Free LOVE OF A RODEO MAN (MODERN DAY COWBOYS) by Bobby Hutchinson Page A

somebody’s runaway stallion. He wants her aborted immediately.”
    Dolinger owned one of the largest ranches in the area. Sara had met him only on ce and thought him a cantankerous little man. She sighed and picked up the phone, determined to be both cheerful and businesslike.
    “Good morning, Mr. Dolinger...”
    A stream of curses made her hold the phone away from her ear. “... and you can tell Stone I’ve no intention of allowing some young female still wet behind the ears to mess around with that mare. Now get him out here on the double, you hear me?”
    Sara drew a deep breath an d tried to curb her rising temper. “Unfortunately Dr. Stone is not here at the moment, and I’m not certain when he’ll be in,” she said as calmly as she could.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” The man sounded on the verge of a coronary. “I want this animal aborted immediately, and I want Doc Stone to do the job. Is that perfectly clear? So I suggest you send Floyd to find him and give him the message, you hear me?”
    “But I’ve just told you...”
    Bang. Dial tone.
    Sara glanced at the receiver, and she was trembling with rage when she finally put it down. It didn’t take much imagi nation to figure out which particular veterinary procedure she’d delight in performing on Mr. George Dolinger. The man was utterly impossible and rude to boot.
    The office door swung open, and Sara snapped, “Floyd, if that horrible man calls back, you can tell him...”
    Sara stopped in midsentence. Mitch stood in the doorway, grinning at her, brown Stetson tilted firmly down over his forehead, powerful body clad as usual in fresh denims and cotton shirt. His boots showed signs of careful polishing.
    “Afternoon, Doc.” He ambled casually into the room and turned an old wooden chair around so he could straddle it. He rested his arms on its back and studied her calmly until she felt uncomfortably self-conscious.
    “Trusty old Floyd told me to just come straight in and to pass on the message that he’s on his way out for lunch.” Mitch’ s voice held a note of sarcasm, and Sara suspected he knew he Floyd was a slippery, smooth-talking, lazy rascal.
    “The guy woul dn’t be much help if an ax murderer walked in here straight off the street, would he?” He raised a questioning eyebrow at her, adding, “I figured maybe that’s what you and I could do.”
    “Murder someone with an ax? Boy, have I got just the person in mind.”
    Suddenly the whole day seemed much brighter, and Sara shoved her hair back from her forehead and returned his smile with a dazzling one of her own. To blazes with George Dolinger.
    “I was thinking more of lunch, but if you’d like me to murder the man you were swearing about when I came in, maybe we ought to tend to him first.”
    Sara thought of all the calls needing to be answered, the farm visits that meant driving from one emergency call to another around the countryside if Doc didn’t show up. The least she was entitled to was a lunch break. It wasn’t hard to make up her mind.
    She got hurriedly to her feet, and before the phone could start ringing again, she switched on the machine.
    “Quick,” she instructed, going over to the door and peering out to make sure the coast was clear and no one had come into the waiting room during the past few moments. “First, we lock the front door and put the Out to Lunch sign up. Then we sneak out the back way, preferably in disguise.”
    “Gotcha.” Mitch had the sign on the front door before Sara had finished running a quick brush through her hair and hastily adding some pink lipstick. She was absurdly glad she’d worn a pair of quite decent blue cotton pants that morning with a gaily striped knit shirt instead of her usual uniform of T-shirt and blue jeans. There was only one little stain on her knee and hardly any animal hair at all on her shirt. She looked really presentable, considering the mess she could end up in around here.
    “How did you happen