by Deb Kastner
The other boy nodded voraciously. “Yeah. Me, too. Sorry, Whitley.”
“That’s a decent start, young men, but unfortunately for you, it’s not good enough.” Tessa continued to march between the two boys, reminding Cole of his recruit division commander in navy boot camp. She had a sense of authority about her that permeated both her voice and the air around her. “Here at Redemption Ranch, we have a zero tolerance policy where violence is concerned, and this—”
She paused and worried her lower lip. Cole’s fists clenched the leather reins he held beneath the horses’ chins, not because the horses were giving him any trouble, but because it was all he could do not to step in and take over for Tessa. She appeared to be faltering, if only for a moment. He’d led his fair share of men in the navy and knew he would have no problem exhibiting a commanding presence that would have those ill-behaved boys shaking in their fancy sneakers.
He restrained himself only when he realized Tessa had everything under control—her features were evenly schooled and the boys were slump-shouldered and cowering. He didn’t know why, but for some reason, this particular prank had rubbed Tessa the wrong way and made her especially emotional. Cole admired the way she’d stopped herself before she’d gone overboard and said or done something she might later regret. Yes, the boys had played a mean joke on Whitley, but Cole didn’t think it had been malicious, and everything had turned out all right in the end. Thankfully, Whitley hadn’t been hurt, and though it had taken the boys a while to admit their part in the prank, they now appeared genuinely repentant. From the expression on Tessa’s face, Cole guessed she must have been thinking the same thing and come to the same conclusion he had.
“I don’t want to see anything like this happen again. One more prank and you guys will be out of here, sporting fluorescent orange vests and picking up trash along the side of the highway. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boys said in unison. Cole bit back a smile. Tessa would have them marching a straight line yet. He had to admit it was impressive to watch her with her teenage charges.
“And just to make sure you understand the severity of your actions, you’ve earned extra stable duties. You’ll both be mucking all of the stalls every morning for a week. Up at dawn, no excuses. The rest of your friends will enjoy a break from that particular chore, which I’m sure they’ll appreciate. They’ll probably want to thank you,” she concluded with a wry smile.
Tessa certainly knew what she was doing, Cole thought as he assisted the boys back onto their mounts. She’d helped those kids—all of them—and had taught them an important lesson. He had no doubt they would be better off for it.
He was amazed to find he barely recognized the woman she’d become. He’d once known a shy girl whose only extroverted act was giving life to her characters on a theater stage. Now she was a leader, mentoring new groups of teenagers on a monthly basis, and that was no easy feat. Not something he ever wanted to do. Tessa had obviously learned a lot in college and in her work at Redemption Ranch. She cared—really put her whole heart into her work. He knew it, and the kids knew it. She made a genuine difference in the world.
Which gave him pause. Sure, he’d done his time in the navy. He’d do a respectable job as a wrangler here at the ranch. But what good had he done in the world?
Chapter Five
Tessa sighed and leaned back on her heels, pressing her palms into her thighs and stretching the small of her back. She’d been hunched over piles of sheet music for what felt like hours now, although in reality it had been more like forty-five minutes. She and Cole were meeting in another half an hour to go over their ideas for the teenagers’ musical performance for the June BBQ, and so far she had nothing.
It didn’t help that she was completely distracted. How could she not be, with Cole in the picture? She shook her head at her perceived weakness. She and Cole had talked very little during the past week, other than when she’d phoned him to set up an appointment to solidify their plans for the barbecue. That had been one awkward and stilted conversation, with her stammering and stuttering and him answering every one of her questions with the fewest words possible.
She’d never felt so mixed up in her life. Up, down, sideways and backward—and it was all Cole’s doing. That he could affect her that way annoyed her to no end. How could a man she hadn’t seen in over a decade have the ability to rattle her so completely, making her equal parts flustered and giddy?
Yes, okay, they had a history together, but they had both matured. She was not the flighty young girl she’d been when she’d last seen Cole, and he was not the green youth who had left Serendipity to join the navy and see the world. She needed to get a handle on her emotions and she needed to do it now, before they—before he—started affecting the quality of her work. The young men and women currently residing at the ranch needed all of her attention, not a counselor whose head was too often in the clouds.
Cole was in her mind even when she was purposefully going out of her way to avoid him. She hoped no one else saw her confused behavior. She’d never before had the inclination to drop her girls with the wranglers when it was time for them to work with the animals and pick them up when they were finished, but now she was making excuses for why she needed to be elsewhere.
Simply put, she wasn’t quite ready to face Cole again after her behavior during the trail ride. Here she was, trying to encourage him as a mentor to the teens, and then she’d gone all ballistic on the boys for their mean-spirited prank on poor, unsuspecting Whitley. Not exactly the best example of how to be a good counselor.
Maybe her father was right. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a counselor at a ranch for delinquent teenagers—not that she would have made a good lawyer, as her father wanted. She’d picked on Cole for his handling of Briana, and yet when it came to those boys and their reckless prank, her own behavior and overreaction had left much to be desired.
At least Cole had unintentionally hurt Briana’s feelings. She’d purposefully lined those boys up like a firing squad and gunned them down with her words—or at least that was how it felt to her in hindsight. She had lost control emotionally, and there was no excuse for that.
She sighed deeply and straightened the pile of sheet music nearest to her. She’d confessed to God and asked forgiveness from the boys, which she hoped would be an important emotional, spiritual and communicative lesson for them, one that they could actually emulate in the future. She wasn’t entirely in the wrong when she’d lectured the boys, and they still had to muck the stables for a week in reparation. Whitley could have been seriously hurt by their prank. But she still felt awful about the way it had gone down.
Music, she reminded herself, pulling out her cell phone to check the time and make sure there weren’t any pressing messages or emails. Like from Cole, saying he wasn’t going to show up. She half expected that’s exactly what was going to happen. He’d made it clear he wasn’t thrilled about having to participate in this project. But then again, neither was she.
She’d sorted through at least a hundred different pieces that the town kept in the small storeroom at the community center in a steel file cabinet so old the drawers barely opened. Most of the music pieces she’d sifted through were traditional Broadway tunes—the good stuff, where Tessa was concerned, but nothing that a group of modern urban youths would be interested in singing.
She might have been roped into this project against her will, but she hoped she would be able to catch the teenagers’ interest with the program. There were quite a few country and Western pieces, but again, not anything that had been written in the past couple of decades. Anyway, country music reminded her of the day she’d broken up with Cole. She didn’t even want to go there.
She blew out a breath and brushed a stray lock of hair back behind her ear.
“No luck finding anything yet?”
Cole’s resonant
voice startled her so completely that she fell backward, landing squarely on her bottom and sending piles of sheet music flying into the air.
He chuckled and bent to retrieve the papers nearest him, stacking them in a neat pile. “I hope these weren’t in alphabetical order.”
“Of course they weren’t,” she replied tartly. He reached for her and she reluctantly accepted his offer of assistance to right herself. So much for dignity. “I had them ordered by genre.”
“My bad.” His chuckle turned into a roll of laughter rumbling from deep in his chest. He took one of her hands in his and curved his other arm around her waist as she stood. He didn’t look as if he was here against his will. In fact, he appeared to be in a good mood.
“Oh, you brought Grayson.” She gestured toward the infant car seat, which Cole had evidently put down when he’d stooped to help her.
He flashed her a crooked grin. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought him along with me. My dad’s back is acting up again. I didn’t want him to have to care for a baby when he’s in pain, so I sent Dad to bed and ordered him to stay there. I just changed and fed Grayson, so he shouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“Of course I don’t mind that you brought your son,” Tessa exclaimed, reaching to pull the car seat nearer to her. “He won’t be any trouble at all. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to spend more time with this little guy.”
The second the words were out of her mouth, Tessa wished she could take them back. Her face flooded with heat. She’d probably given way more thought than she should have to Grayson and his handsome father, but to have blurted out those feelings—how was Cole going to interpret that illuminating statement?
She backtracked the best she could. “I hope your dad feels better soon.”
He cocked one eyebrow, and his blue eyes darkened to a stormy gray and filled with emotions Tessa couldn’t even begin to name. He looked as if he was going to speak, but then he appeared to brush off whatever thought he’d been about to express. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or curious about what he might have said. Perhaps both in equal measure. He turned his attention to his son, dropping forward onto his knees in order to be closer to Grayson’s car seat and rocking it gently to keep the baby calm.
Tessa’s chest tightened as she watched Cole with his infant. How could she not appreciate the love and gratitude pouring from his gaze, the smile on his lips that softened his features without taking away any of his masculinity? If anything, he’d never looked like more of a man than he did in his new role as a father. When he looked at Grayson, he lost the hard lines of stress that usually marked his face and the worry on his brow.
“So what are we going to do here?” he asked after a long pause. “About the music, I mean. What did you pick out for the kids to perform?”
“What did I pick out?” His question caught her by surprise, partially because her mind had been dwelling on him and his relationship with Grayson, and partially because she didn’t know how he’d gotten the notion that she was in charge of selection. They were supposed to be collaborating on the project, and they still had ten minutes yet before they were even technically supposed to meet. And he thought she’d be ready with the music they were going to use? That she’d already made all the decisions?
His assumptions rattled her more than she cared to admit. “Actually, I’m a little overwhelmed by the choices. As you can see, there are hundreds of sheets of music in the file cabinet. I was hoping you’d have some ideas to contribute,” she said, rustling another stack of music to a semblance of order. “I’ll be honest. At this point I don’t even know what genre I ought to be looking at.”
He held his hands up, palms out, as if to stop her flow of words. The lines of strain on his features had returned. “I’m here because I know better than to try to talk Jo Spencer out of anything, but that’s as far as it goes. This is your thing, Red. I don’t want to get in your way. Whatever you think is best. I’ll leave it entirely up to you.”
She gaped at him, righteous indignation and resentment swelling within her. Where had the pleasant man who’d greeted her only minutes earlier gone to hide? This was the guy who’d come back from the navy. Hardened and cynical.
“Are you serious right now? You’re dropping the whole thing on me? We were both asked to do this.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know how I’m going to be able to help you. I’m not mentor material. And as for music and theater—really not my thing. I’m not a singer. I was into football, remember?”
Oh, yes, she remembered, all right. Despite how annoyed she was with the man, warmth filled her chest and her stomach fluttered with the memory. Cole had been a football player. One of the stars on his team. She’d been the theater geek, the senior female lead in the annual high school musical production.
And then Cole had—
Her gaze met his and she forgot to breathe. His eyes warmed and sparkled with emotion as their thoughts became one. His expression grew serious and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
The world seemed to stop turning. The community center storage closet with its messy piles of sheet music littering the floor faded away.
They were there together in the past, deep into their shared memories.
The stage. The song. The gentle brush of his lips against hers.
He groaned softly. She thought it might have been her name. No—not her name. His special nickname for her. Red. He reached out a hand, drew his thumb along the base of her jaw. Framed her face, his fingers tangling in her hair. He leaned toward her, and she toward him. He angled his head, his warm breath fanning softly over her cheek. She closed her eyes.
And then Grayson wailed.
With an audible gasp, Tessa pulled away from Cole, her pulse roaring in her ears. What did she think she was doing? She felt dizzy and a little bit ill.
Cole scowled and turned to care for his son.
What had just happened—or almost happened?
For a moment, it had been as if the years had melted away, as if all the past hurts had never existed.
But they had. They did.
The feelings of loss and betrayal were all real, and they came zipping back at her, inside her, sharp and aching.
Cole looked dazed, as if she’d just slapped him. He cleared his throat and reached to unstrap Grayson from his car seat, regaining his composure as he embraced his son.
“Shush now. It’s okay, little man. Daddy’s here.”
Tessa scrambled to her feet, her head and her heart tumbling over each other. One second she’d been angry with him for dumping the whole project on her, and the next she’d nearly kissed him. What had she been thinking?
That was the problem. She hadn’t been thinking at all. With the mere mention of their past, her mind had promptly meandered into a history that was beyond repair, even if she—if they—wanted to try. Talk about making things go from bad to worse.
They both seemed to know without speaking that they needed a moment to recover. While Cole fussed over Grayson, Tessa filed folders of sheet music in the battered metal cabinet. None of it was any use to her, anyway.
She watched Cole and Grayson out of the corner of her eye. She’d always known Cole would be a good father, but the emotional maturity he had displayed just now impressed her. He’d been able to shove what had happened between them aside in the blink of an eye in order to care for his son.
He really was a different man now, a man she didn’t know. One who carried a heavy burden on his shoulders, yes, but also a man who could force those burdens aside for the sake of his child.
“What?” he asked when he glanced up and caught her staring at him.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about how the years have changed you—us,” she corrected herself, heat flaming her cheeks. “You’re an amazing father to Grayson.”
He made a sound from the back of his throat that almost sounded like a growl. “I don’t know that I agree with your assessment. I’m still on a tremendous learning curve where babies are concerned. Oftentimes I find myself feeling overwhelmed by all the responsibilities. I can’t imagine how I would have handled it if—”
His sentence slammed to a halt, leaving dead air in its wake.
“If what?” she prodded softly, not certain she wanted to hear the answer. She suspected she knew how this was going to end.
He ran a palm across the stubble on his jaw. “If we— If you and I had gotten married. You know, right out of high school. I thought I had everything in my life figured out, but I certainly wasn’t ready to be a father back then, even though in my ignorance I believed that I was. I’m not sure I’m ready for the challenge now, though I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances.”
“Parenthood is something I don’t think anyone is really ready for. Not that I can claim to be any kind of expert on the matter.”
“No, but when I think back on what almost happened, I can’t even fathom the consequences. We were just kids ourselves back then, not much older than those kids at the ranch. Can you imagine if we’d—”
“I don’t think a Broadway musical number is going to work for this group of teenagers,” she blurted, thrusting a random sheet of music at him. “I’ve considered dozens of them, but we’re never going to catch their interest with ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain.’”
Cole looked perplexed for a moment, and then his gaze slowly turned to acknowledgment and acceptance.
“No. That’s definitely not going to work.”
“Suggestions?” She was relieved that he was willing to change the subject. “I’m open to just about anything at this point.”
“Hip-hop?”
“Absolutely not,” she exclaimed. “I might have spoken in haste when I said I was open to anything. There will be no twerking at this barbecue.”
