Marie Ferrarella - The Cowboy's Lesson In Love

“I am going about my business,” she informed him tersely, ignoring the other two men taking all this in. “Since you weren’t returning any of the countless messages I left on your phone, I decided that a face-to-face meeting with you might be the better way to go.”

“Oh, is that what you decided now?” Clint asked and she got the distinct impression that he was mocking her.

“Don’t mind my brother,” Roy said quickly, speaking up. “He gets kind of ornery when he’s been working all day. Around here, whenever rattlesnakes take one look at him, they just head the other way.”

Clint shot his younger brother a dirty look, which didn’t seem to affect the other man at all.

Instead, Roy just shrugged in response. “I just thought she needed to be warned,” the younger man told Clint.

At any other time, Wynona might have even been somewhat amused by this exchange between brothers, but she wasn’t here to be amused. She was here because she felt that Ryan Washburn needed help in coming out of his shell before that shell wound up setting around the boy permanently, walling him off from everyone around him.

Wynona opened her mouth to state her purpose, then stopped. While Clint Washburn seemed uninterested in what she had to say, the other two men with him appeared to be all ears. She had a feeling that what she had to say wasn’t something that Washburn would want the others to hear.

“Is there someplace we could speak privately?” Wynona asked Ryan’s father.

Since he could see the woman wasn’t going to just leave even if he didn’t encourage her, Clint resigned himself to hearing her out about whatever minor, imagined complaint she had come to voice. It was the only way he figured he could get rid of her.

Gesturing around at the vast area surrounding them, he said, “Pick a place.”

She felt that he was humoring her, but it didn’t matter as long as he listened to what she had to say and, more important, took it to heart.

“How about over there?” she asked, pointing to the far end of the corral, away from the horses and the other two men.

Broad shoulders rose in a careless, disinterested shrug. “Works as well as any other place,” he told her in an equally disinterested voice.

As she led the way to the spot she’d pointed out, Wynona noticed that Ryan fell into step right beside her. She didn’t want to risk the boy overhearing his father saying something negative about him.

“No, you stay over there for now, Ryan,” she instructed the boy gently.

“But you’re gonna be talking about me, aren’t you?” Ryan asked. It was obvious that he felt that since this meeting was about him, he did have a right to be there.

She had a feeling that he was always being excluded, but this time it was in his best interest.

Wynona did her best to temper her answer. “I’d like to talk to your dad alone first, Ryan. When that’s done, you can join us.”

Because she took the time to explain this to him first, Ryan felt a little better about having to be left out. Nodding his head, he stopped walking and obligingly fell back.

His uncle came up behind him and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder as Ryan’s teacher and his dad kept walking. He waited until they were a little farther away.

“You getting into some kind of trouble?” Roy asked his nephew good-naturedly. He ruffled Ryan’s hair with affection.

Ryan turned around to look up at him. “No, sir,” he answered solemnly.

“No, I guess not,” Roy laughed. “You wouldn’t know trouble if you tripped over it.” Ryan had always been a good kid, almost too good, Roy thought. A kid needed to get into things once in a while, but Ryan never did. “Why don’t you come on back and help me and Jake get the bridle bits ready for those new horses?” he told his nephew.

He’d seen time and again how eager the boy was to help and for the life of him he couldn’t understand why his brother kept turning a deaf ear to Ryan’s offers. It just didn’t seem right, he thought.

Both he and Clint had grown up working around the horses and doing every imaginable chore there was when it came to running the ranch. They’d practically been born in a saddle and it certainly hadn’t done them any harm. It had come in handy when their father had totally stopped doing any work on the ranch at all.

Roy had told his brother more than once that working with the horses was good for the boy, but Clint never seemed to hear him.

He shook his head. If Clint kept this up, he was certain that his brother was going to drive a permanent wedge between himself and his son.

Roy certainly hoped that that young, pretty teacher had better luck talking some sense into his fool brother’s head than he did, he thought, looking over toward where the two were standing.

With a shrug he caught up to his nephew and went to rejoin Jake.

“So what’s so important that you felt you had to come all the way out here in person to tell me?” Clint asked once they finally stopped walking and Ryan’s teacher had turned around to face him.

Wynona got right to it. Hands on her hips, she demanded, “Do you have any interest in your son?”

Clint felt his back going up instantly.

“What kind of a fool question is that?” he asked.

He’d raised his voice, but she wasn’t about to be intimidated. “A pretty straightforward one as far as I can see.”

His dark blue eyes narrowed. “Then maybe you have blinders on.”

Wynona didn’t take the bait, didn’t get sidetracked by the hostility in his voice and she didn’t get caught up in an argument. Instead, in a very calm voice, she told him, “I would still like an answer to my question.”

His face darkened like storm clouds over the prairie. “Yes, I’m interested in my son.”

She gave him the benefit of the doubt. “Then why didn’t you return any of my phone calls?” she asked, her hands still fisted at her sides. “I told you I was concerned about Ryan’s behavior.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? “Was he fighting?” Clint asked.

Responding to his tone, she raised her chin defensively. “No, but—”

“Was he failing finger-painting?” Clint asked her sarcastically.

Was he belittling education, or just her? In either case, she could feel her temper rising. “I don’t teach finger-painting,” she informed him.

The expression on his face was smug, as if he had just won his argument. “I figured that. Maybe you should.”

What was that supposed to mean? Wynona wondered. In any case, she wanted answers out of him. She wanted him to verbalize what was going on in his head. “ What did you figure?”

The smug look on his face didn’t abate. “That you were just making lady noises.”

“What?” She stared at him incredulously. “Lady noises?” Wynona repeated. What the hell was that—aside from denigrating?

Despite her best efforts, she could feel herself really losing her temper. Something about Clint Washburn made her want to double up her fists and punch him hard , knocking some sense into that thick head of his.

His attitude reminded her of a few men she had encountered as a student and growing up in two different communities: the reservation near Forever and Houston. More than one of her friends’ fathers were painfully distant from their children, concerned only with their own needs. They never once realized the effect that their behavior had on their offspring. She herself never knew her own father.

She hadn’t known that there was any other way to behave until Shania’s family had taken her in and she saw what a real father was really like. Dan Stewart had been kind and caring, taking care of her the same way he took care of Shania. Though she had known him only for a short time, the man had made all the difference in the world to her.