Cathleen Galitz - The Cowboy Who Broke The Mold

“Here you go,” Judson said, handing over a silver ring linking four tarnished keys and a tacky plastic tab faintly marked with the school district’s emblem.

Fervently Carrie hoped that they were keys that would lock out the heartache of the past as well as open the doors to the future. Not unlike a child on Christmas morning, she slipped the key into the lock and opened the schoolhouse door.

Had Judson Horn, the indomitable curmudgeon, not been there beside her she would have rushed to the front of the room and spun around in her excitement. Instead Carrie stood silently beside him in the doorway and wrapped her arms around herself.

It was like turning a page in a history book. Though the dozen desks were fairly new and there was a com- puter in the back of the room, Carrie felt exactly as if she had walked back into the nineteenth century. All the desks faced front, toward an old oak desk that ap- peared as immovable as history itself. On top of it rested an old battered school bell that had undoubtedly called to generations of children. Directly behind the teacher’s desk was an expanse of antique slate board. Portraits of Washington and Lincoln graced the side walls as patri- otically as they had. throughout the century, and an American flag hung limply in the stillness of time. A potbellied stove dominated the back of the room. The fat potentate seemingly awaiting the time its fiery tem- perament would once again be stoked.

The deep timber of Judson’s voice pulled her back into the twentieth century. “Well?”

Expecting a list of grievances as long as a trail drive, he braced himself against the door frame.

“It’s perfect,” she murmured. “Absolutely perfect!”

A flash of derision quickly replaced the momentary surprise that registered in Judson’s eyes.

“We’ll see how you feel when it’s forty below, the power’s out, and you’ve got to get a fire going in that old stove.”

Damn it all, but she sure was pretty all lit up from the inside out that way. The look of genuine excitement shining in Carrie’s soft green eyes touched a chord deep inside him. Her response was not at all what he had expected. He’d figured all he would have to do to run off this prissy Easterner would be to show her the prim- itive conditions of her contract, and she’d be history faster than he could say adios. It hadn’t taken but the threat of hard times to send Cheryl Sue scurrying back into her daddy’s big house, leaving him with a scarred back and a heart to match—not to mention a matched set of newborn twins.

Given his past history, Judson found the new school- teacher to be most perplexing. Nervous, brash, fright- ened, spunky—an enigma all wrapped up in an appeal- ing feminine package that spelled trouble with a capi- tal T !

His icy gaze raked her face. “Come on,” he mut- tered, reminding himself that he’d had enough trouble with women to last him a lifetime. “Let’s put your lug- gage in the trailer.”

Sinking into the soft earth with each step she took, Carrie followed after him, awkwardly maneuvering the short distance in her high-heel shoes. What was fash- ionable in Chicago, she realized with chagrin, was purely impractical in the Wind River Mountains of Wy- oming.

“Welcome to paradise,” he quipped, holding out one arm as if formally admitting her to Buckingham Palace.

Carrie was beginning to truly resent the man whose outlook on life was as clouded as the dirty windows in her new home. On the spot she decided that her very first item of business would be to clean those filmy win- dows. Too bad, she thought, Judson Horn’s negative attitude couldn’t be as easily wiped away.

A musty smell assailed her nostrils the instant she stepped inside the trailer. Looking around the room, Carrie decided it would have gratified the most austere monk. The furniture consisted of a cheap couch and matching chair. The windows had no curtains, and the carpet was a sickly color of rust in which the major traffic patterns were clearly and indelibly worn. Her thoughts traveled back to her plush apartment in Chi- cago. Complete with tennis courts and swimming pool, it had been chic, modern and clean.

Her parents would be horrified to find her living in what they would surely consider squalor. Her mother wouldn’t so much as unpack her bags for an overnight stay in a place like this. Feeling Judson’s probing eyes upon her, Carrie defiantly tipped up her chin, refusing him the satisfaction of witnessing a single tear shed in disappointment.

As he took a seat in the living room, Carrie began her inspection. Following the narrow hallway to its end, she opened the door to her bedroom. “Spartan” was the word that came to mind. There was a bed with a white chenille spread that had yellowed to a dingy shade of beige, a small closet and a flimsy bureau. It struck her as peculiar that such an austere decor failed to re- press a fleeting, sinful fantasy of being alone with a blue-eyed Indian stretched out across this bed….

Suddenly the room grew stiflingly hot. What in the world was she doing fantasizing about a man who clearly regarded her as an unwelcome interloper? Lest Judson Horn become impatient, come looking for her and find her engaged in a lustful fantasy that featured him buck-naked on her bed, Carrie hastened back to the living room.

There she was made aware of how very long Judson’s legs were as she was forced to step over them. Sitting in the chair with his hands behind his head, he looked as comfortable as a cat that called the world his own domain. And as Carrie felt his eyes run the length of her, she had the unnerving feeling that if she wasn’t careful, she might just wind up being this dangerous tom’s next meal.

“There’s no phone,” he informed her as noncha- lantly as she imagined he would relay the going price of beef on the hoof. “Since it’s not worth the phone company’s time and equipment to run a line all the way out here for just one trailer, you have to go back to Atlantic City to place a call. You’ll probably want to invest in a cellular phone for your own personal use, but in case of emergencies, there’s a two-way radio.”

Rising smoothly from the chair, he walked into the kitchen, pulled an ancient-looking apparatus from the narrow pantry and proceeded to explain the operations of two-way communication.

This was far more primitive than Carrie had ever imagined. The term could just as easily be applied to the man standing beside her. Filling her lungs with the heady scent of his musky masculinity, she found it increasingly difficult to keep her mind focused on the task at hand.

“Knowing how to work this radio could mean the difference between life and death,” he said in a tone Carrie suspected was reserved especially for ridiculous city slickers like herself.

Keenly aware of the woman next to him, Judson bat- tled a sudden overwhelming feeling of protectiveness for his children’s teacher. He knew he intimidated her, meant to in fact, so why did the widening of those great big eyes make him feel like such a beast? The feeling threatened to put a chink in his well-polished emotional armor. She was so utterly vulnerable standing there looking up at him as if he were an encyclopedia of Western living that for a minute he almost wished he could be the white-hatted cowboy she wanted him to be. The irony of that particular image brought an off- kilter smirk to Judson’s lips. As he recalled, in the mov- ies the good guys were usually fair-skinned blonds. Breeds were generally cast in roles several pegs below the black-hatted villain.

Distracted by the erotic curve of Carrie’s lower lip held in consternation between her teeth, Judson was seized by a sudden urge to brush those feathery bangs away from her sweet, open face. How in the name of hell could a spoiled Eastern brat possibly arouse such tender feelings in him?