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“Hey, don’t look now, boss, but from the looks of it, there’s an angry lady coming your way,” Jake alerted Clint. “And if you ask me, it looks like the lady’s loaded for bear.”
Roy was already looking in the woman’s direction and she had his complete attention. “I don’t care what she’s loaded for as long as she brings it my way,” Clint’s brother declared wistfully. “Who is she?” he asked, intrigued. “I don’t remember ever seeing her around before. I would have remembered that face,” Roy assured his brother and the other man.
Jake hadn’t taken his eyes off the woman since he’d first spotted her.
“Yeah, me, too.” He glanced toward Clint, who was still working and hadn’t bothered to look at the interloper. “You know her, boss?”
“Whoever she is, Clint, she’s got your boy with her,” Roy added, still not looking away.
“What the hell are you two going on about?” Clint demanded shortly.
He’d been up early, going between the stable and the corral, and working since before his son had gone off to school. He had only spared a minimum of time for the cattle today. He was in no mood for guessing games, or unannounced guests. He just wanted to finish what he was doing and get in out of the sun.
“I don’t know about Jake, but I’m talking about the prettiest sight I’ve laid my eyes on in a long, long time,” Roy answered.
Exasperated, Clint dropped what he was doing and finally looked up just as the angry-looking young woman stepped up to the fence. Rather than ducking between the slats the way he would have expected her to do, he saw her climb up and then over the fence, jumping down on the other side as if she’d been doing it all of her life.
He was aware that his son was taking all this in with awe. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that the boy had the makings of a crush on this woman.
“Which one of you is Clint Washburn?” Wynona asked, walking until she was right in the middle of them.
Clint noted that both his brother and Jake would have been more than willing to say they were, but since he was standing right there, they couldn’t. Both looked in his direction.
“I am,” he told her, taking off his work gloves and shoving them into his back pocket. “Can I help you?” he asked. His tone of voice clearly indicated that there were a great many other things he would have wanted to do first before turning his attention to whatever it was that this woman had come to see him about.
Wynona did a quick scrutiny of the man. He had broad shoulders and a small waist. His dirty-blond hair could have used a haircut, but it was his attitude that really needed work. The man was just as unfriendly as she had imagined he’d be.
“I’m Wynona Chee,” she informed him, introducing herself. And then she added, “I’m Ryan’s teacher,” in case he hadn’t listened to any of the multiple messages she’d left—which she was beginning to suspect he didn’t.
“Well, Wynona Chee, if you’re his teacher, why aren’t you at school, going about your business?” Clint asked.
She resented the way he said that, but snapping at the man wasn’t going to help Ryan and it was Ryan who was the important one here. So Wynona bit back a few choice words that instantly rose to her lips and kept her temper in check.
“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.
That was what she wanted for Ryan—before it was too late.
“Yeah. Lady noises,” Clint repeated. “You come in, take one look around, unleash your emotions and think you’ve got the solution to everything. Well, you don’t,” he told her. “So, are we done here because I’ve got a ranch to run.”
He was about to turn away but she caught his arm and made him turn back to face her.
“No, we are not done here,” she informed him tersely. “Your son is starved for your attention,” she said angrily.
He’d been surprised at the strength of her grip when she’d grabbed his arm. She was obviously not as delicate as she appeared. But that still didn’t change the fact that she had no business telling him how to raise his son and he told her as much.
“I’m not going to coddle the kid.”
“No one’s telling you to coddle him,” she retorted, her eyes all but flashing. “I’m just asking you to give him some of your time.”
“In case you weren’t listening,” he informed her, getting to the end of his patience, “I’ve got a ranch to run.”
“Then have him help you,” she countered. She knew of a lot of kids who helped their fathers out on the ranch. Why was he being so stubborn about it? “And talk to him while he’s helping.”
Clint was getting really tired of having this woman tell him what she thought he should be doing with his son. “Look—”
She anticipated his protest. “Mr. Washburn, I’m not asking you to read bedtime stories to Ryan, although you might give that some thought—” Wynona couldn’t help adding.
“You’re kidding,” he cried, stunned by her suggestion. Nobody read to him when he was a kid. That kind of thing wasn’t important in his book.
“No, I’m not ‘kidding,’” she told him. “But the point I’m trying to get across to you is that you need to take an interest, a real interest, in Ryan. Treat him like a person. Like he matters. Talk to him, ask him how he’s doing in school, tell him about the things you did when you were his age—”
Clint cut her off. He didn’t have time for this. “I don’t remember,” he snapped.
Wynona’s eyes narrowed again as her frustration with this jackass of a man increased. It was obvious that he was stubbornly fighting her on this but she wasn’t about to let him win.
“Then make it up!” she cried angrily. Catching herself, she got control of her temper. “The point is communication. Because right now, every day, this boy is slipping further and further away and if you don’t try to stop that, to make him feel as if you care about him, he’s not only going to wind up being lost to you, he’s going to be lost to himself, too.”
That sounded like a bunch of garbage to him. “That’s your opinion.”
“It would be yours, too,” she informed him, “if you just stopped and assessed the situation more closely like a father.” She had almost said “like someone with a brain” but had stopped herself in time.
Clint waved her away and turned on his heel toward where Jake and Roy were waiting. “I don’t have time for any of this psychobabble,” he said as he walked away from her.
“It’s not psychobabble,” she insisted, calling after him. “It’s common sense.”
“Ha!” Clint countered, but he kept on walking.
He knew if he turned around to say anything more, she’d just drag him back into another argument and he had already wasted enough time on this woman and her crazy theory.
Clint kept walking until he got back to where Jake and his brother were working. Ryan was with them as well and the boy looked up at him the moment he drew closer. Before his son could say anything to him or ask any questions, Clint said, “Go into the house and do your homework.”
“I already finished my homework, sir,” Ryan told him quietly.
“Then go do something else,” Clint ordered, turning back to what he’d been doing before that woman disrupted his day.
To his surprise, Ryan stood his ground.
“Can I help you?” he asked in the same small, hopeful voice he’d used the morning when he had asked the same question.
The word no hovered on Clint’s tongue and he’d almost said it. But then he heard that teacher’s vehicle as she apparently started it up and then began to drive away.
Good. The woman was really going back into town, Clint thought.
But what the woman had said annoyingly refused to drive away with her. It seemed to linger in the air like a solid entity.
Clint frowned as he turned to look at his son.
“Yeah,” Clint finally said, reluctantly relenting. “You can help—as long as you promise not to get in the way.”
Stunned that his father had actually said he could help, Ryan looked at him, a wide smile spreading out over his small, angular face.
“I promise! Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, Dad,” Ryan proclaimed eagerly. “Just tell me,” he repeated.
