The Cowboy's Temptation Page 0,44

of embarrassment. She was glad that something had come up although she knew that Jake was concerned.

She watched as he grabbed his hat and rushed out of the kitchen, following behind the other ranch hand. From the window, she noticed that they were walking faster than usual and her concern grew. Was there a problem with the birth? Shouldn’t they call a vet? Elissa pushed herself away from the window and concentrated on something else. She cleaned the kitchen and scoured through the cookbooks, looking for something interesting to cook for dinner that night. She definitely wasn’t leaving anything for that obnoxious man, she told herself.

She made a list of the ingredients she would need and headed into town, ignoring her instinct to head down to the barn and find out what was wrong.

Elissa drove back to the ranch and unloaded her groceries. She looked out at the barn and wondered if everything was okay with the new foal.

Making a decision, she put all the groceries away and then slipped out the side of the house, wanting to check on the foal. She’d never seen a newborn horse before. Were they really able to stand as soon as they were born? Could she sneak into the back of the barn and not be noticed?

Elissa made her way to the barn and slipped through the side door. She knew something was wrong as soon as she entered the musky smelling area. Sure enough, Jake was bent over the horse’s back and was moving his hands along the side of the horse’s flanks. The horse, obviously Lucy, was laying on her side and groaning with deep breaths coming out every few moments. Several ranch hands were working around the pained horse and another person she’d never seen before, she assumed was a vet, was listening to the horse’s heartbeat.

“Jake, she’ll be okay. Just give her some time. This is a natural course and will just take a few hours,” he said. The man packed up his instruments and left the barn, patting the horse’s neck as he left.

Jake waited until he was gone and then shook his head. “Okay, Lucy. It looks like this is going to be up to you and me. We’ll get through this together,” he soothed the horse.

Elissa watched for hours as Jake talked the horse through her painful contractions. She was horrified at first when Jake checked the horse’s womb but realized that there was no other way to gauge the progress. She’d seen Ronny’s obstetrician do the same thing so Elissa relaxed slightly when he checked the horse again about an hour later.

Sometime in the late afternoon, Elissa slipped back out of the barn and went back up to the house. She made a mountain of sandwiches and several pots of coffee then brought it all down to the barn. There were about six men who were all helping the horse drop the foal and none had left for any reason through the whole ordeal.

Jake didn’t look up when she deposited the stack of sandwiches but the other men smiled gratefully to her as they attacked the stack and took long drinks of the hot coffee. Elissa sat down on a stack of hay and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. Two hours later, things really came to a head.

“Get Mike back out here,” Jake called out to no one in particular but one of the helpers immediately got on the phone and called the vet. “This lady’s breach,” he groaned and soothed the horse through another contraction.

“Jake, I don’t think there’s time to get Mike back out here. I think she’s going to go through it in the next few minutes or she’s not going to make it,” a hand by the name of Jim said.

“I know,” Jake said and checked the horse’s progress again.

“Okay, Lucy. Are you ready for this?” The horse snorted and then groaned, her eyes moving back into her head.

Jake positioned himself at the rear of the animal and felt her flank. Once he found what he was looking for, he reached into the animal’s womb and nodded again. “Okay, I have the foot,” he said. He put one hand on the horse’s stomach and waited. “Lucy, just breathe,” he soothed. “We’ll wait until the next contraction and work together.” Jake’s deep voice seemed to be helping the exhausted mare who simply laid her head down on the hay. A moment later, her head was back up and another groan