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He watched as her shoulders straightened and her head lifted before she turned around. Her face was composed now, almost as if she’d never had a stray nerve in her life. He was struck by the change in her. Before, she’d seemed disconcerted, even a little frightened. Now she kept her expression neutral, a small smile playing on her full lips.
She nodded as she walked up to him. She held out her hand, and he had the feeling she’d accomplished the simple act by sheer force of will and, moreover, that she’d rather be on any other planet than standing there about to shake hands with him. And because of that he had no choice but to take that slim hand into his.
As always, the shock of feeling someone else touching the new skin on his hands gave him the sense of déjà vu, as if he simultaneously remembered how he was supposed to feel another’s palm and the reality of encountering it through new skin.
He imagined there was something different in Corrie Stratton’s fluttering touch. And that something struck him purely viscerally. Whatever the feeling was, it had nothing whatsoever to do with scars, nerve endings or wounds too recently healed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He released her hand. He wasn’t sure what she was sorry about, but hid a smile as she curled her hand into a fist and cradled it against her chest, almost as though she were holding his imprint to her.
Or, perhaps, as if he’d injured her.
“Leeza and Jeannie aren’t here today.”
He frowned. “My interview is with you, I believe.”
She blinked. “It is?”
“That’s what I was told,” he said. He glanced down at the business card Jeannie Salazar had given him, though he knew Corrie Stratton’s name was scrawled on the back with the time of the interview beneath it. He flipped it over and held it out.
He thought of the endless hours he’d spent listening to her on the radio and wondering if any woman could measure up to that incredible voice. She did and then some. “Yep, here it is.”
She glanced at the card but didn’t reach for it. “You’ll have to forgive me. I must have forgotten to jot it down in my book.”
She wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d heard her voice a million times, a thousand hours beyond that. Low and sultry, her subdued voice, with its inherent sexuality, had led him to picture her to be long-legged, lush and ultraseductive.
Instead, she appeared scarcely tethered to this planet, held down by sheer gravity only. The epitome of petite, she was an almost elfin creature, only some five foot something, all long, delicate fingers, sloe eyes and cheery red toenails. And yet, her gaze, somewhat shy and attempting to hide her nervousness, spoke volumes. And let him know she was lying.
Someone had neglected to tell her about the interview. How he knew this, he wasn’t sure, but he knew it nonetheless. Corrie Stratton wasn’t the kind of person who might blame another. He wondered if she’d have been more nervous or less had she known he was coming there this afternoon. For the first time in a long, long time, he found himself curious about a real someone; he wanted to know what made a renowned radio journalist like Corrie Stratton so skittish.
She pulled her hair up into a rough ponytail that she held with her fist and walked past him to a long credenza-like entry table, rummaged in the upper drawer and retrieved a couple of pens. One she stabbed through her hair—and, amazing him, it held the mass of brown locks—and the other she tucked over an ear. She tugged a notepad free from beneath the hall telephone, flipped over the top few pages, smoothed them down and turned to him, all cool, calm and collected prospective employer.
“If you’ll follow me,” she said, and led the way across the massive living room through an archway into a dining room that could easily sit twenty people. She took a seat at the head of the table and gestured to a chair flanking hers.
He waited until she sat, then joined her at the table. He took in the children’s drawings over a long sideboard flanking the dining table. At least twenty of them had been carefully matted and framed and hung in rows beside a low mirror. The mirror reflected the living room he’d passed through, the fireplace on the wall behind him, some hand-woven baskets, a couple of original Holly Huber oil paintings, and an R. C. Gorman print.
His eyes continued their survey of the room and rested thoughtfully on a simple but highly effective alarm system on the dining room wall. It was the kind that could be triggered by hand, excessive heat or smoke. If he remembered the shriek it produced, it was worse than deafening.
“So,” she said, after drawing a deep breath. “Please tell me a little about yourself.” To his delight, she lifted her feet to the seat of the chair and wrapped an arm around her legs. After a glance in his direction, she cleared her throat and lowered her bare feet to the floor, crossing her legs in a decidedly studied, ladylike fashion.
He swallowed the smile threatening to surface. And admired the way she’d pulled herself together for an interview she obviously knew nothing about.
“I’ve taught for twelve years, have a master’s degree in history from Texas Tech and am certified in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado, grades K through 12. And, if you have tennis courts, I can coach tennis, too.”
“I see,” she said, jotting down something in her notepad. “And what is it that makes you want to work at Rancho Milagro?”
He hesitated and she looked up to meet his eyes. Hers were a deep, rich brown, he saw, like coffee liqueur. Eyes a man could get drunk and drown in. He thought it was a lucky thing she’d made her mark in radio broadcasting; those eyes on television would have made the male population newsaholics.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you ask?”
She paraphrased her question about working at the ranch.
He looked away from those liquid brown eyes. “I heard what you were trying to do out here. I liked the sound of it. And wanted to be a part of the miracles.” He attempted a chuckle as he finished blurting the raw truth.
He couldn’t tell her that he’d wanted to be around the woman who had pulled him through a nightmare of torturous procedures, that he craved a slice of the joy Rancho Milagro apparently served for breakfast. At least he hadn’t blurted out that he wanted a new life.
Simply wanted.
He didn’t really believe wanting made anything so. He used to, once upon a distant time, but not any longer. He fought the nightmare images that threatened to rise to the surface, the tragic sound of children crying for help, the scent of burning linoleum and, ultimately, the stench of despair. He didn’t believe miracles were possible, but he wanted any and all to come his way so much more than he could ever begin to tell her.
He felt dazed as she gave him a swift, conspiratorial smile. A knee tucked back up into her chest. She clasped it and leaned forward. “Me, too,” she said.
She, who seemingly had everything, wanted a miracle? What could she possibly want? To meet another king, interview another world leader? What was she even doing on this lonely ranch, miles away from everything?
He didn’t voice any of his questions, but apparently his silence seemed to make her potential-employer consciousness take over again. Her leg lowered and crossed again. He resisted the urge to look beneath the table to see if her toes even touched the floor.
She asked, “What was it that you liked the sound of?”
The miracles—and you, he almost said, lured by her eyes into telling more unvarnished truth. “The kids. Taking foster kids and orphans, giving them a working ranch and home environment. Letting them have half a chance before sending them out on their own,” he said.
He’d wanted, perhaps needed, to come to work there because the tabloids and news features referred to the place as a ranch of miracles. When cynical journalists waxed ecstatic, a huge kernel of truth must lie within the story. And one truth was obvious, the Rancho Milagro partners took in the strays of the world and offered them new lives.
He asked, “How many do you have now?”
“What? Oh, children, you mean. For a minute, I thought you meant miracles.” She stopped on a rueful smile, drew a deep breath and continued, “We only have seven so far. Two are already adopted by Jeannie and Chance—Dulce and José—but they take lessons with the others.”
“You already have teachers, then?”
“Only one, Melanie Jorgensen, and she’s not here yet. She’s arriving in the fall.” She released a slight smile, as if remembering Melanie Jorgensen and liking the memory. “In the meantime, we’ve all been pitching in for various subjects.” She made a face as if the classes weren’t going well. “Right now, we’re on home-school status because it’s too far to ship the children into Carlsbad schools and because the children we have now are all somewhat behind in their schooling.”
“So this would be a temporary arrangement?”
He realized his question was inept when she gave him a blank stare. “Temporary? No. Oh, you mean about the home schooling. Again, no.”
He loved the way she couched every answer in formal terms, as if he might misconstrue the slightest nuance of what she said. It was one of her trademarks on the radio, the bit they advertised before her golden voice came on. When Corrie Stratton says it’s true, it’s a fact.
The woman with the golden voice and truth in her words tilted her head at him. “Eventually we’d like our own status as an official school. But that’s a far piece down the road, as they say around here. With the home-school status, however, and with certified teachers, we can still get these kids well grounded in what they need to know to get good college placements.”
Her feet crept to the chair seat again. He was sure she was unaware of the fact that one of her arms wrapped around her knees, drawing them to her chest. He was also sure she was utterly unaware how attractive she was.
“That’s the object, then?” he asked.
She frowned and looked a question at him.
“What you would want from a teacher?”
“I see,” she said as carefully as she had before. “I’m not exactly sure what Leeza or Jeannie would say in answer to that. From my perspective, I think what we want is someone who will be surrogate parent, teacher, friend and mentor with a bit of a kindly uncle thrown in.”
“A teacher of many hats,” he said, and leaned back in the chair, relaxed for the first time since he’d driven onto the ranch.
She smiled at him—a bit wistfully, he thought. “It’s a dream, I know. But…”
“One that’s already working.” Abruptly, it wasn’t just the job he wanted, but to reassure her that the ranch-cum-children’s-home dream was already coming true.
“Yes,” she said, and gave him the most genuine smile she’d managed with him so far—except when she’d expressed her wish for a miracle.
He felt that smile like a fever coming on, making him feel hot and restless.
“So far it’s working.” She cleared her throat as if remembering she was conducting an interview. “Are you currently teaching somewhere, Mr. Dorsey?”
“Mack,” he said.
“Okay. Sorry. Mack, are you teaching anywhere right now?”
“Nothing to apologize for and, no, at the moment I’m not teaching, so I’d be available immediately,” he said.
She gave him a funny look before making another scratch in her notepad. “And when was the last time you were in the classroom, Mr. Dorsey?”
“Mack,” he corrected. He realized then that she didn’t know who he was, that she didn’t realize that he was the so-called hero of the Enchanted Hills incident. Teacher heroically sacrifices himself to rescue ten students burning in blazing inferno. And what else was an inferno but blazing and what was a sacrifice when he had lived and five children had died?
For a moment, as so often happened, the cries of the children, both rescued and lost, echoed in his ears and his nose stung from the acrid scent of burning schoolrooms.
Corrie Stratton, the woman with the golden voice and the coffee-liqueur eyes didn’t blink. Lady journalist extraordinaire, this tiny scrap of a woman didn’t seem to have a clue as to his identity.
He gave a faint and, he hoped, easy smile. “I’ve been out for two years.”
She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. He must have made some kind of gesture. He found it somewhat ironic that he’d come to Milagro in part to escape the newshounds, the incessant prying into his life, and was now being interviewed by one of the nation’s leading investigative journalists and she didn’t have a clue about him. Because of that news interest, he had assumed Corrie’s partner, Leeza, had known who he was and hadn’t asked him to discuss his reasons for being out of the classroom for such a long time when he went through the initial phone interview with Leeza and the secondary meeting with Jeannie. He found himself stymied and irrationally resenting having to reveal the truth about his scars and talk about the many things he couldn’t explain away—the pain, the losses. Her gaze traveled from his hands to the scars on his face. “An accident?” she asked.
Could one call a deliberately executed firebomb that killed five children and a cafeteria worker an accident? In a cosmic fashion, perhaps that would be true.
“Yes,” he said, and didn’t elaborate. He was grateful when she didn’t pursue that line of questioning.
She cleared her throat again. “You do realize that you’d have to be living here on Milagro?”
Living on a miracle. Better than the bitter ashes of regret. “That works for me,” he said truthfully. He didn’t add that it would be an escape. A refuge. Just dodging the media would be a miracle in and of itself.
“And that because we’re providing room and board—and a horse, if you want to ride—we’re not offering even close to what could be considered a competitive salary?”
“With the add-ons of the living quarters, food and, of course, a horse, I’m okay with the salary, provided you offer insurance.”
To her credit, she didn’t look at his scars this time, though he could see a noticeable rise in her color. “Of course. That’s a given.” She didn’t look up as she added, “We require a thirty-day probationary period.”
“Accepted.”
Her eyes shot to his. He felt a jolt of something hot and fiery shoot through him. He had to clear his throat before asking, “Are you offering me the job, Ms. Stratton?” Her partners, Jeannie and Leeza, had led him to believe this interview was pro forma only.
For all the nights of listening to her voice in the loneliest hours of the dark, believing her stories, fantasizing about her, he suddenly wanted her to ask him to stay, not because he was qualified, but because she wanted him to. Knowing a fantasy was impossible didn’t make it fade any more swiftly.
“Corrie,” she said, without answering him.
“What?”
“You can call me Corrie.”
It was like being asked to call Dan Rather, Dan, or Barbara Walters, Babs. But whatever he’d thought before coming out here, despite the needs he’d felt when he saw the opening advertised, he wanted this job now. He wanted it more than anything on the face of the earth. “Okay. Corrie, then.”
Her eyes met his and he saw the wary denial in her gaze. Disappointment shafted through him. She would say no. She didn’t want him as a teacher on this ranch of miracles. Then he saw something else in her gaze. Something confused and alluring, a look that had nothing whatsoever to do with teaching.
He rasped, “Are you offering me the job?”
She shook her head, though her eyes implored him to understand something she didn’t voice. He clearly saw her wary rejection. “I…I don’t think I can do anything without the approval of my partners, Mr. Dorsey—”
“Just call me Mack.” Two could play at that game.
“Mack.” He thought she repeated his name as if savoring it. Her eyes flickered and she shook her head. “I don’t think I can—”
A horse’s angry whinny and a child’s scream cut her words off midstream. In the split second of hesitation following the scream, their eyes locked. Hers, he thought, carried a wealth of fear and helplessness, a pleading that he do something. His, he was sure, told her he couldn’t do a thing to help, that people had died because of him before.
But looking into the depths of her coffee eyes, he felt powerless to resist her. Without a word, he shoved away from the table and was through the doors and across the veranda.
From the time of the scream to his leap from the steps, no more than three seconds could have passed.
A flashy pinto, with a small kid of nine or ten looking like a rag-doll saddle decoration, bucked and lurched toward the hacienda steps, whinnying shrilly and trying his best to rid himself of the child-burr on his back. The boy, all eyes and scrawny legs, screamed bloody murder and held on to the saddle horn for dear life.
Without thinking about it, Mack jumped from the bottom of the steps, directly into the heaving horse’s path. The beast shuddered and whinnied anew but skidded to a halt.
Mack heard a swift shriek from behind him. He heard other yells and ignored them. All his attention was focused only on the horse and the small boy perched above him.
The little boy, who had somehow held on during the wild ride, lost his control at the abrupt stop and pitched forward. He somersaulted down the horse’s neck to land at Mack’s feet.
Mack hooked a leg around the boy and flipped him behind him, not worrying how the boy would fare against the dirt, but terrified that the shivering horse would decide to rear and bring its sharp hooves down onto the child.
Though he knew less than nothing about horses, he instinctively reached for the fallen reins of the horse’s bridle and, talking to the horse the whole time, managed to secure them. The horse turned a white, rolled eye in his direction and, trembling, stamped the ground and huffed several times before seeming to realize he was all right.
When he could find his voice, Mack asked gruffly, “Hey, kid, you okay?”
Corrie stood frozen on the veranda steps, both hands holding a scream inside. Fractured images of alternate timelines flashed through her mind, other presents and myriad futures: Mack Dorsey sitting calmly at the dining table, handing over references while Juan Carlos flew across the air to thud on the ground with a final groan of pain. Mack and Corrie laughing over something and Juan Carlos trampled by Dancer’s hooves. A funeral, a pregnant Jeannie crying in her husband’s arms, a headstone with Juan Carlos’s birthdate etched and the death date today. Juan Carlos riding Dancer and Mack Dorsey deciding not to come to Rancho Milagro that fine early spring afternoon.
She heard him ask, “Hey, kid, you okay?”
Juan Carlos sat up, perfectly all right, using Mack Dorsey’s jeans as a pulley. “Y-yeah, I think. Yeah, I’m okay.”
Somehow, Corrie managed to get down the steps despite her watery legs and reached Juan Carlos about the same time the groundskeeper and sometimes groom, Jorge, came limping around the corner of the hacienda, gasping and cursing in little bursts of winded Spanish.
Even as she patted the boy down, trying unsuccessfully to pry him from his grip on Mack Dorsey’s legs, Corrie felt like laughing at Jorge’s bedraggled curses. Juan Carlos, according to Jorge, would fall down a rabbit hole and be twitched to death by bunny whiskers. Juan Carlos, before the day was over, would have his face torn off by magpies and sewn on backward by prairie dogs. Juan Carlos, if he didn’t learn to listen to Jorge, would have to learn the entire alphabet in both Spanish and English backward and forward.
“Niño,” Jorge panted, seeing the boy alive and tremulously smiling up at Mack Dorsey, “next time you want to kill old Jorge, just get a gun, okay?” He bent over, a hand on his chest, another on one knee.
