Sasha’s Dad (2 page)

It was quiet, except for Stormy’s heavy panting, a quiet that closed in on her. Half past two in the morning. The hour she’d always found least appealing, even when her surroundings had been the offices of the White House or a foreign capital city and not a rustic old barn with thirteen llamas.

Fourteen
llamas, with one still on the way.

She left Stormy for a moment and went over to the cria, who stood in the corner of the birthing area. The surprised expression on his small face reflected her thoughts.

What the heck is going on?

“Here you go, sweetie.” She crooned as she rubbed another large, dry towel over the animal in front of the heater. His shivers had ceased and he seemed more relaxed than when he’d landed on the barn floor.

Claire allowed a wave of relief to wash over her before she returned to Stormy’s side. At least one cria might make it. Her emotions reminded her of when she’d first come home to Dovetail, thinking she’d be nursing her mother through heart surgery for much longer than had turned out to be the case. Thinking she’d leave after mom got better—but deciding to stay and start her new business—the llamas.

“Hang in there, lady. Help’s coming.” But as she said the words Claire couldn’t ignore the bitter burn of dread deep in her belly.

“No!”
The cry burst up out of her.

She couldn’t,
wouldn’t,
lose Stormy. Stormy had been her first purchase for the farm, even before she’d found the location for Llama Fiber Haven. She’d put the money down on Stormy based on a single phone call to a couple in Michigan. They’d had to sell off their livestock quickly due to his illness.

She recalled the conversation as though it was last night and not more than two years ago. She’d called them from location in Iraq via a satellite phone. Thirty-four days on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan covering the presidential visit had left her exhausted, grimy and on the edge of a mental breakdown. Her team was leaving the next morning, but she couldn’t wait that long to talk to the llama farmers.

Her dreams of leaving Washington, D.C., and having her own business were all that kept her going by that point. Ten years of constant pressure weighed on her spirit. She’d given up everything for her job, which in the early years seemed reasonable since she could say she was doing it as a service to her country.

But she’d had nothing left for herself. She’d let all her relationships decay. First to go were her girlfriends; she couldn’t possibly make time for a monthly dinner or cocktail social. Then any signs of a dating life disappeared. Her on-again, off-again relationship with a lobbyist had to be turned off permanently once she realized he wanted her to publicize his agenda.

Any new love interests never went past the second date—if they even made it that far. She’d had heads of state and diplomats, not to mention her own bosses, try to fix her up with some of their acquaintances, but it was for naught.

Claire was a dedicated career girl.

Until she had an epiphany. One that came to her, strangely enough, when she saw a group of women knitting. Claire had landed a plum interview with the First Lady during visits to local Washington charities. She’d been allowed to travel in the motorcade and should’ve been celebrating her journalistic coup. But then a bookstore window caught her eye. The presidential motorcade roared through D.C. unchallenged, but slowed to navigate a traffic circle.

Light glowed from the corner bookstore’s front window, forming a backdrop to a group of women who sat around a table. Holding needles—knitting.

The table between them was loaded with what looked like woolen items in different colors. Sweaters? Afghans? Scarves?

But it wasn’t the colors she noticed. It was the women, their oblivion to everything except what was happening around that table.

Laughing. Enjoying one another’s company. Happy, living in the moment.

Claire made a lightning-swift discovery then: She didn’t want to work so hard for the rest of her life, with no time for the sense of serenity the knitting women in the bookstore exuded. Even through the bulletproof glass of the limo she rode in and the windowpane of the bookstore, Claire felt the joy those women shared with one another.

She’d known in that instant that she had to go home. She’d been no more than two hours away, in Washington, D.C., for the past decade, but rural Maryland might as well have been the far side of the moon. Claire never took time off back then, not even to see her family or childhood friends.

“Ewwwwwww.”

Stormy’s mewl of pain brought her mind back to the present and elicited a shock of nausea. As a political reporter anxiety had been her constant companion and she’d actually believed she thrived on it.

She’d been insane.

“I’m here, Stormy.” The words struggled through her dry throat as Claire stroked Stormy’s long, graceful neck. Claire’s stomach twisted again as she recognized that Stormy wasn’t going to make it through this. Twins were too much stress on the llama’s body, especially since it was her first birth.

Claire fought back tears. This was the llama who’d got her through her first year back in Dovetail. Who’d helped her start to heal over her many too-raw emotions. It felt as though Stormy was
part
of Claire.

“Hold on, Stormy! You have to.”

The large-animal vets in town and surrounding environs all ran individual offices but worked together to help one another out. They had an agreement that any of them would fill in during an emergency.

Charlie was away, visiting his new grandbaby. That baby had come early, too, as the twin llama crias were arriving for Claire. The other two vets in their circle lived too far out of town to get to her place in time, so the night-duty call service had contacted Dutch.

He shook his head.

She wasn’t going to be pleased when he walked into her barn.

Over the past year they’d avoided each other with all the skill of secret agents. When he’d heard she’d returned, he thought she wouldn’t stay more than a few months. Claire had wanted to leave Dovetail since they were twelve and running through the sunflower fields on the south side of town. Thinking about it, he could still feel the heat of the sun on his head. Those impromptu hide-and-seek games, when they teamed up against Natalie and Tom, had been the freest time of his youth.

That was when his masculine strength was starting to surface, but before his hormones took over his motives.

He remembered how Claire used to look at him with wide-open sea-green eyes, before her curiosity and intelligence had been warped by at first an academic and then later professional drive that obliterated everything in its path. Collateral damage included Claire’s best friend since toddlerhood and Dutch’s deceased wife. Sasha’s mother.

Natalie.

He sighed, and recalled what he’d learned in the grief support group.

“Remember to breathe.”

He took in three deep breaths, exhaling completely after each one. The constant ache of loss had eased over the past three years. He still had his moments of sharp grief, but not the knee-buckling waves of it that nearly did him in during those initial months.

His resentment toward Claire, however, hadn’t abated. Her lack of compassion for Natalie during Natalie’s life-stealing illness was simply…unforgivable.

Especially at the end. Claire had said she’d come to see Natalie, and then didn’t. She wasn’t even in the country for the funeral.

“Damn it!” He pounded the leather bench seat next to him as he made the last arc up the long drive.

He had to let go of all of this, at least for the moment. He had animals to save.

She sighed and sank down on the stool she’d kept in the barn for this reason. Waiting for Stormy to give birth.

She glanced over her shoulder at the two-hour-old cria, who remained in front of the warming fan. The newborn llama watched her while it soaked up the heat from the blower. That piece of equipment had cost her several hundred dollars six months ago. Claire didn’t regret a penny of it.

She’d read every agricultural manual she could get her hands on when she made the decision to leave her reporter’s career in D.C. and come back here. She’d talked to countless llama and alpaca farmers on the phone and spent whole weekends on the Internet gleaning anything that would make her transition, and that of her llamas, easier.

She heard the slam of a truck door.

Finally.

She stroked the side of Stormy’s neck.

“It’ll be okay now, gal. Dr. Charlie’s here.”

At the slap of boots against the barn floor Claire looked up and saw the tall male figure at the other end of the building.

She stood.

“Over here, Charlie.” She waved, then sat back down next to Stormy.

“It’s not Charlie.”

At the sound of his voice, she felt instant shock—and despair.

“Dutch.” Her whispered response floated over the hay-strewn stall floor.

She forced herself to look at him as he approached, to keep her expression neutral.

He’s not twenty anymore.

Unlike the other times she’d seen him since she’d moved back, she made herself stand tall and take in his full length. He was leaner than she remembered, more sharply defined. The barn’s fluorescent lighting harshly illuminated her observations. His eyes were the same inky blue, but his hair was no longer the same shade—it was moon-silver, shockingly so. Only a small patch of blond hinted at the color it’d once been. The lines around his mouth and eyes had deepened, but not, she suspected, from laughter as much as the sorrows of his life over the past several years.

He stopped a stride away from her, his gaze steady and guarded.

“Claire.” One word of greeting, but it sounded more like a condemnation.

She stood too quickly. Her knit cap slid over her eyes and she shoved it back.

“Dutch.” Adolescent awkwardness returned, along with the acute awareness that she was in grimy sweats and hadn’t showered since early yesterday.

She squared her shoulders and gave Dutch a glance she’d used on Afghani warlords.

Why should she even care what he thought about her?

Dutch strode over to Stormy.

“How long since the first was born?”

He was beside her, listening to Stormy’s heart with his stethoscope. She had a hard time fathoming how two years of avoiding Dutch had suddenly yielded to this instant of need on the part of her animals.

“A couple of hours, from what I can guess. He was shivering when I came in here. I was surprised Stormy wasn’t cleaning him, so I set up the heating fan and then I checked her. That’s when I figured out she wasn’t done.”

“You figured right. What took you so long to call it in?”

What
had
taken her so long? She’d been so intent on following all the rules, making sure she’d be able to do this herself. She’d only called Charlie because it was a last resort. But Charlie hadn’t come, Dutch had.

“I called as soon as I realized what was going on.” She truly hadn’t known Stormy was in labor until late last night. “Where’s Charlie?”

“Away.” Dutch didn’t elaborate. He gave a quick look at the cria. She hated herself for studying his eyes, noticing the crinkles around them.

“You’ve already rubbed him down.”

“Yes, I—”

“How about you continue to take care of him and I’ll tend to the mother, okay?”

It was worded as the question it wasn’t. At least that hadn’t changed about him.

Claire massaged the cria, relieved that he seemed content to stay in the warmth of the barn and not run about in the freezing weather.

“I was worried about the temperature all day. I’ve been checking on Stormy every hour on the hour since late yesterday afternoon. I know llamas won’t birth in bad weather if they can help it.”

Dutch didn’t reply. Maybe he hadn’t heard her, since his concentration was focused on Stormy.

“Easy, girl. That’s it.” His tone was gentle yet persuasive, the perfect blend of coach and drill sergeant. Claire wondered if he’d used the same tone when Natalie gave birth to their child.

The wave of guilt at the memory of Natalie grabbed her by the throat and she coughed to cover the groan that rose up in her.

“Come over here and watch this.”

Claire didn’t miss that he didn’t say her name.

As she watched, Dutch eased out the second cria as though he delivered breech babies all the time. He was sweating; she saw the stains under his arms. But his breathing remained steady and there was no strain in his expression. His eyes met hers for the briefest moment, and she saw a tiny flicker in their indigo depths. Of hope? Joy?

Dutch had wanted to be a vet since they were kids. He’d saved as many creatures as the Dobinsky brothers had pulled the tails off, including her beloved lizard.

“Here it is.” Dutch finished delivering the second cria, but it was clear to her that this baby llama wasn’t going to have as easy a time as his twin. It was much smaller and shivered constantly.

“It’s a girl,” Dutch murmured. “Blanket?” He reached out a gloved hand toward Claire.

She passed him one of the many clean blankets and towels she’d stacked for this occasion. He swaddled the cria and walked it to the heater. Claire held her breath as Dutch listened through his stethoscope. She stared at his face for the slightest clue.

He removed the stethoscope from his ears and kept massaging the cria. It almost seemed too rough as far as Claire was concerned, but he was the vet. She wasn’t even a llama farmer by most standards, not yet. This birth was supposed to be her stepping stone into the professional status she longed for. A breeder couldn’t call herself a breeder until her animals actually had off-spring.

And she’d failed.

“She’s breathing. We won’t know for a bit if she’s going to make it.” Dutch’s voice was reserved, even with the grimness running through it. He didn’t want to get her hopes up, or so she assumed—until she reminded herself that
her
welfare wouldn’t be high in Dutch’s priorities.

“What about Stormy?”

Claire kept her hand on Stormy’s side as she spoke, as if by touch she could preserve the dam’s will to live.

“Let me look at her. Here, come and rub this cria. Don’t stop. I’ll check her out.”

While Claire rubbed the tiny llama, and occasionally patted its older sibling, she agonized over her stupidity. It was one thing to want to claim her farm, her business, for herself. It was quite another to put Stormy at risk.

If only she’d recognized Stormy’s distress earlier last night. She’d assumed it was going to be a regular birth, just earlier than Charlie had predicted.

Stormy was more than a resource to her. She was Claire’s hope for a new future. A future that was free of the pressures of the political life she’d left behind. Free of the constant drone of the newsroom and the stress of breaking the next story.

With a start Claire realized she was perspiring more profusely than she ever had while working in the press corps. Stormy and all the rest of her llamas had at some point become more than animals to her. They were embedded in her heart.

Yet another reason to regret her decision, which had led to danger for Stormy and the two crias.

Waiting for Dutch to finish dealing with Stormy stretched Claire’s anxiety to the max.

“How is she?” Claire asked the top of his silver mane. That was all she had in her line of vision.

“Shh.” Dutch’s admonition cut across the stable.

Claire kept rubbing the baby and decided to focus on naming the twins. They would both make it. They had to.

After what seemed like hours, but in reality wasn’t more than twenty minutes, Dutch snapped off his gloves.

He made direct eye contact with Claire, and she squirmed at the intensity of his gaze. But it wasn’t about her, or her and Dutch. It was about Stormy.

“She’s okay for now. Her uterus is intact and the afterbirth looked normal, which is a positive sign.” Dutch shook his head. “However, she’s had a huge shock to her system. She won’t be out of the woods for a day or so. I’m going to start her on IV antibiotics as a precaution.”

“Is there any way to avoid the stronger medications? She’s still young and I really don’t like—”

“No, there is no other option—you made sure of that when you took this birthing on yourself. Llamas, livestock—” Dutch waved his hand around her barn “—aren’t pets, Claire. They’re domestic animals who serve a good purpose and need to be respected as such. They weren’t put here for your entertainment.”

His emotional sucker punch echoed Claire’s own thoughts and drove the taste of bile into the back of her throat.

“This isn’t
entertainment
for me, Dutch. These are my animals, my vocation.”

She hated the electricity that quaked between them, even as they faced each other in total disgust, ignoring any remembrance of their past relationship.

“You’ve never been one for commitment. Is this something else to throw away when you grow tired of it?”

Her mind finished the observation:
The way you threw away your best friend? Your hometown?

As soon as he fired the words at her and before Claire could reply, Dutch looked down.

“Damn it all to hell.” He slapped the OB gloves against his thigh. After a few deep breaths, he looked back up at her.

“This has nothing to do with you, or me or our past, Claire. It has to do with your llama. If you want her to live, you need to follow my directions implicitly.”

“I’m sorry—”

He held up his hand. “I’ll help you until Charlie gets back—or your animals are healthy. That’s it.” He nodded at the firstborn cria. “He’s doing okay, so I’m comfortable leaving him here. But the one you’re holding—I’d rather take her back to my office to monitor.”

“That could kill the mother!” Claire clutched the tiny cria as if it were her own child.

Dutch sighed. “I know. And we’re shorthanded in town for the next week as far as vets go. I’ll set up what you need for a llama preemie clinic right here and show you how to use the equipment. I’ll drop by frequently, and you can call me anytime you need help.”

He had her in the grip of his stare and she watched as his lips flattened into a thin line. “I know there was little reason for you or Charlie to expect twins—this was a rare instance for a llama birth.”

He looked back at her. “No more doing
anything
with regard to your animals on your own. You’re not a vet. Got it?”

Claire swallowed, but kept her mouth shut and nodded.

His gaze didn’t waver from her face.

“Let’s get something straight. We don’t talk about our lives now, or before or whenever. Nothing personal.”

“Right. Nothing personal.” What else was she going to say to the man she’d hurt more than anyone—other than his dead wife?