The Cowboy And The Lady

* * *

DEBI’S HANDS TIGHTENED on the steering wheel. It had been a long drive from Indianapolis. She was hot, she was tired and she’d gotten lost half a dozen times during the trip down to this ranch. She fervently hoped this place dealt in miracles on a regular basis because she really, really needed one.

Badly.

Debi had a feeling that nothing short of a miracle was going to save her brother. And maybe even that wasn’t enough.

She spared her brother a quick glance. He always had a habit of trying to turn things around, of putting her on the defensive. Well, not this time. She couldn’t allow it.

“This isn’t about my marriage, or lack thereof, this is about you. You’re broken, Ryan, and I don’t know how to fix you.” Even saying it pained her, but it was the truth. Somehow, Ryan had lost his way and she had lost the ability to connect with him. She wasn’t too proud to admit that she needed help in both departments.

“Drop-kicking me here to this dude ranch that’s built out of horse manure sure as hell isn’t going to do it, Debs.”

She sincerely hoped that wasn’t a prophecy. “I’ve tried everything else with you and it hasn’t worked. Maybe the people who run this ranch will have better luck.”

Even as she said it, she mentally crossed her fingers. She’d been at her wits’ end and more than desperate the day after she had bailed her brother out of jail. True to his word, John had been gone when she came home with Ryan. The following morning, she’d broken down in the hospital’s fifth-floor break room. Trying to comfort her, Sheila, another nurse on the floor, told her about The Healing Ranch.

It turned out that Sheila’s cousin had a son who was well on his way to a long rap sheet and possibly life in prison. She had sent him to The Healing Ranch in a last-ditch attempt to save him from himself. According to Sheila, it had worked. Three months later, she’d gotten back the decent kid she’d always known was in there.

Debi had called the number Sheila had given her that very day. She’d had to leave a message on the answering machine, which didn’t fill her with much confidence, but that all changed when she received a call back that evening from the man who ran the place. She remembered thinking that Jackson White Eagle had a nice, calming voice. Just talking to him had made her feel that maybe it wasn’t really hopeless after all.

He hadn’t made her any lofty promises, he’d just said that he would see what could be done and invited her to come down with her brother. Debi hadn’t wanted a tour, she’d wanted to sign Ryan up right then and there, afraid that if this Jackson person had a chance to interact with her brother first, he couldn’t accept him into the program.

“You’re sure you don’t want to see the ranch and think about it first?” he had asked her.

Her online research had told her that the man who ran the ranch had a perfect track record so far. That was definitely good enough for her—especially since she had nowhere else to turn.

“I’m sure,” she had replied.

She’d taken a leave of absence from the hospital, gotten together what there was in her meager savings account, transferring it into her checking account, and driven down here with Ryan. John’s divorce papers were tucked into her purse. She had no one to lean on but herself.

Ryan had put up a huge fuss about being taken away from his friends. He’d also threatened to run away the first chance he got.

He repeated the threat every hour on the hour in case she hadn’t heard him the first half a dozen times.

Debi told herself that Ryan only threatened to run away because he wanted to frighten her into turning around and driving back to Indianapolis. Maybe a year ago, she might have, but what stopped her now was that she knew if she did, for all intents and purposes she would have been signing her brother’s epitaph because as sure as day followed night, Ryan was on a path headed straight for destruction.

“Well, the clowns who run this place aren’t going to get the opportunity to brainwash me because I’m taking off first chance I get. You know I will,” he threatened again.

Debi sighed as she stared at the road before her. She wasn’t all that sure the threats were empty ones. Ryan could very well mean what he said. That was why she wasn’t going back home once she had finished registering him and got him settled in. If Ryan did take off, she wanted to be right here where she could go after him and bring him back. He was her brother and at fifteen, obviously still a minor. She was responsible for him, and she would have felt that way even if he were eighteen.

She prayed that it wouldn’t come to that, but considering what she had already gone through with Ryan, she wasn’t counting on it being easy.

“I mean it. I’m gone. First chance I get,” Ryan repeated with emphasis.

“Yes, I heard you,” Debi replied stoically. She also heard the fear in his voice. God, let these people here reach him, she prayed. She saw the cluster of people in and around the corral. “Okay, we’re here. For my sake, try not to insult the man in the first five minutes.”

Ryan’s laugh had a nasty sound to it, and she knew this was not going to go well. “Hey, I don’t want to spoil the man, now, do I?”

She didn’t bother answering her brother. Anger and despair had grabbed equal parts of her. Anger that he had allowed himself to become this destructive, negative being and despair because she couldn’t snap him out of it and had been forced to turn to strangers for help. She’d thought she was too proud for that but obviously pride had withered and died in the face of this situation.

There were two cowboys by the corral as she pulled up. Were they just workers, or...?

She saw the slightly taller of the two draw away from the enclosure and approach her car. Debi turned off the engine, carefully watching the approaching cowboy’s every move. He strolled toward them like a sleek panther, with an economy of steps.

Debi got out of the vehicle. Ryan remained where he was. She wasn’t about to leave him in the car, not even if she was only inches away and had the car keys in her hand. She knew her brother, knew that he could hot-wire anything with an engine and take off at a moment’s notice. She had no doubt that he probably thought that he could propel himself into the driver’s seat and just take off without a single backward glance.

Well, not today, she told herself. Bending down, she looked in through the open window on the driver’s side. “Get out of the car, Ryan.”

“No,” he informed her flatly.

At fifteen, Ryan was taller than she was and while scrawny-looking, he was still stronger. The only time she ever managed to get him to move was when she caught him off guard.

That wasn’t going to work here, she realized, looking down into his defiant face.

Jackson White Eagle chose that exact moment to enter into her life. “Trouble, ma’am?”

Chapter Two

“‘Ma’am’?” Ryan echoed with a sneer. “Is this guy for real?” he jeered, turning toward his sister.

“Very real,” Jackson assured him in an even voice that was devoid of any emotion. “Why don’t you get out of the car like your sister requested?” he suggested in the same tone.

“Why don’t you mind your own freakin’ business?” Ryan retorted, sticking up his chin the way he did whenever he was spoiling for a fight.

“For the next month or two or three,” Jackson informed him slowly with emphasis, “you are my business, Ryan,” he concluded in the same low, evenly controlled voice with which he had greeted the teen’s sister.

Jackson opened the door on the passenger side, firmly took hold of Ryan’s arm and with one swift, economic movement, pulled his newest “ranch hand,” as he liked to call the teens who arrived on his doorstep, out of the car and to his feet.

“Ow!” Ryan cried angrily, grabbing his shoulder as if it had been wrenched out of its socket. “You going to let this jerk manhandle me like that?” he demanded angrily, directing the question at his sister.

Before Debi had a chance to respond, Jackson told her brother matter-of-factly, “That didn’t hurt, Ryan.”

“How do you know?” Ryan cried, still holding his shoulder as if he expected his arm to drop off.

“Because,” Jackson said in a calm, steely voice, “if I had wanted to hurt you, Ryan, trust me, you would have known it. To begin with, the pain would have thrown you off balance and you would have dropped like a stone to your knees.” He released his hold on Ryan’s arm, but his eyes still held Ryan prisoner. “Now then, why don’t you get your things out of the car and come with me? I’ll show you and your sister where you’ll be staying for the next few months.”

“Few months?” Ryan repeated indignantly. “The hell I will.”

Jackson suppressed a sigh. He turned from the woman who he was about to escort to the ranch house and looked back at the teen she had brought for him to essentially “fix.” This one, he had a feeling, was going to take a bit of concentrated effort.

“By the way,” he said to Ryan, “I let the first two occasions slide because you’re new here and this is your first day—”

“And my last,” Ryan interjected.

Debi had stood by, quiet, until she couldn’t endure it any longer. “Ryan!”

The smile Jackson offered to the woman who had brought the teen to him was an understanding one.

“That’s all right. Ryan will come around.” His eyes shifted to the teen. Under all that bravado was just a scared kid, he thought. A kid he intended to reach—but it wouldn’t be easy. “There’s a fine for every time you curse. You put a dollar into the swear jar.”

“Curse?” Ryan mocked. “You call that a curse?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, I do. While you’re here you’re going to have to clean up your language as well as your act,” Jackson informed the teen.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Pay him the damn fine so he’ll stop whining,” Ryan told his sister.

“That’s three now,” Jackson corrected quietly. “That one isn’t free. And you’re the one who needs to pay, not your sister. Time you learned to pull your own weight. Your sister can’t be expected to always be cleaning up your messes.”

“Yeah, well, a lot you know,” Ryan retorted, an underlying frustration in his voice. “My sister’s the one with all the money.”

“That’ll change,” Jackson informed him. “You’ll be earning your own money while you’re here. Everyone at The Healing Ranch earns his own money by doing the chores that are assigned to him. You’ll get yours after you settle in.”

“Wow,” Ryan marveled. “How lame can you get?”

Ryan shifted from foot to foot, eyeing his sister and obviously waiting for her to say something to back him up—or better yet, to spring him so he could stop playing this ridiculous game and go home.

Debi’s cheeks began to redden. “I’m sorry about this,” she apologized to Jackson.

Jackson waved away the apology. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve had a lot worse here.”

“Gee, thanks,” Ryan sneered. “You know I’m right here.”

“Wouldn’t forget it for a second,” Jackson assured him.

By then, Garrett had come over to join them. Behind him, the three teens who were in the corral had stopped working with their horses and were now watching the newest arrival at the ranch try to go up against Jackson. It played out like a minidrama.

Garrett flashed a wide, easy smile at both the newest addition to the crew on the ranch and the young woman who had brought him to them.

“This is my brother, Garrett.” Jackson made the introduction to Ryan’s worried-looking sister. “We run the ranch together,” he added rather needlessly, since the information was also on the website he’d had one of Miss Joan’s friends put together for him, Miss Joan being the woman who ran the town’s only diner and who was also the town’s unofficial matriarch.

Taking the attractive young woman’s hand in his, Garrett slipped his other hand over it and shook it. “Welcome to The Healing Ranch, ma’am,” he said in all sincerity.

“Who came up with that stupid name, anyway?” Ryan asked. “You?” The last part was directed toward Jackson. “’Cause it sounds like something you’d say,” the teen concluded condescendingly.

Garrett treated the question as if it was a legitimate one. He was attempting to defuse the situation. Once upon a time, Jackson had quite a temper, but he now prided himself on keeping that temper completely under wraps.

“Actually,” Garrett told Ryan, “it was our uncle. He came up with the name. This was his ranch first,” Garrett remembered fondly.

“Oh,” Ryan mumbled, looking away. He shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged, lifting up bony shoulders. “Still a lame name,” he muttered not quite under his breath.

Jackson pretended not to hear. “The bunkhouse is right over there,” he pointed out.

“Yeah? So what? Why would I want to know where the stupid bunkhouse is?” Ryan asked, the same uncooperative attitude radiating from every word.

“Because that’s where you’ll be staying,” Jackson said. Inwardly, he was braced for a confrontation between the teen and himself.

Ryan’s deep brown eyes darkened to an unsettling murky hue. “The hell I am.”

“You’d better get to work soon, Ryan. You’ve already got several fines—and counting—against you,” Jackson informed him. “Garrett, why don’t you take Ryan here—” he nodded at the teen “—and introduce him to the others?”

“Others?” Ryan repeated. “Is this where you bring out a bunch of robotlike zombies and tell me they’re going to be my new best friends and roommates? Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“Ryan, apologize right now, do you hear me?” Debi ordered. Her words might as well have been in Japanese for all the impression they made on Ryan. Watching her brother being taken in hand had her looking both relieved and tense.

“Ryan, drop the attitude,” Jackson told him. “You’ll find it a whole lot easier to get along with everyone if you do.”

Ryan drew himself up to his full six-foot-two height. “Maybe I don’t want to get along with ‘everyone,’” he retorted.

Jackson looked at the teenager, his expression saying that he knew better than Ryan what was good for him.

But for now, he merely shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he told Ryan. Jackson turned toward the distraught-looking young woman he had spoken to on the phone several days ago. He could feel that protective streak that had turned his life around coming out. “Why don’t you come with me to the main house and we’ll go over a few things?” he suggested.

She looked over her shoulder back to the bunkhouse. Garrett was already herding her brother over to the structure.

“Debi!” Ryan called out. It was clearly a call for help.

It killed her not to answer her brother. Debi worked her lower lip for a second before asking Jackson, “Is he really going to be staying in that barn?” she asked uncertainly.

“It’s the bunkhouse,” Jackson corrected politely, trying not to make her feel foolish for getting her terms confused. “And back in the day, that was where ranch hands used to live. It’s been renovated a couple of times since then. Don’t worry, the wind doesn’t whistle through the mismatched slates.” The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “The bunkhouse also has proper heating in the winter and even air-conditioning for the summer. All the comforts of home,” he added.

Apparently, Ryan wasn’t the only family member who needed structure and reassurance, Jackson thought. Ryan’s sister had all the signs of someone who was very close to the breaking point and was struggling to hold everything together, if only for appearance’s sake.

“If home is a bunkhouse,” Debi interjected. It obviously seemed incongruous to her.

“A renovated bunkhouse,” Jackson reminded her with an indulgent smile. “Don’t worry, your brother will be just fine.”

Well, if nothing else, Ryan had certainly proven that he was a survivor, she thought—if only in body. His spirit was another matter entirely. But then, that was why she had brought Ryan here. To “fix” that part of him.

“Right now, I think I’m more worried about you and your brother,” she said.

“Why?” Jackson asked, curious. This, he had to admit, was a first, someone bringing him a lost soul to set straight and being worried about the effect of that person on him. “Is Ryan violent?” The teen seemed more crafty than violent, but it paid to be safe—just in case.

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Debi was quick to clarify. “Under all that, he’s basically a good kid—but I’ll be the first to admit that Ryan is more than the average handful.”

“If he wasn’t,” Jackson pointed out as they made their way to the main house, “then he wouldn’t be here—and neither would you.”

“True,” Debi readily agreed—and then she flushed slightly, realizing what the man with her had to think. “I’m sorry if I sound like I’m being overly protective, but I’m the only family that Ryan has left and I don’t feel like I’ve been doing a very good job of raising him lately.” She looked over her shoulder again in the direction her brother had gone as he left the area.

She spotted him with Garrett. The two were headed for the bunkhouse. Garrett had one arm around her brother’s shoulders—most likely, in her estimation, to keep Ryan from darting off. Not that there was anywhere for him to go, she thought. The ranch was some distance from the stamp-sized town they had driven through.

“He’ll be all right,” Jackson assured her. “Garrett hasn’t lost a ranch hand yet.”

“Is that what you call the boys who come here?” she asked, thinking it wasn’t exactly an accurate label for them. After all, they were here to be reformed, not to work on the ranch, right?

She looked at Jackson, waiting for him to clarify things. What he said made her more confused. The man seemed very nice, but nice didn’t get things done and besides, “nice” could also be a facade. That was the way it had been with John. And it had fooled her completely.

“I found that ‘ranch hand’ is rather a neutral title and, when you come right down to it, the boys do work on the ranch. My office is right in here,” he told her as he opened the door for her.

She was going to ask him more about having the boys work on his ranch—had she just supplied him with two more hands to do his bidding?—but when he opened the door to his ranch house without using a key, her attention was diverted in an entirely different direction.

“Your door’s not locked,” she said in surprise.

He heard the wonder in her voice and suppressed a smile. He knew exactly what she had to be thinking. “No, it’s not.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” she asked. “I mean, if you and your brother are outside, working, isn’t that like waving temptation right in front of the boys that you’re trying to reform?”

“They’re on the honor system,” he explained, closing the door behind her. “I want them to know that we trust them to do the right thing. You have to give trust in order to get it. Around here, the boys keep each other honest. For the most part, the ones who have been here the longest set an example and watch over the ones who came in last.”

She looked at him skeptically. “That sounds a little risky.”

“We find it works,” he told her. “And just for the record, ‘I’ don’t reform them. What we do here is present them with the right set of circumstances so that they can reform themselves. Most of the time I find that if I expect the best from the teens who come here, they eventually try to live up to my expectations.”

Debi looked around. The living room she had just walked into was exactly what she would have expected: open and massive, with very masculine-looking leather furniture, creased with age and use. The sofas—there were two—were arranged around a brick fireplace. The ceiling was vaulted with wooden beams running through the length of it. The only concession to the present was the skylight. Without it, she had a feeling that the room would have a dungeonlike atmosphere.

The rustic feel of the decor seem like pure Texas. Debi really had no idea why that would make her feel safe, but it did.

Maybe it had to do with the man beside her. There was something about his manner that gave her hope and made her feel that everything was going to work out.

She knew she wasn’t being realistic, but then, she’d never been in this sort of situation before.

Realizing that she’d fallen behind as he was walking through the room, Debi stepped up her pace and caught up to Jackson just as he entered a far more cluttered room that she assumed was his office.

“Sounds good in theory,” she acknowledged, referring to his ideas about trust.

“Works in practice, too,” he told her with just the tiniest bit of pride evident in his cadence.

Sweeping a number of files, oversized envelopes and a few other miscellaneous things off a chair, Jackson nodded toward it. He deposited the armload of paraphernalia on the nearest flat surface.

“Please, sit,” he requested.

Debi did as he asked, perching on the edge of the seat. She appeared as if she was ready to jump to her feet at any given moment for any given reason, he noted.

This woman was wound up as tightly as her brother. Maybe more so. Undoubtedly because she was constantly on her guard and vigilant for the next thing to go wrong. And he had a feeling that she was doing it alone. She’d said she was the teen’s only family.

“So,” Jackson began as he sat down in his late uncle’s overstuffed, black leather chair. It creaked ever so slightly in protest due to its age. To Jackson, the sound was like a greeting from an old friend. “What do you think is Ryan’s story?”

Debi blinked, caught completely off guard. His wording confused her. Did he believe she wasn’t involved in her brother’s life and could only make a wild guess as to why he was the way he was? Her problem was she was too involved in her brother’s story.

“Excuse me?” she demanded, forgetting all about feeling as if she had failed her brother.

Jackson patiently explained the meaning behind his question. “Every parent or guardian who comes to us usually has some sort of a theory as to why the boy they brought to us is the way he is. They give me a backstory and I take it from there. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong. Not everything is black or white.” He leaned back in the chair. The motion was accompanied by another pronounced creak. “What’s Ryan’s backstory?”

He did think she wasn’t involved, Debi thought. She set out to show this man how wrong he was by giving him a summarized version of Ryan’s life.

“As a little boy, Ryan was almost perfect,” she recalled fondly. “Never talked back, went to school without a single word of protest. Kept his room neat, ate whatever was on his plate. Did his homework and got excellent grades. He was almost too good,” she added wistfully, wishing fervently for those days to be back again.

No one was ever too good, but he refrained from commenting on that. Instead, Jackson gently urged the woman on. “And then...?”

It took her a moment to begin. Remembering still hurt beyond words. “And then, three years ago, he was involved in a car accident. He was in the car with my parents.” A lump formed in her throat, the way it always did. “They were coming out to visit me—I was away at college.”

She would forever feel guilty about that. Guilty about selecting her college strictly because that was where John was going. If she’d attended a college close to home, the way her parents had hoped, this wouldn’t have happened.

“Except that they never made it,” she said after a beat, forcing the words out. “A truck hauling tires or car batteries or something like that sideswiped them.” She had no idea why it bothered her that she didn’t have all the details down, but it did. “The car went off the side of the road, tumbled twice and when it was over...” Her voice shook as she continued. “My parents were both dead.” Taking a breath, she continued, “And Ryan was in ICU. They kept him in the hospital for almost a month. Even when he got out, he had to have physical therapy treatments for the next six months.”