Alyssa and Beau kept their interaction on a purely professional level as the first wave of babies came into the world. He was leery of her and she was pissed at him, so it worked out fine. They split up to work both the pastured mothers and the birthing stalls. They traded places at lunch, so Beau could make sure everything was going well. She was glad to be out in the fresh air part of the day, also. Cade and Chase took the evening rounds and Travis and Grandpa K took early mornings, saying they’d been getting up before the sun their whole lives and why would they stop now. The graveyard shift was mostly completed by the hired hands. But, if anyone on any shift needed a vet to assist, they called or texted both Alyssa and Beau.

One night at two in the morning, Alyssa vaguely heard her phone chime with an incoming text, she reached out to check it and knocked it onto the floor. Before she could reach it, there was a sharp knock on her door. Beau called her name, so she left the phone where it was and hurried to the door.

She opened it to see Beau pulling on a shirt, his pants still unbuttoned—and if she hadn’t been worried about what the problem was she might have drooled. But, clearly, something was wrong.

“We’ve got an emergency. Can you grab some clothes and meet me downstairs? We’ll need to take the truck out to the pasture, so you can pull them on as I drive.”

“Of course, I’m right behind you.”

He nodded. “I’ll bring your boots and coat, just put something on your feet to get to the truck.”

“Got it.” She turned and didn’t even shut her bedroom door as she started grabbing clothes. The sports bra she slept in would do, and she could pull her jeans on over her sleep shorts, her long sleep shirt would have to go, so she grabbed a normal T-shirt and a flannel shirt, socks, her phone, and her hair brush—because she knew she had bed head and couldn’t stand the idea of not at least running a brush through her locks and slapping it into a pony tail. And her breath mints—always good to have mints in your pocket. She stuck her feet into some rain boots and hustled down the stairs.

Beau had the truck pulled up to the back door, engine running and passenger side open. Alyssa clambered in and shut the door as Beau took off.

“What’s happening? I dropped my phone and haven’t seen the text yet.” Alyssa yanked off her sleep shirt and pulled on the t-shirt she’d brought.

Beau glanced her way. “One of the dams is hemorrhaging. I just hope we make it in time to stop the bleeding, so we don’t lose her.”

She pulled on her jeans over her sleep shorts and lifted her rear up to get them over her hips and zipped. “Is she done giving birth?”

“Yeah, at least that’s not another problem to deal with. The baby is fine.”

“Good.” She pulled on her socks and boots. Then, snapped on her seatbelt to keep her from bouncing all over the damn truck. Alyssa ran the brush through her hair and yanked it up into a quick tail and popped in a breath mint. “Want a mint?”

“God, yes. Thanks.”

Yanking on her flannel shirt, she tied it at the waist rather than trying to get it tucked into her jeans, as Beau’s truck careened its way across the pasture. He was trying not to frighten the cattle, but driving as quickly as possible. She’d put her jacket on when they got out of the truck, if she needed it.

“There they are.” She pointed to the left just as Beau jerked the truck in that direction.

“Yep. I’m going to pull in to the left a little, so we have two sets of headlights illuminating the area from a couple of angles.”

“Good idea.”

They got out of the truck and grabbed the medical supplies from the back seat.

“About damn time you got here,” one of the hired hands, Carlos, said.

“They don’t make transporters yet, we got here as quick as we could.” Beau moved in to see what was going on and Alyssa followed him.

John, the older man, said, “We did everything we could think of to stop the bleeding and it’s slowed down some, but not enough.”

“I’m sure you did everything just fine,” Alyssa said. “Sometimes births cause a vein to get severed or there’s a tear in the uterus. Don’t worry, one of you hold her so she doesn’t jerk and the other can keep the herd back and tend to the calf, so we can work.” Beau was too busy working on the heifer to comment on their behavior, but Alyssa knew that half of being a vet was reassuring the humans.

* * *

Beau vaguely heard Alyssa talking to the two ranch hands. He was relieved she was doing it, so he could work on the dam. It really was convenient to have two vets on a ranch.

Beau put the long glove on, that Alyssa had handed him before he asked. “I see it—there’s a vaginal tear. Get me some sutures Alyssa.”

He hadn’t finished speaking before she handed him the pre-threaded sutures. Yep, damn handy to have her.

Beau took her offering and carefully reached inside the cow, keeping a visual eye on the place that needed repair as much as he could but a lot of it would have to be done by feel. It wasn’t easy because there wasn’t much room, but he managed. He also had some gauze to dab at the blood when it got too bad for him to see the tear. Only being able to have one hand inside the animal had caused him to get creative so he used gauze secured to the back of his hand.

When he finished stitching, he got some clean gauze from Alyssa and mopped up the blood still inside to make sure there weren’t any other bleeders. There were none, so he assessed the animal to see if she had lost too much blood.

“I think she’ll be fine, but let’s get her and the calf in the truck so I can take them back to the ranch.”

“We haven’t weighed the calf or tagged him. We noticed right away the dam was bleeding too much and that took all our focus. Sorry, boss.” John shrugged.

Beau and Alyssa both shook their heads. Beau said, “Nope, you did exactly the right thing, we can weigh and tag the little guy in the stall.”

They got the cattle loaded and Alyssa patted John and Carlos both on the shoulder, murmuring encouragement to them both. Then, she climbed into the truck after looking at the cattle one last time.

“She’s cleaning him, so they should be fine,” she reported, as she shut the door.

“Good to know.” Beau started slowly across the pasture taking the easiest path for his cargo. Since disaster was averted images of Alyssa earlier—looking so cute and rumpled when she opened the door to him—assailed him. Then, ripping off her top and pulling on her clothes right next to him. The images were not real clear, but evocative anyway. He needed to get his mind off her and with a quickness.

“You did good out there, anticipating my needs. Thanks. It went a lot faster with the two of us. I was thinking it would be handy to have two medically trained people all the time.”