I
n the week since Open House, Brandy’s sullenness had deepened into outright animosity. Yesterday the simple request that she rewrite an illegible assignment had brought on a temper tantrum that had earned the girl ten minutes in time out. The day before she had been reprimanded for pushing in line. The day before that for saying a bad word.
The confrontation which had been building had the feel of an old-time shoot-out at high noon.
“You’re not my mother, and you can’t tell me what to do!”
Arms akimbo, Brandy challenged her teacher in front of the entire class. Standing defiantly rigid beside her desk, she refused to erase the message she had written on the chalkboard when Carrie’s back was turned.
“Go home Jackalope Marm!”
Carrie took a deep breath and checked her watch. “The rest of the class is dismissed for recess.”
Taking her time arranging papers on her desk, she
waited for the last student to leave the room before meeting Brandy’s icy sapphire eyes straight-on.
“What’s this all about?” she demanded.
“Why don’t you just go home where you belong?” the girl snapped.
“What on earth would make you say that?”
Carrie truly wanted to understand the reason for Brandy’s sudden public display of antipathy. In the three weeks that school had been underway, she had made a determined effort to reach out with kindness to the youngster who bristled like a porcupine whenever she was offered a simple compliment. No matter how surly or contrary Brandy reacted, Carrie persisted in chipping away at her defenses with patience and kind- ness. And up until Open House, she had felt certain that they were making progress toward establishing a posi- tive connection. Had Judson repeated her concerns and somehow upset the girl?
“You just should, that’s all,” the child mumbled.
“Come on, out with it,” Carrie persisted. “You can be honest with me.”
At this, Brandy quirked an eyebrow exactly as her father did before speaking his mind. “Okay—you don’t have to leave, but I want you to leave my daddy alone!”
The earnestness of the entreaty rendered Carrie speechless. Aware that Brandy was closely monitoring her reaction, baiting her for any defensive response that would help justify her blatant disrespect, she knew it was crucial to remain not only calm but also empathetic. Carrie chose to let Brandy have her uninterrupted say.
Tossing a long, dark braid over her shoulder, the girl offered a curious explanation. “You’re no good for him…You’re gonna get him in trouble!”
Carrie’s brow wrinkled in confusion. Since when did
Judson Horn need protection from anything or any- body?
“What kind of trouble are you talking about?” she asked.
“The kind of trouble an Indian gets into when he looks at a white woman the wrong way! The kind that’ll get me killed on the playground!”
Carrie was shocked. Recalling Cody Trent’s barroom racial slurs, she realized she really shouldn’t be. In a community as small and conservative as this, it was little wonder that Brandy had been privy to some un- savory stories about her father’s background. What she didn’t realize was that Judson himself had openly dis- cussed the scars upon his back with both his children. That a couple of Brandy’s classmates continued to em- bellish the story just to see her fly into a rage was com- mon knowledge to everyone but Carrie herself.
A profusion of questions tumbled through her mind. Had she somehow been the cause of someone taunting Brandy or Cowboy at recess? Had Judson perhaps broached the topic of their budding relationship with his children? Was the chemistry between them as obvious to everyone as it apparently was to Brandy? Could her feelings for him really put him in danger?
Seeing the girl’s hands clenched into tight fists at her sides, Carrie worried more for any would-be tormenter than for Brandy herself. A formidable opponent for even the older boys in the class, Brandy would likely make short order of any woman casting sidelong glances in her father’s direction.
Suddenly the cause of the child’s misbehavior seemed obvious to Carrie. Having been the queen of the house for over a decade, Brandy wasn’t about to give up her position without a fight. Frightened by the prospect
of losing her most precious possession—her fa- ther—she had come up swinging.
“You’re just like her!” Brandy stormed with a mewl of pain.
Carrie understood that she was referring to her mother, the woman Judson said had abandoned the twins at birth.
The vulnerability so carefully hidden behind Bran- dy’s hard tomboy facade rose to the surface as tears puddled in eyes so very like her father’s. Though Carrie longed to reach out, wrap her arms around the child and quash all of her fears, she didn’t dare. The probability was high that the girl would react like a cornered wol- verine. Suspecting that the girl carried inside her the deep-seated belief that she was unlovable and had somehow caused her mother to reject her, Carrie felt certain that Brandy needed time, patience and a good counselor. The hard part was going to be convincing Judson.
Taking the girl’s hand into her own, Carrie squeezed reassuringly. That Brandy did not immediately pull away was encouraging.
“Don’t you think maybe you’re overreacting? You have nothing to fear from me, Brandy,” Carrie contin- ued gently. “Love isn’t a competition. It’s never less- ened in the giving.”
Carrie knew it might be too much to expect a child, so deeply hurt and scared, to reason like an adult. Al- ready having lost her mother, Brandy obviously couldn’t afford risking the loss of her father, as well. But Carrie persisted, trying to reason with her.
“Sweetheart, don’t you know how much your father loves you? That nobody in this whole world can take him away from you?”
Crossing her fingers behind her back, Brandy asked with false nonchalance, “Do
you
know that Daddy’s going to marry Estelle?”
The news struck Carrie like a meteor. White-hot pain sliced through her. Exposed to this unexpected revelation, all the lies she ever had told herself about not falling for Judson simply fell apart.
Anger immediately followed on the heels of anguish. Carrie resisted the urge to grab the closest object and fling it against the wall in a temper tantrum to rival the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s. She was an idiot, and all men were jerks out to play her for the fool. Judson Horn and Scott Ballson were the same under the skin— brother skunks.
It was hard to believe that a man could kiss her so passionately without giving any indication that he was actually engaged to someone else. Carrie couldn’t imag- ine when it could have happened. Then again, Estelle had made quite a point of telling her that Judson wasn’t the marrying kind, and as mad as she had been the night of the party, the fiery beauty had left Carrie with the definite impression that their relationship was on the skids.
Was it possible that Brandy had simply made the whole story up for reasons of her own?
Politely congratulating Brandy on her father’s up- coming wedding, Carrie sent her out for the last few minutes of recess. Bright and early tomorrow morning she intended to pay Mr. Horn a visit at home. If Brandy was lying, it would simply highlight the need for her to seek counseling. If she was telling the truth, Carrie would simply have to make Judson rue the day he’d ever been born.
Judson prided himself on the fact that there was little on earth that scared him. And that’s what made Carrie’s kisses all the more disturbing. They left him shaking in his size twelve boots. Something in those feathery-soft kisses resurrected a demon he thought he had slain a long, long time ago. For the past two nights, his sleep had been riddled with erotic, impossible dreams that left him sheathed in sweat.
Even if he could bring himself to simply stay away from Carrie in the future, which he sincerely doubted, she would probably suspect the truth—that he was avoiding her out of pure fear. Fear that history would repeat itself in the same ugly pattern etched upon his back. This time, however, Judson knew there was more to consider than just himself. He had to think about how any relationship he entered into would ultimately affect his children. His first obligation was to them. And though he had the sneaking suspicion that Cowboy would be delighted to see his father’s relationship with his teacher blossom into something more constant, he wasn’t sure how Brandy would react.
Shucking off his covers, Judson decided that it was a perfect day to ride out to check on his hunting camp before the season opened—anything to put as much dis- tance between him and the enchanting pair of emerald eyes that had tormented him throughout the nights.
Besides it was a matter of necessity to get things ready for the arrival of the rich Eastern clients whom he was expecting. What they were paying for was a trophy hunt, not any part of the work required to make it happen. It would certainly be easier to make prepa- rations now while the weather was still relatively nice than to try and fight the snow and bitter cold that was sure to come.
Carrie was up with the sunrise Saturday morning de- termined to seek out the truth of Brandy’s claim that her father was soon to be married. She poured herself a cup of coffee to drink on the way over to Judson’s ranch, the Blue Sky Lodge. Though much of the snow from earlier in the week had already disappeared, it felt like the cold had settled in for what was going to be a very long winter. Patches of thin ice cracked beneath her boots as she made her way from her pickup to the corral where Judson was in the process of saddling up his favorite stallion, a black cutting horse, Cowboy had told her was named Washakie.
The uneven ground, stamped by tire treads and horse hooves, was muddy in spots where the ice had yielded to the sun. Carrie had dressed appropriately in jeans, a bulky coat and boots. She stopped for a moment to ob- serve Judson pull himself into the saddle with the un- conscious grace of a natural athlete. Tall and at ease in the saddle, Carrie thought the expression “larger than life” fit Judson Horn as well as those worn jeans that caused her pulse to flutter so. When he finally turned his head and marked her presence, she noticed that the contours of his face were as sharp and clean as the Wind River Mountains looming in the background.
His sexy Western drawl was slow and easy. “What brings you here so early on a Saturday morning?” he asked, characteristically getting to the point without any small talk.
The gravel in that voice was unmistakable in the way it wound itself around her nerve endings. The memory of this man’s kisses was still warm upon her lips, send- ing a quiver of liquid fire to a place low and deep in
her body. The sky was as vivid blue as the eyes that swept over her.
In that instant Judson noted that Carrie had on the same shiny, new boots that she had worn at the Harvest Ball and a pair of jeans that caused a man to consider the need for a cold shower.
“I need to talk to you.”
Her tone indicated that this was not a social visit, and the sudden surge of joy Judson felt at seeing Carrie so unexpectedly was replaced by an ominous sense of mis- giving.
It had been his experience that whenever someone from school came calling, it meant trouble. Many had been the time when he had covered his mother’s drunken form beneath a blanket to face the authorities by himself, armed only with the standard line that his mom was too sick to come to the door.
Carrie’s somber manner created a sense of déjà vu that made Judson instinctively protective of his own brood. What had those two rascals of his been up to now?
Beneath the brim of his hat, blue eyes issued a chal- lenge as he bent to offer her a hand. “Hop on if you want to talk. I’ve got business to attend to.”
Carrie eyed the beast critically.
A cynical smile curled Judson’s lips. He was sure she had about as much desire to spend time on horseback as he did attending a high society tea.
But Carrie had only to think of her reason for being here to put aside her apprehension about climbing atop a horse as big as a building. She firmly clasped Judson’s outstretched hand. He pulled her up with little effort, leaving her to figure out some way to keep from falling off the back end of the horse.
Judson kneed the horse, and Carrie was pitched for- ward against a back as sturdy as the wall that she was certain to encounter in the ensuing conversation. Slip- ping her hands around his waist, she made a wild grab for the saddle horn.
“It’s not a brake,” Judson chided, covering her hands with his own.
How rough those hands felt against her own smooth skin. Unbidden images of those masculine hands ca- ressing every inch of her body caused Carrie to squirm uncomfortably. Each surefooted step the horse took along the trail jostled her against Judson’s lean, hard body. Feeling her heart beating rhythmically next to his, she became aware how very like two nesting spoons their bodies fit together.
Amazed at how truly powerful the animal underneath her was, Carrie could better understand how a man like Judson was so intrinsically connected to the land. The horse himself seemed an inviolate link to his indepen- dent way of life.
After a while Judson asked, “What’s so pressing that you felt the need to make a personal house call?”
“I understand that congratulations are in order.”
“What for?” Judson asked, thinking perhaps one of the children had won some kind of an academic contest.
“On your upcoming marriage to Estelle Hanway.”
Judson pulled hard on Washakie’s reins and twisted around in the saddle to look her square in the face. “Where in the hell did you get that idea?” he de- manded in an accusatory manner.
“Brandy told me.”
“Where’d
she
get that idea?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out,” Carrie replied evenly.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t from me!”
Seeing the doubt and the pain reflected in the endless meadows of Carrie’s green eyes, Judson found himself on the defensive. Every time Estelle brought up the is- sue of matrimony, he had made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t ever going to marry again. He doubted that she was the source of this disquieting rumor.