As each stood to be formally introduced, Carrie sensed the amusement twinkling in Judson’s azure eyes. Leaning his long body against an old cottonwood, it seemed obvious that he was enjoying her discomfiture immensely.
How I’d like to wipe that smirk off your handsome face…
she thought to herself, extending her hand to a woman with a grin so wide she could have taken it off a jack-o’-lantern.
“Hi, my name’s Snuffy. I’m your bus driver, and I deliver your mail, too.”
Her broad smile revealed the reason for her peculiar name: a wad of chewing tobacco tucked neatly between her gum and bottom lip.
“Glad to meet you,” Carrie said, taking a callused hand into her own. The older woman’s grip was solid, her smile honest. Carrie liked her immediately.
“Afraid of being so far out all by yourself?” asked a bowlegged fellow whom Bill introduced as Ace. “Be- ing nothing more than a schoolhouse and a trailer, Har- mony can get to be a mighty lonesome place—espe- cially in the winter when you can get snowed in. Those who aren’t used to it tend to go stir-crazy.”
Duly suspicious now, Carrie looked for a hint of de- rision in the rancher’s weathered features, but all she could discern was genuine concern.
“I doubt if I’ll go stir-crazy, but I might get a little homesick,” she replied. And, as if to reassure the group that she was truly prepared for whatever emergency that
might come up, added quickly, “I’ll be fine once I get used to the area. I’m grateful to Mr. Horn for showing me how to set jackalope snares around the school. Now I’m sure I’ll feel safe when I’m out scouting around on my own.”
Carrie wasn’t sure what she had said that caused the entire group to burst into laughter, but her cheeks flamed crimson just the same.
“Jackalope snares, you say?”
The question caused another roar of laughter.
“I’d like to market something like that myself!” someone said, slapping Judson on the back in an act of camaraderie.
Suppressing a chuckle himself, her superintendent hastened to explain. “I’m afraid you’ve been had, Car- rie. There is no such thing as a jackalope. It’s just a traditional Wyoming joke to get the tourists going and to make a few bucks.”
Had a more perfect idiot ever been born? Carrie asked herself over the lump in her throat. So this is my initiation. Thank you so much for the warm Western welcome! Tipping up her chin defiantly, she turned to Judson Horn.
His chest tightened beneath her steady gaze. What had initially seemed purely comical now suddenly seemed mean-spirited. Outwardly the new school- teacher was handling all the joshing quite well, but he could easily read the betrayal glistening in those misty green eyes. He himself had long ago learned to control his body’s reflexes so as to hide any sign of pain. The fact that Carrie wore hers so openly only served to deepen his sense of guilt. Despite that plastic smile plas- tered on her face, she looked ready to cry. Kicking him- self for not divulging the truth as he had intended to do
the other day, he truly regretted that her humiliation had been so very public.
For someone who had just pulled off the practical joke of the decade, Judson Horn felt like the biggest jerk on the face of the earth.
Pushing himself away from the tree, he attempted to explain quietly.
“I meant to tell you before—”
“Before I made such a complete fool of myself, Mr. Horn?”
“Oh, no—” interrupted Bill Madden, anxious to smooth over any tension between the two. “I wouldn’t say that. In fact, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you how impressed I am with the fact that you’re such a good sport.”
Her superintendent tried to soften the sting of her embarrassment by telling a story about how the jack- alope had recently caused an international furor when a group of Wyoming businessmen brought along stuffed jackalopes as a gift for some Asian dignitaries on a goodwill visit. They were stopped at customs where of- ficials were certain the creatures should be on the en- dangered species list, and it took several hours to get somebody from the U.S. embassy to clear up the Wyomingites’ practical joke.
Suffering through the next couple of hours, Carrie endured the ribbing she received from everyone includ- ing the janitor and the city mayor. Despite Bill’s attempt at making light of her gullibility, the social Carrie had been so looking forward to had unfortunately proven to be far less “social” than she had anticipated. As far as she was concerned, the chairman of the board had ef- fectively accomplished what he had set out to do—sab- otage her first impression upon the small community.
Discreetly checking her watch, Carrie counted the minutes till she could slip quietly away. She thought no one noticed her collect her empty platter and head for the parking lot, but just as she was opening the door of her pickup to take her leave, she felt a hand upon her bare shoulder. Without looking up, she knew who it was. No one else in this world had such sexy, electric hands capable of setting her on fire and befuddling all her senses at once.
“Could you wait a minute?” Judson asked in a tone so deep and mellow it could qualify as a purr.
Removing the hand from her shoulder as if it were some sort of disgusting insect, Carrie responded dryly, “Sorry, I’m running late—got to rush home to check my traps for those treacherous jackalopes, you know.”
Her withering glance seemed to bounce right off Jud- son’s thick skull. In fact, the only effect her sarcasm seemed to have upon him was to deepen the dimples on both sides of his mouth.
“I’d be glad to help,” he offered with a lopsided grin.
Ignoring the fact that he looked appealingly like a naughty little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Carrie brushed him aside.
“You’ve
helped
more than enough already, thank you very much,” she snapped, climbing into her pickup and slamming the door shut.
Tears pricked at the back of her eyelids. The absolute last thing she wanted to do was to let her new boss see her break down and cry. Peeling out of the parking lot, she was gratified to see the chairman of the board in her rearview mirror brushing dust from his black felt hat.
Carrie reprimanded herself for such a silly, juvenile
outburst. A woman who generally prided herself on her composure, she couldn’t explain the effect Judson Horn had on her. Just because he was a class-one jerk didn’t necessarily mean she had to go out of her way to alien- ate the man who would be signing her paychecks.
She was surprised at how deeply his treachery hurt. Despite the fact that Judson had made it quite clear from the first that he didn’t think she belonged here, Carrie had nevertheless thought the man had felt a tiny mea- sure of tenderness toward her.
Dismissing the ache in her heart as disgust toward all men in general, she told herself that it was truly a bless- ing the way things had worked out. Having solemnly sworn to never, ever again become romantically in- volved with another employer—particularly one who deliberately went out of his way to make her look like an idiot—Carrie was glad for a good reason to end those foolish fantasies that had plagued her since the first time she laid eyes on this workingman’s cowboy.
Right now she assessed the chances of anything de- veloping between her and that despicable practical joker as being on par with her chances of having the Sweep- stake Prize Patrol waiting on her doorstep when she got home. Even if at some point in the distant future she could overcome the embarrassment of being so thor- oughly duped, Carrie wouldn’t make the same mistake again. She wasn’t up to risking her heart anew, to any man, and especially not to a brooding loner who acted as if she had single-handedly brought smallpox into his ancestors’ villages.
Still if there was any way of getting along with the chairman of the board, Carrie knew she would simply have to find it. One thing was for certain. She wasn’t up to another year like Scott Ballson had just put her through. Neither her heart nor her career could stand it.
C
arrie looked out at the freshly scrubbed faces and excited, squirming bodies that filled the small school- room on the first day of school. She had prepared her- self to encounter the same apathetic, hardened expres- sions that the children of Chicago public schools donned as a matter of daily armor. These sweet, eager faces looking expectantly up at her came as a complete surprise. Any one of them could easily adorn a cereal box touting old-fashioned Americanism.
To someone used to following a detailed, mandated curriculum it was disconcerting to obtain a class roster by simply passing around a piece of paper and having each child sign his name and grade. Carrie collected the class roster and studied the list. Two names jumped off the page: Brandy and Cowboy Horn, both in sixth grade.
Her heart skipped a beat.
“Cowboy?” she queried out loud.
What kind of parent would saddle a child with such a name?
One glance answered that question. Wearing brand- new jeans and looking up at her attentively was a min- iature replica of Judson Horn—right down to blue eyes the color of a clear mountain stream.
“Is Cowboy your nickname?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” the child said, setting his jaw in the selfsame manner of his father. “It’s real enough.”
An errant whisper floated through the room. “Crazy fool greenhorn!”
Carrie spotted the culprit immediately. A beautiful child of dark hair and complexion, the boy’s twin sister was surrounded by a tangible aura of anger.
The teacher’s bright smile was lost on the girl. Sul- lenly turning her eyes to the top of her desk, Brandy refused to make eye contact. Reminded of the biblical passage about the sins of the father being passed on to his children, Carrie could tell this girl had a chip on her shoulder the size of the Grand Canyon.
Knowing the unflattering outburst was simply par- roted from home, she tried not to hold the girl’s surliness against her. There was no reason whatsoever that the school year had to stretch into an unproductive bat- tle of wills. Besides, it wasn’t hard to imagine the type of home life a man like Judson Horn would provide. The very names of his children suggested a conception that occurred when one mixed cowboys with brandy….
Curbing her highly inappropriate thoughts, Carrie di- rected the children to her name written upon the black- board. Just as the empty grade book presented the small group assembled here with a fresh start, Carrie once again regarded her own life as a clean slate.
“Do any of you have any questions for me before we get to work?”
Immediately Brandy’s hand shot up.
“Did you
really
set jackalope snares around the school?”
The room erupted into nervous snickers at the im- pertinence of the question.
So much for starting out without any preconceived notions, Carrie thought to herself.
“I most certainly did,” she admitted with chagrin, countering yet another burst of tittering with complete candor. “As you know, I’m not from around here. So when someone pulled that trick on me, I fell for it. And even though it might seem funny to you, it hurt my feelings.” She paused and looked directly at each one of them. “I’d like to ask you all a big favor.”
This was a new turn of events. Every eye was on the lovely new schoolteacher.
“Since I’m new around here, I’m going to need your help to learn all about your beautiful state. I’d like very much for us each to learn from each other. I promise you that I won’t ever pull such mean tricks on you. I won’t allow anyone to be made fun of, say, for not reading as well as someone else, or maybe giving the wrong answer to a question. You don’t have to be afraid of not knowing something here. I think school should be a safe and a fun place for you to come each day.”
The children looked suspiciously at one another. Seemingly this sharing of the teaching task was a strange and exciting concept to them.
Cowboy broke the uncomfortable silence by raising two fingers in the air.
“Yes?”
Blushing furiously at the new teacher’s ignorance, he explained, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh,” Carrie responded with a smile. “Then you have my permission to leave the room.”
As he made his way around to the back of the build- ing to get to the bathroom that had been added onto the old structure when indoor plumbing had become avail- able, Cowboy stooped to open his pocket to let a water snake slither away in the long grass.
Despite the fact that it was a heck of a lot easier to simply let the kids catch the bus home, Judson delib- erately arrived early that first day of school to pick up his children and check on the progress the new school- teacher was making. He had no intention of any ill will between them affecting the way Ms. Raben treated his children.
“What the hell?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes in disbelief.
Decked out in their best back-to-school clothes, the entire group was sprawled out beneath a stand of as- pens. In their midst was their teacher, looking cool as a southern breeze in a pink seersucker suit, her matching heels tucked neatly beneath her long, folded legs. Cheryl Sue used to wear expensive, out-of-place outfits just like that. Judson remembered how that pretty pack- aging had disguised the shallow, insecure girl inside. The one who preferred holding on to her daddy’s money over the twins she had borne her half-breed husband.
Accepting a bunch of dandelions from a pupil, Carrie flashed the child a smile so genuine that even from a distance Judson could feel its warmth. Assuring himself that it was nothing more than sheer indignation that caused his heart to lurch so unnaturally against his
chest, he wondered how school could have changed so drastically from the way he remembered it.
Parking his pickup at the edge of the playground, he proceeded to amble over to the assembled group.
“A little early for school to be out, isn’t it?” he drawled.
“Daddy!” squealed Brandy, leaping up in delight, her artwork crumpled and forgotten in the grass. Ado- ration was clearly reflected in the girl’s lovely features.
Looking up at Judson from ground level, Carrie had a positively erotic view of his tight jeans. Over the weekend she had begun to doubt whether this man was truly as mouthwateringly sexy as she had remembered him or if her imagination had merely run away with her. The immediate fluttering of her senses reassured Carrie that it was not her imagination.
Taking a deep breath she forced herself to address him coolly as “Mr. Horn.” Still smarting from their last encounter, Carrie wished she could afford the lux- ury of ignoring him altogether. But since he was a pa- tron of the district, not to mention the chairman of the duly elected school board, that would be impossible.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken. School is not yet out, and that means you’re interrupting my class,” she added pointedly.
“We’re helping Miss Raben learn all about Wyo- ming,” Cowboy volunteered. “See!”
Proudly he thrust his drawing at his father, where- upon the rest of the children held their creations up for his inspection, as well. There were drawings of lupines and dandelions and meadowlarks and aspen, and a re- markably fat bumblebee crayoned by a cherubic kin- dergartner.
Judson pushed his hat back in that damnable sensual
way of his and wiped the sweat away with the sleeve of his plaid Western shirt.
“Now ain’t those pretty?” he said, rolling his sylla- bles over in a slow, rough-hewn manner that gave a whole new nuance to the word “drawl.”
“Aren’t,” corrected Cowboy, clearly embarrassed by his father’s grammatical shortcomings.
Carrie bestowed upon the boy a smile so sweet as to cause his father’s certain displeasure to fade into the distant horizon.
“Mr. Horn,” Carrie said, firmly taking hold of the situation, “would you please remain after school for a moment?”
Judson bore the children’s snickers humbly. Still, as he waited for them all to leave, fondly swatting his own two on the bottoms and telling them to wait for him in the truck, he felt his neck grow prickly at the thought of being held after school.
Positioning herself behind the fortress of her old oak desk, Carrie addressed him as she would any errant stu- dent. “I will not tolerate you undermining my author- ity,” she began in a quiet yet commanding tone.
Judson met the cold anger reflected in those sham- rock green eyes with the same defiance that had marked his own turbulent schooldays.
“How was I to know I was interrupting? What I walked into sure didn’t look anything like school the way I remember it.”
The remark only added fuel to the fire smoldering within the schoolteacher’s eyes.
“I suppose not,” Carrie countered in a tone that in- dicated she rather expected him to have been educated in a cave somewhere, possibly with a pack of wolves.
“Apparently,” she continued without missing a beat, “it was not enough for you to humiliate me in front of the entire school board, you had to make certain that every child in the entire school district was informed of how I fell for that ridiculous jackalope story.”
“Wait just a minute,” Judson interrupted. “It’s not fair for you to hold me entirely accountable for—”
Carrie did not give him the opportunity to finish.
“Evidently you feel I owe you an apology for being born in Chicago, for being born a woman,
and
for hav- ing the audacity to accept this job. Well, Mr. Horn…” She paused, letting him feel the full effect of her eyes as they bore into him like emerald drill bits. “Like it or not, I am here and I intend to stay!”
“I never said—”
“And despite your opinion to the contrary, teaching is damned hard work. I would greatly appreciate it if in the future you would refrain from undermining my au- thority. That means not bad-mouthing me in front of your children or any of my other students, thank you very much. As well as curtailing that ‘you ain’t never gonna need none of this here book-learnin’ anyhows’ illiterate attitude of yours!”
Judson visibly bristled. “Now wait just a damn—”
“All I’m asking you, Mr. Horn,” Carrie interrupted, her voice rising to match her anger, “is that you get out of my way and let me teach!”
Pointing her red pen at him like a weapon, she dis- missed him. “You may go now.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
Judson was too stunned by the curt dismissal he had received and the tongue-lashing he had endured to know exactly what had hit him. The last time he’d felt like this was when a bull by the name of Hell’s Belle had
tossed him into the air like a tiddledywink, knocking the wind out of him.
Ears burning, he spun on the heels of his cowboy boots and slammed the door behind him, thinking wryly to himself that this was definitely more like school as he remembered it.
Judson Horn had spent his entire second grade at the back of the room, his desk turned away from the rest of the class because his teacher believed “Indians” didn’t have the mental capacity to keep up with their white classmates. Left with a demeaning set of building blocks, he had been abandoned to his own devices. An- gry, rebellious and innately clever, it was little wonder he turned his teacher’s hair prematurely gray. Bitter memories of his alienated youth served to reinforce his determination that his own children be accorded the best education possible—despite any innate prejudices some damned Eastern transplant may harbor about their her- itage.
And so it was with the same sense of rebellion that characterized his own difficult adolescence that Judson Horn turned his horse in the direction of the school— the very day after the new teacher’s volatile warning to stay away. Though there were miles and miles of fences to inspect before bringing the summer herd down to winter pasture, it was the particular stretch bordering school property that Judson decided to check first. By God, nobody was going to keep him from becoming involved in his children’s education.
Nobody.
Washakie, the big black stallion that Arthur Chris- tianson had left to him, pranced high-handedly through the tall, yellowing grass. Thoughts of his father caused
Judson’s chest to tighten as old conflicts blew across the open plains of his heart. How many times had he wished the man who had sired him had given him the thing he had desired most—his name.
Accepted as neither white nor native, Judson had plowed his way through a difficult childhood with both fists ready for action. His mother was of little help, al- lowing her son to shoulder the burden of his mixed parentage and her drinking problem as best he could. It wasn’t that she hadn’t loved her son; she’d simply wal- lowed her life away waiting for the man of her dreams to return, reclaim his family, and live happily ever after.
Judson had remained the old man’s shameful secret well past his mother’s death, unacknowledged until ter- minal illness compelled Arthur Christianson to make swift recourse with his past. A cruel smile curled Jud- son’s lip at the thought of Harmony’s founding father explaining to God from the depths of hell how leaving all his worldly goods to his blue-eyed half-breed bastard should, by all rights, procure his way into heaven.
Though Judson knew money couldn’t buy the way to heaven, it had damn sure bought him a measure of po- lite respectability that had been absent in his life since the day his birth certificate had been stamped “father unknown.” Judson not only inherited one of the finest ranches in the county but also dear old dad’s seat on the school board. And while it was true that he had initially been appointed to his position upon Arthur Christianson’s death, he had taken that responsibility so seriously that he had later been elected by his colleagues as chairman of the board. That the very- first issue on which they had sided against him was the hiring of some wet-behind-the-ears, sassy Easterner certainly stuck in his craw.
Looking over a strand of sagging barbed wire, he caught a glimpse of Ms. Raben surrounded by a gaggle of happy children. It was near the close of the school- day, and they were hanging Popsicle-stick birdhouses from every low limb in the surrounding vicinity. Aspen leaves rustled softly like forgotten dreams, and a gentle breeze carried the sound of a woman’s tinkling laughter.