Sun Kissed Read Free

taken that to mean that the animal was sick or hurt, so he’d brought his satchel. He hadn’t realized until now that the horse was being beaten.
    Not a good situation. As much as Tucker admired Tinkerbell for stepping in to defend the horse, it wasn’t a smart move. When you witnessed a crime in progress, the best course of action was to call the police.
    Toward the front of the crowd, Tucker paused to call fairground security, a number he had programmed into speed dial three days ago, when he’d begun his volunteer stint during Rodeo Days. The phone rang several times and was still ringing when the horse abuser let loose with a roar of anger and doubled his free hand into a fist. Uh-oh.
    With a growing sense of urgency, Tucker broke the connection and punched in the speed-dial code again, thinking maybe he’d misdialed the first time. Not . The phone droned monotonously. While Tucker waited for an answer, he kept his gaze locked on the trio near the horse trailer. The man appeared to be intoxicated. Each time he wagged his fist in Tinkerbell’s face, he swayed on his feet and nearly lost his balance.
    “I’m not moving,” Tucker heard the woman say. “If you mean to strike this animal again, you’ll go through me to do it.”
    What? Tucker couldn’t believe he’d heard her right. She didn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, and the drunk was built like a grizzly bear. The man responded with a shove that sent her staggering back against the gelding.
    Decision time. This situation was fast getting out of hand. Tucker didn’t believe in taking the law into his own hands; he truly didn’t. But more deeply ingrained in him were the principles his father had taught him, including the steadfast rule that a man should never get physically aggressive with a woman. There were no exceptions, period, and it went against the Coulter creed to stand aside while another man transgressed.
    “Here.” Tucker thrust the phone at a stranger beside him. “Dial three for fairground security.”
    The man glanced stupidly at the apparatus in his hand. “Three?”
    “For fairground security,” Tucker repeated. “Get some one over here ASAP. If no one answers, dial nine-one-one,tell the dispatcher exactly where we are, and get a car here as fast as you can.”
    Turning sideways to avoid jostling a woman with an infant in her arms, Tucker shouldered his way through the remaining cluster of people. “Excuse me, excuse me.” He squeezed past an elderly woman. “I’m a vet. Can you let me through, please?”
    A collective gasp rose from the crowd, and Tucker heard a woman cry out, “Oh, my God , he hit her! Somebody do something!”
    Tucker strained to see over the bobbing heads in front of him. Icy disbelief coursed through him. Tinkerbell was bent forward at the waist, one hand cupping her cheek. Even as Tucker watched, the drunk jerked her hat off her head, taking some of her hair along with it.
    Something in Tucker’s brain short-circuited. One second, his thought processes were sequential and reasonable. The next, his head filled with white static, a haze of red filmed his vision, and he let loose with a snarl of outrage.
    From that instant forward, everything seemed to happen in a blur. Dropping his satchel, he plowed through the remaining obstacles to reach the clearing. Then, with a flying leap, he covered the distance to the loading ramp and tackled the older man at the knees. The next thing Tucker knew, he was rolling in the sawdust with his adversary, the other man on top of him one second, under him the next.
    The bastard was heavy. But Tucker, blessed with his father’s tall stature and generous breadth of shoulder, was no featherweight himself. Working daily with large animals had also kept him fit. No contest , he thought grimly as he rolled to the top and quickly straddled his flabby, out-of-shape opponent. It was high time this guy learned, Coulter style, how not to treat a lady.
    Only