Rancher's Deadly Risk

by Rachel Lee

  Not that it mattered, she reminded herself. He was just another guy, albeit one who got her hormones racing every time she looked at him. But just another guy.

  And maybe the problem wasn’t her at all. After all, he had said he would call her tomorrow about the bullying program.

  No, maybe it wasn’t her at all.

  With that hopeful thought in mind, she hurried home to start dinner and get to the homework papers she needed to check. With any luck, all she’d have left to do by tomorrow was some lesson planning.

  The thought brightened her mood a bit, easing the memory of the way James Carney had been cowering.

  They were going to help him, and other bullied students. Wasn’t that all that really mattered?

  Chapter 2

  Linc headed home after the game. It was late because the next high school was so far away, a major problem for running athletics in this part of the country. Ordinarily they avoided night games because of the travel time involved, but this week had been different because the other high school had some construction work going on over the weekend.

  They’d gotten their usual shellacking at the other school’s hands, though. Nothing different there. Busby somehow always managed to field a stellar team.

  But, as he kept telling his players, winning wasn’t the point. Playing the game was. As long as they loved to play, the rest didn’t matter. Sometimes he wondered if they believed him. Regardless, he always had plenty of students turn up for spring tryouts.

  But after he shepherded them off the buses and toward their waiting parents, making sure everyone got a ride home, he still had a forty-five-minute drive of his own to his ranch, and some animals waiting for him.

  The sheep and goats were okay in their fenced meadows, watched by the dogs, who were probably wondering by now when they’d see their next bowl of kibble. He had a couple of horses in a corral he never left out overnight, but always safely stalled in the barn. It wouldn’t take him long, but he was beginning to feel weary. He started his days at five in the morning, taking care of livestock, and finished at one-thirty in the morning...well, he was getting damn tired.

  As the noise of the game and the racket from the players on the team bus began to fade from his immediate memory, along with a running analysis of how the team could improve, Cassie Greaves popped up before his eyes.

  Damn, that woman was stunning. Not in a movie-star sort of way, but more like a...a what? Earth mother? She was full-figured enough to qualify, he supposed, though he wouldn’t classify her as heavy. No, she was luxuriously built, exactly the kind of female form that had always appealed to him. With bobbed honey-blond hair and witchy green eyes, she was a looker. Every time he glanced at her, he felt swamped by desire. Amazing, almost like he was in high school himself.

  But he’d lived his entire life in this county, and he knew how many people came here, thinking they’d found something wonderful, and then after one winter packed up and left because of the cold, the isolation, the lack of excitement. Hell, even people who grew up here left so why wouldn’t people who didn’t have any roots?

  Some people didn’t find enough excitement in days filled with work or with people they saw every day. His own fiancée had headed out after just two years here, swearing she would die from boredom. She probably would have, too, he had finally admitted. Who wanted a life with a guy who was either tied up at his job or working a ranch? Much fun he was.

  So he just tried to avoid the whole thing. When it came to a woman who attracted him the way Cassie did, a woman who hadn’t even survived her first winter here, his guard slammed up like some kind of shield in a science fiction movie.

  But he was getting to the point of appearing rude, and that had to stop. When Les had asked him to work on this project with her, he’d had the worst urge to refuse. Proximity with that woman?

  But then his better angels had taken over. He and Cassie had to deal with this bullying before it got any worse. And it would if they didn’t find a way to get through to these students. Ignoring it because “kids will be kids” was a recipe for serious problems. Yes, they’d do it. Most of them probably had bullied at one time or another, and most had probably been the victims of it.

  But the problem still couldn’t be ignored. That was one thing educators and psychologists had learned over the last few decades. And with the dynamic he’d been watching develop between the students, he suspected that it could get way out of hand.

  As the incident had today. As upset as he was for the Carney kid, he also saw a big danger in the way those boys had treated Cassie. So he’d bite the bullet, keep his guard up and do what he could to get the students to understand that bullying wasn’t funny, it wasn’t a joke, and it was never permissible.

  He was glad, though, to reach his ranch and deal with the dogs and the horses. They centered him, these animals he kept. Reminded him he was part of nature, too, and that a lot of nature was actually prettier than human nature.

  After he’d greeted, petted, stabled and fed, he went inside and made himself a bowl of instant oatmeal. It had been a long time since dinner, and while team parents made sure there were plenty of snacks and water for the players, he was usually too uptight to eat at all during a game. He was like a father with thirty sons on the field or bench.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, eating his solitary oatmeal, he noticed for the first time in a long time just how silent the house was. He’d noticed it after his father had died eight years ago, and he’d noticed it again when Martha had left her engagement ring on this very table.

  Silence, usually a good companion given his busy days, sometimes seemed lonely and empty. Tonight it definitely felt empty.

  This big old house had been meant for a large family. Built back around the turn of the twentieth century, he had only to look at old family photos to know how full it had been at one time. His great-grandfather must have kept awfully busy expanding the place as well as running the ranch and farm. But after the Second World War, youngsters had moved away. The G.I. Bill had offered them different opportunities, and only his own grandfather had chosen to remain after returning from the South Pacific.

  So the old days of a dozen kids had trailed away, his grandmother had born only one child that survived, and then his own mother had died giving birth to him, and his dad had never remarried.

  From many to just him. Sometimes when he walked around and counted dusty, empty bedrooms, and imagined what this place might have been like in its heyday, he felt the lack of human contact. Five years ago he’d tried a family reunion, met some of his great-uncles and cousins he hardly knew, and some he’d never met, and after a rush of “we have to keep in touch” from everyone, keeping in touch had ended when they left town. They felt no ties to this place, or to him.

  He didn’t blame them for that. Time had moved on, and with it so had their lives, which were so far removed now from this thinly populated county that he was sure most of them couldn’t imagine why he remained.

  But his roots were very real to him. He felt them dig deeper every time he walked the land, or tended to his livestock, or even did a repair around the house. He was a man of this land and he wanted no other.

  Martha couldn’t grasp it, either, although for a while she had tried. He just hadn’t guessed how hard she was trying. Maybe it had been easier for her when everything was new and fresh. Then it had become all humdrum and endless for her, a routine that never changed. He supposed he was to blame for at least some of that, but the fact was, he had two jobs, one teaching, the other tending this place, and he couldn’t simply ignore either one. Animals needed daily care. A teaching job required hours not only at school, but also in the evenings and on weekends.

  All work and no play apparently had made Linc a very dull boy, he thought. He needed, he supposed, to find a woman from around here who understood the demands and isolation, someone who could be self-sufficient in more ways than Martha. Someone who would be willing to lend her shoulder to the r
anch work and make it part of her life, too.

  So far no luck. Judging by his attraction to Cassie Greaves, that was most likely his own fault. He never seemed to be drawn to women who had lived here all their lives. Maybe that was his own form of looking for something different. Whatever, it had left his life very empty.

  He rinsed his bowl and spoon and put them in the dishwasher Martha had insisted he install. It was a bit much for just one person, and he could go a week without running it, but it was convenient when he didn’t feel like washing up after himself. There were days like that, days that were just too long for one reason or another, especially during football season.

  Upstairs after his shower, he stood naked in his chilly bedroom and looked out over the moon-drenched fields. There were no curtains any longer. Martha had taken down the ones that had been there at least since his mother had hung them, and replaced them with something she considered cheerier. She hadn’t been gone long when he ripped them down and got rid of all the other reminders.

  A childish act, part of him judged, but necessary. He didn’t need reminders greeting him everywhere he went. Not reminders of Martha, anyway.

  The air was getting downright frigid, but he ignored an impulse to turn on the heat. Once he climbed beneath the quilts he’d be warm enough for the night. In the morning he’d deal with seeing his breath and having to dress quickly in clothes that felt as if they’d been in a freezer all night.

  Conservation. He preached it to his students, and practiced it himself. Like the compost pile out near the barn. Nothing wasted. He’d been raised that way, and rightfully so. So had many of his students, though not all.

  He figured he had a good life in all, and was achieving some good ends, mostly. But nights like this, when the moon was full and the house so silent, he felt he could howl at the moon for a mate. Man was not meant to be solitary.

  He shook his head at the turn of his thoughts and went to climb beneath the heap of quilts on his bed, quilts made by generations of women in his family. Heat tomorrow, he decided as his skin met icy sheets. Definitely. He was not going to be a happy camper come morning.

  He shivered for a while until his cocoon warmed up. Closing his eyes against the bright moonlight, he thought again of Cassie Greaves. Why did she have to be such a tempting armful?

  But surely he knew better now. Nevertheless, thoughts of Cassie seemed to warm that cocoon of quilts faster than usual.

  * * *

  Cassie awoke in a better frame of mind than when she had gone to bed the night before. As awful as the bullying she had seen had appeared to be, she was confident that with some education and a reminder of penalties they could probably lessen the problems.

  And giving the boys detention for how they had ignored her should help remove James from the firing line. They would know it all had to do with what they had been doing to James, but with the detentions arising from their treatment of her, they’d have nothing to add to their scorecard against James. She hoped.

  By the time she was eating her yogurt and drinking her coffee, she felt good about the program Les had proposed, even though she and Linc hadn’t started to work on it. In her experience, the important thing was to create a culture among students, and if possible among their parents, that frowned on bullying. So the question was not whether it would work, but how long it would take.

  From what Linc had said yesterday, she gathered there had been a major change in dynamics owing to the new people who had moved here with the semiconductor plant. She’d already heard that sad story of boom and bust. While the plant hadn’t closed down when the recession hit, it had laid off quite a few people. A lot of lives had undoubtedly been hurt or destroyed.

  But on the other hand, whatever had brought about the social dichotomy in the school, this wasn’t the first time she had seen it. Sometimes it was about race. Sometimes it was about who was a “townie” and who was a “military brat.” Sometimes it was just about how you dressed and who you hung around with. Kids could find ample reasons to form cliques and exclusive groups. It seemed to be part of human nature in general.

  But it could be contained and controlled. Courtesy, which she thought of as the grease on the wheels of life, could be learned, and could overlay baser impulses.

  The problem would be one of motivation.

  She hoped Linc would have some idea of what would motivate these students, because she didn’t know the student body well enough yet and this was a rather late point in their education to start something that should have begun in the earliest grades.

  Linc again. She supposed it would be wise to castigate herself for wasting so much thought and energy on thinking about a man who was making it as plain as day that he’d prefer not to get to know her even casually. Work with her? Yes. Anything else, not so much.

  Still, she couldn’t help wandering into the bedroom to look at herself in the full-length mirror, something she usually avoided. She was plump, yes, but much as she would have liked to be built like a model or movie star, that wasn’t in her genetic makeup. She didn’t think she looked that bad, anyway. Plenty of guys had made passes at her. Full-figured but not ugly was her pronouncement. Problem was, she didn’t quite believe the “not ugly” part.

  Stifling a sigh, she bathed and dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, caught her hair up in a short ponytail, and dug out her planning books. Yesterday had pretty much driven everything else out of her mind, and she needed to come up with some kind of new, hands-on project that would teach math in a real-world way.

  It had, she admitted, been easier to come up with things at the start of the year, but as the weeks passed, ideas had become thinner on the ground. She scanned the topics to be covered that week, seeking some fertile soil. Unfortunately, she didn’t think most of her students were quite ready to enjoy math for the sake of math.

  She was searching around on her computer looking for ideas that might work with at least some of what she would teach this week, when the phone rang. She answered, her heart lifting a bit, expecting to hear Linc’s voice.

  Instead what she heard was a deep, angry voice. “Stay out of what doesn’t concern you, bitch, or you’ll pay.”

  Before her jaw could even drop, the other party had disconnected. At once she pressed the caller ID button, but it told her only that the call had come from Wyoming. Great help.

  She sat there, staring at her phone, shaken. Just words, she told herself. Just an empty threat. But she couldn’t quite persuade herself of that. Her stomach kept flipping nervously, and she’d have given just about anything to call back and give that man a piece of her mind. It would have relieved her anxiety just to be able to yell at him.

  Just as anger began to seriously overtake uneasiness, the phone rang again. Without even looking to see who it was, she snapped, “What?”

  There was a pause. Finally Linc’s familiar voice said, “Cassie?”

  At once embarrassment filled her. “Sorry,” she said, aware that her voice had thickened, “I just got a nasty call. I thought it was another one.”

  A moment of silence. “What kind of nasty call?”

  “Telling me to stay out of things that don’t concern me, with an implied threat and a bit of name-calling. It’s nothing, it just made me mad.”

  He didn’t reply directly. “Are you going out?”

  “No, I’m doing my weekly planning.”

  “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  Then he was gone, leaving her to wonder what had lit the fire under him. Surely the call, as annoying as it had been, didn’t require immediate action. Heck, she didn’t even know for sure what it was about.

  Then it struck her that Linc was on his way over. She hurried into her bedroom and changed into something more attractive than the baggy clothes she had been working in. Nothing too much, just a more attractive blouse with a pair of reasonably new jeans. Another brushing of her hair, a tiny—just tiny—dab of makeup around her eyes and some gloss on her lips.


  Then she started a fresh pot of coffee, since somehow she had managed to drink most of it while working this morning. That much caffeine? It struck her that that might have caused the stomach flips as much as the phone call.

  She threw open a window to let in some of the fresh, chilly air, then tried to return her attention to her planning. It didn’t work. All she could think about was Lincoln Blair coming here. Imagining him walking through her door. Wondering how he would be able to keep up that shield he seemed so determined to place between them while they were working on a project.

  God, was she really thinking like this at the age of thirty? That man had truly gotten to her, yet what did she really know about him? That he looked good enough to model on a magazine? That he was popular with both faculty and students?

  That meant nothing, really. Nothing. She gave herself a firm mental shake and told herself to remember that she was simply going to be meeting him to work on a project, something she had done countless times before with teachers she found attractive or not-so attractive. So what the hey?

  Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help being a little nervous anyway. If he arrived here packed in his personal brand of refrigerant, she didn’t know how she would manage. Yes, she had worked with difficult people before, but there was difficult and then there was difficult.

  Cussing silently, she waited for her doorbell to ring, giving up hope of focusing on her work. Instead she looked around her little office, the house’s one spare bedroom, and decided she liked what she had so far been able to do with it. Little by little she was transforming the place into a home that reflected her love of bright color and handmade crafts. Some items she had brought with her, and some she had discovered since arriving here, at a little hole-in-the-wall place that seemed left over from an earlier century.

  Finally Linc arrived. Butterflies fluttered wildly in her stomach as she went to open the door.

  Her memory had not exaggerated his Celtic-warrior good looks, not one bit. He stood there in a light jacket, jeans and his usual chambray shirt—it was almost a uniform. On his head sat a felt cowboy hat that looked as if it had seen better days.