The Cowboy and the Lady Read online

  Jackson shrugged. “Don’t mention it. Anytime I can make you an offer you don’t want to take me up on, just let me know.”

  He noticed that her eyes crinkled as she laughed softly to herself. “I’ll be sure to do that,” she told him.

  Chapter Eight

  Jackson walked into the bunkhouse, the heels of his boots echoing within the all but empty room.

  He’d been expecting this.

  Expecting the challenge from the newcomer. The contest of wills that pitted the newcomer against the authority figure—in this case, him. New “ranch hands” always envisioned the clash they felt was coming, the one they always built up in their minds because it was all they had to cling to. It was crucial to their so-called hot-shot reputations which made them the king of the hill.

  Or so they believed.

  Debi Kincannon’s brother, Ryan, struck him as being no different from all the other boys he had taken on at the ranch since he’d started his program. Boys who arrived with attitude to spare stuffed into their suitcases because their self-esteem was nonexistent.

  Oh, there were nuanced differences to be detected, because every boy was different in some way. But when it came to the overall big picture, all the boys were basically alike. They felt neglected, ignored, belittled, and they were all bent on doing something to be noticed, something that would gain them a measure of respect, even in a cursory, shallow way.

  It was better than nothing.

  And every troubled teen who, one way or another, found his way to The Healing Ranch would challenge his authority, sometimes immediately, sometimes a little later, but most of the time sooner than later.

  Ryan, apparently, wanted to start that way right off the bat.

  As he crossed the bunkhouse floor, making his way to the two rows of beds facing one another, Jackson spotted Debi’s brother immediately. Ryan was sitting on his bunk with his back against the wall.

  His arms were crossed before his thin, shallow chest, a bantam rooster biding his time and waiting for the fight to start.

  Jackson could feel the teen’s dark brown eyes on him, watching his every move.

  Waiting.

  So it was up to him to break the silence, Jackson thought. He obliged. “Garrett said you refused to leave your bunk.”

  Ryan’s lower lip curled in a smirk. “Yeah, he’s smart that way,” the teen quipped. Something flickered in his eyes. Fear? “Don’t think you can get me up, ’cause I got ways to hurt you.”

  “I’m not about to drag you out of bed,” Jackson told the teenager. “Although I could if I wanted to,” he informed him in a steely, unemotional voice. Letting him know the way things could be. “But if that’s what you want to do, lie in bed all day, be my guest.”

  “Why are you being so nice?” Ryan asked suspiciously, pressing his back even harder against the wall, as if bracing himself for a sudden move.

  Jackson shrugged indifferently. “I’m not being nice. Just the opposite.”

  More suspicion, if possible, entered Ryan’s eyes. “How do you figure that?”

  “Well, if I was being nice,” Jackson said, coming to a stop directly in front of Ryan’s bunk bed, “you’d be able to eat lunch and dinner.”

  Ryan scowled at him. “Why can’t I eat?” he asked.

  Jackson’s tone indicated that the answer was self-explanatory. “Because you’ve elected to lie in bed. You don’t work, you don’t eat. It’s as simple as that. There are no free rides here, Ryan. You have to earn everything, just like in the world that exists outside these walls.”

  Ryan raised his chin. “My sister’s not going to let you starve me,” he cried.

  “She has no say in it,” Jackson said in a soft voice that was all the more terrifying for its lack of volume. “Your sister signed over all rights over you to me. While you’re here, I am your sole guardian.” He was stretching things, but he knew that Ryan had no way of knowing that. “I decide what you do, what you wear, if you eat. I decide everything.”

  Clearly, Ryan’s fear was escalating. “I don’t believe you,” he cried. “Deb wouldn’t do that.”

  Jackson didn’t bother trying to convince him, didn’t waste so much as a single breath arguing, cajoling or convincing. Instead, he took a folded, legal-looking document out of his back pocket and held it out for Ryan to see.

  “That’s your sister’s signature, isn’t it?” he asked calmly.

  Ryan’s breath shortened and caught in his throat, and he looked to be on the verge of a screaming fit. Jumping up out of the bunk, Ryan looked around for something to throw, to break.

  Grabbing the first thing he saw, a lamp, he was all set to throw it when Jackson informed him, “You break it, you pay for it. And if you have no coinage because you refuse to work here, you’ll wind up spending a few days in jail as a guest of the county.”

  “You can’t do that.” Ryan’s voice cracked as he spat out the retort.

  “Oh, but I can,” Jackson countered.

  On his feet, the teen looked like a caged wild animal, scanning the room as he tried to figure out his next-best move.

  There wasn’t one.

  Undoubtedly, he hated conceding, but it appeared that he had no choice. “So if I work, I eat?”

  “That’s the deal,” Jackson agreed.

  “And this ‘work’ you’re talking about,” he said, approaching the subject warily, “just what is it that I do?”

  “It varies. Whatever is on your schedule to do that day,” Jackson told him.

  Muttering something unintelligible, Ryan stomped toward the door, anger smoldering in his eyes.

  “Oh, and if you don’t put in a full day,” Jackson added as Ryan passed him, “you get docked for each half hour you miss.”

  Ryan swung around to glare at his jailer. “You’ve got this damn thing rigged, don’t you?”

  “You owe another dollar to the swear jar,” he said mildly. “And as for what you just said, it works both ways,” Jackson answered, his tone as mild as when he had begun talking.

  While The Healing Ranch was still in its early days, he’d discovered that the boys he had undertaken to turn around behaviorally had a great deal in common with wild animals.

  And as with wild animals, if he spoke in a non-threatening, even an almost monotone, sort of way, there would be far less miscommunication between them.

  “But all we can hope for is the present and the future. There is no changing the past,” Jackson murmured under his breath to himself as he walked out of the bunkhouse behind Ryan.

  Out in the open, the teen turned around and looked accusingly at him. “So where am I supposed to be today?” he asked in a nasty tone.

  That was an easy enough question to answer. He had checked all the teens’ schedules first thing that morning, before he had even gotten dressed or sat down to his own breakfast. “You have stable duty.”

  “Wow, what a surprise,” Ryan sneered. He looked around the area and saw some of the other teenagers he had bunked with last night. They were in the corral, each of them working with the horse that had been assigned to them. For a moment, it appeared as if interest had sparked in his eyes before he reassumed his bored, sullen stance. “Hey—” he swung around to look at Jackson “—when do I get my own horse?”

  “When you’ve earned it,” Jackson replied matter-of-factly.

  Lengthening his stride, he passed Ryan and made his way over to the corral to see how the teens there were doing.

  “And how do I accomplish that great deed, oh Fearless Leader?” The sarcasm fairly dripped from Ryan’s lips as he asked the question.

  “I’ll let you know when it happens, Ryan,” Jackson told him.

  Frustrated and obviously feeling helpless, Ryan raised his voice and shouted after Jackson, his tone t
hreatening, “I’m going to tell my sister that you’re just yanking me around!”

  Without breaking stride, Jackson turned for a split second and calmly called back, “Won’t make any difference, remember?”

  The next minute, Jackson behaved like a man who was completely out of earshot, even though in reality he could actually hear everything that the teen was shouting at him.

  He’d made himself immune to words the likes of which Ryan was hurling at him a long time ago.

  “How long?” Garrett asked him, joining his brother as Jackson reached the perimeter of the corral.

  Jackson knew exactly what Garrett was asking. He barely paused to think. His response at this point, after all the boys he and Garrett had worked with and managed to turn around, was close to a science and his assessments were all but automatic.

  “A week, week and a half if he’s particularly stubborn.”

  “A week and a half before he drops that abrasive attitude.” Shaking his head, Garrett sighed. “Tell me again why we keep beating our heads against the wall, trying to make model citizens out of a bunch of thugs, future con men and thieves?”

  “We’re banging our heads against the wall because we want to keep them from becoming those future con men and thieves. We make a difference, Garrett,” Jackson stressed. “And we’re banging our heads against the wall because when we were these rotten know-it-alls, Sam was there for us. And because he was—and because he turned us around—now it’s our turn to be there for all those others who don’t have an Uncle Sam—no wordplay intended,” he added when he realized what that had to sound like.

  Leaning against the corral railings, Jackson momentarily allowed his thoughts to drift back to his much earlier days. He’d lived on the reservation then and all he had wanted back in those days was to fit in, to be accepted.

  “Besides,” he continued as if this, at bottom, had been the answer to Garrett’s question all along. “Weren’t you the one who said he liked that good feeling inside when he realized he’d turned another kid around and kept him away from a life of crime?”

  “Maybe.” Garrett shrugged his shoulders carelessly. “I guess I must have had one too many beers when I said that.”

  Jackson played along. “Doesn’t matter if you did or not. The point is that you said it and since you did, it can’t be unsaid. You’re committed to this way of life, same as I am.” He was well aware of the fact that he couldn’t have done nearly as much as he had if Garrett hadn’t been there right next to him, sharing the load. “Repeat after me,” he coaxed Garrett. “It’s nice to make a difference.”

  “‘It’s nice to make a difference,’” Garrett parroted. “It would be even nicer to be well compensated for it,” he added with a bit more feeling than he had intended to begin with.

  “We are,” Jackson told him in all sincerity. “It just doesn’t happen to be in coinage.”

  “Ever try to buy dinner with non-coinage?” Garrett asked him. He frowned slightly as he went on to say, “Doesn’t work very well.”

  Jackson stopped watching the teens in the corral and looked at Garrett more closely for the first time during their conversation. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” He eyed Garrett with concern. “Are you burned-out?”

  Garrett shrugged.

  “Let’s just say, it’s more like tapped out.”

  “We’re not in this for the money,” Jackson reminded him.

  Garrett laughed shortly. “Hell, don’t I know that,” he said.

  Jackson had always believed in tackling a problem head-on, before it became a major disaster. If nothing else, he wanted to be prepared for whatever this problem might happen to kick up.

  “You thinking of leaving the ranch?” Jackson asked, hoping he’d managed to successfully hide his deep concern.

  “I’m always thinking of leaving,” Garrett confided to his brother.

  He supposed that wasn’t exactly a secret, Jackson thought. Hell, there were times when he was all set to pack his own bags and go himself. But the good accomplished on the ranch far outweighed the bad he had to endure. It always did, which was why he was hopeful about continuing their work.

  “Well, before you act on it, Garrett, come talk to me,” Jackson requested.

  “Right, because you’re really talkative and everything.” Garrett laughed, shaking his head.

  “Good point,” Jackson responded. He certainly couldn’t dispute his brother’s image of him. He’d always believed in an economy of words. The world was already far too littered with words uttered by people who just liked to hear the sound of their own voices.

  “I said come talk to me, I didn’t say I’d talk back. Sometimes you just need someone to listen and use as a sounding board, nothing more.”

  “And you can be as wooden as the best of them,” Garrett guessed, laughing heartily.

  “Now you’ve got it,” Jackson told his brother with an affectionate grin. But, being Jackson, the grin vanished even before it fully registered on his lips.

  Just another day at the ranch, Jackson thought, leaving Garrett and moving on to interact with the teens in the corral.

  * * *

  DEBI REALIZED THAT she had never totally appreciated what “putting in a full day’s work” actually meant until today.

  She had definitely put in a very full day at the clinic.

  It was a little like being thrown headfirst into the deep end of the pool—except in that case, even if she were a nonswimmer, she’d still had reasonable expectations of survival.

  Here at the clinic, it was a somewhat different story. Midway through her first day, she wasn’t all that sure about her odds of surviving until sunset.

  The pace at County General, the hospital where she worked back in Indianapolis, had always been rather hectic with very little downtime, but there was downtime on occasion. She had a very strong suspicion that “downtime” here at the clinic would have to involve some sort of an injury that would normally keep her off her feet—and even then the doctor in charge, Dan Davenport, would probably urge her to keep on going, injury or not, cast or no cast.

  It wasn’t that Davenport was a slave driver—he seemed like a very nice person. As was everyone else who worked at the clinic.

  The second she walked into the place, believing herself to be twenty minutes early, she saw a line of people beginning at the door and spilling out onto the street. It just became worse once the clinic doors opened. The people just kept on coming.

  Eventually she decided that there had to be an endless supply of sick people within the town because for every one examined, two more came to take his or her place.

  Try as they might, the doctors still couldn’t get to all of the patients during normal working hours. But rather than send them away the way she assumed that they would, the doctors had her lock the front doors as an indication that they weren’t accepting any more walk-ins. Then the patients who were still in the clinic, despite the fact that the hours of operation were over, were seen, each and every one of them. Neither doctor gave any indication that they would leave before the last of the patients were examined and diagnosed.

  Dedication like that could be truly wonderful when there was no one waiting at home for you to come through the door. In that case, it allowed a person to give as much of themselves as they wanted to.

  However, she quickly learned that was not the case for either of the doctors, or Holly for that matter. All three had spouses and children at home waiting for them.

  She was the only one who had no one.

  Coming “home” to the hotel room held no allure for her. Oh, the room itself was quite lovely. And it was also small, the perfect size for one occupant, not so much for two. She supposed she was given this one intentionally so as not to emphasize the emptiness of both the room and the life of the person who
temporarily occupied it.

  She had gotten so used to being someone’s wife, to thinking in terms of two rather than just one, she found herself missing being married. Not missing John, just missing the concept of being married.

  Which was why, she silently reminded herself, she needed to work, to keep occupied. To that end, Jackson White Eagle had done her a huge favor by bringing her to the clinic.

  But she had reached her saturation point. Although she’d wanted to be a nurse for as far back as she could remember, right now she knew if she saw one more patient, applied one more cuff to measure blood pressure or called in one more prescription to be filled, she was going to run into the streets, screaming out words that the children in the area did not need to hear.

  Before she had become a surgical nurse, she had worked in the ER. She had been convinced that working in the ER had been rough. But compared to the day she had put in here at the clinic, a day in the ER seemed to her like a day spent at an amusement park.

  Every bone in her body was beyond tired.

  The doctors had finally removed their white lab coats and resumed their civilian lives. Holly had stayed to lock up and, as the “new kid on the block,” Debi felt that she needed to remain, as well.

  They were the last two to leave the building.

  “You did great for your first day,” Holly told her with weary cheerfulness.

  Debi thought there was no harm in pushing the envelope just a little further. “How would you have said I did if this hadn’t been my first day?”

  Holly looked at her as if she thought that was a very odd question.

  “Good, still good,” she answered with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “Glad to have you on our team for as long as you’re going to be here in our area,” Holly tacked on.

  Everyone at the clinic—the doctors, Holly and the patients, as well—had made her feel welcome.

  Exhausted, but welcome, she thought with a weary smile on her lips.