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After he’d greeted, petted, stabled and fed, he went inside and made himself a bowl of instant oatmeal. It had been a long time since dinner, and while team parents made sure there were plenty of snacks and water for the players, he was usually too uptight to eat at all during a game. He was like a father with thirty sons on the field or bench.
Sitting at the kitchen table, eating his solitary oatmeal, he noticed for the first time in a long time just how silent the house was. He’d noticed it after his father had died eight years ago, and he’d noticed it again when Martha had left her engagement ring on this very table.
Silence, usually a good companion given his busy days, sometimes seemed lonely and empty. Tonight it definitely felt empty.
This big old house had been meant for a large family. Built back around the turn of the twentieth century, he had only to look at old family photos to know how full it had been at one time. His great-grandfather must have kept awfully busy expanding the place as well as running the ranch and farm. But after the Second World War, youngsters had moved away. The G.I. Bill had offered them different opportunities, and only his own grandfather had chosen to remain after returning from the South Pacific.
So the old days of a dozen kids had trailed away, his grandmother had born only one child that survived, and then his own mother had died giving birth to him, and his dad had never remarried.
From many to just him. Sometimes when he walked around and counted dusty, empty bedrooms, and imagined what this place might have been like in its heyday, he felt the lack of human contact. Five years ago he’d tried a family reunion, met some of his great-uncles and cousins he hardly knew, and some he’d never met, and after a rush of “we have to keep in touch” from everyone, keeping in touch had ended when they left town. They felt no ties to this place, or to him.
He didn’t blame them for that. Time had moved on, and with it so had their lives, which were so far removed now from this thinly populated county that he was sure most of them couldn’t imagine why he remained.
But his roots were very real to him. He felt them dig deeper every time he walked the land, or tended to his livestock, or even did a repair around the house. He was a man of this land and he wanted no other.
Martha couldn’t grasp it, either, although for a while she had tried. He just hadn’t guessed how hard she was trying. Maybe it had been easier for her when everything was new and fresh. Then it had become all humdrum and endless for her, a routine that never changed. He supposed he was to blame for at least some of that, but the fact was, he had two jobs, one teaching, the other tending this place, and he couldn’t simply ignore either one. Animals needed daily care. A teaching job required hours not only at school, but also in the evenings and on weekends.
All work and no play apparently had made Linc a very dull boy, he thought. He needed, he supposed, to find a woman from around here who understood the demands and isolation, someone who could be self-sufficient in more ways than Martha. Someone who would be willing to lend her shoulder to the ranch work and make it part of her life, too.
So far no luck. Judging by his attraction to Cassie Greaves, that was most likely his own fault. He never seemed to be drawn to women who had lived here all their lives. Maybe that was his own form of looking for something different. Whatever, it had left his life very empty.
He rinsed his bowl and spoon and put them in the dishwasher Martha had insisted he install. It was a bit much for just one person, and he could go a week without running it, but it was convenient when he didn’t feel like washing up after himself. There were days like that, days that were just too long for one reason or another, especially during football season.
Upstairs after his shower, he stood naked in his chilly bedroom and looked out over the moon-drenched fields. There were no curtains any longer. Martha had taken down the ones that had been there at least since his mother had hung them, and replaced them with something she considered cheerier. She hadn’t been gone long when he ripped them down and got rid of all the other reminders.
A childish act, part of him judged, but necessary. He didn’t need reminders greeting him everywhere he went. Not reminders of Martha, anyway.
The air was getting downright frigid, but he ignored an impulse to turn on the heat. Once he climbed beneath the quilts he’d be warm enough for the night. In the morning he’d deal with seeing his breath and having to dress quickly in clothes that felt as if they’d been in a freezer all night.
Conservation. He preached it to his students, and practiced it himself. Like the compost pile out near the barn. Nothing wasted. He’d been raised that way, and rightfully so. So had many of his students, though not all.
He figured he had a good life in all, and was achieving some good ends, mostly. But nights like this, when the moon was full and the house so silent, he felt he could howl at the moon for a mate. Man was not meant to be solitary.
He shook his head at the turn of his thoughts and went to climb beneath the heap of quilts on his bed, quilts made by generations of women in his family. Heat tomorrow, he decided as his skin met icy sheets. Definitely. He was not going to be a happy camper come morning.
He shivered for a while until his cocoon warmed up. Closing his eyes against the bright moonlight, he thought again of Cassie Greaves. Why did she have to be such a tempting armful?
But surely he knew better now. Nevertheless, thoughts of Cassie seemed to warm that cocoon of quilts faster than usual.
Cassie awoke in a better frame of mind than when she had gone to bed the night before. As awful as the bullying she had seen had appeared to be, she was confident that with some education and a reminder of penalties they could probably lessen the problems.
And giving the boys detention for how they had ignored her should help remove James from the firing line. They would know it all had to do with what they had been doing to James, but with the detentions arising from their treatment of her, they’d have nothing to add to their scorecard against James. She hoped.
By the time she was eating her yogurt and drinking her coffee, she felt good about the program Les had proposed, even though she and Linc hadn’t started to work on it. In her experience, the important thing was to create a culture among students, and if possible among their parents, that frowned on bullying. So the question was not whether it would work, but how long it would take.
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.
“We could go to my office in the back,” she suggested.
“This is fine for now.”
As if he didn’t want to get any deeper into her life or her house. Feeling a bit stung, she placed his coffee in front of him and sat facing him.
“So I started thinking about this program,” she began.
He shook his head a little. “In a minute, Cassie. First I want to hear more about that phone call.”
As if a switch flipped in her head, she heard that angry, deep voice again. “What’s there to say? I told you what he said. He sounded angry, and threatening, but it was just a phone call. It’s easy to make anonymous threats.”
“It may be easy, but it’s seldom pointless. Somebody’s angry with you, and I doubt that many people know yet about what happened yesterday. The boys involved, maybe their parents if Les has already called them all. Maybe a few people they talked to.”
She shook her head. “Nothing has happened. Nobody has been suspended. If this stops, nobody gets suspended. Scholarships are protected and so is the almighty state championship. If anyone hoped for anything from that call, it’s that I wouldn’t push this into a suspension.”
He set his mug down. “I agree. Essentially. What’s troubling me is the way you got treated yesterday. Your authority was ignored, you were pushed, not just brushed by, and now today a threatening call. That incident yesterday was unusually aggressive for students that age. I’m not saying they never get past name-calling and the occasional spat, but like I said yesterday, by this age they’re mostly past ganging up and getting physical. Add that to the way they treated you and I’m concerned, that’s all.”
She thought it over for a moment. “Then maybe I’m not the best choice to help with this antibullying campaign. If I’m seen as just a troublesome outsider, the message may be lost.”
“You’re not doing this alone,” he reminded her.
No, she wasn’t. She had tried to avoid meeting his gaze directly, but now she did, and felt as if she were falling into the depths of the incredible blue of his eyes. An almost electric spark seemed to zap her.
Then he broke eye contact, returning his attention to his mug. “I spent some time this morning exploring the subject,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have a dial-up connection out there and the internet moves like molasses.”
“I’ve got broadband. We can use my computer.”
“Or go to the school.”
She sensed he wanted to be out of her house and into a more neutral environment as quickly as possible. Again she felt that sting, but did her best to ignore it. No point creating a Shakespearean tragedy in her own mind.
“Sure, if you want,” she said quickly. “Let me get my jacket.”
Five minutes later, with a couple of her travel mugs filled with coffee for the two of them, they stepped outside into a brisk morning. Fluffy white clouds raced overhead in a cerulean sky.
“God, it’s beautiful here,” she said.
“Really?”
She glanced at him. “Don’t tell me you don’t notice.”
“Well, I actually do, especially out at my ranch.” For the first time he cracked a genuine smile.
It almost took her breath away. Of course she’d seen him smile on occasion around school, but never had the full wattage been directed her way. Warmth drizzled through her all the way to her toes, and she had to fight to collect her thoughts.
“What do you raise?” she asked as he helped her into his battered pickup, a truck that might have once been a bright red, but now was dulled with age and liberal applications of touch-up paint.
“Actually my dogs do the raising,” he said humorously as he climbed in behind the wheel. “They do a damn good job of looking after my sheep and goats. And I have a few horses. It’s not much, but it’s all I can handle while I’m teaching.”
“Why do you keep on doing it?”
“I enjoy it, for one thing. For another, that place has been in my family for over a hundred years. I’m not going to be the one to give it up.”
She could understand that, although it was hard to imagine. “You must feel a lot of loyalty.”
A faint smile this time, directed out the windshield as he drove toward the school. “My family invested a lot of sweat in that place. It was their place in the world, and now it’s my place. Maybe some day I’ll have kids and they won’t want it, but fact is, I’m rooted here until I die.”
“That must be a good feeling.”
“Sometimes.” He hesitated. “You?”
“Rootless. I have no way to really understand how you must feel about your ranch. My mom moved us around the country a lot. I was lucky to finish high school in the same town where I started it.”
“And you’ve continued the gypsy tradition?”
“You mean because I came here?”
“For one. But what about the past?”
“I’ve moved a lot, too. You want the truth? It’s getting old. I’ve never known anyone for more than a few years, and then they get left behind. I started thinking about that, and it struck me that’s a really lonely way to live.”
“So you’re looking for a place to stay permanently?”
“If I can find one.”
“Why this place?”
