Christmas On His Ranch: Maggie's Dad / Cattleman's Choice. Diana Palmer
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had chores to finish before she could go home. She didn’t doubt that Powell would be along. But she wasn’t going to back down. She had nothing to lose now. Even her job wasn’t that important if it meant being blackmailed by a nine-year-old.
Sure enough, it was only minutes since class was dismissed and she was clearing her desk when she heard footsteps coming down the hall. Only a handful of teachers would still be in the building, but those particular steps were heavy and forceful, and she knew who they belonged to.
She turned as the door opened and a familiar tall figure came into the room with eyes as dark as death.
He didn’t remove his hat, or exchange greetings. In his expensive suit and boots and Stetson, he looked very prosperous. But her eyes were seeing a younger man, a ragged and lonely young man who never fit in anywhere, who dreamed of not being poor. Sometimes she remembered that young man and loved him with a passion that even in dreams was overpowering.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, putting the past away in the back drawers of her mind. “She did get a zero, and she deserved it. I gave her all week to produce her homework, and she didn’t.”
“Oh, hell, you don’t have to pretend noble motives. I know why you’re picking on the kid. Well, lay off Maggie,” he said shortly. “You’re here to teach, not to take out old grudges on my daughter.”
She was sitting at her desk. She folded her hands together on its worn surface and simply stared at him, unblinking. “Your daughter is going to fail this grade,” she said composedly. “She won’t participate in class discussions, she won’t do any homework, and she refuses to even attempt answers on pop tests. I’m frankly amazed that she’s managed to get this far in school at all.” She smiled coldly. “I understand from the principal, who is also intimidated by you, that you have the influence to get anyone fired who doesn’t pass her.”
His face went rigid. “I don’t need to use any influence! She’s a smart child.”
She opened her desk drawer, took out Maggie’s last test paper and slid it across the desk to him. “Really?” she asked.
He moved into the classroom, to the desk. His lean, dark hand shot down to retrieve the paper. He looked at it with narrow, deep-set eyes, black eyes that were suddenly piercing on Antonia’s face.
“She didn’t write anything on this,” he said.
She nodded, taking it back. “She sat with her arms folded, giving me a haughty smile the whole time, and she didn’t move a muscle for the full thirty minutes.”
“She hasn’t acted that way before.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m new here.”
He stared at her angrily. “And you don’t like her.”
She searched his cold eyes. “You really think I came all the way back to Wyoming to take out old resentments on Sally’s daughter?” she asked, and hated the guilt she felt when she asked the question. She knew she wasn’t being fair to Maggie, but the very sight of the child was like torture.
“Sally’s and mine,” he reminded her, as if he knew how it hurt her to remember.
She felt sick to her stomach. “Excuse me. Sally’s and yours,” she replied obligingly.
He nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s what really bothers you, isn’t it?” he said, almost to himself. “It’s because she looks just like Sally.”
“She’s her image,” she agreed flatly.
“And you still hate her, after all this time.”
Her hands clenched together. She didn’t drop her gaze. “We were talking about your daughter.”
“Maggie.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t even bring yourself to say her name, can you?” He perched himself on the edge of her desk. “I thought teachers were supposed to be impartial, to teach regardless of personal feelings toward their students.”
“We are.”
“You aren’t doing it,” he continued. He smiled, but it wasn’t the sort of smile that comforted. “Let me tell you something, Antonia. You came home. But this is my town. I own half of it, and I know everybody on the school board. If you want to stay here, and teach here, you’d better be damn sure that you maintain an impartial attitude toward all the students.”
“Especially toward your daughter?” she asked.
He nodded. “I see you understand.”
“I won’t treat her unfairly, but I won’t play favorites, either,” she said icily. “She’s going to receive no grades that she doesn’t earn in my classroom. If you want to get me fired, go ahead.”
“Oh, hell, I don’t want your job,” he said abruptly. “It doesn’t matter to me if you stay here with your father. I don’t even care why you suddenly came back. But I won’t have my daughter persecuted for something that she didn’t do! She has nothing to do with the past.”
“Nothing?” Her eyes glittered up into his. “Sally was pregnant with that child when you married her, and she was born seven months later,” she said huskily, and the pain was a living, breathing thing. Even the threat of leukemia wasn’t that bad. “You were sleeping with Sally while you were swearing eternal devotion to me!”
Antonia didn’t have to be a math major to arrive at the difference. He’d married Sally less than a month after he broke up with Antonia, and Maggie was born seven months later. Which meant that Sally was pregnant when they married.
He took a slow, steady breath, but his eyes, his face, were terrible to see. He stared down at her as if he’d like to throw something.
Antonia averted her gaze to the desk, where her hands were so tightly clasped now that the knuckles were white. She relaxed them, so that he wouldn’t notice how tense she was.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said after a minute. “I had no right. Your marriage was your own business, and so is your daughter. I won’t be unkind to her. But I will expect her to do the same work I assign to the other students, and if she doesn’t, she’ll be graded accordingly.”
He stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets. The eyes that met hers were unreadable. “Maggie’s paid a higher price than you know already,” he said enigmatically. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
“I’m not in the habit of taking out my personal feelings on children, whatever you think of me.”
“You’re twenty-seven now,” he said, surprising her. “Yet you’re still unmarried. You have no children of your own.”
She smiled evenly. “Yes. I had a lucky escape.”
“And no inclination to find someone else? Make a life for yourself?”
“I have a life,” she said, and the fear came up into her mouth as she realized that she might not have it for much longer.
“Do you?” he asked. “Your father will die one day. Then you’ll be alone.”
Her eyes, full of fear, fell to the desk again. “I’ve been alone for a long time,” she said quietly. “It’s something…one learns to live with.”
He didn’t speak. After a minute, she heard his voice, as if from a distance. “Why did you come back?”
“For my father.”
“He’s getting better day by day. He didn’t need you.”
She looked up, searching his face, seeing the young man she’d loved in his dark eyes, his sensuous mouth. “Maybe I needed someone,” she said. She winced and dropped her eyes.
He laughed. It had an odd sound. “Just don’t turn your attention