Chapter 5
Chloe saw little of Jack over the next week, he was still up and out of the cabin early each morning while her day started and lasted later. She still made her daily trip to the clinic to see how things were going, looking forward to the day she’d have a central location to practice. Traveling all over the canyon had been fun at first, but now it was just becoming exhausting. But now when she crossed the field to check on Jack’s progress, he sent one of his brothers instead of coming himself.
As much as she liked Owen and Flynn, she was still disappointed every time Jack all but ignored her. She should have been happy that he was ignoring her, it might have made her attraction to him all that much easier to ignore, but like a school girl with a crush, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him.
June flew by, the weather was clear and beautiful allowing construction on both the clinic and the ranch to progress much faster than anyone could have hoped. When the contractor asked her if she wanted the clinic or the apartment finished first, as tempted as she was to have him finish the apartment, she opted for getting the clinic done. The truth was that she didn’t mind the little cabin that much, she’d gotten used to having Jack next door, hearing his laughter when he was with Josh, was enough to keep her from getting lonely.
When July arrived, Jack actually met her one day when she made her trip to the clinic. “We’re ready to move the sheep.” He said, without even a greeting.
“Okay, what’s your plan?” She asked, matching his tone.
Jack outlined his plan to have the sheep shipped by boat to LA, then they’d be transported by truck as far into the canyon as the road would allow, from there they’d be pushed up to the ranch and the prime grass just waiting for them in the pasture. Chloe was a bit skeptical of his plan, but could see from the look on his face that he’d made his mind up. Still, it was her job to look out for all the animals in the canyon, including Jack’s sheep.
“I wonder if that’s going to be a bit stressful for them, a week or more on a boat and then a trip across LA and up the mountain.” She said carefully.
“I don’t see why. They’ll get plenty of exercise on the boat, I’ve made sure of that. It’s only a seven day trip you know.” He said, his tone condescending.
“But then you’re going to add a trip by truck through LA, which could take hours.”
Jack looked down at her, considering her words, but then dismissed them with a wave of his hand, “They’ll be fine, these are extremely tough animals, only the best of the flock.”
Chloe took a deep breath trying to calm her anger, she was getting very tired of Jack dismissing her skills and education. She knew more about sheep than he did, whether he’d been working with them for his entire life, she had one of the best educations in the world behind her and she’d worked hard for that education. One day very soon, she was sure that they were going to come to blows over Jack’s sheep, but she decided it wasn’t going to be that day, so she backed down.
“We’ll go with your plan, but just remember I’m here to help.” She said, and stomped off across the field.
Jack watched her go, cursing both himself and her, how she always managed to set him off he wasn’t sure, but she did. Maybe it was the fact that when he was close to her that all he wanted to do was kiss her, or maybe it was the fact that every day for the last few weeks he’d watched his brothers flirt and laugh with her from a distance. A distance he’d felt the need to impose, but had only proven to make him want Chloe more, something that just couldn’t become a reality for so many reasons.
A week later, they were all standing on the dock as the sheep came off the boat. Chloe was frowning and Jack was trying to ignore her. There were twenty-five sheep in all, twenty-four ewes and one ram, each one a prime example of Merino sheep. But they were all looking a little rundown from the trip across the ocean, they were more nervous than they should be and some looked like they’d lost weight. Once they were all in the holding pen, Chloe knew that she wasn’t going to let Jack transport the sheep one step farther until she’d had a look at them.
Jack knew that his sheep had suffered some on the trip but all he could think about was getting them to the rich grass in the mountains, any damage that had been done would quickly be repaired by the freedom and bounty of the ranch. So when Chloe grabbed her bag out of the back of her truck and started towards them, he followed her, curious to see how she handed the big animals. He watched amused while she prepared to examine the sheep, putting on a strange vest covered with pockets, then attaching a rope to her belt, he thought she looked like she was preparing to go to war.
He stood watching her a condescending smile on his face, waiting for the moment when she tried to catch one of his very wild sheep, he was shocked when she stepped into the pen then promptly turned her back on them all. The smile disappeared from his face, only someone who knew sheep would use that trick. In a matter of minutes, the sheep had surrounded her and instead of being scared like he thought she would be, she simple began examining the sheep closest to her, whispering in its ear until it was calm.
She moved with the efficiency of someone who had spent lots of time with sheep, never once did she startle them, even when she drew blood from several of the ewes. By the time she stepped out of the pen, Jack knew that he’d made some assumptions about Chloe that he’d have to rethink, and seeing the look on her face, he was going to have to do it quickly.
“These sheep aren’t going anywhere for at least three days. They’re stressed from the trip, they’ve lost weight and some are slightly dehydrated.” She said, slipping out of the vest, which was now filthy.
“That’s impossible. What are we going to do with them for three days?” Jack couldn’t help but argue with her.
“We’ll figure out something, but I’m telling you that they can’t be put through the stress of going to the canyon until they’ve had some time to recover.” Chloe said, putting her hands on her hips ready to battle.
“These are my sheep.” Jack said, getting in her face, loving the way her eyes sparked when she was mad.
“And I’m their veterinarian, and I’m telling you to leave them here.” She shot right back at him, raising her chin so she could stare him down. “I bet you don’t even know that you’ve got three pregnant ewes in that herd. They shouldn’t have been brought over.”
Jack looked back at the small herd, cursing whoever had let that happen. “How do you know?”
Chloe sighed, “I just know, but I took blood samples so we can find out for sure.”
Jack was considering her words when one of the herders came over, his dog trailing along obediently at his side. Hoping to prove her wrong, he turned to the man and said, “Dr. Barton thinks we might have a few pregnant ewes in the flock.”
“Well, she might be right, there were some problems at the dock back home. It’s entirely possible, but I figured it was a short trip.” The man said, nodding to Chloe. “Jack, the trip was a bit harder on them than we thought it was going to be…the weather was terrible and they didn’t want to eat or go on deck. If you want my opinion, we should give them a few days to rest here before we move them again.”
Chloe couldn’t help but give Jack a look that said, told you so. Then with a satisfied grim, she said triumphantly, “I’ll make some phone calls.”
An hour later, she’d arranged for the sheep to stay right where they were, found some vet students to take care of them, and ordered a supply of fresh food for them. She’d found places for the herders and their dogs to stay at the university, and booked the rest of them into a hotel in town. After communicating all the arrangements to Jack, who was surprised once again by her efficiency, she packed up her medical supplies.
After she’d given them directions to the hotel, which was only a few miles from the docks, she climbed into her truck, headed to her room, hoping to avoid the men for the rest of the day. The entire encounter with Jack over letting the sheep rest after their trip from Australia had been extremely frustrating. For someone who seemed to care so much about his sheep, he had been almost childlike in his refusal to listen to her advice.
It was almost as if he was doing it just to annoy her, and if he had been, it had worked. She was still mad and frustrated with Jack and wanted to put as much space between them as possible, they’d be in LA for three days and she planned to see as little of him as she could during that time. After she got into her room, she collapsed onto the bed and buried her face in the pillow. It was bad enough that she had to fight her attraction to Jack, but if she also had to fight with him over every medical decision she made about the sheep, it was going to be a long and difficult two years.
Knowing that she needed some emotional bolstering, she called her best friend Michelle to arrange for them to meet for dinner. “Why don’t you just come over to my house; we can make dinner and catch up. I want to hear all about Coldwater Canyon and we’ll have more privacy.” Michelle said when Chloe suggested they go out to dinner.
As she drove to Michelle’s house, she debated whether or not to tell her about her attraction to Jack, of all her friends, Michelle had been the only one who’d warned her about Brandon. It had caused a huge strain in their relationship at first, but after some time, she’d realized that Michelle had only been looking out for her best interests and she’d repaired the friendship. When her relationship with Brandon had come crashing down around her, Michelle had been there to pick up the pieces of her broken heart, sitting with her through that first horrible night. In the end, their relationship had only gotten stronger.
Chloe’s life had never been easy, but it could have been a lot worse. She’d only been five when her parents had been killed in a car crash, the three of them had been on their way to Seattle to start a new life away from the city but those plans had never come to fruition. When she’d woken up in the hospital, the first thing she’d asked for was her mother and she’d been gently told that both her parents had died in the crash that had left her with a broken leg and a few cuts and bruises.
At first her child’s mind hadn’t been able to grasp the truth, death was such a foreign concept to her that she just kept asking for her parents. Finally, a woman came to her room and explained it to her in a way that she could understand. When the truth finally sank in, she was so devastated that she stopped talking for several days, making it impossible for them to find any of her family. When she finally started talking again, she was able to tell them where she was from, but that did little to help them because Chloe had no other family besides her parents.
After weeks in the hospital, the woman came to tell her that she’d be going to live with some nice people on a ranch outside of town, something the woman seemed very proud of. Only later would Chloe realize just how lucky she’d been to find her adoptive parents, who had loved her as if she was their own, smoothing the way for her to be accepted into a very white community. But Chloe being who she was, worked hard both at home and at school, her only goal to make both her adoptive parents and her real parents proud of her.
Living on a sheep ranch in South Dakota was never easy, especially in the winter, but she’d learned to love the land. She worked the sheep alongside her adoptive parents, but what she really loved was working with the other animals on the ranch. The cattle they kept for their own use, the horses that were a critical part of everyday life, the barn cats and herding dogs kept her sane when the monotony of moving the sheep from one place to another got to her.
By the time she was in high school, she knew that she wanted to be a veterinarian, but she also knew the chances that she’d be able to make her dream happen were slim. Besides being from such a small town where the schools were just adequate, she’d have to pay for college herself. As much as they wanted to help, her adoptive parents wouldn’t be able to. She wasn’t the only child they’d taken in over the years. But she was smart and resourceful, she studied hard and bugged her teachers until they all agreed to spend extra time with her so that she’d have the required classes to get into a good college.
During her senior year, all she did was work the ranch and study with such focus that she cut everything else out of her life. She didn’t do all of the usual high school activities, no homecoming or prom, she didn’t play sports or join the band as many of her friends had done. Nor did she date, her first and last boyfriend had been when she was a freshman in high school, it had been a time-consuming and strangely dissatisfying relationship from the very beginning. She just wasn’t good at the games that boys and girls played; it all just seemed like a huge waste of time when she had bigger plans.
She’d dated occasionally during undergraduate school, usually fellow animal studies students who shared her love of large animals. But then Brandon Michaelson had walked into her life the summer before she started vet school, and at first she was suspicious of his attention, he was by far the best looking man she’d ever met and he had the charm to go with those looks. The fact that he was rich didn’t really impress her that much, growing up the way she had, she knew that there were many more important things in life than money.
At first, Brandon had tried to impress her with that money, which according to many people was his standard move when he wanted to impress a woman. She’d made it clear to him from the very beginning that she was there for one reason and one reason only, to graduate and go home to South Dakota and practice there. Not only had her adoptive parents sacrificed a lot for her, the town had stood behind her, knowing that in the end they would gain a valued member of the community.
When Brandon discovered that his money wasn’t going to buy his way into her life, he’d changed tactics, professing a great love for large animals and shadowing her everywhere she went. At first it had been annoying but eventually she’d let her guard down and they’d begun dating. By the middle of their first year in vet school they were inseparable, spending most of their time together studying and working in the large animal barn.
At times Chloe questioned their relationship, knowing that it couldn’t last, once she’d even tried to break up with Brandon but he’d insisted that they were on the same path. Describing to her the ranch they’d own one day, sheep-free of course, and she’d relented and stayed with him. Brandon always seemed to take it in stride when she scored the highest on tests and performance reviews, bragging about her to anyone and everyone who would listen.
But as graduation neared, Brandon began to change, and when he discovered that Chloe had gotten one of the coveted interviews at Coldwater Canyon and he hadn’t, it had all blown up in her face. Brandon wouldn’t have even known about the job if she hadn’t told him, but once she had it was like he became a man possessed. He did everything he could think of to get an interview, including going to Dr. Morgan to ask for a recommendation, which hadn’t worked.
He came home one night and slammed the door to their apartment, “You’re never going to believe this.” He shouted from the entry way. “I didn’t get an interview in Coldwater Canyon, the invitations came out today and I didn’t get one. No one will even say who did get one.”
Chloe had been in the kitchen making a celebration dinner; she had been one of the lucky few to get an invitation, in fact she was supposed to spend the weekend up there at the end of the month. Without even thinking, she blurted out, “I got one.”
The look Brandon gave her was one of pure venom, “You what?” He’d shouted.
“I got an interview in Coldwater Canyon, I go at the end of the month.” She’d said, suddenly aware that the air in the room had gotten very cold.
Brandon looked at her for a second, then stomped back to the bedroom and slammed the door. Later that night, he’d left without even saying goodbye and didn’t return until the middle of the night, slipping into bed next to her smelling like perfume, sex, and alcohol. She’d laid awake most of the night, afraid of what Brandon’s behavior meant for their future, and the ranch they’d been planning for almost two years. She’d finally moved to the couch in the early hours of the morning, too heartbroken to stay in bed with Brandon.
The next morning, he’d come out of the bedroom with a packed suitcase and tried to slip out the door, but she’d woken from where she’d finally fallen asleep on the couch. What had followed had been one of the most difficult mornings of her life, a morning that she’d never forget, a morning that had destroyed a piece of her, a piece that she was sure could never be repaired.
“Brandon, what’s going on? Don’t you see that if I get this job, Dr. Morgan can’t hold me here all summer?” She’d asked, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Well, you wouldn’t be in this position if you kept your smart mouth under control. Frankly I don’t blame Dr. Morgan for sanctioning you. I would have kicked you out of the program.” Brandon said, with a sneer.
Chloe was so shocked she could only stare at him, but he wasn’t finished yet. “Just because you’re some kind of genius with the animals you seem to think that you’re better than all of us. I’ll let you in on a little secret, you’re just a country hick who doesn’t know a thing about the world. Thanks to you, I’m going to graduate second in the class, second only because I’ve been copying your tests and papers for the last year and a half. Did you actually think I was going to give up my life for you? The only reason I even wanted that interview in Coldwater Canyon was to meet the Montgomery’s, I have no intention of spending my life up there.”