Don't Mess With Texans

“She pay with cash or check?”Letter to ReaderTitle PageDedicationCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYCHAPTER TWENTY-ONECHAPTER TWENTY-TWOCHAPTER TWENTY-THREECHAPTER TWENTY-FOURCHAPTER TWENTY FIVECHAPTER TWENTY SIXCopyright

“She pay with cash or check?”

“Something better, Doc. She said she was fresh out of cash.” Carol Anne plucked something shiny from a drawer and dropped the tiny object into his palm. “Here’s how she paid. She said to send her the change care of this address—” she waved a piece of paper at him “—once we’ve hocked it.”

Tag lifted the ring to the light “A diamond!”

“If you believe that, Doc.... It’ll be a zircon, I guarantee, worth fifty if we’re lucky.”

They both looked up as headlights swept the room, followed by a second pair, then a third. Brakes yelped in the parking lot Doors slammed.

As Tag threw open the door to the clinic, another car wheeled in off the road.... No, this was a van. With the logo of the local TV station emblazoned along its side. It was a media frenzy. With its prey in sight.

“Dr. Taggart! Why did you perform unauthorized surgery on the finest racing sire ever bred in America?” Voices receded into the yammering din of white noise. Somewhere, Susannah Mack was laughing at him. laughing at him while his life ended up in ruins.

“No comment” He’d save his comments and his own questions for the one woman who could answer them. He gazed into the cameras, because he knew she’d be watching. Read it in my eyes, Susannah. You can run. You can bide. But I’m gonna get you, if it’s the last thing I do!

Dear Reader,

“She’s from Texas,” my oldest friends roll their eyes and say whenever I stick out my chin, take the law into my own hands and charge off to seek Justice—and usually find Trouble instead. Like the time I dognapped one hundred and twenty pounds of bellowing mutt that was terrorizing our neighborhood at 3:00 a.m. and tied him to the police station back door, with a doggy confession looped round his shaggy neck. (I’ve been barking again.) Or the time this five-foot-two-inch woman got indignant and tried to stop a large and irate shoplifter all by herseff—not one of my better ideas.

And maybe my friends’ explanation is the best one—call it a mental holdover from the Wild West days, when Texas Rangers were few and far between. So if a lady wanted justice—or revenge (which we all fondly imagine to be the same thing)—well, she just had to find it herself.

Whatever, this Texan found it easy to imagine a woman like Susannah Mack, who needed revenge—shoot, she earned it!—and who was spunky enough, indignant enough and reckless enough to fight for it against overwhelming odds. And then to imagine her ideal partner in adversity—Dr. R. D. Taggart, a man practical, tough and tender enough to see his Texas Pistol safely through her wildest schemes to the happy-ever-after ending she so richly deserved.

So here’s Susannah’s story. I had a lark writing it, and I hope you will reading it. All the best!

Peggy Nicholson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is for my mother, Marguerite Grimes, the first

horsewoman I ever knew. Her endearing spunk and stubborn gallantry inspired my heroine, Susannah Mack. It’s also for Ron duPrey, only my sun and moon and a northwest breeze at dawn.

With special thanks to John Civic, D.V.M., for his

kind advice on veterinary procedures. Any technical mistakes this author may have made were despite his bemused help—You want to what?—rather than because of it.

CHAPTER ONE

SIX HOURS AFTER SURGERY, the tomcat was looking like a keeper. “Gums couldn’t be pinker,” Tag assured him. So he wasn’t bleeding internally. He let the cat’s upper lip drop and the torn slashed at his leather glove, then retreated to the back of the cage. Reflexes coming back nicely after anesthesia. His pupils were equally dilated and no wider than they should be. “So what day of the week is it?” Tag murmured, and got a sing song growl in reply.

“Wednesday, right. First week in January, last year of the century.” The car that hit him last night must have just grazed him, breaking his jaw as it tossed him aside. But his brains didn’t seem to be scrambled. “And who’s the president?”

The tom’s ragged ears stayed flattened to his furry skull. Another subsonic moan issued through wired jaws.

“Who cares? You wouldn’t give three fleas and a dead rat for every politician in the country,” Tag translated. “Can’t say I blame you.” Neither would he. Politics was a pastime for comfortable people with time on their hands and steady paychecks coming in. For his and the cat’s kind, survival was the name of the game. And living well was its best revenge.

Still, to live well this stray would have to learn to tolerate humans. Because as soon as he mended, Tag meant to find him a home. He hadn’t spent half the night patching him up just to boot him back out on the street when he was healed. He shut the cage door, then lingered, talking soothing nonsense till the cat stopped growling.