Once and for All Read Online Free PDF Page B

home.
    “Yes.”
    “Sorry. Can’t help you.”
    Her blue eyes flashed, but her demeanor remained remarkably calm as she said, “Damn it, Sam. I can’t have my father’s animals dropping like flies.”
    “Your father got himself into this situation.”
    “My dad felt justified in bringing suit against you or he wouldn’t have done it…but that’s not an excuse,” she added, as if remembering her mission was to finesse him, not beat him in an argument. “Just an explanation.”
    “Feeling justified and being justified are not the same,” Sam felt obliged to point out. “Or maybe it is for you legal types.”
    “We legal types understand the difference,” she said patiently, even though she was obviously annoyed at his remark. “He lost a thirty-thousand-dollar horse. Surely you can understand—”
    “The horse couldn’t have been saved.”
    “The professor from the UC Davis disagreed, which was why my father brought suit.” She met Sam’s eyes, her expression candid. “You can’t fault him for that. He sought the opinion of an expert and acted on that opinion.”
    Ah, yes. The star witness, who’d been working with twenty-twenty hindsight and after-the-fact information.
    “Your expert didn’t convince the judge, did he?” Sam reminded her. And the expert hadn’t been there the night the horse died, either. Sam had been, working his ass off trying to save an animal with a twisted gut. And he’d done everything he could, everything he’d been capable of…although it had happened only a few weeks after Dave’s death and Sam had still been suffering from shock. Hadn’t been thinking all that straight. But he’d gone over his responses a thousand times in his mind, logically reviewing what he’d known at the time.
    He hadn’t made a mistake, and he truly resented Joe for coming after him at such a time in his life.
    “No,” Jodie agreed.
    “Because I was right,” he replied. And it felt good to say that out loud to a Barton. He put his palms on the counter that separated them and leaned closer. “And that is why you can’t get services. People don’t want to deal with your family.”

    J ODIE FOUGHT BOTH desperation and exasperation, with a healthy dose of anger thrown in. Why was she wasting her time here? She wasn’t going to win and the bull was going to die.
    She put her own hands on the counter opposite Sam’s and leaned across the laminate surface until they were practically nose to nose. “ I didn’t sue you,” she said adamantly. “ I’m asking for help. Not my father.”
    Sam wasn’t buying her argument. Hell, even she wasn’t buying it. She’d sat in court with her dad, which made her pretty much a party to the action, even if she hadn’t been the one to file suit.
    “I am not going to be responsible for killing my father’s prize bull.”
    “He killed his bull,” Sam said stubbornly. “Not you.”
    “The animal is still alive, Sam. You could keep him that way.” She’d barely gotten the last word out of her mouth when the phone rang.
    Sam glanced at the caller ID. “It’s my nephew. I have to take this.”
    “ Will you come to the ranch?” Jodie asked before he got the receiver to his ear, and was horrified to hear a tiny crack in her otherwise even voice. What next? Sobs?
    Instead of answering her, Sam said into the receiver, “What is it, Ty?” He bent his head as he listened.
    Jodie knew she’d hit her breaking point then. Her mission was futile. The bull was going to die. Her father would come home to a dead animal and missing a vettrained cowboy. His blood pressure would skyrocket. The vacation would end up being wasted time….
    Not on her watch.
    “Thanks so much, Sam,” she said sarcastically, glad that her voice remained strong even as her eyes started to burn. “You probably would have killed the bull, anyway,” she muttered, too low for him to hear.
    She turned and walked out the door before she did something both embarrassing and