The Cowboy and the Kid

by Anne McAllister

  A pretty tall order since her own mother obviously hadn't.

  Becky thought it was asking an awful lot—even of God.

  And then the bus stopped and she got off and walked into her class—and saw Ms. Albright standing there.

  * * *

  They were following her again.

  When she stopped to stare at the display of nails, screwdrivers and wire cutters in Gilliam's Hardware, Felicity could see them reflected in the glass as they ducked behind the dusty Dodge pickup truck parked beside the curb. It was the third time this week she'd been tailed—by two little girls.

  Becky Jones and Susannah Tanner.

  Her students.

  If she were still teaching in Southern California, Felicity might have understood. There, in the midst of the anonymous urban sprawl, stalking had sometimes seemed a way of life.

  But here? In Elmer, Montana?

  By a pair of third- and fourth-grade girls?

  Felicity wondered if she was losing her mind. She didn't think so. In fact, for the first time in two years, she'd begun to think she'd finally recovered it.

  Moving to Elmer had been the start. She had come last month when she inherited Uncle Fred's house. It was a completely unexpected windfall. She hadn't seen Uncle Fred since she was ten years old, when she and her mother had visited him for two weeks in the summer.

  He'd been the eldest of her grandfather's brothers, the one with the wanderlust. He had traveled everywhere on the globe before finally settling in Elmer and taking over its small newspaper. When she came that summer, he'd let Felicity help him print it. She remembered being ink-smudged and totally happy. Those two weeks had been among Felicity's fondest memories.

  They had apparently been among Uncle Fred's happiest, too, for in his will he left her his house and everything in it—lock, stock and printing press.

  Felicity had been flabbergasted. And yet it had seemed like fate—a godsend—coming as it had, exactly two years to the day after her husband Dirk had been killed.

  Dirk. Dear, wonderful Dirk. They'd only been married two-and-a-half years. Their lives, their hopes, their futures, were ahead of them as they waited for Dirk to finish school.

  A graduate student in music, Dirk Albright had been a talented cellist—a gifted musician, but an even more gifted teacher. Everyone knew it—especially Felicity. She and Dirk had grown up together, they'd gone to high school and university back in Iowa together. When Dirk won a graduate fellowship at UCLA, they'd married and moved to California together.

  "I don't want to go without you," he'd said to her. "Please come."

  And over her family's objections, she had. She'd never considered doing anything else because she'd loved Dirk as desperately as he loved her.

  They'd lived on a shoestring budget in a tiny apartment above a garage in Westwood. They ate macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches seven nights a week, and thought they were the luckiest people on earth. Felicity drove an hour and fifteen minutes each way to the school where she taught. But Dirk could ride his bike to the university. What little they could save, they put toward the house they'd buy someday wherever Dirk got a college teaching job. They had plans, hundreds of them. They talked about them every night.

  And then one afternoon after school Felicity had looked up to see a policeman standing in the door to her classroom. Gently, quietly, he told her that Dirk was dead.

  Riding his bike home from class as he did every day, he'd been hit by a car.

  "He never knew," the policeman assured her. "He didn't suffer."

  Felicity did. For the past two years she had mourned her lost husband, her lost hopes, her lost dreams. Everything she'd hoped to be had depended on her life with Dirk. In the space of a single moment, she'd lost it all.

  "Come home," her parents urged her. "Come back to Iowa."

  But she couldn't. There were too many memories there. Everywhere she turned she would come face-to-face with the past she and Dirk had shared. "No," she told them. "I'll stay here. I have my job. I love the kids. I'll survive."

  She did. She got through the next school year by submerging herself in her work, letting it consume her. If she didn't stop, she didn't have to think, to plan, to face life more than a day at a time. That was enough.

  Then, a little more than a year after Dirk's death, her friend, Lori, said, "Listen, Felicity … I have a friend I'd like you to meet."

  A man, she meant.

  Felicity knew Lori meant well, but she wasn't interested. She didn't want to know that his name was Craig, that he was an aeronautical engineer who lived in the same apartment complex as Lori, that he liked music and surfing and playing basketball. "I can't," she said.

  "So, maybe he's not the right one," Lori said philosophically. "I know another guy, a friend of my brother's."

  But Felicity wasn't interested in him, either. There were other men over the next few months—men Lori found for her, men her brother Tom and her sister Cassandra told to drop by and see her while they were in L.A. There were even some men who found her without any help at all. Nice men, all of them.

  But not Dirk.

  "You can't mourn him forever," Lori told her. "He wouldn't want you to stop living, you know."

  Yes, Felicity knew. Intellectually she nodded her head and agreed, but she couldn't make herself show any interest in men. The very thought of dating again left her numb, as if her feelings were encased in ice.

  "There are a million eligible men in Southern California," Lori had told her impatiently one night. "There must be one who's right for you."

  But if there was, Felicity didn't care. She had no desire to look for him. And she wished everyone else would stop looking, too.

  But they didn't. So, when news of Uncle Fred's legacy dropped into her mailbox like the proverbial roast duck and Felicity remembered those few carefree days of childhood joy, the memory translated itself into a desire to go back once again.

  Why not, after all? She had nothing to keep her here.

  "You're going where?" Lori demanded.

  "Elmer, Montana."

  "You'll be back," Lori predicted.

  But once she'd arrived, Felicity's chest expanded, her breathing deepened. She felt, as she looked around at the tiny higgledy-piggledy town, the high mountains and the big, big sky, as if that first deep breath had finally cracked the ice. The pain and numbness she'd lived with since Dirk's death began almost imperceptibly to melt away.

  Felicity had looked around the town and smiled at its prosaic name. Nestled against the foothills of the Bridgers, looking across the fertile Shields Valley toward the mysterious Crazy Mountains, Elmer had, to Felicity's way of thinking, been misnamed. It should have been called Eden—or Paradise.

  She decided to stay.

  "You haven't seen it in the winter," Polly McMaster, who ran the post office, said.

  But Felicity was looking forward to winter. The sameness of Southern California's seasons was one of the things she had never got used to. "I grew up in Des Moines. I can hardly wait."

  Polly had looked skeptical, but Felicity knew it was true. And she felt alive here for the first time in two years. She went back to California just long enough to resign from her job and pack her things.

  "You're kidding," Lori said.

  Felicity shook her head and kept packing.

  Lori watched, then sighed philosophically. "Well, fine. Maybe you'll meet a cowboy."

  Felicity looked at her askance, "A cowboy?"

  "This is Montana, isn't it?"

  But Felicity hadn't met a cowboy yet. She had met most of Elmer's 217 inhabitants, though. Their sympathies had been immediately engaged by the pretty young widow Fred Morrison had left his house to, and they thought she was a right smart lady when she preferred Elmer to Southern California. It wasn't long before Maudie Gilliam, whose husband ran the hardware store, was bringing her gooseberry pies and Howie Ward was fixing her window screen and two old schoolteachers called Cloris
and Alice were inviting her out for meat loaf at the Busy Bee, and old Mr. Eberhardt stumped over every afternoon with yesterday's Bozeman Chronicle so she'd have a big-city newspaper to read.

  "Fred always liked to keep up," he told her.

  "So will I," Felicity had assured him. She could read the want ads, she thought, and look for a job.

  Serendipitously, a job found her.

  Polly's sister, who had been the third- and fourth-grade teacher in Elmer's seventy-six-student school, discovered in mid-August that the long-hoped-for baby she was expecting was actually going to be triplets.

  "She has to take it easy," Polly had told Felicity. "Stay flat on her back. And the babies aren't due until January."

  So Felicity had a job.

  And—for some unknown reason—two little girls tailing her.

  She stopped as usual in the post office to pick up her mail. When she came out they were still there, one dark head and one light brown, peeping over the hood of a pickup. Felicity smothered a smile and turned up Apple Street

  , heading home.

  Two small girls ducked and bobbed along behind.

  They only came halfway down the block, just far enough to be sure that she was going into her house. When Felicity peeked out again moments later, they were gone. "What are you two up to?" she murmured as she let the curtain fall.

  At first she had thought they had questions they were too shy to ask in class. Now she knew better. Susannah, a fourth grader, never seemed to have questions about anything, and every piece of work she turned in was excellent. Becky was a different story.

  Not shy at all, Becky had all sorts of questions. Work was another matter. A third grader with bright green eyes and a quicksilver smile, Becky Jones had done absolutely nothing in three weeks.

  Nothing—except wear spurs every day to school.

  * * *

  "They missed the bus again?" Taggart scowled when Noah put the cellular phone in the truck and ambled back to the corral to report the conversation he'd just had with his daughter. "How many times this week is that?"

  Noah shook his head and began once more to slap paint on the fence. "Three. And three last week. You reckon Orville is takin' off the minute the bell rings?"

  "Naw. He's been driving that bus since I was on it. It's gotta be that new teacher of theirs. She must be keeping 'em after."

  "Susannah never does anything to get kept after school!"

  "Takes after her mother, does she?" Taggart grinned. "Well, she will if she hangs around with Becky long enough."

  It wasn't that his daughter was a bad kid; she was just a challenging one. He figured it must run in the family. His dad had always said Taggart made life "interesting" for his parents. He supposed it was only fair that Becky made life interesting for him.

  "So, who goes and gets 'em today?" Noah asked.

  "Oughta make 'em walk," Taggart grumbled, but he set down his brush and started toward the truck. "I'll go."

  Noah grinned. "Want to get a look at the teacher, do you?"

  Taggart stopped. "No, why?"

  Noah shoved his hat back. "Susannah says she's a looker. Long blond hair, deep blue eyes. Didn't Becky tell you?"

  "Becky wouldn't notice."

  If it didn't have four legs—or eight—his daughter didn't know it was there. Becky noticed frogs and spiders and mice. She played with cats and puppies and colts. She didn't pay the least bit of attention to people—unless they were riding on horses. Or bulls.

  He doubted if she even knew her new teacher's name. And it would certainly never occur to her to tell him the woman was pretty.

  Not that he'd be interested if she did.

  Taggart Jones might have a wistful hormonal twinge every now and then—hell, what thirty-two-year-old man in possession of all the right hormones didn't?—but he could handle them.

  Far better than he could handle another marriage.

  So what if Noah and Tess were disgustingly happy in theirs? So what if both Noah's brothers, Tanner and Luke, and Taggart's friend, Mace—all well married—were as pleased as pigs in mud? That didn't mean he would be, even if he found someone he was ga-ga over.

  Which he hadn't. Wouldn't. Because, damn it, he wasn't looking.

  Oh, maybe he allowed his eyes to follow a pair of long legs and a curvy bottom in a pair of tight jeans from time to time. And maybe he wondered sometimes what it would be like these days to kiss a girl over the age of eight. But those were his hormones talking, not his common sense.

  Taggart's common sense told him that he'd had his shot with a woman and he'd blown it—big-time. It had taken him less than a year to drive Julie away. He didn't imagine another woman would want to hang around any longer than she had, even though he wasn't going down the road all year long anymore.

  He had other drawbacks now—like an almost eight-year-old girl.

  Not that he personally considered Becky a drawback. As far as he was concerned, his daughter was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  He might not think too highly of Julie in other respects, but he thanked God every day for the daughter she'd given him. And since she'd hated him and their life so much, he even thanked God that she'd left. He did it again now as he started up the truck and headed toward town.

  He and Becky were doing fine just the way they were.

  * * *

  Two

  « ^ »

  "May I please speak to Mr. or Mrs. Jones?"

  Accustomed to calls from cowboys wanting to sign up for bull- and bronc-riding school or livestock dealers intent on selling him or his dad some cattle, Taggart was startled when the voice he heard was female, soft in his ear, yet clear and warm like honey. His folks must be making new friends.

  He leaned against the barn door and tucked the cellular phone against his shoulder. "Sorry. They've moved to Bowman."

  "Bowman?" The woman sounded flustered. "But I thought… This is Felicity Albright. I teach their daughter, Becky…"

  Taggart fumbled the phone. Hell, how was he supposed to know she wanted him? Nobody ever called him Mr. Jones! And everybody knew there wasn't a Mrs. Jones, didn't they? He'd forgotten that Becky's teacher was new in town.

  He rescued the phone and cleared his throat. "Sorry. I thought you meant … never mind. I'm Becky's dad."

  "Ah." He could hear relief in her voice. "I'm so glad to reach you, Mr. Jones. I'd like to talk with you. I wondered if you could drop by some afternoon?"

  "Talk with me? Like a conference, you mean? I thought conferences were in October."

  "Well, yes. I realize it's a little early, but—" she hesitated "—there are some things I'd like to discuss with you."

  Like why she was making Becky miss the bus every night? That'd be nice, Taggart thought. He straightened, shrugging his shoulders against the wooden door. "I wouldn't mind discussin' a few things with you, either, Ms., um—" What the hell had she said her name was?

  "Albright," she supplied in his groping silence. "I gather Becky hasn't been talking much about school?"

  "I reckon she's got other things on her mind."

  "I reckon." Her echo of his words seemed somewhat dry. "That's one of the things I'd like to discuss with you, Mr. Jones. When can you come?"

  "Tomorrow?" Might as well get it over with. Maybe she'd stop keeping Becky after school that way, too.

  "Wonderful. About three-fifteen or so?"

  "Why not? I been coming in three times a week anyhow. You know they been missing the bus, don't you?" He knew he sounded accusing, but he had a right to. She'd been inconveniencing everybody. He'd intended to tell her yesterday when he picked the girls up, but she hadn't been anywhere around.

  "I thought they must be."

  "And you kept 'em, anyhow?"

  "I haven't been keeping them, Mr. Jones. Becky and Susannah are choosing to stay late."

  His brows hiked up. He'd always known his daughter was bright and clever and capable, but he'd never known her to expend much of that b
rilliance or cleverness on school before. "How come?"

  "I was hoping you could tell me."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Perhaps it would be better if we discussed it tomorrow. I do want you to know, though, how much I've been enjoying Becky in class. She's very … interesting. A challenge."

  That sounded ominous. But then, maybe this Ms. Albright was one of those rigid, toe-the-line types who didn't appreciate a little girl who marched to a different drummer. Taggart rubbed his back against the barn door again and vowed to stick up for Becky. "She's a good kid," he said defensively.

  "Yes, she is. I'm looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Jones."

  "I'll be there."

  * * *

  Felicity felt a little foolish asking for a conference with Becky's parents. It wasn't as if the little girl was doing anything dreadful. She wasn't.

  She wasn't doing anything at all. No work. No papers. Nothing.

  Except wearing spurs. And tailing her teacher after school. And on Saturday, too, now—if last Saturday was anything to go by.

  Felicity had been standing in the checkout line at the grocery store when she glanced up and saw Becky and Susannah peeping in the window. The moment they realized she'd seen them, they ran off.

  Felicity had been tempted to ask Carol Ferguson, the checker, if she'd ever been tailed around town. Was it perhaps something all newcomers to Elmer experienced? But somehow the topic never came up—and it wasn't easily worked into a conversation. But eventually Felicity expected she'd get to the bottom of it. Maybe when she met the Joneses.

  She had to admit to a certain curiosity about Becky's parents. Her father, according to Becky, was a bull rider. A world champion bull rider.

  "He rode nine out of ten bulls at the National Finals two years ago. And I'm gonna be just like him when I grow up." She never mentioned her mother. Obviously the father had all the charisma in the family.