The Cowboy and the Lady

by Marie Ferrarella

  There was nothing he welcomed less than pity.

  For now, Jackson’s answer was a vague “Something like that,” hoping that would be the end of it.

  Debi glanced over toward the kitchen. “Well, it does show a great deal of initiative. Most guys living on their own would have found a woman to cook for them.”

  That was what John had done. In John’s case, he had found her. Debi couldn’t remember a single time when John had offered to prepare something rather than leaving it all up to her. John’s idea of serving a meal was opening a pizza box.

  Just the smallest hint of a smile passed over Jackson’s lips. “I would have wound up starving to death,” he told her. “I’m pretty fussy—about everything,” he added.

  With his looks, she caught herself thinking, Jackson White Eagle could well afford to be fussy. Women would probably fight with frying pans at ten paces for the right to feed him.

  “It was just easier learning how to cook on my own,” he told her. “So,” he concluded, “you still want that tour of the bunkhouse?”

  She struck him as a newly lit rocket that was dying to achieve liftoff. Hard to believe she’d seemed so out of it just a short while ago. She’d been attractive before, and now she was even more so, plus exceedingly sensual.

  “Now that you’ve replenished my energy, I’m ready for that tour more than ever,” she replied.

  So saying, Debi rose from the table carrying her empty plate and coffee mug in her hands. Jackson watched her as she crossed to the sink and turned on the water. Following behind her, he leaned over and decisively shut off the faucet.

  When she looked at him quizzically, he told her, “I’ll have one of the hands take care of that.”

  “I don’t mind,” she responded in all sincerity.

  “But I do,” he countered. “The hands are here to learn the benefits of work. Cleaning up after a guest is all part of it. Ready?” he asked her again.

  Since there was nothing left for her to do there, Debi quickly dried her hands and nodded. “Ready.”

  Jackson led the way outside. When he walked right past his truck, which was parked outside the front of the house, and kept on going, she was rather surprised. Back in Indianapolis, any distance that amounted to more than a few steps was traversed using a car. Walking was viewed as a pastime, as in taking a walk around the block. Anything other than that necessitated the use of a vehicle.

  But apparently not here.

  Not only that, but she discovered that in order to keep up with Jackson, she had to either lengthen her stride or break into a trot. She wound up doing a little of both.

  When he realized that he was outpacing her, Jackson deliberately slowed down so that she could wind up walking beside him.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked as he fell back to join her.

  “You mean like ‘why are we galloping?’” Debi asked, amused. “It didn’t seem polite.”

  He waved away her assessment of the situation. “I’m used to going everywhere on my own—occasionally with Garrett. Since he’s the same height as I am, he tends to walk as fast as I do,” he explained, then apologized. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you trot.”

  Really good-looking, polite and he could cook. The man was almost too good to be true—which meant that this was probably just his public facade, Debi decided. No man was too good to be true. She knew that now.

  She shrugged off his apology. “No harm done,” she responded. “I think of it as burning off calories,” Debi added. Whenever possible, she tried to look at things in a positive light. It was a coping mechanism that she employed.

  Her last comment had him looking at her, his gaze lingering longer than he’d intended because he was verifying something for himself. “Why would you want to burn off calories?”

  “Same reason every woman would, to noticeably slim down.”

  The way the female mind worked was nothing short of mysterious to him, Jackson concluded. “You slim down ‘noticeably,’ you’ll have to be on the lookout for people wanting to run a flag up along your body.” He paused for a moment right before the bunkhouse. “If something is already good, you don’t mess with it,” he told her matter-of-factly.

  “Was that a compliment?” Debi asked, rather stunned if it was. He didn’t strike her as someone who bothered with flattery, yet what else could it be?

  “‘That’ was a bunch of words, signifying a thought and forming a conclusion,” he answered. “If you feel it was a compliment, then fine, it was a compliment. But it wasn’t intended as one. Make of it what you will.”

  And what do I make of you, Jackson White Eagle? she wondered. No immediate answer came to her.

  Moving on, Jackson pushed open the door to the bunkhouse.

  “This is it,” he told her, acting as a guide. “This is where the hands on the ranch sleep and where they unwind at night after dinner.”

  Debi looked around slowly. She had walked into a very large communal room. Rather than the bunk beds she’d expected to see, there were two rows of equally spaced twins beds facing one another. Four on one side, four on the other.

  Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t recalled seeing that many teenage boys on the grounds, but they could very well have been within one of the buildings she’d noted as she’d driven onto the ranch.

  Curious, she asked, “How many hands are there currently on the ranch?”

  “If you’d asked me that question at the beginning of the month, I would have said we were full up with twelve.” They’d had to bring in extra beds at the time, making it more crowded. “But since then I’ve had a few of them graduate and go back to their homes.” It was easy to see that he was quietly proud of that accomplishment. “Currently, counting your brother, we have eight.”

  She moved about the room slowly, trying to get a feel, a vibration from the area. She would’ve said that no teens slept in the bunkhouse these days. The neat way the beds were all made was nothing short of impressive. “How many repeaters do you get?”

  His eyebrows came together in almost a huddle as he looked at her, puzzled. “Excuse me?”

  “How many of the ‘hands’—” that word still felt very awkward in her mouth “—that graduate from here fall back into their old habits and wind up coming back to your ranch?”

  He didn’t have to think. Jackson’s answer was immediate. “None.”

  He seemed pretty positive. “Is that because their parents take them elsewhere?” she asked bluntly. Being blunt had never been her way nor had she found it acceptable, but the situation Ryan had put her in had changed all that.

  “No, it’s because none of the boys who graduate from here wind up being repeat offenders. They wind up going on to finish high school and they either take up a trade or, in some cases, go on to college.” He saw the doubt in her eyes. It was to be expected. He would have been suspicious if she’d been too trusting. “I’ve got letters from former ranch hands, catching me up on their lives, if you’d like to look them over.”

  The fact that he had volunteered the letters put a different sort of light on the matter. Jackson didn’t know her and thus had no way of knowing whether or not she would take him up on his offer. Bluffing would have been a mistake. The cowboy didn’t seem like the type to make mistakes.

  She supposed she could say yes and see if that made him uncomfortable, but she already had a strong feeling that it wouldn’t. The man struck her as being more than able to hold his own in a war of nerves.

  Her gut told her that he wasn’t a liar.

  “No,” she told him simply. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  He nodded as he watched her roam about the room. “Suit yourself, but the letters are available if you ever want to, say, satisfy your curiosity—or put your mind at ease.”

  She loo
ked around one last time before making her way over to what was a very large bathroom. The door was open so she assumed it wasn’t occupied. Peering in, she saw that it had a number of shower stalls, a long counter with five sinks and the same number of bathroom stalls. Closer scrutiny showed that the entire area appeared to be clean enough to eat off. Just like the rest of the bunkhouse.

  She found it almost unbelievable.

  “Are you sure you have the hands sleeping in here?” she asked incredulously. This place was every bit as clean as her own apartment—perhaps even more so.

  “Very sure,” he answered. Then, to lighten the mood just a bit, he added faux-solemnly, “It’s either that, or somebody has substituted some very lifelike robots for the guys who bed down here every night.”

  With nothing left to see within the bunkhouse, they walked back outside. Jackson pulled the door closed behind him. “Would you like to see the stables, as well?” he suggested.

  It was as if Jackson had been expecting her scrutiny, or at least scrutiny by someone conducting a close review of the premises, but if the ranch was normally in a state of chaos, there would have been no way to make it this presentable in a few hours. This had to be the normal state of affairs on The Healing Ranch, and that alone all but left her speechless.

  “The hay’s probably been scrubbed clean,” Debi guessed.

  Jackson shook his head. “Too time-consuming,” he deadpanned. And then he added seriously, “I just have whoever’s in charge of the stables that day replace the old hay with new hay. It’s a lot simpler—and cleaner—that way.”

  What did she have to lose? It wasn’t as if she actually had a job interview waiting for her. Besides, she did like horses, even though the closest she’d ever been to one was in her living room, watching a Western on the TV screen.

  “Okay, sure, I’ll have a look,” she told Jackson gamely.

  As it turned out, the stables were close to the bunkhouse. All part of the so-called “hands” bonding process with the horses they were assigned to care for, Debi surmised.

  When she arrived, the doors to the stables were standing wide-open the way, Jackson told her, they were every day during normal operating hours.

  Since they had passed a number of hands working with horses in the corral, Debi expected to find the stables as empty as the bunkhouse had been.

  But they weren’t.

  While there were no horses to be seen—they were all out in the corral—the same wasn’t true of the people Jackson was working with. Specifically, the person he was going to work with that day after he finished being her guide on the ranch.

  Debi was stunned when she realized that the person dressed in jeans, boots and a plaid shirt, and manning a pitchfork as if he was trying to figure out how he was supposed to handle an oversize dinner fork, was her brother.

  She’d overlooked him at first.

  An involuntary little gasp of surprise passed her lips and had Ryan looking up. There was nothing but blatant hostility and anger blazing in his eyes when he realized that the sound had come from his sister and that she was here, looking at him.

  “You come here to gloat?” Ryan demanded nastily. “Or maybe you just came by to tell me that this enforced slavery is for my own good.”

  “It’s not ‘slavery’ and it is for your own good, Ryan,” she said, feeling helpless and taken advantage of as well as angry at her brother’s tone.

  She’d put up with so much for so long that she was dangerously close to her breaking point. She was seriously worried that she would wind up breaking at the wrong time.

  Ryan’s eyes narrowed into small, angry, accusing slits. “Well, if it’s so damn great, why aren’t you in here, shoveling all this sh—”

  “Careful, Ryan,” Jackson warned, intervening. “You don’t want to owe the swear jar more money than you’re going to earn this week. If you do, you’re going to find that what you ultimately wind up doing will be a whole lot worse than just mucking out the stables.”

  It wasn’t a threat, but a promise. One that was vague enough to mean nothing—or everything. But Jackson White Eagle did not look like a man to be antagonized without consequences.

  Slightly intimidated, Ryan obviously bit back the insult he was about to hurl at both his sister, the betrayer, and the man she had sold him out to.

  Ryan changed the wording, but not the tune. “I’m not staying here,” he shouted to his sister as she was being escorted away by Jackson. Ryan thought of him as the dark soul who ran this place. “Just giving you fair warning,” Ryan shouted even louder. “First chance I get, I’m outta here. I’m gone.”

  Debi turned and looked over her shoulder at her brother.

  “Ryan, please, let them help you,” she begged, afraid that her brother would carry out his threat. Afraid that he would wind up dead in some alley before the year was out.

  “I don’t need their help. I don’t need yours, either,” Ryan retorted with a nasty edge to his voice.

  Each word just cut straight into her heart. There had been a time when they had been close, when she had known or sensed her younger brother’s every thought, every need. Now she hardly recognized the angry being he had become.

  “Ryan—” she began in a supplicating tone.

  The next second, before she could find the words to even remotely try to convince Ryan that being here was a good thing, she felt Jackson taking her arm and leading her away from the stables.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, shaking off his hold.

  Jackson released her only once they were outside and several lengths away from the stables.

  “The longer you stay in there with him, the more he’s going to rant and work himself up,” Jackson told her mildly.

  She gazed up at him, her concerns piquing. She only heard one thing. “You’re telling me I can’t talk to my brother?”

  “I’m telling you that you can’t talk to your brother now,” he corrected in a voice that was almost maddeningly calm. “Give me a chance to work with him, to show him the right path and make Ryan come around on his own accord.”

  She was trying very hard to have faith in the process and in the man she was talking to. But in light of her brother’s present attitude, it was very difficult for her. “You mean like finding God?”

  “God doesn’t have to be found. He’s not lost,” Jackson replied in a voice so mild she found it both soothing and maddening at the same time. “What Ryan has to find is Ryan. He has to stop feeling angry and guilty and all those other hostile emotions that are getting in the way of his own inner growth and evolution. We get him down to the very basics,” he explained to Debi, “and then start rebuilding him into a person both you and he can be proud of.”

  She was beginning to doubt that was even remotely doable. “Sounds like a dream right now,” she confessed.

  Jackson smiled at her. “Then I guess I’m in the business of making dreams come true,” he said before redirecting the conversation. “If there’s nothing else that you want to see here, I’ll drive you into town.” Jackson began leading the way to his vehicle.

  That wasn’t what the rancher-slash-miracle-worker had told her earlier. “I thought you said you’d have one of the hands take me.”

  “I did, but you turned that down, saying you could find the town yourself,” he reminded her.

  And nothing had changed since then as far as she was concerned. “I still can.”

  “I have no doubt,” Jackson was quick to affirm. “But the way I see it, things’ll go faster for you if I introduce you to Doc Davenport myself. Otherwise, you might have to sit out in the waiting room and wait your turn. I don’t really recommend that,” he added, specifying in a lower voice, “They’re always busy.”

  She didn’t want to be in his debt, but then, if the man actually managed to turn Ryan
around and get him even marginally back to where he had been before things began falling apart, she knew that she would be eternally in Jackson’s debt until the day she died.

  This was a small deal in comparison to that.

  “Then I guess,” she told him, “you’ve made me an offer that I can’t possibly refuse.”

  Jackson had no idea that she was paraphrasing a famous movie line. He took it seriously at its face value. “Not wisely, no,” he agreed.

  “Well, then I won’t refuse it,” she told him.

  Chapter Six

  As far as the size of towns went, Forever was more of a whisper rather than a long-winded speech.

  While it was true that when it came to Forever’s citizens, not everyone knew everyone else, it was a town where everyone at least knew of everyone else by name if not by association or sight. However, when it came to those necessary to keeping the town running smoothly and without mishaps, they became known to everyone. People like the town vet, the town doctors, and the store owners since their numbers were few, as well.

  The sheriff and his three deputies were familiar faces to one and all even though Forever’s worst offenders were a couple of men who preferred spending their time at Murphy’s, the town’s tavern, to coming home to their sharp-tongued, overbearing wives.

  The one person that everyone knew without question was Miss Joan.

  Miss Joan had owned and run the local diner for as far back as anyone in town could remember. The diner was the one place where everyone eventually came to meet as well as eat, either on a regular basis or once in a while. Because of this, and the fact that Miss Joan liked to stay on top of everything that was happening in Forever, be it eventful or of no consequence whatsoever, Jackson decided to bring the woman sitting in the passenger side of his truck to the diner first.

  And to Miss Joan.

  Debi was under the impression that the cowboy was taking her straight to the clinic. So when Jackson pulled up in front of what looked like a diner, the sunshine gleaming off its silver exterior like a lighthouse beacon, she was mildly curious. For a moment, she assumed that he was going to pass by the eatery—cutting it admittedly rather close.