That Holiday Feeling (Virgin River #8)(84)

Despite Nate’s warning that he might not make it home until very late, she went to his house anyway. She could hear in his voice his desire to spend a little time with her, and what did she have to keep her away? If he wasn’t back by early morning, she’d feed the puppies and go home to shower and get ready for work.

She was inexplicably drawn to the master bedroom, though she had no real reason to go there. It was the sight of a couple of suitcases open on the floor, filled with clothing, that saddened her so deeply she felt a small ache in her heart. Oh, she was going to miss him so much! Disappointment filled her—she had looked forward to an hour or two of cuddling before she had to give him up for his ten-day adventure. Now it was probably not to be.

Suck it up, Annie, she said to herself. And with that, she shucked her jacket and went to make sure the puppies were taken care of. “Well, my little loves,” she said to the box of squirming, jumping, yelping, vibrating puppies. “Ew,” she said, taking a sniff. “Time for a refresh, I see.” And she set about the task of giving her little charges clean fur and dry bedding. “Yeah, you’re ready for new homes. You have to be about six weeks by now. Close enough, as far as I’m concerned.”

Her puppy chores didn’t take long. She wandered into the family room and sat on that comfy sofa. That lonely sofa. She hated to leave prematurely; she wanted to give him time to get home, to catch up with her. As she looked around the family room, it seemed so barren. At least compared to the farmhouse, which was full to the brim with food, decorations, people, laughter and happiness.

She turned on the fire to make it more welcoming for him, and then on a whim she went to the garage and looked through the storage cabinets that lined the walls of the three-port garage. She smiled to herself. Nathaniel’s mother had certainly made it easy. One entire cabinet held boxes that were neatly labeled. She skipped the one that said “ornaments” but opened another. And another. And another.

She really only meant to bring a touch of Christmas into the house for Nate, even if it was only for one night, or just an early morning. First was a centerpiece for that long, oak kitchen table, then a couple of fat, glittery candles on a bed of artificial holly, which she put on the coffee table. She thought if she were decorating this house for real, there would be lots of fresh stuff and the smell of pine. And the aroma of hot chocolate and cookies.

She put her jacket on to go back into the garage and soon she had a garland for the mantel, stockings and brass stocking holders, and three-foot-tall nutcracker characters for a grouping in the corner. She found a large basket of red ceramic apples mixed with huge pinecones, a poinsettia with little twinkling lights. That gave her another idea, and she found some tiny tree lights in a box, which she brought in and used to adorn the house plants—a couple of tall ficus trees and a couple of lush philodendron and ivy. She tied thick, red velvet bows to the backs of the kitchen chairs.

A box labeled “Christmas dishes” was just too much to resist. Inside were some festive plates and cups. So she turned on the oven and poked around in the pantry, laughing to herself. Hadn’t she said she wouldn’t poke around? Well, Nathaniel obviously didn’t do a lot of baking, and who knew how long that canister of flour had been there? And the brown sugar was like a brick. But he did have butter, sugar and M&M’s. It took only thirty minutes to produce a plate of pseudo chocolate-chip cookies. She found chocolate-milk mix and fixed up a couple of cups with spoons in them, ready for filling. It was probably in her DNA—she covered the festive plate of cookies with plastic wrap.

“Christmas for a day,” she said to herself, pleased.

She made sure all the boxes were stowed in the garage. Then she looked at the clock. Almost eleven, and she had to get up early for work. But it didn’t take her a second to make her decision—a girl doesn’t find a quality boyfriend every day. She turned down some lights in the house, took off her boots, reclined on the sofa in front of the fire with the throw over her legs and promptly fell asleep.

Six

Nate was was physically tired and emotionally drained. By the time he reached the Bledsoe stables, the mare had miscarried a five-month foal and she was skittish. Frantic might be a better word. Indication was that the horse was sick, the cause of the miscarriage, though Nate had checked her over before she was bred and she’d been in good shape. Because he wasn’t going to be around to follow up, he had called Dr. Conner, the Eureka vet. He tranquilized the mare to calm her, administered antibiotics, made sure the placenta was whole, and then transported the products of conception to Eureka so that Dr. Conner could follow up with a postmortem to try to determine the cause. Conner would probably choose to do an endometrial biopsy. Other horses in the stable would have to be examined immediately; Bledsoe had six breeding at the moment.

But that was not the hardest part. Not only was the mare valuable and the stud a champion, the owners’ teenage daughter had raised this horse from a filly and it was her first foal. The girl was as distraught as the horse, and terrified her mare was going to die.

She wasn’t going to die, but the jury was still out on whether she was a good broodmare. Some mystery problem or illness had taken its toll and caused her to drop the foal and suffer a considerable amount of bleeding. Time and follow-up would tell the story. But when Nate left the family, quite late at night, it looked as though the teenage girl was going to sleep in the stable with her horse.