immediately suggested I might be interested in seeing the McClary veterinarian—the woman who’d marched into a thunderstorm yesterday and accidentally given me a front-row view of the finest pair of breasts I’d seen in years.

My conscience was disgusted.The rest of me remained committed to preserving that memory in high definition.Against my will, my brain replayed the whole scene—her soaked shirt, her horrified expression when she looked down, and then, somehow worst of all, her stiff, painfully professional:Consider the nipple show your tip.

I scrubbed a hand down my face.

I wasn’t a sixteen-year-old boy sneaking a stolen magazine into a barn loft.Yet, my idiot brain had spent the last twenty-four hours revisiting that moment like it was a favorite movie scene.

I crested the hill and nearly had a stroke.Dr.Gia Stevens stood in the calf-high weeds in boots and short-sleeved, tan coveralls with a rifle braced against her shoulder, sighting straight down the barrel at my llama.

“What the hell are you doing?”I shouted.“Stop!”

There was no crack of gunfire when she pulled the trigger.Just a softthwip.

She lowered the rifle, squinted toward the llama in the distance, and smiled with disturbing satisfaction.“Got her.”

I stopped dead.Then turned slowly toward Cody.“Why,” I said carefully, “is the veterinarian sniper-shooting my animal?”

Cody lifted both hands.“She said stand back.”

“That explains nothing.”

“I darted her,” Gia said, in the same tone someone might use to announce the weather.She pointed toward Carol, who sprinted twenty feet, stopped and slowly turned to glare at us like she was plotting three separate murders.

Gia nodded toward the llama.“We tried to catch her for twenty minutes.I’ve been kicked at twice, spit on, and I’m about ninety percent sure she called me a bitch.”

Cody snickered.

“All I can see are bloody dreadlocks because apparently she hasn’t been clipped since…” She squinted at the llama.“Honestly?Ever?”

The llama took one staggering step, blinked hard, then dramatically folded sideways into the grass.

Gia slung the dart gun over a shoulder, grabbed a discarded duffel bag of supplies, and walked toward the unconscious menace.

“You had no right to shoot my llama,” I snapped, following her.“Why are you even here?I didn’t ask foryou.In fact, I specifically told my brother?—”

“Enough,” she barked, spinning on me so fast I nearly walked into her.“For the next forty-five minutes, I need you to put a sock in…” she made a broad circle at me with her hand, “…allthis.”

I opened my mouth.

She pointed sharply at me.“No.Not one more word.Your asshole llama is sedated, bleeding, and somehow still the second biggest problem I’m dealing with in this field.”She jabbed an index finger at my chest.“You’re my first.Don’t make me dart you too.”

I swallowed the urge to keep arguing.She was right, damn it.