Rancher's Deadly Risk

by Rachel Lee

  “But that assumes whoever is trying to get me to quit and leave town hasn’t got some other axe to grind. Or isn’t just out-of-control nuts. And frankly, reacting this way to detentions is so over-the-top. That’s what’s scaring me. Even one of the student’s own mothers just wanted to defend her son. All she did was confront me in the parking lot and insist her son couldn’t have done anything wrong. I’ve faced that before, I’ll face it again. That’s within the realm of normal reaction. Even the pushing while we were dancing. That was just some people who wanted me to be aware they didn’t think that was enough to merit action. I don’t think it’s associated with the other stuff at all, like the phone call, or the rat and my car. Those exceed a typical response.”

  “I agree,” he said quietly.

  She paused her pacing and looked at him. Why did he have to be so gorgeous that she kept wanting to forget everything else? “What you said about the basketball championship. Could somebody really get this heated over something like that?”

  “Heated, yes. Enough to make you feel threatened? Not most people.”

  She nodded. “I agree. But I don’t have the pulse of this place the way you do.”

  “Well,” he said dryly, “I do believe most of us left the Wild West and showdowns at high noon behind us.”

  That caused her a pang. “I wasn’t trying to insult your neighbors. It’s just that last week you said...”

  “I know what I said. I was trying to explain why people might be upset that a star basketball player could be unable to play if he gets another detention. What I said about the rat...” He shook his head. “Cassie, I wasn’t trying to minimize it, not really. Yes, kids here are more used to that kind of thing because of hunting and ranching, but to do something like that to send a message...” Again he shook his head. “I just didn’t want you worrying needlessly if that was the end of it. Clearly that’s not the end.”

  “So you were just trying to reassure me?”

  “Yeah. I was worried about it at the time, and I’m still worried.”

  “I’m a big girl,” she said sharply. “Don’t try to shield me or brush things off.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  But she didn’t want him to be sorry. He was a naturally protective man as she had learned this past week. It had probably been instinctive for him to not want her to get too upset without further cause. “Don’t apologize. Just don’t do it again.”

  “Fair enough. So where does this get us? Are you going to pack and leave for other parts?”

  “No.” Of that much she was certain. She might be frightened of where this could go. Clearly she was the target of someone who was angry with her. But how much of a threat was he? She fought to tamp down the morass of fear that tried to rise again.

  Slowly she returned to the table and sat. “I’m mad. I’m stubborn. I’m not going to be pushed around by some coward who makes anonymous phone calls, slashes my tires and uses a dead rat to get his point across. What’s more, I was really starting to like this town.”

  “And?” he asked.

  “I’m staying. I’m going to ride it out. I’m not going to turn tail.”

  “It could get dangerous. I can’t promise you it won’t. Not after two very obvious threats of violence, that rat and your car.”

  “They’re probably just threats,” she said decisively. “But even if they aren’t I’m staying. I’m going to keep working to put an end to bullying, and to teach my students the best that I can. I absolutely refuse to give in to a bully, and that’s what this guy is.”

  “Then you’d better get ready to have me around a lot until we’re sure this is over.”

  “I can deal with that.” Which was a rather offhand way of skirting the truth: she wanted him around. Giving herself an inward shake, she told herself to focus on work, on her job, on her students. It had saved her before.

  Chapter 9

  They made love again that night, but only once. Cassie didn’t know if she imagined that Linc seemed a little withdrawn, but she knew she was tightening into her protective shell again. The passion filled her with melancholy even as it carried her to heights of delight. Barriers that were at least partly hers, and perhaps partly his, seemed to be rising again.

  The feeling stayed with her as he took her home in the morning, as he called his friend to come take care of her car while she prepared for school. The magic of Saturday seemed to be waning.

  All to the good, she told herself, even as she began to realize that brave words spoken in the shelter of Linc’s ranch seemed almost foolhardy now that she was faced with returning to school.

  For the first time she felt honestly nervous about going to work, about facing her classes. So far her students didn’t seem to have joined the anti-Cassie camp, but what if the antipathy she had experienced on Friday had now reached them? What if she looked into hostile faces?

  She’d deal with it, she promised herself. She’d deal with it the way she had dealt with so many things in her life: by ignoring it until it went away. Often that was the only option.

  Her first indication of a sea change came from the mechanic Linc had called. When she tried to give him her credit card for the tow he waved it aside.

  “No charge for any of this, Ms. Greaves,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to think that folks around here would approve of whoever did this.”

  “But...” Even as her heart swelled with appreciation, she felt guilty. “You need to make a living, too, Morris.”

  “I’ll make one even if I do this. Put that card away.”

  She was sure her mouth didn’t close until her car disappeared down the street on the back of the truck.

  “Wow,” she said finally.

  “Plenty of generous people in the world,” Linc remarked. “The ugly ones seem to get the most attention, though.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. The next sign of a shift came before her first class. Les came looking for her, and he was beaming. “You’ll never guess what’s going on.”

  “What?”

  “Some townspeople, mostly parents, are setting up a fund to help James Carney’s family with medical bills and counseling costs. And what’s more, the school email and voice mail is full of requests for a special evening assembly for parents to discuss bullying.”

  “That’s wonderful!”

  “I told you an assembly was the best way to handle this. Now we’ll get the parents involved. I hardly dared hope we’d get such a response.”

  “We might not have,” she reminded him. “Except for James. Have you heard anything? Linc and I were at the hospital Friday until he was out of danger, but I haven’t heard since.”

  “I called his mother this morning. He should be released today, but she’s not planning to bring him back to school.” Les sighed, a frown settling over his round face. “She said it was just until he had some counseling, but I don’t know, Cassie. This was a terrible thing. People are responding positively, but that doesn’t mean we can change the culture overnight.”

  “I’m sure we can’t. But this is a giant step.”

  A giant step that brightened her morning considerably, as did the students in her classes, who seemed to want to do something, whether it was sending some kind of message to James and his family, or taking on the bullies in their midst. Suddenly it seemed too long to wait until the Friday assembly. Everyone wanted to do something constructive now.

  Behind that, though, she sensed something else, a kind of uneasiness. It came, she thought, from awareness of their own past transgressions, from the near loss of someone their own age. From guilt and awareness of mortality. Not knowing what else to do, she put her lesson plans aside for the day and just let the students talk, making a mental note that they might need to get the school psychologist in on this.

  The day became emotionally exhausting for her as she tried to guide students through their mixture of feelings. Some started out tough, insisting they would never kill themselves over anything as stup
id as bullying. Some spoke about how they had been bullied and how it had made them feel. In class after class, a slow consensus was reached: bullying was a bad thing.

  She suspected the conversation would go on for days, and she was determined to have it if that was what the students wanted. So she gave them the situation: if they wanted to continue the discussion, they’d have to make up time on the lessons. They voted to make up the work with very few dissenters.

  Having allowed them to choose, she was quite certain they would do so. At the end of the day, she was feeling a whole lot better about everything, and already figuring out how to alter her lesson plans for the makeup without pushing the students too hard to keep up.

  “Ready to go, Teach?”

  She looked up and saw Linc framed in the doorway, his jacket hanging open, his backpack slung over one shoulder.

  “It’s been a good day,” she said as she gathered her last few things.

  “You, too? We talked about bullying all day.”

  Her heart lifted and she returned his smile. “Yes.” Then her smile faded. “Why does it always take a martyr to get a point across?”

  “People can ignore a lot until they get jolted out of their ruts. How else could we survive?”

  That was an excellent point. Walking with him across the parking lot as the afternoon faded rapidly toward twilight, she tried to tell herself not to expect too much, that it would take a long time to really change anything, that after the shock passed it would be easy to forget. “Shock works just so long.”

  “I know,” he said as he opened the truck’s door for her. “That’s why I didn’t ignore it today. Strike while the iron’s hot.”

  She slid into the seat. “Don’t you have a practice?”

  “Canceled. We’re going to be playing a makeup for the game Saturday. I’ll have to get back here by six and we’ll play at seven.”

  “On a school night?”

  “Yeah. Only way to prevent messing up the season schedule. Want to come?” he asked as he pulled the truck onto the road.

  Since she was feeling considerably better today than yesterday, she actually had to think about it. A football game would be fun, but she had to rework all those lesson plans. And when she tested the sore space inside, the place left by the events of the past couple of weeks, she found it wasn’t terribly tender. Her faith had been restored, and she was inclined to figure that nothing would happen that she couldn’t handle.

  “I need to work on lesson plans,” she said. “We’re going to get into a real mess with the syllabus if I don’t figure out how to space things so the students don’t get overwhelmed. I’d better just stay home and work.”

  “Not afraid?”

  She glanced his way and smiled slowly. “Actually, no. Like I said yesterday, whoever did those things is a bully and a coward.”

  “And today you believe it?”

  “Actually, I do. It was like everything changed today. Peoples’ opinions seem to have swung around. The bully will probably crawl back under his rock now that people aren’t upset.”

  He was silent as he steered them around a corner. “Probably.” He spoke the word slowly. “I don’t know, Cassie. I wouldn’t have expected anyone to vandalize your car, or put a rat on your desk. Someone has a kink.”

  “Obviously. Are you trying to frighten me?”

  His head shake was quick and certain. “No. I just want you to be cautious. People around here may be experiencing a shift in opinion, but that doesn’t mean he has.”

  She couldn’t argue with that, but she felt more confident than she had since this whole affair had started. And despite her burst of fear yesterday, she had begun to realize that the thing she most needed to do for herself was stand up. If she had begun to lose sight of that, her students today had definitely reminded her. They needed her, and other teachers, to help them work through this, and they had shown good hearts for the most part. Turn tail now? No way.

  “None of it hurt me,” she reminded him, and maybe herself. “All of it was done in a way that would seem to indicate the bully doesn’t want to be identified.”

  She gasped with surprise as they came around the corner. Her car was sitting in the driveway, and it sparkled. “Oh, my! Morris even washed it!”

  Linc chuckled quietly. “I told you most people around here are good folks.”

  He pulled in behind her car, and she grabbed her backpack and climbed out before he could assist her. She walked around her compact and peered inside. “He even vacuumed it! My word!” She touched it. “I’d forgotten it could look this good.”

  “The key is probably under your doormat,” Linc said.

  She checked immediately and was relieved to find it. Any mischief-maker could have helped himself if that was a custom around here. Finding the key reassured her

  even more.

  Linc came inside with her. She dropped her bag on the battered couch and faced him, smiling. “It’s amazing how fast things can change.”

  “We’ve seen a really huge swing since you found those boys bullying James,” he agreed. “First all the way down and then up.”

  “What can I do to thank the mechanic?” she asked him, still thinking about the loving care he’d bestowed on her car for free. “That was really above and beyond. A bottle of wine?”

  “Beer would probably go over better. I think he’d appreciate the gesture.”

  “That’s what I’ll do, then.” Feeling ever so much better, she spun in a little circle. “I can’t believe that yesterday I felt like everything was crashing down on me. A weight is gone.”

  She noticed, however, that he didn’t appear quite as thrilled as she was feeling. She glanced away, wondering if she had overreacted yesterday or if she was overreacting now. Yesterday she had been seriously frightened, wondering what kind of attack would come next. Then she had decided that whoever had been bothering her really hadn’t done all that much, and what he had done indicated that he was a typical bully, a coward.

  She still believed that. Whoever had butchered the rat and vandalized her car had wanted to frighten her, but he hadn’t had the gumption to face her directly.

  “Do you think I’m being foolish?” she asked finally.

  “No.” He stepped toward her and surprised her by wrapping her in his arms and hugging her close. It felt so good to be near to him again, to feel as if he weren’t holding her at a distance. Last night’s feeling that he was drawing away had lingered throughout the day, a subtle sort of ache, a sense of impending loss like a backdrop to all the good things that had happened since this morning. Part of her wanted to pull away, but another part of her took charge and she returned his hug.

  “I understand,” he said, “that yesterday it all crashed down on you. I’m not quite as sanguine that this bully will settle down now that public opinion is starting to rise against bullying. But maybe you’re right. So far he’s been a coward, that’s for sure. Trying to frighten you without facing you. Typical of bullies.”

  “Exactly.” Reluctantly she stepped back, reminding herself that she shouldn’t get in any deeper. He had his reasons for fearing involvement; if there was ever a woman made to fit the bill of what worried him, it was her. She’d been here only a few months, she might decide not to stay.

  Her own fault, too, because she could clearly hear herself saying more than once that she should resign and leave. After the rat, especially, she’d been unnerved enough to think about it seriously.

  Equally important was that she was certain he had only spent so much time with her because he felt he needed to protect her and reassure her. He seemed like that kind of man, and the sexual attraction...well, little could be built on that. It flared, but it always quieted. She had enough married friends to have observed that.

  So they’d been overcome, but that didn’t mean she had to put her heart at his feet. Asking to get trampled once again, and this time by a man who had good reason not to trust her, didn’t seem bright. If the backgro
und ache she’d been feeling was any indication, she was already in too deep. Definitely time to step back.

  “Want something to eat?” she asked brightly without quite looking at him. “You’ve got to eat before the game.”

  Linc felt her pull away, saw how she avoided his gaze, and wondered what the hell he’d done wrong. Then it struck him: she was pulling away because she no longer felt she needed him.

  Why should that be such a shock? Martha hadn’t needed him enough to stay. Cassie had needed him since the day when that rat showed up on her desk, understandably. She was a newcomer around here without resources of her own yet. He had stepped up like some kind of hero and she’d welcomed the support and the protection he’d offered.

  But now she felt everything was going to be okay. He believed the passion they had shared had been real, but beyond that? Beyond that there was evidently nothing.

  He’d been a fool once again. His stomach turned to lead and his mouth soured. Another Martha? Maybe just a different version. But why should he be surprised? Why would any woman who hadn’t grown up here want to hitch her wagon to a man who was just a teacher and part-time rancher. There were certainly better prospects out there, even around here.

  “No thanks,” he said. “I’ve got something back at the school. Maybe I’ll stop by for a few minutes after the game. If anything disturbs you, I’ll have my cell phone on, but I might not be able to hear it during the game.” He started toward the door, then hesitated, his conscience plaguing him.

  “Cassie? Are you sure you don’t want to come to the school?”

  She shook her head. He wondered why her face suddenly looked a little...wooden? Sad? He couldn’t quite read it.

  “Thanks,” she said, giving him a small smile. “I’ll be fine.”

  He walked out, feeling as if he had just missed something very momentous.

  Wishful thinking, he told himself. That’s all it was. At some level he’d dared to believe Cassie was different from Martha.

  Evidently not.

  Some unspoken conversation had just been had, but Cassie was only sure of her part in it. She had pulled back, yes, but she had offered him a meal, something far less dangerous than where that hug could have led. Then he had seemed to want to get out of there as fast as possible.