MILLS & BOON

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      CATHLEEN GALITZ,

      a Wyoming native, teaches English to students in grades six through twelve in a rural school that houses kindergarteners and seniors in the same building. She feels blessed to have married a man who is both supportive and patient. When she’s not busy writing, teaching or chauffeuring her sons to and from various activities, she can most likely be found indulging in her favorite pastime—reading.

      For my aunt Cleo who, when I least expect to hear her voice, reminds me to laugh and to celebrate the joy of life most precious.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      One

      She was much prettier than Johnny Lonebear had expected. Not that it took much to beat the pair of horns and tail he had envisioned as part of the personage of the infamous Ms. Anne Wainwright. To be sure, it had been his own past experience, rather than anything his niece said about her new teacher, that had led him to picture a woman with a pitchfork for a pointer: the kind his own second-grade teacher used to whack him with across the knuckles whenever he acted up in class, which he had to admit was more often than not. Indeed, on the surface, the lovely Ms. Wainwright was nothing at all like that old warhorse Miss Applebee.

      But Johnny wasn’t as easily deceived by this young woman’s ready smile and considerable talent as was his impressionable niece when it came to judging outsiders. Crimson Dawn’s mother believed that beneath the surface, they were all devils. And according to her, the do-gooders were the worst of all. Johnny’s suspicions were more tempered than those of his older sister. His wariness had been bought and paid for on the field of battle, where all too often the enemy that he had faced was attempting to prove with bullets the superiority of a particular culture, religion or skin tone. That so many radicals believed genocide a viable option made Johnny proud to have served as a U.S. Marine dedicated to the concept of upholding freedom for all. As far as he could tell, the only thing keeping the next madman from rising to power in any number of hot spots all over the world was that good men were willing to give their lives for one another without regard to the color of the man fighting next to them.

      It was Johnny’s belief that mercenaries were much easier to defeat than zealots. And he feared a zealot in the classroom was potentially far more dangerous than one in a designated war zone. If Ms. Wainwright proved herself to be the misguided extremist that his sister, Ester, believed her to be, she could well be as formidable an enemy as any he had ever faced before. At least, that was the way Ester put it to him. After thoroughly chastising him for even letting the woman into his school at all, she had expressly sent him into the classroom to check out that “she-devil” himself.

      “I don’t hire ’em, sis,” he had told her. “I just do my best to keep the place up and running.”

      Studying one fair-haired head surrounded by so many dark ones gathered around her, Johnny had to admit that the newest member of his staff didn’t look particularly diabolical this morning. In fact, it took a concerted effort on his part to pull his thoughts away from the intriguing way the light was toying with her hair and remind himself just why he was here.

      As if somehow sensing the liberties that his thoughts were taking, the lady in question looked up from a piece of blood-red glass that she was cutting to look directly at him.

      “Would you care to join us?” she asked.

      Her voice was not overtly hostile. In fact, Johnny was surprised at its gentle quality and lack of discernable Midwestern accent. That utterly feminine sound wrapped itself around his senses and reminded him, in the most visceral way, that he could not help but respond to her invitation as anything but an interested male. In stark contrast to that mellifluous voice, her eyes openly challenged him.

      There was nothing subtle about those blue lasers that