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Isobel came close. And flipped her hair behind her shoulder. Hunter gritted his teeth but pointed out the break even as she said, “Ouch. His femur. That won’t be easy to brace.”
She ducked her head down to nuzzle the dog.
“We can’t just use a standard cast,” he said. It was too high up on his back leg. “But we can try a Thomas brace to put the leg in traction. It’ll at least give him a chance.”
“Poor baby,” she cooed into the dog’s ear.
She was sensitive. Not always the best quality in a vet.
Which was a good thing, he tried to remind himself. He was supposed to be trying to get her to quit. Not be working with her like they made a good team.
Because they didn’t. At all.
He turned and abruptly left the room without another word. Her footsteps followed behind him. He ignored her as he stepped back into the room with the family and explained the x-ray and the brace he’d be putting on. He also tried to set their expectations—only time would tell how the dog healed with the brace and lots of rest.
The girls nodded bravely and then they went to wait out in the hall while Hunter pulled out the coil of aluminum tubing he used for this sort of thing. With a small heating element, he started molding a cone-shaped frame.
“Oh.” Isobel sounded startled. “You don’t use a pre-made frame? You make it from scratch?”
“All different shapes of animals,” was all he said. Plus, he saw no need for fancy equipment when he could make the same thing for ten bucks with materials from the hardware store. Folks around here could rarely afford the extra expense and sometimes any little cost saving measures he could find meant the difference between a client having to choose to put down a family pet or being able to treat them instead.
Hunter went over and gave the dog a sedative, then fit the round part of the cone he was shaping around Jupiter’s hip joint to check the fit. The hoop needed to be a little narrower. He went back to his heating element and rod to shape the aluminum some more.
He ignored Isobel for the next thirty minutes as he set the dog’s leg, then fit the Thomas brace into place and taped the leg down to keep it in traction. If Jupiter didn’t overexert himself too much, the leg had a good chance of healing up just fine.
He finished the last bit of tape around the frame, then, on a whim, reached into his drawer and pulled out a glittery silver smiley face sticker and placed it on top of the tape right below the hip.
He picked up Jupiter and turned to go take him back to the little girls and their mom. Which was when he caught Isobel watching him. With this little smile and her eyes all soft. It made his neck feel hot.
He frowned and headed for the door. “Clean up in here. It’s 12:45. We were due at the Anderson farm fifteen minutes ago.”
Chapter Ten
ISOBEL
Four farm calls and one hundred and thirty miles later, Isobel was ready to pummel Hunter Dawkins’ handsome face in.
Had she actually thought he was sweet earlier today taking care of that family dog? Temporary insanity, that was her only defense. And she was definitely cured, that was for damn sure.
He hadn’t let her touch another animal all day. She’d been relegated to watching him handle cases from the background. So far in the background, in fact, she’d barely been able to see what he was doing half the time.
I know you city folk think cows are cute and just part of the scenery, but they pack a nasty kick. It’s best if you watch from behind the fence.
Hunter had said that right in front of the farmer who’d called them out. If Isobel’s face had flamed any hotter she would have spontaneously combusted.
Then there were the endless hours on the road. Hunter was apparently the only large animal vet in two counties. And Wyoming? Yeah. It was a big damn state.
She’d thought he was joking when he told her how few veterinarians there were. Five and a half hours later, she believed it.
But she swore, if she had to spend one more minute locked in the cramped cab of Hunter’s truck with him, she’d scream.
Did he have to take up so much space? He drove with his left hand on the steering wheel and his right arm draped lazily between them, taking up about three-fourths of the entire bench seat. She’d been crammed up against the passenger side door for several hours between all the farms because she didn’t want to accidently touch him and have him thinking that she was trying to play handsy with him.
Not to mention, the music. God, if she heard another pop country singer twanging about how all they needed in life was beer, their truck, God, and the USA, she might just throw the door open and leap out of the moving vehicle.
A commercial for Chevy trucks ended and then the twanging steel guitar started up, followed by a man with a deep southern voice singing, “You can take a man’s steer but don’t you dare take his beer—”
Enough!
