“I’m going to bed,” she told Lizzy.
“But—”
“Good night,” Jenny said firmly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Lizzy seemed about to protest, but Jenny’s expression must have warned her to save it. Instead, she pulled Jenny into a fierce hug.
“I love you. Remember that. And so does everyone else in the family. It’s not up to you to save us all by yourself. It never has been.”
Jenny smiled wanly. “I know.” She only wondered how sorely tested that love was going to be when the others learned the truth about what she’d done tonight, when they realized she could have protected White Pines and hadn’t done so.
* * *
Jenny hadn’t thought it possible, but Tuesday turned out to be an even worse nightmare than Monday had been. Petey was so completely out of control, so totally defiant, that by noon she’d marched him down to the principal’s office and left him there, ignoring Patrick Jackson’s expression of triumph. Obviously the principal was pleased she’d lost control again.
Petey looked slightly chagrined when she went to get him after lunch. In fact, he even apologized, albeit halfheartedly.
“I didn’t mean to make Felicity cry,” he told her as they walked back to the classroom together. “But she’s such a little suck-up.” He slanted a look at Jenny. “I told Mr. Jackson that, too. I guess I sort of forgot he’s her dad. I thought for sure he was gonna have a stroke.”
Jenny had to work very hard not to laugh. “I can imagine,” she said.
Jenny actually shared Petey’s opinion of Felicity, but that didn’t excuse Petey’s tormenting the child earlier by stealing her homework and making all her answers incorrect. Felicity, who prided herself on her neatness, had been humiliated not just by the inexplicable mistakes on her papers, but by the sloppiness of the work. She’d been in tears when Jenny had insisted she hand the paper in or get an F on the assignment.
One look at the messy work and Jenny had guessed what had happened. One look at Petey’s smug expression and Timmy McPherson’s triumphant one had confirmed it. Getting Petey to admit he was responsible had been traumatic for all the students, every one of whom she’d threatened with detention if someone didn’t confess.
She glanced at Petey. “Why did you do it? I don’t want to hear that stuff about Felicity being a teacher’s pet. I can see why that might make her an easy target. Why did you feel that you had to do something you knew I would punish you for?”
“I dunno,” he whispered, looking miserable.
“I don’t buy that. Come on, Petey. Tell me why. Did this have something to do with Timmy again?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
He sighed heavily. “Do I have to tell?”
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I want the whole truth this time.”
“I guess it’s because you pay attention to me when I do stuff,” he said, avoiding her gaze.
She stared at him incredulously. “Petey, I’d pay attention to you if you were good, too.”
“But you wouldn’t come to the house and stuff.”
“I’m confused. I thought you didn’t like me coming around. I thought you didn’t like me at all because of who I am.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I figured out you were kinda okay and you made Dad laugh sometimes, the way he used to.”
Jenny saw that for the supreme compliment it was. Coming from Petey, who’d been raised to dislike anyone connected to Harlan Adams, it was high praise, indeed. As for her ability to make Chance smile, that was yesterday’s news, but apparently Petey didn’t know it yet.
“I’m glad you think I’m okay,” she said quietly. “I think you’re pretty okay, too.” She regarded him soberly. “But I’d like you even more if you’d stop doing these terrible things to your classmates just to get my attention.”
“But I want you to keep coming to the house. I think Dad does, too.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Jenny protested. In fact, she was fairly confident she wouldn’t be seeing any more of Chance Adams than was absolutely necessary from now on. “Look, maybe you and I can get a soda at Dolan’s after school once in a while. Or maybe you can come over to White Pines and go riding with me.”
His eyes widened and he gazed at her hopefully. “Really?”
“I’ll try to work it out. I promise.” She stared at him intently. “But only if you’re on your best behavior in class from now on, okay?”
He grinned. “Okay.” He raised his hand to give her a high five.
“Since we’re on a roll here,” she said, “maybe you should work on getting those grades up, too. You’re a whole lot smarter than you’ve been letting on.”
He shrugged. “Maybe a little.”
Jenny chuckled. “A’s and B’s. I won’t settle for anything less.”
“Okay, okay. You’re worse than Dad. It’s way too much pressure for a little kid like me.”
“Oh, I think you can handle it,” she said with confidence. After all, he’d just manipulated her into doing exactly what he’d wanted. He had those Adams genes in spades.
As they reached the door to the classroom, Petey hung back. “Can I ask you something? It’s something I can’t really talk to my dad about.”
“Of course,” she said at once. His tone alerted her that whatever was on his mind was something very serious to him. “But I’ll bet you could talk to your dad about it if you wanted to. He cares about you, Petey. You know that.”
“I know. It’s just that this is about Mom, and sometimes talking about her makes him real sad.”
Jenny’s heart seemed to stop. She’d never considered that Chance might still harbor feelings for the wife he’d lost two years earlier. “What about your mom?” she asked quietly.
Petey gazed up at her with tear-filled eyes. “Do you think it’s terrible that sometimes it’s real hard for me to remember her?”
Jenny knelt down and gathered him close, oblivious to the possibility that someone might come along and see her comforting one of her students, especially one she’d banished to the principal’s office only a couple of hours earlier.
“Oh, sweetie, it’s perfectly normal to forget sometimes. You were very young when she died.”
“But she was my mom,” he protested. “I should remember what she looked like and not have to stare at some old picture to get it right.”
“I know.” She tapped the center of his chest gently. “I’ll bet you never forget the way you felt about her right here, in your heart.”
His expression brightened a little. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “That’s true.”
“It’s not the details that are important, not the color of her eyes or the shape of her nose, but the times you shared and the way she made you feel. Those memories will never go away.”
Petey regarded her worriedly. “Not even if I got a new mom someday?”
Jenny grinned and tried not to turn weepy at the realization that she wouldn’t be that new mom. “Not even then,” she assured him.
His expression turned sly. “Then I guess I’ll tell Dad it’s okay if he decides to marry you.”
Jenny winced. The kid truly did have lousy timing. “Maybe you’d better not tell him that just now.”
“How come? I think he wants to.”
What the heck was she supposed to do now? she wondered. Tell him she’d turned down his father’s proposal? That was news best delivered by Chance. She suspected he was going to be stunned that Petey had even been thinking along those lines.
“Sweetie, marriage is a very grown-up decision,” she explained. “Maybe you’d better just leave that up to your dad.”
“Are you sure? Sometimes he can be real mule-headed about stuff. At least that’s what Grandpa used t
o say. He said when Dad gets that way, he needs a good shove.”
“I doubt he meant for you to do the shoving,” Jenny said. “Now let’s get back to class, okay?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Jenny grinned. “You don’t have to sound so overjoyed about it.”
“Hey,” he said, “it’s school. I’m a kid. What do you expect?”
Jenny sighed. There were days, she was forced to concede, when she felt pretty much the same way.
Still, it had been a good conversation, if ever so slightly disconcerting. In fact, her relationship with Chance aside, she’d begun to feel fairly hopeful about life in general by the time she drove home that afternoon.
The feeling didn’t last. The sight of all the cars and trucks in front of the house brought her spirits crashing right back down. Something was wrong if everyone in the family had turned up in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday.
Jenny took the front steps two at a time and burst into the living room where everyone was gathered, their expressions as somber as if a major illness had struck.
“Daddy?” she asked at once. “Is he—”
“I’m just fine, darlin’ girl,” he said quietly, coming up behind her and giving her shoulder a squeeze. “I was just in the kitchen getting something to drink. It’s the rest of ’em. They’ve all got their feathers ruffled.”
Relief washed over her, only to vanish as she studied the somber faces in the living room. “What now?” she asked.
To her surprise it was her mother who answered.
“I had a call today from an attorney in Dallas, a big-shot partner at a firm with a dozen names on the masthead,” Janet said.
Jenny felt her stomach clench. Only one piece of legal business she could think of would draw everyone in the family together on the spur of the moment. “About?” she asked reluctantly.
“That mean-spirited snake of a cousin of ours is suing for half of White Pines,” Cody snapped.
Jenny reached for the back of a chair to brace herself. He couldn’t have. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since she’d turned down his marriage proposal. Had he made all the arrangements ahead of time just in case she said no? Or had he planned to do it all along no matter what she said? Maybe he’d just been playing a sick game with her.
“Damn him,” she muttered.
“My sentiments exactly,” Luke chimed in bitterly. “I don’t know where the hell he gets off waltzing into town after all these years and stirring up trouble.”
“Maybe if you all had done the thinking I asked you to do and settled on a solution, it wouldn’t have come to this,” her father said quietly.
Jenny swallowed hard and said, “I could have stopped it. I’m sorry.” With that she burst into tears and ran from the room, leaving everyone except Lizzy gaping after her.
“I’ll talk to her,” Janet said.
Jenny heard her mother hurrying up the stairs behind her, but she didn’t slow down. She just wanted to get to her room and throw herself on the bed and cry until she had no more tears left.
How could she possibly have gone and fallen in love with a man capable of hurting everyone she cared about? And that was what she had done. She’d realized it the night before when she’d had so much trouble taking off that beautiful ring he’d bought for her for all the wrong reasons. The sad truth had echoed in her head just that afternoon when Petey had talked about her becoming his mom.
She made it as far as the bed, but the hot angry tears had barely begun to spill when her mother sat down next to her and pulled her into her arms.
“Okay, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” Janet asked.
Her gentle reasonable tone had a calming effect on Jenny’s distress. “I’ve made a real mess of things,” Jenny said, sniffing. “I thought I could work it out with Chance, keep him from doing this, but I’ve only made it worse.”
“How?”
She took a deep breath, then blurted, “He said if I’d marry him, he’d settle for my share of the ranch and forget about suing.”
Her mother stared at her in shock. “He what?”
Jenny regarded her ruefully. “You heard me. He was trying to blackmail me into marrying him.”
“Why, that rotten low-down scoundrel!” her mother exclaimed. “How could he put you in such a terrible position?” Holding Jenny’s shoulders, she searched her face. “You turned him down, didn’t you? You told him to taking a flying leap, right?”
Jenny nodded. “More or less.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Well, good. The whole idea is absolutely ridiculous.” She paused and studied Jenny’s face again. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” Jenny said, then sighed.
“Oh, no,” her mother whispered. “You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you? Harlan told me he’d seen all the signs of it, but I thought it was just wishful thinking.”
“I don’t know, maybe,” Jenny admitted brokenly. “God, what a mess!”
Janet stood up and began to pace. “Maybe not,” she said thoughtfully.
“Mother, I know that tone of voice. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that Chance Adams would never have made such an outrageous proposal if he wasn’t at least half in love with you, too.”
“No,” Jenny said bleakly. “I think this was just part of his revenge. He got me all tied up in knots when he intended all along to sue for half of everything we owned. If I’d said yes, he probably would have abandoned me at the altar just to make his revenge complete.”
“He didn’t sue until today,” her mother reminded her. “After you’d said no. Maybe he’s simply trying to force your hand, show you he means business.”
“This isn’t about me,” Jenny said adamantly. “It’s about White Pines. It always has been. He came to town to get revenge and now he has, or at least he’s put the wheels in motion.”
“I’m not convinced of that,” her mother insisted. “I think there’s more to it. Do you mind if I go down and tell the others what’s been going on?”
Jenny resisted the idea. She knew, though, they had to be told. In the end she was forced to admit as much, but she didn’t want her mother stuck with the dirty work.
“Give me a few minutes to get my act together and I’ll tell them,” she said finally. “They might as well hear straight from the horse’s mouth just how big a fool I’ve been.”
Her mother chuckled. “You tell them like that and they’re liable to go over there and lynch the guy.”
“Why?”
“For hurting you.”
The prospect held a certain sick appeal. “Do you really think they would do that for me?”
“These are Adams men you’re talking about,” Janet reminded her dryly. “Protecting those they love is what they do best.”
“So telling them this will stir up a real hornets’ nest,” Jenny said thoughtfully.
“It’s what Chance deserves, don’t you think?”
Jenny sank back down on the edge of the bed. “Wait a minute, though. What will it solve in the long run?”
“It may not solve anything,” her mother conceded. “But right now I’d like to see him with a bloody lip and a couple of black eyes, wouldn’t you?”
“No,” Jenny said at once, then changed her mind. “Yes.” She sighed. “Maybe.”
Her mother chuckled at her indecision. “Well, as much as you and I would take satisfaction in that, I think maybe if we all put our heads together, we can come up with something a whole lot more devious.”
“To save White Pines?”
“Of course not,” her mother said, waving off the suggestion as if the ranch was the least important issue on earth. “To get the man to admit he loves you.”
Jenny’s mouth gaped
. “Weren’t you listening? He doesn’t love me.”
“Oh, I think he does,” her mother countered. “But if he’s like most men, he just might not realize it yet.”
13
Chance walked out of Wilkie’s barn after feeding the horses for the night and came to a dead halt. There was a parade of pick-ups coming up the driveway, and unless his eyesight was going bad, each one was driven by an Adams. He guessed they’d gotten the word about his suit.
The decision to file it had been impulsive, made in the middle of the night when Jenny’s rejection had cut deep into his heart. He’d put it together first thing this morning after a flurry of phone calls and faxes to an attorney in Dallas Wilkie had recommended.
He kept his gaze fixed warily on the approaching trucks. Despite the implications of that convoy, he felt more exhilarated than frightened. It was all finally going to come to a head right here and now. He’d suspected they wouldn’t wait around to settle things in court.
He walked toward the fence around the corral, propped a booted foot on the bottom rail and waited. His pulse hammered in his ears.
All his planning and scheming had come to this. The irony, of course, was that with every scheme he’d mentally concocted he’d found himself losing just a smidgen of his heart to a prim and prissy schoolteacher of all things. An Adams.
And that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be at all. He was supposed to be immune to all these conniving Texas relations. He was supposed to be completely focused on his goal.
And for a brief while he had actually been able to view Jenny purely as a means to an end, but something had happened in recent weeks that scared the dickens out of him. She was rattling him, leaving him tongue-tied and sweating and aching so damned badly, he needed a dozen cold showers to relieve the tension. Last night had been the worst.
Petey wasn’t helping matters, either. For some reason or other, his son had fallen under Jenny’s spell, too. Last night of all nights he had talked about her nonstop and actually had the audacity to offer the two of them his blessing.
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