A Stone Creek Christmas
Sometimes, especially in the dark of night, when pure exhaustion sank Olivia O'Ballivan, DVM, into deep and stuporous sleep, she heard them calling—the finned, the feathered, the four-legged.
Horses, wild or tame, dogs beloved and dogs lost, far from home, cats abandoned alongside country roads because they'd become a problem for someone, or left behind when an elderly owner died.
The neglected, the abused, the unwanted, the lonely.
Invariably, the message was the same: Help me.
Even when Olivia tried to ignore the pleas, telling herself she was only dreaming, she invariably sprang to full wakeful-ness as though she'd been catapulted from the bottom of a canyon. It didn't matter how many eighteen-hour days she'd worked, between making stops at farms and ranches all over the county, putting in her time at the veterinary clinic in Stone Creek, overseeing the plans for the new, state-of-the-art shelter her famous big brother, Brad, a country musician, was building with the proceeds from a movie he'd starred in.
Tonight it was a reindeer.
Olivia sat blinking in her tousled bed, trying to catch her breath. Shoved both hands through ... read full excerpt from: A Stone Creek Christmas ebook
