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Her immediate attraction to him had been his dachshund, Clarence, who she had seen for a tooth abscess a couple of weeks earlier. Then, on a follow-up visit he had asked if Kaylee would like to go out, and she had honestly not been able to think of one good reason she shouldn’t. Except for Bennett Dodge. Her best friend since junior high, and the obsessive focus of her hormones since she’d discovered what men and women did together in the dark.
Which meant she absolutely needed to go out with Michael.
Bennett couldn’t be the excuse. Not anymore.
She had fallen into a terrible rut over the last couple of years while she and Bennett had gotten their clinic up and running. Work and her social life revolved around him. Social gatherings were all linked to him and to his family.
She’d lived in Gold Valley since junior high, and the friendships she’d made here had mostly faded since then. She’d made friends when she’d gone to school for veterinary medicine, but she and Bennett had gone together, and those friends were mostly mutual friends.
If they ever came to town to visit, it included Bennett. If she took a trip to visit them, it often included Bennett.
The man was up in absolutely everything and the effects of it had been magnified recently as her world had narrowed thanks to their mutually demanding work schedule.
That amount of intense, focused time with him never failed to put her in a somewhat pathetic emotional space.
Hence the very necessary date.
Then, her phone started vibrating because it was ringing, and she couldn’t ignore that. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Excuse me.”
It was Bennett. Her heart slammed into her throat. She should not answer it. She really shouldn’t. She thought that even while she was pressing the green accept button.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Calving drama. I have a breech one. I need some help.”
Bennett sounded clipped and stressed. And he didn’t stress easily. He delivered countless calves over the course of the season, but a breech birth was never good. If the rancher didn’t call him in time, there was rarely anything that could be done.
And if Bennett needed some assistance then the situation was probably extreme.
“Where are you?” she asked, darting a quick look over to Michael and feeling like a terrible human for being marginally relieved by this interruption.
“Out of town at Dave Miller’s place. Follow the driveway out back behind the house.”
“See you soon.” She hung up the phone and looked down at her half-finished dinner. “I am so sorry,” she said, forcing herself to look at Michael’s face. “There’s a veterinary emergency. I have to go.”
She stood up, collecting her purse and her jacket. “I really am sorry. I tried to cover everything. But my partner… It’s a barnyard thing. He needs help.”
Michael looked… Well, he looked understanding. And Kaylee almost wished that he wouldn’t. That he would be mad, so she would have an excuse to storm off and never have dinner with him again. That he would be unreasonable in some fashion so that she could call the date experiment a loss and go back to making no attempts at a romantic life whatsoever.
But he didn’t. “Of course,” he said. “You can’t let something happen to an animal just because you’re on a dinner date.”
“I really can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. She put it on the table and offered an apologetic smile before turning and leaving. Before he didn’t accept her contribution to the dinner.
She was not going to make him pay for the entire meal on top of everything.
“Have a good evening,” the hostess said as Kaylee walked toward the front door of the restaurant. “Please dine with us again soon.”
Kaylee muttered something and headed outside, stumbling a little bit when her kitten heel caught in a crack in the sidewalk. That was the highest heel she ever wore, since she was nearly six feet tall in flats, and towering over one’s date was not the best first impression.
But she was used to cowgirl boots, and not these spindly, fiddly things that hung up on every imperfection. They were impractical. And how any woman walked around in stilettos was beyond her.
