The Texan Read Free Page B

a year, handling just this sort of emergency. The foal was turned so the hooves, instead of the nose, were presenting first. It was the equivalent of a human breech birth. Not an impossible situation, but a difficult one, that sometimes turned out badly.
    “I know I should have called you sooner,” Summer Blackthorne said, as she sank to her knees beside the priceless championship cutting horse. “I thought I could handle it myself. I was sure I could handle it myself,” she said, an edge of defiance in her voice. “But I couldn’t get the foal turned.” The young woman lifted frightened eyes to meet Bay’s gaze. “Can you save her? Ruby is … She’s like family.”
    “How long has Ruby been in trouble?” Bay asked, as she rolled up her sleeves and moved to the mare’s hindquarters.
    “From the start,” Summer admitted in a low voice.
    Bay clamped her jaw tight to keep from giving the young woman a piece of her mind. She’d gotten her fill of troublesome Blackthornes last night at the Armadillo Bar. Here was another one making her life difficult—Owen and Clay’s little sister—who just might be worse than all the rest put together.
    Summer Blackthorne had a reputation for running wild. She’d dropped out of a dozen colleges. Well, maybe only a half dozen. But everyone in Bitter Creek, Texas, knew she was the apple of her father’s eye—and spoiled rotten.
    But not totally uncaring of the harm she might have caused by her reckless behavior, Bay conceded, as she glanced at Summer’s anguished hazel eyes and ragged appearance. Blond curls had come loose from a thick ponytail, and her expensive, tailored white Western shirt had obviously been used like a throwaway rag to wipe her hands. But then, money for new clothes was easy to come by for the wealthy Blackthornes.
    At least the girl had called Bay. Finally.
    “I had no idea how quickly Ruby would tire,” Summer said, as she caressed the mare’s neck with a trembling hand.
    “Let’s hope you didn’t wait too long.”
    Bay had been shocked to receive the frantic call from Summer, since Blackthornes and Creeds never crossed paths if they could help it. But it wasn’t always possible to avoid each other. Especially when the Creed ranch was lodged, like a chicken bone in the throat, in the very center of the vast Bitter Creek ranching empire.
    Three Oaks, the ranch where Bay had been born, was a small island in a sea of Blackthorne grass. It measured a mere five miles east and west and twenty miles north and south, but that hundred square miles of land had been bitterly fought over by Blackthornes and Creeds since the Civil War. And neither of them seemed willing to give up or give in.
    The quarrel had once again become deadly eighteen months ago, when Summer’s mother had arranged the murder of Bay’s father. Actually, she’d been trying to kill Bay’s mother—whom she suspected her husband of secretly loving. But the man who’d been hired to do the shooting had missed and ended up killing Bay’s father, instead.
    As far as the local sheriff was concerned, her father’s death had been a hunting accident—a hunter’s bullet tragically gone astray. The Creeds had learned the truth when Summer’s eldest brother Trace told Bay’s elder sister Callie—after he’d married her—that his mother had admitted to her family that she’d arranged the whole thing.
    Bay fought down the surge of helpless rage she felt every time she remembered how Eve Blackthorne had escaped punishment for her crime. After what had happened last night, she wouldn’t have come near Bitter Creek, except she’d known it was the mare that would end up suffering if she stayed away.
    “Why didn’t you call your regular vet?” Bay wondered aloud, as she began manipulating the foal to see if she could turn it, or whether she was going to have to help it be born feet first.
    “I didn’t tell him Ruby was foaling before he took off for Houston. I thought I could handle