The Cowboy and the Lady

by Marie Ferrarella

  Obviously, it wasn’t.

  Embarrassed, she said, “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I said she means well. Miss Joan,” he threw in for good measure. It occurred to him that he was trying to explain something to Debi that obviously hadn’t gotten through to her. He needed to explain something else first. “Once upon a time, Miss Joan and my late uncle used to see one another on a really regular basis. That’s why I think Miss Joan feels obligated to try to pair me off with someone.”

  “Meaning me?” Debi asked in wonder. She was an outsider. If this Miss Joan was into playing matchmaker, wouldn’t the woman have picked someone she knew? Someone who lived here in this little button of a town?

  But Jackson shook his head. He didn’t want her to feel intimidated. “Meaning anybody who happens to be female, unattached and within five feet of me.”

  “Oh.”

  Debi supposed she should be relieved that she wasn’t giving off any particular signals that would have made the older woman think that she was fair game. Because she wasn’t. Despite the fact that she was very vulnerable and lonely these days, she was determined never to put herself in that sort of a position again.

  She would never allow someone else to almost literally break her heart as well as her spirit the way John had done.

  In the year before her parents had been killed, she would have sworn to anyone who would have listened that she had found the kindest, most caring man on the face of the earth. Looking back, she now realized that he’d behaved that way because she had put herself at his beck and call. Time and again, she had deliberately gone out of her way to make sure that John was always happy and that if he needed something, she would fill that need for him, sometimes even before he could put that need into actual words.

  In essence, without really being consciously aware of it, she had sacrificed herself, her personality and her own needs in order to make sure that John was always happy.

  She only realized how much of herself she’d been giving when she had to stop giving so much of her time and effort to John. In essence, her whole life had been restructured in order to bring Ryan into her home.

  Shortly after that, the kindest man in the world turned into a moody, self-centered narcissist. And he only got worse with each week that passed. As a result, she became more and more stressed.

  Until the final straw came with his ultimatum.

  Nope, she would never be in that kind of position again, Debi promised herself for the umpteenth time since her marriage had dissolved right in front of her like a wet tissue.

  And if she was feeling more than a little attracted to the man sitting across from her, well, there were all sorts of psychological reasons for that which didn’t revolve around the fact that he was probably the handsomest, sexiest man she had ever seen up close and personal.

  She was just feeling sorry for herself. She’d been part of a couple for so long, it was hard for her to get used to being single again.

  “Why would Miss Joan feel she had to do that?” Debi asked him after a waitress had come to take their orders and then retreated. “I mean, I’m sure that you can have your pick of willing women.” Did that come out right? she silently questioned. She had a feeling that it hadn’t. All she could do was hope that Jackson didn’t think that she was flirting with him. “The town isn’t that small, is it?”

  Jackson watched as a faint shade of pink climbed up on her cheeks. Until this moment, he thought the idea of a woman blushing was some sort of a myth. Yet the woman he was talking to was doing just that.

  Blushing.

  And he found it strangely appealing.

  “Not when you combine it with the number of people who are on the reservation,” he acknowledged.

  She’d forgotten about the reservation. About to say as much, Debi caught herself just in time. She didn’t want Jackson to think she was insulting him or his heritage. It was just that the concept of a reservation was so foreign to her.

  “So then, why aren’t you ‘spoken for’?” she asked, trying to appear as if she was asking him tongue in cheek even though part of her was genuinely curious.

  Jackson shrugged carelessly. “I guess I never found the right person. That and my time’s pretty much taken up with the ranch and the boys.” There was another reason why he had never ventured into the marriage field. Both of his father’s marriages had fallen apart because his father had cheated on one wife then just ran out on another. So, not only didn’t he have a decent role model to emulate, he had his father’s blood running through his veins. In his eyes, that gave him less than a fighting chance of having a decent marriage.

  What was the point of trying if failure was more than just a fleeting option?

  Debi thought over the excuse he’d given her. It was flimsy at best. “I’d think that the boys would probably be the ones to do whatever it is that needs doing on the ranch—and that you’re one of those people who can get people to do what you want them to just by looking at them a certain way.”

  Now that sounded like fiction, pure and simple. Jackson laughed softly at her supposition. “You spend a lot of time reading, don’t you? Escapist fiction, am I right?”

  There’d been a time when she could get lost in a book. But not lately. Between her longer hours at work and her time spent either looking for Ryan or fighting with him to change his behavior, she had precious little downtime to herself.

  “I don’t get much of a chance to read anything these days. Work and Ryan have kept me pretty busy.” Mentioning her brother brought something else to mind. She didn’t like putting Jackson on the spot, but she needed to know if she was being overly optimistic about the present situation. “Full circle now, do you think he can be straightened out?”

  About to answer her, Jackson saw the waitress approaching with their orders. He paused, waiting for the young woman to finish and then leave. When she did, he realized that by waiting, he had dragged the moment out for Debi. He hadn’t meant to.

  “I never met a boy who couldn’t be straightened out,” he told her.

  “Is that a slogan on your brochure, or do you really believe that? Tell me honestly,” she pressed, her eyes never leaving his face. Aside from being extremely handsome, he had one of those faces that weren’t expressive. Thus she had no idea what he was thinking, she could only hazard a guess and then hope that she was right.

  “Honestly?”

  Jackson repeated the pertinent word as if he was mulling his options over. What he was actually doing was stalling, stretching out this dinner so that it lasted a little longer. He told himself it was because he was just trying to find out what sort of a life Ryan had had before coming to the ranch. But if he was being honest, he was certain that he already knew the answer to that. Although she was definitely nervous, Debi struck him as a caring person. She would have tried to make things easier on Ryan, not tougher. That’s all he really needed to know about her relationship with her brother.

  “Of course honestly,” she responded.

  He paused to take a few bites of his dinner before answering. “It’s both.”

  “Both?” she questioned. Was she putting her faith in the wrong person after all? Her gut told her no, but then her gut would have maintained that John was a decent person she could always count on, no matter what. Look how wrong she had been there.

  He explained it to her. “It’s the slogan I sometimes use, but it’s also something I really believe to be true. The teens who come to The Healing Ranch aren’t hardened criminals or sociopaths. In most cases, they’re not even terminally bad. They’re just ‘troubled’ teens in a very real sense of the word.

  “My job is to get them to think past themselves, to realize that they have a lot to give and that it’s okay not to be a tough guy all the time. In order to do that, I need to find out just what caused them to want to bre
ak all the rules, to act as if a jail cell was in both their immediate and their permanent future—and to act as if they didn’t care if it was.

  “In Ryan’s case, the reason for his behavior looks to be fairly simple.” He saw the questioning look enter her eyes. He doubted if he was telling her anything that she didn’t already know. Most likely, she was wondering how he had figured it out so quickly. “He blames himself for being alive.”

  She’d come to that conclusion herself, but each time she’d tried to approach her brother about it, Ryan shut her down, blocking any successful communication.

  But she had come to that conclusion after a few months. Ryan had only been there for a couple of days. She was curious what had triggered Jackson’s theory.

  “Why?”

  “Because there were three of them in that car that day and only he survived. Survivor’s guilt is pretty common actually,” Jackson told her. He found it to be rather an appalling truth. “Not that there was anything your brother could have done to prevent your parents’ deaths, but that doesn’t change the fact that he thinks there should have been something he could have done. I’m sure he’s gone over the seating arrangement dozens of times in his head. Maybe if he’d sat in the front passenger seat and your mother was in the back, she’d be alive instead of him, that kind of thing.”

  Jackson was putting into words what had secretly been haunting her all this time, as well. To have someone else verify it, to believe that Ryan was actually going through this, just tore at her heart.

  Debi stifled a helpless sigh. “You really think he thinks that way?”

  Jackson nodded in response. “I’m as sure of it as I can be without having him say the actual words. But what I need to do now is to get him to open up and talk about it.”

  “You mean like a group therapy session?” She couldn’t see that happening. She’d tried to sign Ryan up for that, but he’d refused to go. And when she literally dragged him to the psychologist’s office, Ryan had shut down completely. If anything, Ryan’s hostility level increased. After two attempts—and failures—she gave up trying to get him to attend the sessions.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Jackson allowed. The way he said it sparked her curiosity. The half smile on his lips did a little something more. “Except that in this case, the ‘group’ consists of horses.”

  “Horses?”

  He nodded. “You’d be surprised what kind of things people get off their chests ‘talking’ to the family pet dog, or their goldfish as they’re feeding it.” The skeptical expression in her eyes told him she needed to be convinced. There was a time he wouldn’t have believed it, either. But Sam had showed him differently. “It’s a safe way to share something that’s eating away at them. After all, an animal isn’t about to betray a trust and spill the secrets it was entrusted with.”

  “So then what?” she asked. “Do you have a recorder hidden somewhere on the horse or in the stable so you can gain some insight into the teenager you’re dealing with?” She knew it was the most logical way to proceed, yet doing that seemed somehow underhanded.

  She was surprised to discover that Jackson agreed with her.

  He shook his head in response to her question. “Having a hidden recorder in the vicinity is just begging to destroy any sense of trust that might have been built up. That would cause more damage than good in the long run.”

  She hardly noticed what she was eating and did it automatically, her attention fixed on what Jackson was telling her. “So then how—?”

  He liked the fact that she was questioning his procedures. So many parents would just deposit their offending offspring and wait to be called back at some future date. Ryan was a lucky kid.

  “If the boy talks to his horse, that’s the first step. Sharing what’s weighing so heavily on them brings a sense of relief—sometimes minor, sometimes more. But letting it out—whatever ‘it’ is—is definitely healthy and brings with it a feeling of well-being, however minor it might be. The next time that happens, the feeling will last longer.

  “In the long run, it’s healing to unload the burden of whatever offense they feel they’re guilty of. Sometimes it’s just the offense of living when someone else isn’t anymore,” he told her pointedly.

  That was obviously what Ryan was experiencing, she thought. “What school did you go to?” she asked, clearly impressed. When he looked at her quizzically, she added, “To get your degree in psychology.”

  The smile that curved his mouth created a strange, fluttery sensation within her. It left her feeling somewhat confused. Was she reacting like this because she was grateful to Jackson, or—?

  “The school of hard knocks,” he told her.

  Was that just his modesty kicking in? “No, seriously, because you’re making a lot of sense.”

  “Well, I’m glad that you think so,” he said, finishing the last of his meal and moving the plate to one side, “but it’s still the school of hard knocks.”

  “You didn’t go to college?” she asked, surprised at the extent of his insight without any formal textbook training.

  Jackson laughed shortly. “I didn’t graduate high school,” he confessed. “At least, not the first time around.”

  He had gone back to get his GED once he had decided that returning Sam’s favor was going to take him in a far different direction than he had initially foreseen for himself. He’d gotten the high school diploma not to impress anyone, but to satisfy his own needs. There’d been no money for college at the time. By the time there was, he was too busy rescuing young boys’ souls to take the time to go for a degree.

  Debi was surprised. She came from a world where in order to accomplish anything, a person had to go to college—it was one of the things she worried about when it came to Ryan.

  It was also something she and John had argued about before his ultimatum. He definitely didn’t want her using “their” money to send her brother to college someday.

  “Seriously?” she asked Jackson.

  “It’s not something I’d joke about,” he replied. He looked at her empty plate. “Would you like anything else? Dessert?”

  He got a kick out of the surprised look that passed over her face when she looked down at her plate and saw that it was now empty. This was a woman who could never play poker successfully, he mused. Everything was there for the world to see, right on her face.

  He liked her openness, he decided. Encountering it was not an everyday occurrence.

  “I’d love dessert,” she confessed once she made peace with the fact that she had consumed an entire meal without even realizing it. “But I shouldn’t. I don’t need the extra calories.”

  Jackson’s eyes washed over her. The woman was slender but it wouldn’t take all that much to get her to look “thin”—as in skinny. “I’d say you most definitely need a few extra calories. Either that, or bricks to put in your pockets.”

  That didn’t make any sense to her. Why would she want to carry around bricks? “Excuse me?”

  “The winds kick up here every so often. Right now, I’d say that you’re slender enough to blow away in a good stiff breeze.” He grew serious, saying something he felt that she needed to hear. “Ryan can’t afford to lose you, too.”

  “You twisted my arm,” she conceded. She had always had a weakness for sweets. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  His response was automatic. “Apple pie.” Of all the various desserts that the diner offered, apple pie was a staple and also his favorite.

  Her mother used to make the very best apple pies, Debi thought as a wave of nostalgia as well as sadness washed over her.

  “Sounds good to me,” she told Jackson.

  Jackson held up his hand to get their waitress’s attention. Before the young woman turned in their direction, Miss Joan saw him. In short order, she presented h
erself at their table.

  “Everything all right?” she asked. The question appeared to be intended for both of them, but it was obvious that Miss Joan was looking pointedly at her.

  Debi nodded. “Everything’s very good, thank you, Miss Joan.”

  Miss Joan inclined her head in acknowledgment—as if she had expected nothing less.

  “We’d like a couple of slices of apple pie,” Jackson told the older woman.

  Miss Joan glanced from one to the other. “You like the same things.” There was approval in her voice. “That’s good. Two pieces of apple pie, coming right up,” she promised, withdrawing.

  Jackson exchanged glances with Ryan’s sister as Miss Joan walked to the rear of the diner. The older woman usually tried to make newcomers feel at home, but even so, Miss Joan was behaving unusually accommodating, he thought.

  “Hard to believe that woman was a free-living hellion in her younger years, or so people tell me. It wasn’t until she got married that she started looking at unattached people as people in search of their soul mates.”

  Debi thought of her own failed marriage and the dreams she’d had at the outset. She had been incredibly naive.

  “I really doubt if there’s any such thing as a soul mate.”

  The sadness in her voice had him wondering about the extent of what she had gone through. “I think Miss Joan would argue with you about that.”

  “She’s that happy?” It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, it just went against what she’d experienced. There had been a time when, if asked, she would have said that she had found her soul mate, as well.

  “Yes, she is,” Miss Joan said, reappearing with two servings of apple pie. She slid the two plates from the tray onto the table.

  “That makes what you have very special,” Debi told her, feeling somewhat awkward at being caught talking about the woman.