Rachel Lee - Rancher's Deadly Risk

From what Linc had said yesterday, she gathered there had been a major change in dynamics owing to the new people who had moved here with the semiconductor plant. She’d already heard that sad story of boom and bust. While the plant hadn’t closed down when the recession hit, it had laid off quite a few people. A lot of lives had undoubtedly been hurt or destroyed.

But on the other hand, whatever had brought about the social dichotomy in the school, this wasn’t the first time she had seen it. Sometimes it was about race. Sometimes it was about who was a “townie” and who was a “military brat.” Sometimes it was just about how you dressed and who you hung around with. Kids could find ample reasons to form cliques and exclusive groups. It seemed to be part of human nature in general.

But it could be contained and controlled. Courtesy, which she thought of as the grease on the wheels of life, could be learned, and could overlay baser impulses.

The problem would be one of motivation.

She hoped Linc would have some idea of what would motivate these students, because she didn’t know the student body well enough yet and this was a rather late point in their education to start something that should have begun in the earliest grades.

Linc again. She supposed it would be wise to castigate herself for wasting so much thought and energy on thinking about a man who was making it as plain as day that he’d prefer not to get to know her even casually. Work with her? Yes. Anything else, not so much.

Still, she couldn’t help wandering into the bedroom to look at herself in the full-length mirror, something she usually avoided. She was plump, yes, but much as she would have liked to be built like a model or movie star, that wasn’t in her genetic makeup. She didn’t think she looked that bad, anyway. Plenty of guys had made passes at her. Full-figured but not ugly was her pronouncement. Problem was, she didn’t quite believe the “not ugly” part.

Stifling a sigh, she bathed and dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, caught her hair up in a short ponytail, and dug out her planning books. Yesterday had pretty much driven everything else out of her mind, and she needed to come up with some kind of new, hands-on project that would teach math in a real-world way.

It had, she admitted, been easier to come up with things at the start of the year, but as the weeks passed, ideas had become thinner on the ground. She scanned the topics to be covered that week, seeking some fertile soil. Unfortunately, she didn’t think most of her students were quite ready to enjoy math for the sake of math.

She was searching around on her computer looking for ideas that might work with at least some of what she would teach this week, when the phone rang. She answered, her heart lifting a bit, expecting to hear Linc’s voice.

Instead what she heard was a deep, angry voice. “Stay out of what doesn’t concern you, bitch, or you’ll pay.”

Before her jaw could even drop, the other party had disconnected. At once she pressed the caller ID button, but it told her only that the call had come from Wyoming. Great help.

She sat there, staring at her phone, shaken. Just words, she told herself. Just an empty threat. But she couldn’t quite persuade herself of that. Her stomach kept flipping nervously, and she’d have given just about anything to call back and give that man a piece of her mind. It would have relieved her anxiety just to be able to yell at him.

Just as anger began to seriously overtake uneasiness, the phone rang again. Without even looking to see who it was, she snapped, “What?”

There was a pause. Finally Linc’s familiar voice said, “Cassie?”

At once embarrassment filled her. “Sorry,” she said, aware that her voice had thickened, “I just got a nasty call. I thought it was another one.”

A moment of silence. “What kind of nasty call?”

“Telling me to stay out of things that don’t concern me, with an implied threat and a bit of name-calling. It’s nothing, it just made me mad.”

He didn’t reply directly. “Are you going out?”

“No, I’m doing my weekly planning.”

“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

Then he was gone, leaving her to wonder what had lit the fire under him. Surely the call, as annoying as it had been, didn’t require immediate action. Heck, she didn’t even know for sure what it was about.

Then it struck her that Linc was on his way over. She hurried into her bedroom and changed into something more attractive than the baggy clothes she had been working in. Nothing too much, just a more attractive blouse with a pair of reasonably new jeans. Another brushing of her hair, a tiny—just tiny—dab of makeup around her eyes and some gloss on her lips.

Then she started a fresh pot of coffee, since somehow she had managed to drink most of it while working this morning. That much caffeine? It struck her that that might have caused the stomach flips as much as the phone call.

She threw open a window to let in some of the fresh, chilly air, then tried to return her attention to her planning. It didn’t work. All she could think about was Lincoln Blair coming here. Imagining him walking through her door. Wondering how he would be able to keep up that shield he seemed so determined to place between them while they were working on a project.

God, was she really thinking like this at the age of thirty? That man had truly gotten to her, yet what did she really know about him? That he looked good enough to model on a magazine? That he was popular with both faculty and students?

That meant nothing, really. Nothing. She gave herself a firm mental shake and told herself to remember that she was simply going to be meeting him to work on a project, something she had done countless times before with teachers she found attractive or not-so attractive. So what the hey?

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help being a little nervous anyway. If he arrived here packed in his personal brand of refrigerant, she didn’t know how she would manage. Yes, she had worked with difficult people before, but there was difficult and then there was difficult .

Cussing silently, she waited for her doorbell to ring, giving up hope of focusing on her work. Instead she looked around her little office, the house’s one spare bedroom, and decided she liked what she had so far been able to do with it. Little by little she was transforming the place into a home that reflected her love of bright color and handmade crafts. Some items she had brought with her, and some she had discovered since arriving here, at a little hole-in-the-wall place that seemed left over from an earlier century.

Finally Linc arrived. Butterflies fluttered wildly in her stomach as she went to open the door.

Her memory had not exaggerated his Celtic-warrior good looks, not one bit. He stood there in a light jacket, jeans and his usual chambray shirt—it was almost a uniform. On his head sat a felt cowboy hat that looked as if it had seen better days.

“Howdy,” he said.

His deep voice seemed to pluck a string inside her and make it vibrate. She very nearly forgot to invite him in, then realized she was in danger of standing there like a starstruck kid.

“Come on in,” she said. “You didn’t have to race over here, you know.” Not that she was exactly objecting.

“Probably not, but we needed to meet anyway.” He stepped inside and looked around her cozy living room. He surprised her with his choice of words. “Very inviting,” he said approvingly.

“That’s what I hope,” she said as she closed the door behind him. “Coffee?”

“Love some.”

He followed her into the kitchen, and as naturally as if he belonged here, he pulled out a chair at her dinette and sat. She filled two mugs, vaguely remembering from school that he liked his black.