“You’re the big, smart brother,” Paige reminded him, throwing his earlier self-description back at him. “You figure it out.”
“Paige—” There was a warning note in Anderson’s voice.
She could only lead him so far. After that, he was going to have to figure it out for himself. Otherwise, he’d accuse her of meddling and do the exact opposite of what she wanted to suggest with all her heart: that he go out with Marina and give them both a chance.
Paige pretended to look at her watch. “Oh, look at the time. Gotta go,” she announced. With that, she got back behind the wheel of her vehicle. “Tell Jake I said hi—and think about what I said.”
“Which part?” he wanted to know, exasperated.
“All of it,” she told him just before she pulled away.
“No time,” he called after her.
But the truth of it was, he did think about it. He thought about how he felt he was in over his head. Most of all, he thought about the petite redheaded teacher with the startling blue eyes. He was struggling to resist having anything to do with the woman, but he was really beginning to wonder if he wasn’t allowing his own fear of any sort of involvement to get in the way of his son’s welfare.
If what he’d seen at the town meeting and at Back to School Night were any indication, his son really did have a full-blown crush on his teacher. She could very well be the key to his being able to establish a decent relationship with Jake. At least it was worth a shot, he told himself.
He just hoped that he wasn’t also shooting himself in the foot.
It was another half hour before Jerry Holder finally drove up in his beat-up pickup truck, bringing Jake with him.
“I brought my own hammer,” Jake announced proudly as he bounced out of the passenger side of the truck. He held it up so that his father could see it for himself. Joining him, Jake looked back and forth along the long length of the fence. “Where do you want me to get started?”
“Why don’t you work right alongside me?” Anderson suggested. He thought it best to keep an eye on the boy until he felt that Jake knew enough about the task to be allowed to work at his own pace.
Jake took another hard look at the long length of fencing. His small face puckered up a little.
“Are we fixing all of it?” he asked, sounding somewhat intimidated by the scope of the job.
Anderson looked at the fence, trying to see it through the young boy’s eyes. He had to admit that from this angle, it looked as if it went on forever.
“Whatever needs fixing,” he told his son.
“Oh.” The single word was brimming with emotion. “Are we doing it all today?” he asked,
Anderson laughed. “No, not today. Today we’re only going to do a little bit to get started.” He pretended to look very solemn as he asked Jake, “That okay with you, cowboy?”
Jake bobbed his head up and down, clearly pleased at being consulted by his father this way. “It’s okay with me,” he said, and went to work.
Jake worked quietly alongside his father for close to twenty minutes before he finally and unexpectedly broke the silence.
His out-of-the-blue declaration was not exactly the kind that caused ripples of surprise to go undulating through the air.
“I really like Ms. Laramie,” he told his father.
Jake looked so serious, it was hard for him not to laugh, but he managed to pull it off. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, I do,” Jake solemnly confirmed. “I think that she’s really nice.” He paused then, his hammer dangling from his fingers as he seemed to ponder what he was about to say next. He began carefully, his eyes never leaving Anderson. “Dad?”
“Yes, Jake?” Anderson asked patiently. He’d decided that he was going to be open to anything his son had to say. This was brand-new territory that they were crossing and he didn’t want to say anything that would have Jake closing up again.
Jake pressed his lips together as he searched for just the right words. “Do you think that maybe someday, we could invite Ms. Laramie and her daughter to the ranch for lunch or maybe dinner?” he asked.
“Maybe someday,” Anderson echoed, knowing full well that it wasn’t going to end there.
And it didn’t.
“Someday soon?” Jake asked hopefully, rocking forward on his toes.
“Define soon,” Anderson requested, appearing to continue to hammer down the next nail. In reality, his mind was anywhere but on fixing the fence. He was bracing himself for what was coming—and for what he was going to have to say in order to make his son happy.
“I dunno,” Jake answered. “Like maybe next week?”
“That soon?” Anderson knew he couldn’t surrender immediately. It had to take at least a couple of seconds. “Jake, I don’t know if—”
“Did you know that Sydney’s never seen a horse?” Jake asked. “Not in her whole life,” he stressed.
“Sydney?” Anderson questioned.
“Ms. Laramie’s baby,” Jake explained, his eyes never leaving his father.
Anderson remembered the expression on Marina’s face when he surprised her by walking in on her when she was changing her daughter. He recalled the infant’s little arms and legs waving in the air.
“Isn’t Sydney about five months old?” he asked, taking a stab at the infant’s age from her small size.
Again Jake nodded vigorously. “Yes, she is.”
“At five months, she could have seen an elephant and I doubt if she would remember once she’s a year old. At that age, nothing much registers,” he assured his son, waiting to see what Jake came up with next.
He was surprised that his son didn’t attempt to spin any yarns. Instead, he was very direct about the matter. “Then you’re not going to invite them to the ranch?” Jake asked, looking crestfallen.
When the boy regarded him like that, Anderson knew that he would have moved heaven and earth to get him to smile again.
That was when Anderson resigned himself to losing this battle over Marina’s invasion into his life. Jake had somehow, without a single shot being fired, won the war. His son had somehow managed to get the upper hand here by doing nothing more than being himself.
And, in order to make his son happy, he knew he was willing to do anything, even if it meant having to throw open his doors and invite that woman and her offspring into his home.
“On the contrary,” he told Jake, “I am going to invite her to lunch.”
Jake’s eyes grew huge, brimming with happiness. “When?” he asked eagerly.
“When am I going to invite her, or when is she coming over?” Anderson asked, drawing the moment out.
“Both!” Jake cried.
He’d expected nothing else, Anderson thought. “I was thinking along the lines of inviting her to come to lunch next Saturday. That way it’ll be light and Sydney can get to see the horses. Who knows, maybe she’ll even get to ride one.”
“But she’s too little for that,” Jake protested protectively.
He would have made a great big brother, Anderson thought. Too bad that wasn’t going to happen. At least, not on his side, Anderson thought. Nonetheless, he was pleased to see these qualities in his son.
“Can you tell me when you’re going to do it?” Jake asked hopefully. “When you’re going to ask Ms. Laramie over?”
Anderson had no problem with that. “Sure, but why?” he asked, curious.
“That way, I can watch and listen. I won’t even make a peep,” Jake promised.
Then, in case there was any doubt, the boy crossed his heart making an elaborate show of sweeping his fingertips first in one direction and then in the other, forming a huge, albeit invisible, cross over his small heart.
Anderson suppressed a grin. “Okay, now that that’s settl
ed, let’s get back to work,” he suggested.
“Let’s!” Jake agreed, beaming as he grabbed up his hammer, looking ready and eager to follow his father anywhere.
Seeing him, Anderson knew he would have been willing to pay any price just to bask in that sort of gleeful approval.
Even if it meant spending the day with Jake’s fifth-grade teacher.
Chapter Seven
Out of the corner of his eye, Anderson could see his son in the family room.
Jake was hovering around instead of sitting on the sofa. He had the video controller in his hand, but unlike when he first arrived on the ranch, the boy wasn’t playing. Despite the fact that there were lifelike characters flying back and forth across the TV screen, Jake wasn’t even pretending to pay attention to them. Not since the boy had seen him pick up the receiver to make the call.
Anderson could see his son watching him in what he could only assume the boy believed to be a covert manner. Well, it looked like Jake could definitely rule out being a spy from his list of future careers, he thought, the corners of his mouth curving in amusement.
Every time he looked in Jake’s direction, the boy would jerk his head down as if something about his controller had suddenly caught his complete, undivided attention.
But Anderson knew better. Jake was watching him. Watching and waiting for him to complete the phone call that would commit him to the fateful path he’d promised his son he would take—the path he didn’t want to take. Inviting Marina Laramie and her daughter, Sydney, to come out to the ranch for the day.
C’mon, Dalton, how bad can it be? It’s just for one afternoon out of your life. Before you know it, it’ll be gone just like that—and you will have made your son one happy cowboy.
Anderson suppressed a sigh. The problem was he didn’t want to call Marina. Didn’t want to call her for a number of reasons. If he extended the invitation and Marina turned it down, Jake would be devastated and any good that had come from the association of teacher and student would have gone out the window. If, however, Marina did accept the invitation, then Jake would undoubtedly want her to come over again.
And again.
And again—until the woman would weave herself into the fabric of both their lives and there would be no escaping her. He knew that he really didn’t want to go that route.
And then there were his sisters. Paige and Lani had turned into some sort of an annoying cheering section for the feisty little redheaded teacher, extolling Marina’s virtues every time he wound up exchanging more than a couple of words with either of them.
If they caught wind of the fact that he’d actually invited Marina and Sydney to the house, that would be the end of peace as he knew it. He knew his sisters. They would immediately start planning their wedding no matter what he said to them about the invitation being extended to the woman strictly for Jake’s sake and not his own.
Then there was that “other” reason. The one that entailed his complete reluctance to occupy the same general area as the vibrant fifth-grade teacher because—well, just because. She made him uneasy, made him remember that when it came to women, he didn’t exactly have an outstanding track record. He didn’t want to be attracted to a woman because attraction meant that the specter of disappointment and all that entailed would be waiting for him in the wings only a few steps away.
He’d much rather keep to himself than have to go through that. It was demoralizing.
Do it for Jake. This is for Jake, an insistent voice in his head whispered. The only reason he was even in this situation—having to call Marina’s cell to tender the invitation—was because he was Jake’s dad and it was up to him to extend the invitation since Jake couldn’t very well do it on his own and be taken seriously. She was extroverted and properly unpredictable to a degree, but he sincerely doubted that Marina would just pop up on the porch and announce she was staying for lunch because Jake had invited her to do so.
He’d been psyching himself up now for fifteen minutes. Braced as he would ever be, Anderson brought the landline receiver to his ear.
Glancing one last time over his shoulder, he saw Jake watching his every move. At this point, the boy didn’t even try to pretend to look away. Instead, with an encouraging grin, Jake gave him the thumbs-up sign.
His son was obviously hoping for the best.
That makes two of us, buddy.
The only problem was, given this particular scenario, Anderson didn’t exactly know what “the best” outcome was in this case.
He looked down at the precise numbers that Jake had carefully written down on the piece of paper he’d handed him. The paper contained Marina’s cell number, which Jake had gotten thanks to Paige.
He supposed that made sense, Anderson thought now, looking down at the phone number. After all, Paige and Marina were friends so of course his sister would have the other teacher’s personal number. He had to shake off this feeling that it was all one giant conspiracy to pair him up with the teacher.
Taking another breath and feeling Jake’s eyes all but boring into him, Anderson forced himself to complete the call. As it rang, he silently resigned himself to the inevitable.
But before he could complete his mental pep talk, Anderson heard the phone on the other end being picked up and someone on the other end saying, “Hello?”
The single word sounded like a self-contained symphony.
Anderson came very close to losing his nerve and just hanging up. And maybe he would have if he hadn’t felt Jake’s eyes all but glued to him the entire time. He couldn’t disappoint the boy.
Here goes nothing.
“Hello, Ms. Laramie?”
“Yes?”
He could hear the slight quizzical note in her response. She didn’t recognize his voice.
Last chance to bail, he thought, toying with the idea.
But if he bailed, he knew that he’d be disappointing Jake—and besides, bailing was the act of a coward. He knew that he was a lot of things, but a coward was not one of them.
Most especially when his son was watching him.
“Ms. Laramie, this is Anderson Dalton—Jake’s father,” he added almost awkwardly, as well as, he discovered, needlessly.
“I know who you are, Mr. Dalton,” she assured him patiently. “Is there something that I can do for you?”
Transfer to another state before I do something we’re both going to regret.
“Actually,” he told her, “I’m calling about something that I could do for you.”
She paused for a long moment before finally saying—rather stiffly at that, “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”
That makes two of us, Anderson couldn’t help thinking.
Belatedly he realized how Marina might have gotten the wrong idea from his response. Anderson cleared his throat, telling himself he needed to start over if this had a prayer of working out—for Jake, he tacked on again. This was all for Jake. He couldn’t allow himself to lose sight of that.
“Let me start over,” he began.
“Please,” Marina urged.
He almost laughed at the unabashed earnestness of the request. He had a feeling she wouldn’t have reacted well to his laughing at her and managed to refrain.
“Jake was telling me that Sydney’s never ridden on a horse.”
“No, she hasn’t,” Marina confirmed, sounding as if she wasn’t sure if he was being serious. “You do realize that my daughter’s only five months old.”
“I figured she was around that age,” Anderson admitted. He gave no indication that he knew perfectly well that a five-month-old did not belong on the back of a horse—at least not by herself. “But Jake seems really troubled that your daughter’s gone all this time without having that experience.”
He heard her laugh and he had to admi
t that there was something almost lyrically engaging about that sound. And he also had to admit that at least part of him was relieved that she didn’t think he was either insensitive or crazy to even be talking about the idea of Sydney on horseback.
“You do have a very sensitive, thoughtful son, Mr. Dalton.”
Marina smiled to herself as she thought of the boy. She had to bite back the urge to ask if Jake took after his mother. Anderson seemed more like the type to shoulder his way through the world—whether the world wanted to get out of the way or not.
“My ‘very sensitive, thoughtful son’ would like me to invite you and your daughter to come to the ranch for lunch and a little horseplay.”
Marina stepped back into the land of confusion again. “Excuse me?”
“Jake wants Sydney to meet Fury.”
That remark was even less clear than the first one. Was he deliberately trying to confuse her? Or was it her? “What?”
Anderson realized that the reference probably meant nothing to the woman, unless she was a trivia expert—or one of her students happened to be hooked on classic kids’ TV shows.
“Jake named the horse I gave him after this old, old TV show he saw on one of those kids’ channels.” And then, just in case she was worried that the name fit the horse, he reassured her. “Trust me, Fury doesn’t live up to her name. The horse makes molasses look like it’s moving fast. Jake is a city boy—he likes to make things sound dangerous. But I knew he had to take it slow when it came to riding and Fury is really even gentler than an old gray mare.”
“If you say so,” she replied, not totally convinced that he was telling her the truth.
But the one thing she was convinced of was that Anderson loved his son. Anyone who was around the two of them for more than a couple of minutes could see that was the case.
She heard what sounded like Anderson clearing his throat. The next moment, he started to speak. “Well, anyway, Jake wanted me to invite the two of you to the ranch whenever it was convenient for you to come out.”
Marina noticed how he emphasized the fact that the invitation was coming from his son. If she was reading correctly between the lines, that meant that he was extending the invitation under protest.
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