Читать книгу Rancher's Deadly Risk - Rachel Lee - Страница 9

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 ranch 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.

“Howdy,” he said.

His deep voice seemed to pluck a string inside her and make it vibrate. She very nearly forgot to invite him in, then realized she was in danger of standing there like a starstruck kid.

“Come on in,” she said. “You didn’t have to race over here, you know.” Not that she was exactly objecting.

“Probably not, but we needed to meet anyway.” He stepped inside and looked around her cozy living room. He surprised her with his choice of words. “Very inviting,” he said approvingly.

“That’s what I hope,” she said as she closed the door behind him. “Coffee?”

“Love some.”

He followed her into the kitchen, and as naturally as if he belonged here, he pulled out a chair at her dinette and sat. She filled two mugs, vaguely remembering from school that he liked his black.

“We could go to my office in the back,” she suggested.

“This is fine for now.”

As if he didn’t want to get any deeper into her life or her house. Feeling a bit stung, she placed his coffee in front of him and sat facing him.

“So I started thinking about this program,” she began.

He shook his head a little. “In a minute, Cassie. First I want to hear more about that phone call.”

As if a switch flipped in her head, she heard that angry, deep voice again. “What’s there to say? I told you what he said. He sounded angry, and threatening, but it was just a phone call. It’s easy to make anonymous threats.”

“It may be easy, but it’s seldom pointless. Somebody’s angry with you, and I doubt that many people know yet about what happened yesterday. The boys involved, maybe their parents if Les has already called them all. Maybe a few people they talked to.”

She shook her head. “Nothing has happened. Nobody has been suspended. If this stops, nobody gets suspended. Scholarships are protected and so is the almighty state championship. If anyone hoped for anything from that call, it’s that I wouldn’t push this into a suspension.”

He set his mug down. “I agree. Essentially. What’s troubling me is the way you got treated yesterday. Your authority was ignored, you were pushed, not just brushed by, and now today a threatening call. That incident yesterday was unusually aggressive for students that age. I’m not saying they never get past name-calling and the occasional spat, but like I said yesterday, by this age they’re mostly past ganging up and getting physical. Add that to the way they treated you and I’m concerned, that’s all.”

She thought it over for a moment. “Then maybe I’m not the best choice to help with this antibullying campaign. If I’m seen as just a troublesome outsider, the message may be lost.”

“You’re not doing this alone,” he reminded her.

No, she wasn’t. She had tried to avoid meeting his gaze directly, but now she did, and felt as if she were falling into the depths of the incredible blue of his eyes. An almost electric spark seemed to zap her.

Then he broke eye contact, returning his attention to his mug. “I spent some time this morning exploring the subject,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have a dial-up connection out there and the internet moves like molasses.”

“I’ve got broadband. We can use my computer.”

“Or go to the school.”

She sensed he wanted to be out of her house and into a more neutral environment as quickly as possible. Again she felt that sting, but did her best to ignore it. No point creating a Shakespearean tragedy in her own mind.

“Sure, if you want,” she said quickly. “Let me get my jacket.”

Five minutes later, with a couple of her travel mugs filled with coffee for the two of them, they stepped outside into a brisk morning. Fluffy white clouds raced overhead in a cerulean sky.

“God, it’s beautiful here,” she said.

“Really?”

She glanced at him. “Don’t tell me you don’t notice.”

“Well, I actually do, especially out at my ranch.” For the first time he cracked a genuine smile.

It almost took her breath away. Of course she’d seen him smile on occasion around school, but never had the full wattage been directed her way. Warmth drizzled through her all the way to her toes, and she had to fight to collect her thoughts.

“What do you raise?” she asked as he helped her into his battered pickup, a truck that might have once been a bright red, but now was dulled with age and liberal applications of touch-up paint.

“Actually my dogs do the raising,” he said humorously as he climbed in behind the wheel. “They do a damn good job of looking after my sheep and goats. And I have a few horses. It’s not much, but it’s all I can handle while I’m teaching.”

“Why do you keep on doing it?”

“I enjoy it, for one thing. For another, that place has been in my family for over a hundred years. I’m not going to be the one to give it up.”

She could understand that, although it was hard to imagine. “You must feel a lot of loyalty.”

A faint smile this time, directed out the windshield as he drove toward the school. “My family invested a lot of sweat in that place. It was their place in the world, and now it’s my place. Maybe some day I’ll have kids and they won’t want it, but fact is, I’m rooted here until I die.”

“That must be a good feeling.”

“Sometimes.” He hesitated. “You?”

“Rootless. I have no way to really understand how you must feel about your ranch. My mom moved us around the country a lot. I was lucky to finish high school in the same town where I started it.”

“And you’ve continued the gypsy tradition?”

“You mean because I came here?”

“For one. But what about the past?”

“I’ve moved a lot, too. You want the truth? It’s getting old. I’ve never known anyone for more than a few years, and then they get left behind. I started thinking about that, and it struck me that’s a really lonely way to live.”

“So you’re looking for a place to stay permanently?”

“If I can find one.”

“Why this place?”

“Because it feels right. Because after I’d spent a week here considering the job, I got the feeling that if I stayed long enough to become a part of the community, I could put down some really deep roots. People wouldn’t be strangers on a busy street. They’d have names, and I’d get to know them at least a bit. That maybe someday I wouldn’t be an outsider anymore.”

“So you’ve always been an outsider?”

“I’ve never been anything else.”

He fell silent, pulling into a faculty parking spot near the west wing door. From here she could see the freshly painted and repaired roof and side wall. “Someone said a tornado hit the building?”

“Yeah, last spring. What a mess, but at least no one was killed. It just grazed the town, but the thing was a half mile wide. If you get out into the countryside you can still see the scars where it passed. At least no one was killed, although we had some injuries.”

“Is that common here? Tornadoes?”

“It’s really rare. I won’t say never, but what we saw last spring was one for the record books.”

“Nobody told me how bad it was.”

He gave her an amused glance as he turned off the ignition. “They probably didn’t want to scare you away.”

“I’ve lived in tornado country. It wouldn’t panic me. I just prefer it if they’re not common.”

“They certainly aren’t here.”

As they climbed out and headed inside, she could hear sounds from the athletic fields on the other side of the building. “Practice today?”

“Not until later. I think some youngsters must be playing on the outdoor basketball courts.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her.

“Why would the school have outdoor courts? I never got that.”

“Only the team and supervised students get to play basketball in the gymnasium. Outdoors is for fun and practice.”

“That’s really a nice idea.” But she couldn’t help thinking he had brought her to this side of the school in case some of the basketball players were out there. Or some of the kids she had interrupted yesterday. She doubted he was afraid of any of them, so he must be trying to avoid giving her a moment of discomfort. A generous thought, but really not necessary. She liked to believe she was tougher than that.

They wended their way through virtually empty hallways. In the distance they could hear a janitor working with a buffer, but other than that the place seemed abandoned.

He took her to his office just off the gymnasium, not to his homeroom. She guessed it made sense that he’d have two offices given that he wore two hats at the school.

It wasn’t a huge space, but it contained enough room for maybe half-a-dozen students to gather with him, and a counter where he had a coffeepot and microwave.

“This is positively homey,” she tried to joke.

“Given their age, high metabolism and activity level, it takes a lot of effort to keep those young men fed. That microwave gets a megaworkout.”

“I bet.”

He cleared a stack of papers to one side, pulled a chair around so she could see his computer screen and turned on the machine.

“Okay,” he said. “You’ve worked in a lot of different places. How familiar are you with antibullying programs? How much do you already know about the dangers of bullying?”

“Some,” she admitted. “In one of the schools where I worked, the program had been in place for at least ten years. It started in kindergarten, actually, and was covered every single year.”

“What were the important mechanisms?”

“First, faculty and administration. It’s so important for teachers not to ignore bullying, to listen to student complaints about it and do something, and for the administration to be fully involved. You get nowhere if the adults in the school brush it off.”

He nodded, his blue eyes touching lightly on her face before returning to the computer screen. She wondered, half-humorously, if he would have liked to dive into the monitor to escape. “And the students?”

“We tried to create a culture where bullying was frowned on. You know as well as I do that peer pressure is more important to youngsters than anything adults do or say. So if you can persuade the students to self-police, to look down on bullies, you can stop a lot of it.”

“That’s going to be the hard part.”

“No kidding. Changing a culture takes time. One assembly won’t do it, it’ll just get the ball rolling. This is going to have to be an ongoing program.”

“Where do you suggest we start?”

She liked that he was looking to her for advice. Even in this supposedly more equal time, she was used to men just taking over and directing projects. She’d always put it down to testosterone or something, but maybe it wasn’t. Linc didn’t strike her as short on testosterone or manliness, come to that.

“Ideally,” she said slowly, “we’d like to get the cooperation of students who are looked up to. The tone-setters.”

“Like some of my players.”

“Exactly. They can be our first peer-pressure group, the guys and gals most of the other students respect.”

“We need to get across how dangerous this really is. It’s not just a matter of scaring or upsetting another student.”

“No,” she agreed. “It can have lifelong consequences. It can cause posttraumatic stress disorder. And have you looked at the rate of teen suicide? A lot of those can be linked directly to bullying.”

“We’ve definitely got our work cut out for us. First to get the staff and a core of students on our side. Once we have the kernels we’ll need to help them grow.”

Then he looked at her. “Have you ever been bullied?”

“Of course. Most people have been.”

“Badly?”

She hesitated then sighed. “I guess. I got picked on a lot for my weight.”

He astonished her then. “I don’t see anything wrong with your weight. Were you heavier back then?”

“Actually, not by much.”

He shook his head. “Amazing. I would have thought most men would have thought you were gorgeous.”

Her jaw dropped but he had already turned away. “I wondered,” he said, returning to the subject at hand, “because you didn’t seem to take the way those guys brushed against you as bullying. Almost as if it were normal.”

“I didn’t think of it that way,” she admitted. “It was a little strong but I didn’t feel intimidated.”

Blue eyes settled on her again. “Really? But that’s what they intended, don’t you think? Letting you know that they were bigger and stronger and not afraid to push?”

She bit her lip, considering it. “I guess so. There was no other reason for it. They didn’t frighten me, though. I just got angrier.”

“Somebody sure tried to frighten you this morning.” He frowned then and leaned back a bit in his chair, as if thinking things over. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Bullying in general, of course, but I don’t like the way it seems to have escalated, judging by what you saw and what you experienced. Some element is getting way out of line and we need to yank them back as quickly as possible.”

“Maybe it’s just the four I caught in the act. Maybe it isn’t a trend at all.”

One corner of his mouth tipped up, and his eyes scraped over her briefly. “You’re quite the optimist. I’m more inclined to think this is the tip of the iceberg. These things don’t usually happen in total isolation.”

She rested her chin on her hand. “You might be right.”

“I hope I’m not,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, I’ve been watching that steady fracturing I mentioned yesterday ever since the semiconductor plant arrived. Little by little a line has been drawn. And when you start drawing lines, how long is it before the people on the other side of the line from you become objects of your scorn?”

“You may be right.”

“Basic social dynamics. We’ve always gone to war over our differences. A school is just a microcosm.” He shook his head. “Don’t let me start thinking about humanity as a whole. Right now we need to deal with a front-and-center neighborhood problem with as little scarring and fallout as possible.”

She gave a laugh. “Yeah, we can’t reform humanity in a day, or a school in even a week. How do you want to approach this?”

He took the task of finding the students for his core peer group, and she agreed to set about finding materials that they could use in a more public venue.

Then he rose, stretched and said, “I’ve got a team meeting in a little while. I’ll drive you home.”

“I prefer to walk, but thanks.”

“Then I’ll walk with you.”

His words stilled her. “You really are worried about that call.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m worried, but a little caution might be wise until we see if you get harassed again.”

She felt an instant of rebellion. She was an independent woman who felt perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and she didn’t need a white knight to protect her. On the other hand, it would mean a little extra time with him, which she wouldn’t mind. Maybe she could get past the force field a little.

Pulling on her jacket, she remarked, “I thought this was a friendly, nice county.”

“It is, mostly. But like any other place on the planet, not everyone is nice.”

Outside, the air still had that wonderful crisp feel of fall, and she almost thought she could smell snow in the air even though the sun was bright. After he locked the door, they began to stroll toward her house, carrying the travel mugs. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

“How do you like living here so far?” he asked.

“I’m loving it, actually.”

“Not dying for lack of nightclubs, theaters and huge shopping malls?”

She laughed. “Not at all. I’ve never enjoyed mall-crawling, for one thing. I’m always looking for little out-of-the way places full of different things.”

“We have plenty of those.”

“I’ve noticed. It’s one of the things that charmed me. I haven’t been in a department store like Freitag’s since I was a little kid. I get a kick out of having the wood floors creak under my feet. Besides, if you’ve seen one mall, you’ve pretty much seen them all. The homogenization of America. You can’t tell what city you’re in.”

“That’s my impression. But what about things to do?”

“There’s plenty to do.” She glanced at him, wondering about the line of questioning. “I get together with some teachers to play cards a couple of times a month. We go out for lunch and sometimes dinner. I never liked the club scene. I guess most people would find me dull.”

“Not around here.”

“And if I ever get an overwhelming urge for a museum or the theater, I can take a weekend and go to Denver. Come on, Linc. You teach. You know how little free time you have.”

He chuckled. “You’re right. And there’s even less with my ranch.”

“And football,” she reminded him. “Anyway, I really like it here so far. It’s different from the places I lived before, but I’m finding it comfortable.”

“I’ll ask for your opinion again come early March.”

She was laughing when he left her at her door, but his smile was faint, and she could almost hear the shield cranking back into place.

What was it with that man?

Sighing, she went inside, taking his advice to lock up behind herself, and decided she would probably never know.

Whatever his problem, Linc had clearly decided not to let her into his circle.

To hell with him, she thought, returning to work on her week’s plans. She needed an idea to excite her students more than she needed him.