Unexpected Mommy

Mary sniffed and managed a faltering smile of triumph for her now subdued classmates.

Jenny took the child’s hand and led her toward the door, then paused as she recognized the danger in her plan. The class was very likely to erupt into chaos again the instant her back was turned.

She turned slowly back to face the other students. She doubted she would ever learn which student was responsible for this disaster, but maybe she could transform the incident into a lesson for all of them. If she didn’t take control of these nine-year-olds today, it would be a very long year.

Or a very short one, if she followed through on seeking new employment. Any new employment Once the principal saw Mary’s new haircut, he might very well encourage Jenny’s career change. In the meantime, though, she leveled a stern look at her young charges.

“When I get back here, I expect to find you exactly where I left you,” she said. “And I expect to find the person responsible for chopping off Mary’s hair writing an apology to Mary.”

Several boys snickered. Jenny scowled.

“On second thought, perhaps all of you should be writing that apology,” she said firmly. “Even if you didn’t cut her hair, you all stood by and watched it happen. That makes you accessories. I’ll explain exactly what that is when I get back. Then you can read your letters aloud. They had better ring with sincerity or every one of you will spend the next month in detention. Maybe longer.” She scowled. “Maybe the whole semester. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” a redheaded girl muttered dutifully. Her hands were folded neatly atop her desk and her expression was as solemn and innocent as a saint’s.

“Yes, ma’am,” several others mimicked.

Jenny sighed and decided to let the taunt pass.

“You may start now.” She waited until heads were bent and pencils were scratching over paper before taking Mary to the principal’s office and explaining the morning’s catastrophe.

Patrick Jackson peered at Jenny over the ugly black frames of his thick glasses, then glanced at Mary and sighed heavily. “I just knew something like this was going to happen the minute I heard the board had approved your transfer to this school. I would have fought it, but it would have been a waste of time. Even though you’ve been trouble ever since you hit town twenty years ago, your family has too much influence for me to win.”

She ignored the reference to her family and to her inauspicious beginnings as a resident of Los Piños. Some memories were destined to die hard.

“This is hardly my fault,” she protested, instead. “I wasn’t even in the classroom yet.”

“My point precisely. The bell had rung. Where were you?”

Jenny stared at him incredulously. “In here with you listening to yet another explanation of my duties, along with a few off-the-cuff remarks about my lack of suitability as a teacher,” she shot back.

That gave him a moment’s pause. He settled for regarding her sourly. “And who’s with your class now?”

“No one,” she admitted.

“Obviously you learned nothing from what happened this morning.” He shook his head. “It’s just as I expected. You are not cut out for this.”

Jenny barely resisted the urge to utter a curse that would have blistered the man’s ears. After all, Mary had been traumatized enough for one morning. She didn’t need to see her brand-new teacher lose her temper and punch Mr. Patrick Johnson in his bulbous nose.

She stood a little straighter and said with quiet dignity, “If you will call Mary’s mother and explain what happened, I will get back to my other students.”

“Go, go,” he said, waving her off. “I’ll speak to you again at the end of the day.”

She beamed at him. “I’ll be looking forward to it.” He’d have to catch her first, she thought as she gave Mary’s hand a last reassuring squeeze and bolted from the office.

As she raced down the hall, she listened for the sounds of renewed chaos erupting in her classroom. Instead, it was absolutely silent as she approached. She found the quiet worrisome, but she was grateful nonetheless.

Inside, Jenny scoured the room for signs of mischief. It appeared, though, that she’d gotten her message across. No one had budged so much as an inch in her absence.

“Is everyone finished writing that apology?” she asked, perching on the edge of her desk and surveying the students.

“Yes, ma’am,” the same little redhead replied eagerly.

“Yes, ma’am,” the others taunted in a singsong chorus.

“Enough!” Jenny said. “Who’d like to go first?”

Naturally it was that accommodating little redhead who replied.

“Fine,” Jenny said. “Your name is?”

“Felicity Jackson.”

Jenny winced. “Any relation to our principal?”

“He’s my father,” the child said proudly.

Of course, he would be, Jenny thought with a sigh. “Okay, then. Thank you, Felicity. You may go first.”

Felicity’s essay was less of an apology than a well-crafted crime report. Bless her little suck-up heart, she readily mentioned not only the precise details of the insult that had been perpetrated on her classmate, but the name of the boy responsible: Petey Adams.

Before Jenny could say a word, a boy—almost certainly the boy in question—flew out of his seat and aimed straight for Felicity, clearly prepared to knock the breath clean out of her. Jenny stepped in his way with seconds to spare. With one arm looped around his waist, she plucked him off his feet.

“Petey, I presume.”

“You can presume anything you danged well want to,” he said with a defiant tilt to his chin and fire flashing in his startlingly blue eyes.

Something about that chin and those eyes looked disturbingly familiar. Jenny had the uncomfortable feeling she ought to recognize Petey, especially since his last name was Adams, the same as her own.

“Petey, you and I will discuss this incident when the rest of the class goes to recess,” she informed him. “In the meantime you have two choices. You can remain in your seat and behave, or you can spend the morning in the principal’s office. It’s up to you, but I should warn you that Mr. Jackson is very eager to get his hands on the person responsible for Mary’s haircut.” She smiled at the boy. “What’s it going to be?”

The defiance slipped just a notch. “Might’s well stay here,” he muttered eventually.

“Good choice,” she said, and released him to return to his seat. “Perhaps you’d like to read your apology to the class.”

“Didn’t write one,” he said, glaring at her. “You can keep me here till I’m an old man and I still won’t write one.”

The belligerence took her aback. “You did hear me give the assignment, didn’t you?”

“I ain’t deaf.”

“Then you are deliberately choosing to defy me?”

He squared his little shoulders and stared straight back at her. “Yep.”

She had to admire his spunk if not his insubordination. She had a whole new respect for the teachers forced to deal with her through the years. How she handled Petey Adams was absolutely critical to gaining the respect of his classmates, with the possible exception of Felicity, who obviously craved the approval of all authority figures more than she wanted the friendship of those her own age. She was definitely her father’s child.

“Okay, Petey, we will discuss this matter during recess.”

He shrugged indifferently.

Jenny turned to the other students and called on them one by one to read their apologies. Fortunately there were no further incidents. Still, by the time recess came an hour later, she was so tense her shoulders ached. She made arrangements for the third-grade teacher to supervise her students on the playground, then returned to meet with Petey.

He regarded her with hostility. Jenny sighed. She took a moment to look over his file, which she’d retrieved from the office on her way back from the playground. He was new to Los Piños. His mother had died less than two years before, his grandfather just months ago. He was all alone with his dad, who’d taken a job as foreman of a ranch near White Pines.

Jenny recalled all too vividly her own sense of being lost and alone after her parents’ divorce, when her mother had brought her from New York to this strange new place. She kept a tight rein on her sympathy, though, as she looked up and faced the boy seated in front of her.

“You’re new this year, aren’t you?”

“So?”

Apparently there was to be no such thing as a simple yes or no with this kid. “I remember when I went to a new school,” she said. “In this very town, in fact. I wanted to make sure everybody knew they couldn’t mess with me.”

There was a brief spark of interest in his eyes. Jenny considered mat a good sign.

“I got myself into as much trouble as I possibly could,” she said, deciding not to tell him the precise nature of that trouble. Explaining that she had stolen Harlan Adams’s car and smashed it into a tree when she was barely fourteen might just give this kid the idea that he’d been wasting his time chopping off pigtails.

“What’d you do?” Petey asked.

“Oh, lots of things,” she said dismissively. “What I really wanted most of all was to get my mom’s attention. She’d been so busy getting us settled and getting set up with her new office that she hadn’t had much time for me.”

Petey’s eyes brightened. She had clearly caught his interest.

“Did it work?” he asked eagerly.

Jenny smiled at the memory. “Oh, it worked, all right She was furious with me. She made me go to work.”

Petey stared at Jenny, disbelief written all over his face. “But you were just a kid.”

“True.”

“How old?”

“Fourteen.”

“I’m only nine. My dad would never make me work.”

“That’s what I thought about my mom. She was a lawyer, after all. I told her she was violating child labor laws, but she didn’t care. She said I had to learn a lesson. She put me to work for the man whose property I damaged.”

Petey considered that, then regarded her with a worried frown. “Do you think I’m going to have to pay for Mary’s haircut?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Jenny said. “It might even be good if you volunteered to do that. It would show that you’re sorry for hurting her and that you know what you did was wrong.”

“But I don’t have any money.”

“Then I suppose you’ll have to do like I did. You’ll have to earn it by doing chores.”

His gaze narrowed. “You mean like doing Mary’s homework and stuff?”

She bit back a grin. “No. 1 think you and Mary should each do your own homework. But maybe you could help out around her house or maybe your dad will give you extra chores at home and you can give the money to Mary’s mom.”

For the first time Petey squirmed uncomfortably. “You’re really going to tell my dad?”

Jenny was fairly sure he’d known that was going to be the outcome from the beginning of this little escapade. Now that it was a certainty, though, he was obviously worried about the consequences.

“Actually I was hoping you would tell him yourself,” she said.

“He’ll be really really mad, though.”

“You should have thought of that before you took those scissors to Mary’s hair.”

He sighed heavily, then his expression brightened. “I know. Maybe I could do chores for you and you could give the money to Mary’s mom. We wouldn’t have to tell my dad at all.”

“Nice try, but I don’t think so. After school you and I are going to go see your dad,” she said firmly. “I understand he’s working for a rancher right outside of town. It’s on my way home. I’ll drive you.”

“I’m supposed to take the bus,” he argued.

“We’ll make an exception today.”

“I shouldn’t ride with a stranger. My dad said so. My granddad, too.”

“I’m not a stranger. I’m your teacher.”

“I don’t think that matters. My dad doesn’t know you.” His expression brightened. “Maybe you should just write a note and I’ll take it home,” he suggested hopefully.

And flush it down the toilet, Jenny thought. “Nope. I want to speak to your dad face-to-face.”

“Okay,” Petey said, his expression sullen again. “But don’t blame me if he says it’s all your fault.”

“My fault?”

“Sure. If you were a better teacher, it would never have happened.”

Out of the mouths of babes, she thought wearily. With Petey regarding her triumphantly, she swore that if she survived this day, she was going to think very seriously about choosing another profession. Less than half a day on the job this year and she was already regretting not going into law with her mother or maybe ranching like her adoptive father, Harlan Adams. Heck, maybe even calf roping would have been a better choice. Then again, she’d tried that once at her father’s insistence. She hadn’t been very good at that, either.

For the rest of the day she pondered what sort of man would have a son as insightful and inventive and troublesome as Petey Adams. Just thinking about facing such a man was almost enough to make her choose to stick around school and square off with Patrick Jackson, instead. Almost, but not quite. Ducking out would irritate the pompous principal, which was pretty good motivation in and of itself.

In fact, by the time the final bell rang, she was actually looking forward to meeting Chance Adams. She was just itching to go toe-to-toe with an adult, instead of a classroom of pint-size hellions.

Chapter Two

In retrospect, the decision to settle in Los Piños had been easier than Chance had anticipated. Even when he’d driven into town two months earlier, he hadn’t been sure he would stay. He’d just meant to keep his promise to his daddy, check out White Pines and then move on if West Texas didn’t suit him. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Petey, he might have kept on roaming for the rest of his life. He was too restless, too soul-deep exhausted to start over.

As it was, though, he knew his son deserved stability. Petey needed schooling and a real home to come to, his own bed to sleep in. The motel rooms they’d stayed in on the road when they’d first left Montana were fine for a night or two. But they were not the kind of places where he could raise a kid. No matter how sick at heart he was himself, he owed his son a better life than that.

He’d still been wrestling with his conscience when they’d crossed the border into Texas. He’d deliberately taken his time getting to Los Piños. They’d gone to the southeast part of the state first, taken a swim in the Gulf of Mexico, which Petey had declared way more awesome than the creeks back home. Then they’d spent a few days exploring the wonders of Houston, the biggest city Petey had ever seen, before moving on to Dallas, where Petey had wanted to see the stadium where his beloved Cowboys played. Whatever happened, Chance had wanted Petey to have his grand adventure. He’d hoped that would make up for all the grief in his young life. Two devastating losses in as many years were enough to shake up a boy’s whole world. A man’s, too, for that matter.

At any rate, it had been early July by the time they’d driven into Los Piños. Chance had expected to feel some sort of tug, some kind of connection to the place, but as far as he could see it was no different from any other ranching community in the West. The businesses catered to the cattlemen, nothing fancy, just good solid merchandise at decent prices.

They were just in time for the town’s annual Independence Day celebration. Flag-waving families had gathered all along the sidewalks for a parade that was twice the size of the one back home in Montana, even though the town was no more populated, at least as far as Chance could tell.

After the parade there’d been a picnic. Most folks had brought their own baskets of fried chicken, along with blankets to spread on the grass, but there were plenty of food concessions for those who wanted to buy hot dogs and fries and cotton candy.

The celebration was wrapped up that night with fireworks. Chance had choked back bile at the oftrepeated announcements that the lavish display had been donated by none other than Harlan Adams and his sons.

“Y’all be sure and thank ’em when you see ’em,” the mayor said.

Petey’s eyes had widened at the mention of Harlan Adams. “That’s Granddaddy’s—”

Fearing he’d be overheard, Chance had put a hand over Petey’s mouth, cutting off the blurted remark in midsentence. It was too soon for anyone to know he was connected in any way to the powerful Harlan Adams. He wanted to size things up before he made his presence and his intentions known—if he ever did.

But hearing all that boasting had solidified one thing: he was staying. He wanted to see just how the other half of the family had thrived after running his father off. Resentment he hadn’t known he felt simmered all night long.

During the day he had asked around about employment and learned that a rancher named Wilkie Rollins was looking for an experienced foreman.

“It’s a small place compared to White Pines.” one man told him. “Then, again, most are. White Pines is about the biggest cattle operation in the state, bar none. Harlan’s got himself quite a spread out there. That boy of his, Cody, has doubled the size of it these past few years. He’s a smart one, all right, every bit as sharp as his daddy.”

“Is that right?” Chance said, absorbing the information about his cousin and tucking it away for later consideration. “How do I go about finding this Rollins place?”

“You can’t miss it if you head west going out of town. If you come up on them fancy gates at White Pines, you’ve gone too far.”

The directions had been easy enough to follow. The next morning he’d driven out there, talked with Wilkie Rollins and had a job and a new home by the end of the interview. He and Petey had been settled in by sundown. Petey had been ecstatic that they were staying on.

In the weeks since, Chance had been happy enough with the familiar work. Wilkie’s spread was smaller than his own had been in Montana, but the man was getting too old to handle it himself. He left most of the decisions to Chance and drove into town every day to hang out with his cronies. Chance had been able to keep up with the work with time to spare to contemplate his next move with Harlan Adams.

Petey was hell-bent on charging over there and introducing themselves and staking their claim. He’d been all but deaf to Chance’s admonitions that slower was better. Fortunately, despite being the next-door neighbor, White Pines was too far down the road from Wilkie’s for Petey to sneak off there on his own to snoop around.

“Patience, son, patience,” Chance said over and over, but he figured he was pretty much wasting his breath. Petey was intent on fulfilling his grand-daddy’s last request.

Through the years Chance hadn’t gotten caught up in his father’s bitterness. It had always seemed a waste of energy to him. But now, the more he heard about those paragons of virtue out at White Pines, the more the high praise grated.

He wondered what folks would have to say if they knew that Harlan Adams had stolen half of that ranch right out from under his younger brother. He wondered how they’d react if they knew that Hank Adams had been sent away all but destitute. In the past two months Chance had started working up a pretty good head of steam over it himself.

While he debated the best way to go about making his presence known, he gave Wilkie his money’s worth and let the idea of revenge simmer. Some of his plots were subtle and downright sneaky. Some were blatant and outrageous. All of them ended with him and Petey ensconced in that fancy house a few miles up the road from the little foreman’s cottage they currently called home.

He was just trying a new scheme on for size when he glanced up from the wood he’d been chopping and caught sight of a slender dark-haired woman striding in his direction, a purposeful gleam in her eyes. Since she also had his son in tow, he suspected Petey had been up to some sort of mischief again. He’d hoped the start of school today would settle the boy down, but it looked like just the opposite had happened.

The boy was darn near out of control. He managed to find a way to do mischief where Chance would have sworn none was possible. Chance would have tanned the boy’s hide, if he’d thought it would help, but his own father’s lashings had never done anything except make Chance more defiant than ever. Since Petey had his temper in spades, it seemed likely he’d react the same way.

Chance wiped his brow with the bandanna he’d stuck in his pocket and stood back to watch their approach. Might as well appreciate the sight of a pretty woman while he had the opportunity. In a few minutes they were going to be on opposite sides of something or other. That much was clear from the scowl on that pretty face of hers.

She was tall, five-eight at least, he gauged from a distance, and thin as a poker in her fancy doeskin-colored linen slacks and bright orange blouse. Her black hair was cropped short as a boy’s, emphasizing wide cheekbones and eyes as dark as coal. There was a hint of Native American ancestry in her angular features.

He put her age at anywhere from late twenties to early thirties. She had the brisk no-nonsense stride of a man, but as she neared, he saw that she had the surprisingly ample curves of a woman beneath that clinging silk blouse of hers. His body reacted as if he’d just spotted a primed and waiting sex goddess in his bed.

The reaction, of course, was the result of too many months of celibacy. This woman wasn’t at all his type. She was way too skinny, and that determined jut of her chin warned him she’d be a handful of trouble.

“Mr. Adams,” she called out as she neared. She sounded way too grim to be dropping by for the sheer pleasure of it.

“That would be me,” he confirmed, glancing at Petey. When his son determinedly refused to meet his gaze, Chance looked the woman over from head to toe, hoping to rattle her. The action was as instinctive as breathing. He’d always enjoyed flirting with a pretty woman, no matter the circumstances. If he could distract her from her mission, so much the better. Instead, though, her gaze remained fixed squarely on his face as she patiently withstood the examination.

“Satisfied?” she asked eventually.

There was no hint of color in her cheeks, but Chance felt his own flaming. “Not by a long shot,” he said, trying to reclaim the edge he’d lost

She shrugged. “Let me know when you are. I can wait.”

He concluded that trying to best her was a losing cause. “Who are you?” he asked since no one had seen fit to fill him in.

“I’m Petey’s teacher.”

He’d guessed as much—Petey was coming home from school, after all. And the woman with him had a prim and prissy attitude about her, just like every teacher Chance had ever had, though she was definitely a whole lot sexier than most.

“You have a name?” he asked.

“Jenny Adams.”

Chance flinched. This was a turn of events he hadn’t anticipated. He’d heard all about Harlan Adams’s sons. He hadn’t heard a word about any daughters. Then again, Adams was a common enough name. Maybe she wasn’t kin at all.

“Adams?” he repeated cautiously. “Any relation to Harlan Adams?”

Her expression brightened. Those great big eyes of hers sparkled like coal well on its way to turning into diamonds.

“He’s my father,” she said with pride. “My adoptive father, actually. I was Jenny Runningbear before he married my mother and adopted me. Do you know him?”

“Oh, I know him, all right,” Chance said coldly. “Or maybe I should say I know all about him, since we haven’t exactly been introduced.”

“Dad!” Petey protested, tugging urgently on his jeans.

Chance ignored him. Before he could stop himself, he blurted what he’d intended to keep secret for a while longer yet. “Harlan Adams is my uncle. He and my father were brothers.”

She gaped at that, clearly stunned. Petey looked equally shocked that his father had done precisely what he’d been warning Petey not to do.