Would Cody have a chance elsewhere?
She wanted the best for her son, which is why she booted Max out of their lives in the first place. But how could she keep digesting this secret for a month without completely self-destructing?
Suddenly, the door to the girls dorm opened, temporarily solving her dilemma. Three teens piled outside into the afternoon sunshine, followed by a woman who looked to be in her mid-twenties, shiny brown hair pulled up high in a ponytail. She wore a whistle around her neck and a smile that made even Emma want to confide in her.
“There’s Faith, now. She’s great and will be here helping you out as much as her part-time schedule allows.”
Emma nodded, though she wasn’t sure which burned worse. His compliments and obvious admiration of Faith—or the fact that she even noticed.
“The campers are Stacy—” Max pointed discreetly to the older, curly-haired blonde Emma remembered from dinner the night before “—Katie and Tonya. Katie’s the short one, and Tonya is the tall one. Stacy is seventeen, Katie and Tonya are fifteen. They’re both from Texas, while Stacy is from south Louisiana. Faith can fill you in on the rest.”
She couldn’t help but be impressed with Max’s attention to detail, especially without the campers’ files as a cheat sheet. Hopefully she could get to know the girls as quickly. Faith already had a huge one up on her. But this wasn’t a competition. She and Faith, as perfect as the younger woman seemed, were on the same team.
Still...she watched as Faith led the campers toward the barn. “Is Faith married?”
Max frowned, revealing his confusion as to why it mattered, but didn’t question it. “Yes, and she has two small children at home. That’s why she’s only part-time.”
Emma refused to admit why that suddenly made her a lot more open to having Faith as a friend.
* * *
After unpacking her suitcase, downing her headache medicine and dozing off for a half hour, Emma felt ready to face the world. Or at least her ex-boyfriend, his perfectly perky counselor and three sullen teen girls.
On second thought, maybe she should have napped longer.
She opened the dorm’s front door and was nearly barreled over by Stacy, Tonya and Katie as they hurried inside. She stepped back, offering an easy smile despite the teens’ instant suspicion.
“Who are you?” Tonya crossed slim arms over her chest, frowning. “And why are you in our dorm?”
“Silly.” Katie hip-bumped Tonya out of the way and grinned at Emma. Her red hair and freckles made her seem younger than Max had indicated, while Tonya’s flawless, cocoa-colored skin and braided locks made her appear years older. “She’s one of the moms. Remember?” She snapped her fingers. “That cute little guy.”
“You’re Cody’s mom?” Stacy, who had shouldered past on her way toward the bedrooms, stopped and looked back with surprise. “They allowed parents here again? I thought all of y’all left yesterday.” Her eyes widened as if worried her own guardian might pop back up unannounced.
Emma sighed. Apparently Max hadn’t been able to make the announcement during her nap, or at least not in front of all the campers. All the more reason she should have stuck to tomorrow’s plan. Hopefully he’d at least been able to warn Cody.
She forced a smile she didn’t feel, ignoring the fact that she very likely might already be in over her head. “Yes, I’m Cody’s mom, but that’s irrelevant right now. Max needed a full-time counselor for you girls, so he asked me to step in. I’ll be taking over for the woman that went on maternity leave.”
“You’re the replacement?” Tonya snorted. “Maybe that’s why Cody looked so bummed earlier. I’d be, too.”
Katie nudged her, mouth open in overly dramatic shock. “Don’t be rude!”
“Just being honest.” Tonya held up both hands in defense.
Yeah, Emma knew that kind of honesty—and it wasn’t steeped in truth. She tightened her smile. “Cody will be fine. Besides, I’m here for you girls. I’m a licensed psychologist.”
“Who obviously can’t control her own son.” Stacy smirked and pushed open the door leading to the bedrooms. “Come on, girls. Dinner’s almost ready.” She peered over her shoulder as the door began to shut. “Better hurry before Ms. Psychologist tries to shrink our heads.”
The click of the door separating her from the teenagers felt like an insurmountable wall, and for a long moment, Emma considered turning and leaving. She swallowed the dismay bubbling in her stomach and worked to keep back the familiar tears of failure. Dinner might be almost ready, but she already felt as if she’d been chewed up and spit out.
But no. This was her chance. The girls were baiting her, testing her. Especially Stacy, who already demonstrated leadership influence on the other girls by being the oldest in the camp. If she let them pull rank now, the next month would be torture on her—and useless for them. They’d all lose.
She shoved aside the personal barb and followed the girls inside, briefly wondering where Faith was and why the girls were even walking around the ranch alone in the first place. Was that against the rules? She’d have to ask Max. So much she didn’t know.
But she knew how to handle this.
Her heavy footsteps brought all three girls’ heads up. Stacy, where she perched on the edge of her bed changing her shoes; Tonya, where she examined her complexion in the room’s only full-length mirror; and Katie, who rummaged through her top dresser drawer.
Emma took advantage of their surprise and squared her shoulders. “Here’s how it’s going to be.” She lifted her chin and crossed her arms, purposefully coming across defensive in her body language. First step, lay down the rules. Set the standard. “I’m in charge here, whether you girls like it or not, and whether you think I deserve to be or not. That’s not your decision to make, it’s Max’s. And it’s been made.”
She drew a breath, maintaining eye contact with them all, especially Stacy, whom she had the farthest to go to reach. Second step, initiate heart. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Personally, I’d like to have fun with you girls. I’m not here to braid hair and paint fingernails and be your best friend. But I really don’t want to be a dictator, either.”
That seemed to reach Katie, whose expression flickered briefly before morphing back to neutral.
Emma held her breath, intentionally uncrossing her arms, wanting to appear open and approachable. Third step, issue invitation. “What do y’all say to meeting in the middle?”
Silence registered, as all the girls plucked at loose threads in their jeans or on their bed comforters.
So it wasn’t going to be that easy. Maybe she needed to play a little dirty. She shifted her weight to one side and tilted her head casually to the other. “I know you’re all really loyal to Faith, but can’t you give me a chance?”
Katie jerked her head up so fast, her short red hair flew across her cheeks. “What? We barely know Faith.”
“But I’ve seen you with her already, all buddy-buddy.” She glanced at Stacy, who frowned slightly. She knew that would get to the older teen. The last thing the rebellious girl wanted would be to seem like she was in tight with an authority figure. Emma shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “I guess that’s only fair. After all, she seems pretty cool.” Max certainly thought so, anyway.
“Faith isn’t cool. She’s a mom.” The words flew out of Stacy’s lips so quickly, she was done talking before Emma could even look at her.
She hesitated, not having expected that answer. “I’m a mom.”
“Exactly.” Stacy leveled her gaze at her. “Moms aren’t cool.”
“Says who?” She refused to be offended. Though it sort of stung because she knew that was how Cody saw her and that he would only continue seeing her as less and less cool—or admirable, at the least—as he grew up. The thought dug in and twisted.
“Faith isn’t that bad.” Katie’s tentative voice pierced the weighty silence. She played with the dresser drawer pull, letting the metal piece bounce between her fingers and the wood with a steady tap. “She taught you how to stay on your horse today during the trail ride.”
“Shut up.” The look Stacy shot Katie could have melted concrete. “I didn’t need help.”
Tonya laughed, finally moving away from the mirror to sit on her bed across from Stacy’s. “Yeah, right. You were whiter than those bedsheets.”
Stacy threw her shoe at Tonya, who dodged it with a shriek—the first undignified, emotional reaction Emma had seen from the girl yet. Progress in some ways, probably, but she was losing control—if she’d ever had any in the first place. She raised her voice to be heard over the commotion, implementing the next measure in her strategy. “So you guys wouldn’t prefer Faith to be your full-time counselor instead of me?”
The looks the girls shot her clearly said they weren’t particularly partial to either of them. Perfect. Emma wouldn’t be making up ground, but rather, carving her own path. That would make it a lot easier to reach them if she wasn’t playing catch-up. “Good.”
She should have stopped there, but her mind wouldn’t cut the connection to her lips fast enough. Some deep part of her needed these girls to laugh, to like her. To respond to her. To make up for how Cody didn’t. She winked. “I promise I won’t smile as much as she does, okay?”
Stacy’s gaze darted over Emma’s shoulder and then dropped to her lap as a reluctant grin spread across her face. She wasn’t going to challenge. Score one. Emma glanced at Tonya, who seemed the second-hardest one in the group, and was rewarded with a genuine grin. Or maybe it was another smirk. Oh, well, close enough. Next she looked to Katie, who giggled uncontrollably. Well, that was easy enough.
She’d done it. Won them over for now. Relieved, she allowed herself a moment to relax. “So, how about some dinner?”
“Actually...”
Emma spun around at the sweet voice sounding from behind her. Oh, no.
Faith.
The ponytailed counselor slid her hands on her trim hips and arched one eyebrow at Emma. “I thought we’d just stay in here so I could give smiling lessons.”
Chapter Six
Wednesday started early, as evidenced by the chorus of groans as Max paced before his troops, a whistle tucked between his lips. Dew wet the top of his boots, and the late October chill cut through his button-down shirt. He struggled to keep his mind on the yawning teens before him, rather than dwelling on how cute Emma looked first thing in the morning, hair haphazard while wearing jeans and a rumpled sweatshirt. Her charges, though grumpy, were there on the chalked meeting line by the barn, on time and wearing the required work clothes. He was impressed—not bad, since Emma hadn’t even gotten the camp schedule until last night at dinner.
Where she’d been quieter than he expected. Maybe her headache hadn’t fully gone away by the time they’d been served steaming chicken and dumplings. Then again, did he know anything about Emma well enough anymore to make assumptions? He considered questioning Faith about her, but he didn’t want to give the other counselor the wrong idea about him and Emma. He and Emma were definitely no longer “he and Emma.”
No matter how much her makeup-free image reminded him of the younger version that still stalked his dreams.
Yeah. Time to get to business.
Max blew the whistle, and Cody clapped his hands over his ears. He fought the wave of sympathy rising in his chest. Growing up, his reaction to sudden sounds had always been the exact same, which got to be embarrassing as he grew older and the mere sound of a chair scraping against the floor in school would be enough to send his hands flying to his head. He eventually broke himself of the habit. Hopefully Cody would, too.
At least the young guy had taken the news of his mom filling in as counselor like a champ. There’d been a hint of panic in Cody’s eyes at first, but as Max explained that he would rarely even see Emma besides at mealtimes and during occasional group projects, he’d shrugged it off—probably thinking his easy acceptance would win him brownie points later. Max would have to be careful to keep an eye on that and make sure Cody didn’t play Emma against him or vice versa. One hint of that and he’d stop it immediately.
Yesterday, Max was Mr. Nice Guy. Today that would change. He had the teens’ best interests at heart—and while their first day had been all about rest time and chicken and dumplings, today, tough love was the main course.
Hopefully Emma would be able to hack it.
He blew the whistle again in two quick successions. “Listen up!” The kids stared blankly, except for Cody, who slowly lowered his hands from his ears and scowled. “First on the agenda is barn chores. Then after breakfast, where you’ll receive exactly one half hour to eat, we’ll move on to the obstacle course.”
That got their attention. Some of the boys grinned and nudged each other with excitement, but the girls looked beyond confused. “Obstacle course?” Katie’s red eyebrows nearly disappeared into her matching hairline. “Like, with ropes and barbed wire and stuff?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.” At one time he’d considered making a separate course for the girls, an easier one, but Nicole had almost taken his head off at the suggestion. Ever since, he’d seen how the girls in each camp had proven themselves time and again. These kids needed a challenge, the girls especially needing to see their own strength, the boys learning how to channel that strength into something positive.
Not for the first time, he wished he’d had someone to drag his teenaged rear end through an obstacle course, to force him to reach beyond himself and for new heights. Then maybe he wouldn’t have turned to girls, alcohol and drugs to fill the yawning spaces left behind from his father.
Enough of that. He blew the whistle. “To the barn.” The teens groaned, and he silenced them with a look. “All the horses are to be loosed in the paddock. Halters go in the tack room on the hooks. And remember—never approach a horse from the back unless you’re partial to getting kicked.”
Emma’s lips twitched at that one, and he wondered if she was remembering the time he “borrowed” Mr. Judson’s mare for a joyride late one night after enjoying too many beers—and gotten exactly what he deserved in the form of a horseshoe imprint on his thigh. His leg twinged at the memory. Yet the most vivid detail of that night was Emma, perched on the fence railing, head tilted and blond hair streaming down her back in the moonlight as she watched for shooting stars.
His gaze darted to her stoic expression in line, and the memory faded. Whatever she’d once seen in him, she certainly didn’t anymore. Not that he deserved it—then or now. Sure, he’d turned his life around, but he’d put Emma through the ringer in the meantime. No wonder she deserted him all those years ago. Her temporary draw to the “bad boy next door” had been exactly that—temporary. He never deserved her. Maybe she finally realized that same fact and moved on. Maybe her reasons for never returning had been as simple as that.
With another whistle blow, he herded the kids toward the barn, wishing with all his heart that some mistakes weren’t permanent.
* * *
Max had failed to mention that as chaperone, Emma was obligated to interact with the teens in the midst of their projects. Riding horses, brushing horses, cleaning stalls—and, apparently, crawling under barbed wire.
She winced as once again her hair snagged in the fencing above her head. She propped on one elbow in the dirt and reached up to free the tangle with her other hand, trying to note where her girls had gone. Katie and Stacy had taken to the course as if they’d already been through military basic training, flawlessly running the tires and scooting under the barbed wire like a couple of prairie dogs.
At least the exertion had fought against the midmorning chill in the air. She could feel
most of her toes, though not many of her fingers. Probably because they were half-buried in the earth. So much for her last manicure.
Though at the moment, nail care was the least of her worries. Some counselor she was, having already lost over half her group. She could only hope they had gone ahead with the rest of the boys who had finished the course. She couldn’t raise her head far enough right now to check.
“Need help?”
She tilted her head and peered as far sideways as she could without risking another tangle or mouthful of dirt. Faith, bright-eyed and exhilarated, grinned from her position a yard or two away, looking as if she did this kind of thing every day.
“You probably think I deserve this.” Emma wasn’t sure which rubbed worse—her verbal blunder in front of the fellow counselor at the dorms yesterday, or the sand currently gritting in her teeth.
Faith army-crawled toward her and laughed. “I know I smile a lot. It’s my trademark.” She reached over and freed another piece of Emma’s hair she hadn’t even realized was stuck. “I can’t be angry at you for noticing.”
“I really wasn’t making fun of you.” Emma felt about three inches tall, which was pretty accurate seeing how she was crawling through cold mud. “I just—”
“Wanted the girls to like you?” Faith motioned for them to keep going, and Emma pushed herself to follow the younger woman’s lead as they neared the end of the course. “I felt the same way when I started here last year. All this pressure to ‘fix’ these kids at whatever cost.” She crawled a few more paces, then slid out from under the last string of wire and stood, offering her hand to Emma. “I forgot that fixing them wasn’t in my job description.”
Emma accepted the offer, then slid to her feet and started to brush the dirt off her clothes before realizing the effort was futile. If helping the teenagers wasn’t the counselors’ job, then whose was it? She met Faith’s frank, open stare and raised her eyebrows in silent question.
Love Inspired January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Her Unexpected CowboyHis Ideal MatchThe Rancher's Secret Son Page 44
