Big Chance Cowboy Read online

  Adam squashed the moment of pleasure that her first thought was to call him and said, “We’re here now.”

  The dog whimpered, and his focus shifted to thoughts of chaining some nameless, faceless asshole to a stake and leaving him there, because that was surely what had happened to the dog. They’d found remnants of a bloody rope near the barn. The other end was attached to the dog’s collar.

  “She must have been tied to that post by the barn and chewed her way free so she could try to have her pups somewhere safe,” he said. “I wonder if she fell in this hole, based on the way her front leg’s bent.”

  “What about her eye? Do you think she hit it on something when she fell?” Lizzie asked.

  Adam looked at her and saw the hope there—that this was a mistake, and the dog was in this situation by accident. He wanted to lie to her, to make up something innocent. She deserved that kind of world, but he couldn’t give it to her. Returning his attention to the dog, he said, “This place has been used for dogfighting, and that one was probably bait, left behind because no one had the balls to put her down after they let her get chewed up.”

  He heard Lizzie’s shocked breath, but he wouldn’t comfort her and say everything would be okay. That dog was in terrible shape, and the likelihood she’d survive her rescue was slim. The pups’ chances weren’t much better, especially if they couldn’t find a surrogate to nurse them.

  “What’s the plan, Hoss?” Talbott asked. “Do we call the dogcatcher?”

  Lizzie said an emphatic “No,” and followed with, “They’ll put her down. We have to at least try to save them.” She looked at Adam like she believed he could not only save the dog but get the earth to spin backward simply by flying fast in the opposite direction.

  “I don’t have bolt cutters with me, so I don’t think we can get through the fence they used to section off the room. It makes more sense to climb down in there and hoist them out,” Adam said. “Let’s see what I’ve got in the truck.” Not much, he feared.

  Lizzie’s panicked phone call had scared him enough that he’d barely thought to grab Jake and Talbott on the way to the truck. The guys had given him enough bullshit teasing about why he was running off in the middle of a video game because some girl called that he’d only grabbed a crate and a few other things, convincing himself she was overreacting.

  Until he’d seen the dog.

  The next thing he knew, Adam was being lowered on a makeshift rappelling harness into the cellar-turned-deathtrap while Lizzie crouched over the corner where the dog lay whimpering and watching the activity with one hopeless eye. “It’s okay, Mama,” she said. “We’re gonna help you. It’s gonna be okay.”

  The sound of her voice seemed to keep the dog distracted while Adam caught the crate that Jake lowered to him.

  He wrapped a sweatshirt he’d found in the back of the truck around his arm as a homemade bite sleeve. He crept toward the dog, moving slowly but steadily. He didn’t know how aggressive this pit bull might be—had she been trained to fight? Even if she hadn’t, she might be in enough pain to go for anyone who tried to touch her or her puppies. “It’s cool, Mama,” he said, echoing Lizzie’s comforting words—he could remind himself later that dogs weren’t people.

  He put the crate down and opened it, taking out the bowl and bottle of water he’d had the presence of mind to include. He held the protected arm out to shield himself as he poured an inch of water into the bowl and pushed it toward the dog.

  She didn’t even look at it. Not good. He unwrapped the sweatshirt and put it aside. The next issue was how to move her, when he had no idea how broken her body might be.

  He looked up where Lizzie, Jake, and Talbott watched silently. Deep inside, he knew he should still be wary. The dog could use her last breath to attack him if she thought her pups were threatened, but he had to get her out of this hellhole now or bury her here.

  He slowly reached a hand out toward the dog. She lifted her head and sniffed his hand, then lay it back down. He put his hand in the water and dribbled a few drops onto her mouth. Her tongue barely moved, but she did seem to try to swallow, so he did it again. And again.

  “Come on, Mama,” he coaxed, taking the half-full water bottle in hand. “Let’s try this.” He poured a few drops onto her jaw, and she tilted up her chin, apparently realizing this was real, drinkable water. He gave her a steady stream of water, which she began to lap. When the bottle was empty, she turned to the bowl and took a few more laps until Adam took it away. “That’s enough. We don’t want you puking.”

  Up close, her injured eye was a festering mess, covered with flies and smelling of decay. She was rotting. The puppies couldn’t have been more than a couple of days old, tiny and blind. It would be more merciful to put the whole family down right here.

  “It’s okay, babies. Adam’s gonna help you,” Lizzie whispered.

  No, Lizzie, he thought. Don’t count on me for this. He wasn’t fit to take care of the half-grown dog and two broken-down soldiers already on his doorstep, much less a needy pit bull and a litter of newborns. Even if they survived, they’d need round-the-clock attention. This was a damned lost cause.

  * * *

  Lizzie watched Adam scan the area around him before pulling his T-shirt over his head with one arm.

  “Damn, Hoss, this isn’t the time for your Chippendale’s act,” Marcus Talbott said, but when no one responded to his attempt at humor, he asked, “What do you need us to do?”

  Adam shook his head but didn’t answer. Instead, he continued his steady murmuring to the mother dog while he carefully eased the shirt under her body. He bent down and slid his arms under her and lifted her so gently, Lizzie might have thought the dog was weightless except for the shifting of his muscles beneath the tattoos covering his back as he worked.

  He maneuvered the dog into the plastic kennel and scooped up the pups in two big hands, putting them on the old sweatshirt and then next to their mother before looking around to make sure he hadn’t missed any. Finally, he latched the door and stood.

  She wasn’t sure, but she could have sworn she heard him say, “Okay, honey, we’ve got you now,” but when he finally looked back up at Lizzie and his friends, his cold, emotionless mask was firmly in place.

  “Jake, toss me the end of that rope,” he ordered and tied it to the handle on top of the crate. “Okay. Slowly now.” He lifted the crate and didn’t relinquish his hold on it until Marcus lay on his stomach and reached into the pit to steady it while Jake pulled it the rest of the way up.

  Lizzie felt completely useless, but they seemed to know what they were doing. Like they’d mounted a few rescues together before now.

  As soon as the dogs were on high ground, Jake joined Marcus on the edge of the basement to reach down for Adam’s hands, pulling him up far enough to grab a few handfuls of sod and pull himself the rest of the way out.

  His big, muscled body shone with exertion in the midafternoon sun, and he gave Lizzie a slight nod that made her shiver in spite of the heat.

  She cleared her throat, breaking away from the intensity of his gaze, and bent to look into the crate, trying not to gag at the smell. “How many puppies?”

  “Six. Don’t know how many will make it, though.”

  “I called Rob Chance while I waited for you to get here. He and his vet tech are expecting us.”

  Adam nodded with a heavy sigh, as though resigned to seeing this rescue through to the end.

  She looked from her mom’s little car to Adam’s big white truck.

  “What if Talbott and Jake take your car to the ranch, and I’ll take you and the dogs to the vet in my truck?” he asked.

  “You must be psychic,” she said.

  “Or psycho,” he muttered but lifted the dogs into the back seat of his roomy old pickup truck. Louder, he said, “Why don’t you sit back here so you can talk to them, keep thing
s calm?”

  That was a good idea. Otherwise, she’d worry about them the whole way to town.

  “We’ll feed the semi-hairy beast his supper,” Marcus assured them, opening the driver’s door of Adam’s truck.

  “Thank you,” Lizzie said. “Not just for feeding D-Day. For—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Marcus told her, waving her thanks away.

  Jake, who hadn’t spoken the entire time he’d been there, opened the passenger door and said, “We’ll see you…and the puppies…later.”

  Lizzie took it as a positive sign that Adam didn’t even pretend to fight about giving the new little family a home.

  He sighed and pointed at his friends. “I don’t know when we’ll be back, but when these dogs get there? You assholes are on midnight kennel duty.”

  Chapter 9

  Lizzie stroked her hand over the mother dog one more time before a technician lifted her from the examination table. The poor thing seemed to be lost between exhaustion and terror, and Lizzie’s heart squeezed. “Bye, Mama,” she said as another tech gathered the pups and all were taken to the back room to be treated.

  Adam leaned against the wall, arms crossed, glowering. He’d been the poster boy for rude from the moment the veterinarian came into the room.

  Rob Chance, the vet in question, tucked his stethoscope into his pocket and said, “We’ll get some IV fluids into her tonight and start trying to feed her. We’ll take a look at her in the morning and know if she’s strong enough for general anesthesia. We need X-rays for that leg, and the eye’s probably going to have to come out.”

  “We really appreciate that you stayed late to help us,” Lizzie told him, trying not to glare at Adam.

  “No problem. It was a stroke of luck that you got there when you did. I don’t think she’d have made it through the night.”

  Lizzie shuddered at the thought of those poor puppies starving to death next to their dead mother.

  “What do we owe you?” Adam asked, the first words he’d deigned to utter. Was that his problem? He was worried about the cost? Lizzie should have made it clear that she’d take care of the bill—it was her rescue.

  But Dr. Chance shook his head. “Let’s see what we go through in the way of meds and supplies. I’m not going to charge you for my time. I hate these fu—dogfighting rings. I thought we’d chased them out of the area, but they’re like cockroaches.”

  “That’s very generous. How early can I call to check on them?” Lizzie asked.

  “I can call you after I’ve had a chance to examine her. This is your cell number, right?”

  Adam was almost through the door—what was his hurry?—but stopped and came back to Lizzie’s side. She ignored him and answered Dr. Chance. “Yes, that’s my cell, and my parents’ home number is on there, just in case.”

  “You’ve got mine on there, too,” Adam pointed out. “My schedule’s flexible. Call me first if there’s a problem.”

  Lizzie gaped at him. Really? He’d spent the entire trip to the clinic and the whole visit acting like this was all a big waste of time, and now he wanted to be Johnny-on-the-spot in case of a dog emergency? He was so weird. He’d refused to look at the dog or her babies after getting them into the crate but constantly asked her to check on them during the ride to town.

  “Should we stop and file a report with the sheriff while we’re in town?” Lizzie asked when they got to Adam’s truck.

  He looked toward the center of town, then shook his head. “Let’s call them later. I’ve had about enough of Big Chance for one day.”

  Lizzie realized she should have been more sensitive to his triggers—like driving through town. She softened over his reaction in the vet’s office. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He nodded and unlocked the door for her.

  “That was really nice of Dr. Chance, to donate his time like that,” Lizzie said, once she’d buckled herself into the passenger seat. She made a mental note to find a way to do something for the staff of the veterinary clinic as soon as she could. Cookies? Dog biscuits and cookies?

  “Yeah,” Adam said. “Really nice. Especially the way he took your phone number.”

  Wait. What? She laughed. “You think he was hitting on me?”

  “He’s thinking about it,” Adam told her, backing on to Main Street.

  “I don’t think so.” She ran through the visit in her head. She didn’t know him very well. He was a Chance, but she wasn’t sure which branch—not a sibling of Joe, the mayor, she thought. Probably a cousin. She’d first met the young veterinarian when she’d brought D-Day in for a checkup, and he’d been friendly and chatty. Today, he’d seemed enthusiastic and more than willing to stay at the clinic for an extra hour until she got the dogs there. “Well, you know…I do have this effect on men who care about animals,” she said, though her sarcasm was probably lost on Adam.

  He grunted.

  Okay, maybe not a positive effect on all of them. “Take you, for instance,” she continued. “I seem to have the effect of making you grumpy.”

  “You seem to think I’m someone who cares about animals.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Not more than the average person.”

  “I’m pretty sure I remember that you were a dog-handling MP in the army, right?”

  His nod was more like a shrug, but she decided not to let his reticence deter her. She’d heard him talking to the mama dog and had even seen him pet D-Day a few times.

  “Maybe you should get a job with the sheriff’s department here. Be a K-9 officer.”

  He snorted. Lizzie noted that his eyes were on the road, but his attention seemed to be far, far away. “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, I guess you’ve done your share of protecting and serving. You’re certainly entitled to do something else if you want. You’d be really good at managing…something.”

  “Not,” he said, then looked like he wished he could eat his words.

  “You’re totally a leader. That’s why Marcus and Jake came to you.”

  “Talbott and Jake need somewhere to stay. I owe them—” He cut himself off. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he braked at the stoplight in the center of town.

  “Maybe you could be a high school teacher.”

  He shot her an incredulous look. “What?”

  “You have that natural alpha dog thing going on. Kids would love you. After all, you’re good at making D-Day behave.”

  He snorted. “Anybody can do that.”

  “I can’t.”

  “That’s because you don’t command respect.”

  His words stabbed her. “I don’t?”

  “No. Everything you think and feel is broadcast across your face, through your body language. The dog can sense your insecurity.”

  A wash of something similar to shame spread over her. Was that true of everyone in her life?

  Adam went on. “You need to practice being in charge. You’ve got too much ‘Oh, D-Day, you’re such a sweet boy’ going on.” His voice went up and got all squeaky when he mimicked her, but then went back down. “He doesn’t respect you.”

  “Oh.” She wanted to deny it, but Adam was right. And not just about D-Day but about her relationship with Dean, her career—heck, everything to this point. Good thing she wasn’t interested in getting involved with Adam, because she’d be horrified if she thought she’d acted simpering and weak in front of him, too, inviting him to walk all over her.

  Bummed, she pondered her failure as she stared at the dying rays of the sunset, reflected in the windows of the mostly empty businesses in the center of town.

  * * *

  Ah, hell. He’d hurt her feelings. Again.

  It was more evidence that he shouldn’t be around people, except that, damn it, today had been different. Even when he was having a stupid attack of jealousy, h
e hadn’t had a whiff of the tension that normally tried to paralyze him every time he came to town. For that matter, he hadn’t been as jumpy as usual lately.

  He was struck by the realization that it had something to do with Lizzie, with the way she was around him. And it wasn’t how much he wanted to touch her every time she came near. Sure, imagining her naked kept him distracted, but he’d gotten with a few willing women since he’d been back in the USA, and not even sex could drown out the worst of the shit that went through his mind. It was Lizzie. Even though he’d been a total ass to her more than he cared to acknowledge, she neither fawned all over him—like having been to war and getting a bunch of people blown up was some sort of amazing feat of manhood—nor did she tiptoe around, waiting for him to explode. She talked to him, she teased him, and she seemed to think that he had something to offer.

  Unless he’d just alienated her completely.

  A faint sniffle reached his ears, and he risked a glance to see that Lizzie was staring out the side window. He had to fix this.

  There. To the right was Dairy Queen. His parents had always taken him and Emma for ice cream when they were having a hard day. Call him cowardly, but he couldn’t face riding the next twenty minutes to the ranch stuck in a car with a woman crying over something he’d said.

  He turned on the blinker and slowed.

  “What—what are you doing?” Lizzie asked.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You want to eat here?”

  “Why not? It’s open. They have food.” He pulled into an empty slot and turned off the engine.

  He took his wallet out of the center console, leaned forward to shove it into his back pocket and reached for the door handle, trying not to remember the good times he’d had when Todd worked here. How he’d planned to meet Todd here the last night he’d been in town and instead found himself at Lizzie’s house.