Читать книгу Dalton's Undoing - RaeAnne Thayne - Страница 9

Fourteen was a miserable bitch of an age.

Though more than half his life had passed since that notable year, it felt just as fresh and painful now as Seth watched Cole Boyer shovel manure out of a stall.

Though the kid wasn’t tall by any stretch of the imagination, he was gangly and awkward, as if his muscles were still too short to keep up with his longer bones.

Seth remembered those days. He’d been small for his age, too, six inches shorter than most of the other guys in his class, and with asthma to boot. His father’s death had been just a few years earlier. And while he hadn’t been exactly paralyzed by grief over the bastard, he had struggled to figure out his place in the world now that he wasn’t Hank Dalton’s sickly, sissy-boy youngest son.

He’d been a little prick, too, full of anger and attitude. He had brothers to pound on to help vent some of it, but since fights usually ended with them beating the tar out of him, he tended to shy away from that activity. Eventually, he’d turned some of his excess energy to horses.

He trained his first horse that year, he remembered, a sweet little chestnut mare he’d ridden in the Idaho state high school rodeo finals a few years later.

Yeah, fourteen had been miserable, for the most part. But the next year everything started to come together. Between his fourteenth and fifteenth years, he hit a major growth spurt, the asthma all but disappeared and he gained six inches of height and thirty pounds of muscle, almost as if his body had just been biding its time.

Girls who’d ignored him all his life suddenly sat up and took notice—and he noticed them right back. After that, adolescence became a hell of a lot more fun, though he doubted Jenny Boyer would appreciate him sharing that particular walk down memory lane with her son, no matter how miserable he looked about life right now.

He should be miserable, Seth thought. Though he was tempted to turn soft and tell Cole he’d done enough for the day, he only had to think about the damage to his GTO to stiffen his resolve.

A little misery never hurt a kid.

“Can you hurry it up here?” Seth leaned indolently on the stall railing, mostly because he knew it would piss the kid off.

Sure enough, all he earned for his trouble was a heated glare.

“This isn’t exactly easy.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” Seth said.

After three hours, the kid had only mucked out four stalls, with two more to go. The more he shoveled, the grimmer his mood turned, until Seth was pretty sure he was ready to implode.

Tempted as he was to wait for the explosion, he finally took pity on him and reached for another shovel.

Cole gave him a surprised look when Seth joined him in the stall. “I thought I was supposed to be doing this.”

“You are. But since I’d like to take a look at the car you trashed sometime today, I figure the only way that’s going to happen is if I lend a hand.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Cole muttered.

“I know. If I thought you were slacking, you can bet I’d still be out there watching.”

Surprise flickered in eyes the same green as his mother’s, but he said nothing. They worked in silence for a few moments, the only sounds the scrape of shovels on concrete, the whickers of the horses around them and Lucy’s curious yips as she followed them.

Only after they’d moved onto the last stall did the boy speak. “Why don’t you have a real job or something?” he asked, his tone more baffled than hostile.

Seth raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think this is real work?”

“Sure. But what kind of loser signs up to shovel horse crap all day?”

Seth laughed. “If this was the only thing I did around here all day, I’d have to agree with you. But I usually leave the grunt work to the hired help while I get to do the fun stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Working with the horses. Breeding them, training them.”

“Whatever.”

“Not a real horse fan?”

“They’re big and dumb. How hard could it be to train them?”

“You might be surprised.” He scraped another shovel full of sunshine. “I can tell you there’s nothing so satisfying as taking a green-broke horse—that means an untrained one—and working with him until he obeys anything you tell him to do without question.”

“Whatever,” Cole said again, his voice dripping with scorn.

To his surprise, Seth found he was more amused by the kid’s attitude than he’d been by anything in a long time. “Come on. I’ll show you. Drop your shovel.”

Cole didn’t need a second invitation. He dropped it with a clatter and followed Seth toward a stall at the end of the row, where his big buckskin Stella waited.

In moments, he had her saddled, then led her outside to one of the corrals where he kept a dozen or so cattle to help with the training.

“Okay, now pick a steer.”

“Why?”

He had to laugh at the boy’s horrified expression. “I’m not going to make you ride the thing, I promise. Remember how I was telling Morgan about cutting? Stella’s going to cut whatever steer you pick out of the herd for you. Just tell me which one you want her to go after.”

“How the hell should I know? They all look the same!”

“You’ve got a lot to learn, city boy. How about the one in the middle there, with the white face?”

At least the kid had lost his belligerence, though he was looking at Seth like he’d been kicked by a horse one too many times.

“Sure. Get that one.”

He gave the commands to Stella then sat back in the saddle and let her do her thing. She was brilliant, as usual. In minutes, she had the white-faced Hereford just where Seth wanted him, away from the herd and heading for the fence where Cole had perched to watch the demonstration.

“There you go. He’s all yours,” Seth called over the cattle’s lowing.

The boy jumped down faster than a bullet at the sight of a half-ton animal heading toward him.

Seth pulled Stella off and let the steer return to the rest of the herd, then led the horse back through the gate.

“So what do you think? She’s brilliant, isn’t she?”

“You told her what to do.”

“Sure. But she did it, didn’t she? Without even hesitating. She’s a great horse.” He slid out of the saddle, then sent the kid a sidelong glance. “You do much riding?”

Cole snorted. “There aren’t too many horses on Seattle street corners sitting around waiting to be ridden.”

“You don’t have that excuse here. Get on.”

Before Cole could argue, Seth handed him the reins and hefted him into the saddle.

He looked even smaller than his age up on the big horse, though Seth gave him points for not sliding right back down. With one hand on the bridle, he led them back inside the training facility.

“You probably know the basics, even if you’ve never ridden before, just from watching TV. Keep a firm hand on the reins, pull them in the direction you want her to go. Above all, have fun.”

He let go of the bridle, confident the horse was too well-trained to unseat her rider, no matter how inexperienced.

Sure enough, she started a slow walk around the arena. Cole looked terrified at first, then he gradually started to relax. By the second time around the arena, he even smiled a little, though he bounced in the saddle like a particularly hapless sack of flour.

“I suck, don’t I?” he said ruefully as they passed Seth.

Sit up, boy. Or are you too tired to learn to be a man? You’ll never be able to ride the damn thing if you slouch in the saddle like that and gasp like a trout on the end of a frigging hook every time the horse takes a step.

He pushed away the echo of his father’s voice, wondering if he’d been four or five during that particular riding lesson. “You don’t suck,” he assured Seth. “You just have to learn to move with the rhythm of the horse. It takes a while to figure it out. For your first time, you’re kickin’ A.”

For one shining instant, Cole looked thrilled at the praise. He must have felt himself smile, though, because he quickly retreated back into his brittle shell.

“Am I done here? My butt’s starting to hurt.”

Seth sighed as the momentary animation slipped away. He shrugged and held Stella again so Cole could slide down.

“We’ve got one more stall to finish. Work on that while I take off Stella’s saddle.”

Cole grimaced but headed back to his shovel.

He couldn’t expect to change the kid’s attitude with one horseback ride, Seth thought. But maybe the car would do the trick.

He caught his own thoughts and grimaced at himself. Since when was he the do-gooder of Pine Gulch? He had no business even trying to fix this troubled kid’s problems. Better just to get his money’s worth out of him in labor to compensate for the car damage and leave the attitude-adjusting to his mother.

Saturdays were usually one of her most productive days of the week, away from the office and all the distractions of running an elementary school with four hundred students.

She usually accomplished more in a few hours than she could do in two days at school, between lunch duty and phone calls from concerned parents and dealing with state and federal education regulations.

Today, Jenny couldn’t seem to focus on work at all while she waited for Seth Dalton to return with Cole.

After trying for an hour and a half to slog through some paperwork while Morgan rested on the couch next to her in the den watching television, she finally gave it up for a lost cause.

She wasn’t worried about Cole. Not precisely. She was more concerned that her belligerent son would forget Seth was doing him a huge favor and instead would vent his unhappiness in all the usual ways.

She couldn’t stress about that. Something told her a man like Dalton was more than capable of holding his own against a fourteen-year-old rebel.

He struck her as a man who could handle just about anything. She thought of those strong, capable shoulders and had to suppress a sigh. Why couldn’t she seem to get the man off her mind?

She’d had an unwilling fascination for him since the first time she heard his name, long before her son’s recklessness brought them into his orbit. It had been a month or so after school started and she’d been in her office after lunch when one of her brand-new teachers, just out of college and still half terrified of her students, stopped in during her prep hour to talk to Marcy, the school secretary.

It hadn’t surprised her the two were friends. Marcy was only a few years older than Ashley Barnes, the new kindergarten teacher. Beyond that, she was warm and bubbly, the kind of person who drew everyone to her. Not only was she great at her job but the children adored her and Jenny had learned most of the other teachers did, too.

She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but her door had been open and she’d been able to hear every word.

“He said he’d call me,” Ashley complained. “How stupid was I to believe him?”

Marcy had only laughed. “You’re human and you’re female. There’s not a woman in town who can resist Seth Dalton when he gives that smile of his. Heck, he even has all the old ladies in my grandma’s quilting club batting their fake eyelashes at him.”

“That night at the Bandito, you’d think I was the only woman in the world,” Ashley said, the bitterness in her voice completely at odds with her usual sunny disposition. “He never left my side all night and we danced every single dance. I thought he really liked me.”

“I’m sure he did like you that night. But that’s the thing about Seth. He lives completely in the moment.”

“He’s a dog.” Ashley sounded close to tears.

“No he’s not. Believe it or not, he’s actually a pretty decent guy. He’s the first one out on his tractor plowing his neighbors’ driveways after a big snowstorm and he always stops to help somebody in trouble. But he was blessed—or cursed, however you want to look at it—with the kind of good looks that make women go a little crazy around him.”

“You think I imagined that night?”

“No. Oh, honey, I’m sure you didn’t,” Marcy had replied in her patient, kind voice. “My friends and I have a theory. We call it Seth Dalton’s School of Broncobustin’. If you’re lucky to find him turning his attention to you, just climb on and hold on tight. It probably won’t last too long, but it will be a hell of a ride.”

“I’m not like that!” Ashley had exclaimed. “I never even go to bars. I don’t drink. I probably wouldn’t even have met him if my roommate hadn’t dragged me along that night.”

“Which is probably the reason he didn’t call you,” Marcy pointed out gently. “You’re a kindergarten teacher with Marriage Material stamped on your forehead. You’re sweet and innocent, and you probably have already got names picked out for the four kids you’re going to have.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“Oh, honey, absolutely not. I think it’s wonderful, and somewhere out there is someone who is going to love those things about you. But that’s not what Seth Dalton is about.”

One of the third-graders had come in just then complaining of a stomach ache. Marcy had turned her attention to calling the girl’s mother to come get her and Ashley had returned to her class, but not before Jenny had developed a strong dislike for the man under discussion.

It was one of those weird cases where, once she heard a name, she suddenly couldn’t seem to escape it: Seth Dalton’s kept popping up.

She heard another teacher just before the start of a faculty meeting talk about running into him in the grocery store and how she’d been so flustered just because he’d smiled and asked her how she was that she’d left without half the items on her list.

When they were brainstorming ways to raise money for new library books, someone suggested a bachelor auction and someone else said they’d have enough books to fill every shelf if only they could get Seth Dalton on the auction block.

Now that she’d met him, she certainly understood all the buzz about the man. A woman could forget her own name just from one look out of those blue eyes.

“Are you done with your work?” Morgan asked from her spot on the couch, distracting her from her completely unproductive train of thought.

She closed her laptop and gathered her papers, shoving them back into her briefcase. She had learned long ago how to recognize a lost cause. “For now. Want to watch a DVD or play a game?”

“Sure. You pick.”

They were still discussing their options a moment later when she heard the back door open and a moment later her father came in, his cheeks red from the November chill and his arms full of wood to replenish the low supply in the firebox by the woodstove.

“You should let me do that,” she chided, upset at herself for being too distracted by thoughts of Seth Dalton to pay attention to her father’s activities.

“Why?” Jason looked genuinely surprised.

“I feel guilty sitting here where it’s warm and comfortable while you’re outside hauling wood.”

“I need the exercise. Keeps my joints lubricated.”

She had to laugh at that. At sixty-five, her father was more fit than most men half his age. He rode his mountain bike all over town, he fished every chance he got—winter or summer—and his new passion was cross-country skiing.

“Maybe I need the exercise, too.”

“And maybe it does my heart good to know I’m still capable of seeing to the comfort of my daughter and granddaughter. You wouldn’t want to take that away from an old man, would you?” Jason said, with a twinkle in his eyes and the incontrovertible logic that had made him such a formidable opponent in the courtroom.

She rolled her eyes and was amused to see Morgan copying her gesture.

“Grandpa, you’re silly,” her daughter said with fondness. “You’re not old.”

The two of them were kindred spirits and got along like the proverbial house on fire. Coming to Pine Gulch had been the right decision, she thought again. Even if Cole still fought and bucked against it like one of Seth Dalton’s horses with a burr under the saddle, the move had been good for all of them.

She couldn’t be sorry for it. Morgan and Cole had come to know the grandfather they had been acquainted with only distantly, and in a lot of ways, Jenny felt the same. Jason had been a distant, distracted figure in her life, even before her parents had divorced when she was twelve. Coming here had led to a closer relationship than they’d ever had.

“We’re going to watch a DVD. Are you interested? We’re debating between a Harry Potter or one of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.”

“Oh, Tolkien. By all means.”

They settled on which of the three to see and were watching the opening credits when by some mother’s intuition, she heard the low rumble of a truck out front.

“Go ahead and start the movie,” she said. “Since I’ve seen it at least a dozen times, I’m sure I won’t be too lost when I come back.”

She reached the front door just as Cole hopped down from a big silver pickup truck. Through the storm door, she studied her son intently. Though he didn’t appear to be exactly overflowing with joy, he didn’t seem miserable, either, as he headed up the sidewalk to the house.

She wasn’t really surprised when Seth climbed out the other side of the truck and followed the boy up to the house. She opened the door for her son, who would probably have walked right by without even a greeting if she hadn’t stepped right in his way.

“How did it go?” she asked, fighting the yearning to pull him into her arms for the kind of hug he used to give her all the time.

“My favorite Levi’s smell like horse crap.”

“I’m sure that will wash out.”

“I doubt it,” Cole grumbled. “They’re probably ruined forever.”

“Here’s a tip for you,” Seth spoke from the doorway with a lazy smile. “Next time you come to the ranch, maybe you shouldn’t wear your favorite pair of Levi’s.”

“If you’re going to suggest I buy a pair of Wranglers, I might just have to puke.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Seth drawled. “Then your favorite pair of Levi’s would smell like horse crap and puke.”

Cole’s snort might have passed for a laugh, but Jenny could not be quite sure.

“Wear whatever you want. But if you take the school bus to the Cold Creek on Tuesday, we might be ready to get into the real work on the car now that we’ve taken a look at the damage. Bus Fifteen is the one you want to take. Ray Pullman is the driver.”

“Right. I need to take a shower.”

“Bring your jeans out when you’re done so we can wash them,” Jenny said.

Cole didn’t answer her or even acknowledge her as he headed down the stairs to his bedroom, leaving her alone with Seth.

In part because of embarrassment over her son’s rudeness and in part because Seth was so masculine and so blasted attractive, she was intensely aware of him. He seemed to fill up all the available space in the small foyer.

She gave a small huff of annoyance at herself and tried to ignore the scent of him that seemed to surround her, of warm male and sexy aftershave.

“Tell me the truth. How did it really go today? I doubt Cole will tell me much.”

“Good. He worked hard at everything I asked him to do and some of it wasn’t very appealing. I can’t ask for more than that.”

She relaxed the fingers she hadn’t realized she’d clenched tightly in the pockets of her sweater. “Was he…” her voice trailed off and she couldn’t figure out how to ask the question in a way that wouldn’t make her sound like a terrible mother.

“Rude and obnoxious? Not much, surprisingly. He digs cars and we spent much of the afternoon working on mine, so everything was cool.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved that makes me.”

“You should probably know I did throw him up on a horse for a few minutes. He actually seemed to enjoy it. Even smiled a few times.”

She blinked, trying to imagine her rebellious city-boy “I-hate-everything-country” son on the back of a horse.

“You’re sure we’re talking about the same kid? He wasn’t possessed by alien cowboy pod people?”

Seth laughed, his blue eyes crinkled at the corners, and she could swear she felt warm fingers trickling down her spine just looking at him.

“Not a UFO in sight, I swear.”

She shouldn’t be here, sharing laughter or anything else with Seth Dalton. With sharp efforts, she broke eye contact. “Thank you for all the trouble you’ve gone to,” she said after an uncomfortable moment. “It would have been less work on your part if you had just turned him over to the authorities.”

“I’m getting free labor with my horses and with my car. Not a bad deal. I’m no saint here.”

“So they tell me.”

Had she really said that aloud? She mentally cringed at her rudeness and Seth looked startled at first, then gave her one of those blasted slow smiles that ought to come with a warning label as long as her arm.

“Who’s been talking about me, Ms. Boyer?”

Her nerve endings tingled at his low, amused voice, but she ignored it, turning her own voice prim. “Who hasn’t? You’re a favorite topic of conversation in Pine Gulch, Mr. Dalton.”

He didn’t seem bothered by town gossip—or maybe he was just used to it.

Looking for all the world as if he planned to make himself right at home, he leaned a hip against the door frame and crossed his arms across his chest. “That must tell you what a quiet town you’ve settled in, if nobody in Pine Gulch has anything more interesting to talk about than me. So what’s the consensus?”

That you’re a major-league player. That you flirt with anything female and have left a swath of broken hearts behind you. That half the women in Teton Valley are in love with you and the other half are in lust.

She so didn’t want to be having this conversation with him. She thought longingly of the paperwork she’d been putting off all afternoon and would have given just about anything right then to be sitting at her desk filling out federal assessment forms. Anything but this.

“Nothing I’m sure you haven’t already heard,” she finally said. “You’re apparently a busy man.”

A purely masculine, absolutely enticing dimple appeared in his cheek briefly then disappeared again. “Yeah, starting a full-fledged horse ranch can take a lot of hours.”

He had to know she wasn’t talking about his equine endeavors, but she decided she wasn’t going to set him straight.

“I’m sure it does,” she murmured drily. Dating a different woman every night probably tended to fill up the calendar, too. But not this woman, even if she wasn’t four years older than him and the exact opposite of all the tight, perky young things he was probably used to.

She knew all about men like him. She’d been married to one, a man compelled to charm every woman in sight.

She had worked hard to rebuild her heart and her life and her family in the last three years. After a great deal of hard work and self-scrutiny, she had finally become someone she could respect again.

She was a strong, successful woman who loved her work and her family, and she wasn’t about to let a man like Seth Dalton knock her on her butt again.

Even if he did make her hormones wake up and sing hallelujah.

“Thank you for taking the time away from your horses to bring Cole back,” she said, in what she hoped was a polite but dismissive tone.

He either didn’t pick on it or didn’t care. “No problem. How’s Morgan doing now?”

She didn’t want him to be interested in her daughter or for the simple question to remind her just how kind and patient he had been during Morgan’s flare-up.

That was the problem with charmers, she supposed. They seemed instinctively to know how to zero in on a woman’s weak spot and use that to their advantage. He’d already slipped inside her defenses a little by being so decent about Cole crashing his car. She would have preferred if he ignored Morgan altogether.

How was she to pigeonhole him as a selfish womanizer when he showed such genuine concern for her daughter’s welfare?

“She’s fine. By the time we returned home, her peak flow was about seventy percent. After we nebulized her, it went up to about eight-five percent.”

“Good. I hope the flare-up doesn’t discourage you from bringing her out to the ranch again. She’s welcome to tag along with Cole anytime. You both are.”

She smiled politely, though she had absolutely no intention of taking him up on the invitation. “Thank you. But I’m sure the very last thing you need underfoot—with you being so busy and all—is a wheezing nine-year-old girl.”

“I’d like to have her back. Both of you. Pretty ladies are always welcome at the Cold Creek.”

His smile was designed to reach right into a woman’s soul and she felt it clear to her toes. Darn him. No, darn her for this ridiculous crush, the weakness she had for handsome charmers.

She couldn’t endure his light flirtation, especially knowing he didn’t mean any of it, it was all just a game to him.

He couldn’t possibly be seriously interested in a stuffy, overstressed thirty-six-year-old elementary school principal with no chest to speak of and the tiniest bit of gray in her hair that she only managed to hide by the grace of God and a good stylist.

He wasn’t interested in her, and he had no business smiling at her as if he were.

“Do you stay up nights thinking of lines or do you just come up with them on the fly?”

He raised an eyebrow, though amusement still lurked in his blue eyes, even in the face of her frontal attack. “Was that a line? I thought I was simply extending an invitation.”

She sighed. “Look, you’ve been incredibly understanding about what Cole did to your car. If I had been in your shoes, I can’t imagine I would be nearly so magnanimous. He’s going to be working with you to make things right for at least a few months and I suppose we’ll see a great deal of each other in that time, so let’s get this out of the way.”

“I’m all ears.”

And sexy smiles and gorgeous eyes and broad shoulders that look like they could carry the weight of the world.

She frowned at herself. “I’m not interested in being charmed,” she said bluntly.

“Is that what you think I was doing?”

“Weren’t you?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I doubt you’re even aware of it, it’s so ingrained in your nature. The flirting, the slow bedroom smiles. Even if you’re not attracted to a woman, something in your blood compels you to conquer her, to find her weaknesses and exploit them until she surrenders to your charm like every other woman.”

He gazed at her, obviously taken aback by the sudden attack. She heard her own rudeness and was appalled but couldn’t seem to stop the words from gushing out.

All she could think of was Ashley Barnes crying her eyes out when Seth never called her back and Richard murmuring lies and promises while he was already sleeping with another woman and planning to abandon his children.

“It’s different if a man is genuinely interested in a woman,” she went on. “If he truly wants to know about her, if he might feel some spark of attraction and want to follow up on it. That’s one thing. But you’re not interested in me. Men like you charm just because you can.”

He straightened from the door jamb, a sudden fiery light in his eyes that had her stepping back a pace. “That’s quite a scathing indictment, Ms. Boyer, especially since you’ve known me less than a day. I thought good teachers and principals weren’t supposed to rush to snap judgments.”

His words gave her pause and she had to wonder what in heaven’s name seemed to possess her around him.

“You’re right. Absolutely. I’m very sorry. That was completely uncalled-for. I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t rush to any snap judgments provided you refrain from trying to add me to your list of conquests.”

Before he could answer, she held open the door in a pointed dismissal. Cold air rushed in, swirling around her like a malicious fog, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough to take care of her hot embarrassment. “Thank you again for bringing Cole home. I’ll be sure to send him out to your ranch on the bus Tuesday.”

Seth gave her a long, hard look, as if he had much more he wanted to say, but he finally turned around and walked outside.

She closed the door and leaned against it, her hands clenched at her sides.

How had she let him get her so stirred up? He hadn’t done anything. Not really. Sure, he’d flirted a little, but she had always been able to handle a mild flirtation. He seemed to push all her buttons—and several she hadn’t realized were there.

How on earth was she supposed to face him again after she’d all but accused him of trying to seduce her?

She would simply have to be cool and polite. She would be gracious about what he was doing for her son but distant about everything else. She had no doubt she could keep him at arm’s length, especially after she’d just slapped him down so firmly.

Keeping him out of her head was a different matter entirely.