Cattleman's Honor. Pamela Toth
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“Why don’t you sit down and finish eating,” she suggested now. “Give it a few days—”
“I’m not going back there.” His cheeks were flushed and his dark brows were bunched into a frown, but his eyes had a suspicious sheen as he plopped back down. After a moment he stabbed his fork into the spaghetti on his plate.
“What will you do if you don’t go to school?” Emily asked, feeling as though she were walking barefoot through a room full of mouse traps. Her own appetite had disappeared with his first angry exclamation. She’d hoped at least one student would make an effort to welcome him.
“I dunno,” he mumbled. “Hitchhike back to L.A., I guess. I could find a job at one of the studios. Dad would help me.”
Emily clasped her shaking hands together in her lap under the table. “Listen,” she said, leaning forward, “I want your promise right now that you won’t do any such thing.” The idea of him alone on some highway, thumb out, made her stomach turn over.
“You mean get a job?” he asked with a patently innocent expression.
“Don’t play dumb! I don’t want you hitchhiking under any circumstances.” Her voice was sharp, and she had to take a deep breath before she continued. “We’ve talked about the dangers of accepting rides from strangers.”
He rolled his eyes, but at least his frown had faded. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He took a huge bite of garlic bread, his jaw flexing as he chewed. Pretty soon he’d be shaving and Lord knew what else.
“I mean it. I want your promise that you’ll talk to me before you do anything like that,” Emily repeated.
She waited impatiently for his answer while he swallowed. When he took a drink of milk, she nearly screamed with frustration. “David,” she warned.
Finally he bobbed his head. “Okay, I promise.”
Emily released the breath she’d been holding. “What about your classes? Your teachers? Anyone good? Anything interesting?”
He shrugged, twirling spaghetti around his fork. “Geometry’s all right, I guess, and the Spanish teacher’s a babe.” He gestured with his hands. “Really built, you know?”
Emily realized he was fishing for a reaction. “But can she teach?”
He looked at her from the corner of his eye, and his mouth relaxed ever so slightly. “Who cares?”
“You’re right,” she teased. “If you don’t learn anything, you can always take the class over in summer school.”
He slid down in his chair, and she wondered, as she always did, how he could sit on his tailbone like that and be comfortable.
“Are you behind in your classes?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? I’m way ahead in most of them. There are only a couple hundred kids in the whole school, and that’s for six grades,” he replied. “It’s weird having the younger kids right there.”
“And did you meet anyone interesting, other than your Spanish teacher?” she persisted.
Instantly his frown was back. “Talk about a bunch of hicks,” he grumbled. “You’d think the whole world was into rodeos and cattle ranching. They all dress like Roy Rogers, and they stare at me as though I just beamed down from another planet.”
“I’m sure that to the kids around here California is a different planet,” Emily agreed, “but I’ll bet some of them are curious about you. Maybe they’re shy. Keep smiling and give them a few days to get used to you.”
“You always think everyone is shy, but the truth is that no one likes me here.” David shoved back his chair, but this time it didn’t tip over. “Is there more spaghetti?”
Emily nodded toward the pan on the stove. “Help yourself. Didn’t anyone talk to you?”
“Just one girl,” he said as he piled more pasta on his plate and ladled sauce over it. “She showed me where the library was. It only has five computers.”
“What’s her name?” Emily asked, shaking her head when he pointed first to her plate and then to the stove.
“Her name’s Kim. She’s in two of my classes, and I saw her getting on the bus after school.”
Emily knew better than to express too much curiosity about the girl. “Do you have homework?” she asked instead.
He stuffed the last bite of garlic bread into his mouth. “Yeah.” His voice was muffled, but she ignored the breach in manners that would have sent Stuart into a rage. “I can help you with the dishes first, if you want,” David offered.
Emily beamed at him. Sometimes, when she least expected it, the sweet boy she remembered would make an appearance. Stuart had always worked long hours, leaving her to raise their son alone. Until the incident that had gotten David expelled from his old school, she would have said her relationship with him was extremely close. He was still the most important person in her life, but since the divorce, he had built up a wall she couldn’t scale.
“School will get easier,” she promised rashly. “Give it a little time.”
“Can I call Dad?” he asked as he carried his dishes to the counter.
“Sure, after you’re done with your homework. Just don’t talk too long.” She hoped, for David’s sake, that Stuart would be home this time, since returning David’s calls didn’t seem to be a priority.
While David stacked their dishes, she began running water into the sink, followed by a squirt of liquid soap.
“When are we getting a dishwasher?” he asked as he put the leftover salad in the refrigerator.
“After I get the bill for remodeling the studio,” she replied. She’d spent a big chunk of her settlement for this place, and she was cautious by nature. “Until then, we do it the old-fashioned way.”
Wrinkling his nose at the sinkful of bubbles, he grabbed a towel. “I’ll dry.”
Two days later Emily was in her office going through the mail when she heard someone knocking. Figuring the contractor must be back from town, where he’d gone to buy more supplies, she hurried through the living room and opened the door without bothering to look out the window.
Standing on her porch was a tall man wearing a black cowboy hat. Speechless with surprise, Emily stared over the top of the reading glasses perched on her nose. His familiar green eyes widened and then his serious expression relaxed slightly. How could the same lines that detracted from a woman’s beauty look so fantastic on a man?
“Ms. Major,” he said, touching the brim of his hat with his fingers, “we meet again. I’m Adam Winchester. We more or less ran into each other at the feed store the other day.”
How had he found out her name and tracked her down so quickly? And why had he bothered?
As he waited with an expectant expression, Emily pulled the door partially shut and blocked it with her foot, suddenly aware of her isolation from the main road as well as her neighbors. This wasn’t L.A., and the man was probably harmless, but he had gone to the trouble of seeking her out, and she wasn’t taking any chances.
“What do you want?” she asked without returning his smile.
His jaw hardened in response to her lack of welcome, and his gaze narrowed, drawing attention to his thick, dark lashes and emphasizing the creases fanning out from his eyes. “There’s something important you and I need to discuss,” he said forcefully.
Some women would undoubtedly find his interest complimentary, his determination flattering, but Emily was merely annoyed by his persistence. In California she’d been surrounded by truly beautiful women, and she’d been married, so men hadn’t been standing in line to flirt with her. Perhaps here in