The Cowboy's Lesson In Love

Wynona opened her mouth to state her purpose, then stopped. While Clint Washburn seemed uninterested in what she had to say, the other two men with him appeared to be all ears. She had a feeling that what she had to say wasn’t something that Washburn would want the others to hear.

“Is there someplace we could speak privately?” Wynona asked Ryan’s father.

Since he could see the woman wasn’t going to just leave even if he didn’t encourage her, Clint resigned himself to hearing her out about whatever minor, imagined complaint she had come to voice. It was the only way he figured he could get rid of her.

Gesturing around at the vast area surrounding them, he said, “Pick a place.”

She felt that he was humoring her, but it didn’t matter as long as he listened to what she had to say and, more important, took it to heart.

“How about over there?” she asked, pointing to the far end of the corral, away from the horses and the other two men.

Broad shoulders rose in a careless, disinterested shrug. “Works as well as any other place,” he told her in an equally disinterested voice.

As she led the way to the spot she’d pointed out, Wynona noticed that Ryan fell into step right beside her. She didn’t want to risk the boy overhearing his father saying something negative about him.

“No, you stay over there for now, Ryan,” she instructed the boy gently.

“But you’re gonna be talking about me, aren’t you?” Ryan asked. It was obvious that he felt that since this meeting was about him, he did have a right to be there.

She had a feeling that he was always being excluded, but this time it was in his best interest.

Wynona did her best to temper her answer. “I’d like to talk to your dad alone first, Ryan. When that’s done, you can join us.”

Because she took the time to explain this to him first, Ryan felt a little better about having to be left out. Nodding his head, he stopped walking and obligingly fell back.

His uncle came up behind him and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder as Ryan’s teacher and his dad kept walking. He waited until they were a little farther away.

“You getting into some kind of trouble?” Roy asked his nephew good-naturedly. He ruffled Ryan’s hair with affection.

Ryan turned around to look up at him. “No, sir,” he answered solemnly.

“No, I guess not,” Roy laughed. “You wouldn’t know trouble if you tripped over it.” Ryan had always been a good kid, almost too good, Roy thought. A kid needed to get into things once in a while, but Ryan never did. “Why don’t you come on back and help me and Jake get the bridle bits ready for those new horses?” he told his nephew.

He’d seen time and again how eager the boy was to help and for the life of him he couldn’t understand why his brother kept turning a deaf ear to Ryan’s offers. It just didn’t seem right, he thought.

Both he and Clint had grown up working around the horses and doing every imaginable chore there was when it came to running the ranch. They’d practically been born in a saddle and it certainly hadn’t done them any harm. It had come in handy when their father had totally stopped doing any work on the ranch at all.

Roy had told his brother more than once that working with the horses was good for the boy, but Clint never seemed to hear him.

He shook his head. If Clint kept this up, he was certain that his brother was going to drive a permanent wedge between himself and his son.

Roy certainly hoped that that young, pretty teacher had better luck talking some sense into his fool brother’s head than he did, he thought, looking over toward where the two were standing.

With a shrug he caught up to his nephew and went to rejoin Jake.

“So what’s so important that you felt you had to come all the way out here in person to tell me?” Clint asked once they finally stopped walking and Ryan’s teacher had turned around to face him.

Wynona got right to it. Hands on her hips, she demanded, “Do you have any interest in your son?”

Clint felt his back going up instantly.

“What kind of a fool question is that?” he asked.

He’d raised his voice, but she wasn’t about to be intimidated. “A pretty straightforward one as far as I can see.”

His dark blue eyes narrowed. “Then maybe you have blinders on.”

Wynona didn’t take the bait, didn’t get sidetracked by the hostility in his voice and she didn’t get caught up in an argument. Instead, in a very calm voice, she told him, “I would still like an answer to my question.”

His face darkened like storm clouds over the prairie. “Yes, I’m interested in my son.”

She gave him the benefit of the doubt. “Then why didn’t you return any of my phone calls?” she asked, her hands still fisted at her sides. “I told you I was concerned about Ryan’s behavior.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? “Was he fighting?” Clint asked.

Responding to his tone, she raised her chin defensively. “No, but—”

“Was he failing finger-painting?” Clint asked her sarcastically.

Was he belittling education, or just her? In either case, she could feel her temper rising. “I don’t teach finger-painting,” she informed him.

The expression on his face was smug, as if he had just won his argument. “I figured that. Maybe you should.”

What was that supposed to mean? Wynona wondered. In any case, she wanted answers out of him. She wanted him to verbalize what was going on in his head. “What did you figure?”

The smug look on his face didn’t abate. “That you were just making lady noises.”

“What?” She stared at him incredulously. “Lady noises?” Wynona repeated. What the hell was that—aside from denigrating?

Despite her best efforts, she could feel herself really losing her temper. Something about Clint Washburn made her want to double up her fists and punch him hard, knocking some sense into that thick head of his.

His attitude reminded her of a few men she had encountered as a student and growing up in two different communities: the reservation near Forever and Houston. More than one of her friends’ fathers were painfully distant from their children, concerned only with their own needs. They never once realized the effect that their behavior had on their offspring. She herself never knew her own father.

She hadn’t known that there was any other way to behave until Shania’s family had taken her in and she saw what a real father was really like. Dan Stewart had been kind and caring, taking care of her the same way he took care of Shania. Though she had known him only for a short time, the man had made all the difference in the world to her.

That was what she wanted for Ryan—before it was too late.

“Yeah. Lady noises,” Clint repeated. “You come in, take one look around, unleash your emotions and think you’ve got the solution to everything. Well, you don’t,” he told her. “So, are we done here because I’ve got a ranch to run.”

He was about to turn away but she caught his arm and made him turn back to face her.

“No, we are not done here,” she informed him tersely. “Your son is starved for your attention,” she said angrily.

He’d been surprised at the strength of her grip when she’d grabbed his arm. She was obviously not as delicate as she appeared. But that still didn’t change the fact that she had no business telling him how to raise his son and he told her as much.

“I’m not going to coddle the kid.”

“No one’s telling you to coddle him,” she retorted, her eyes all but flashing. “I’m just asking you to give him some of your time.”

“In case you weren’t listening,” he informed her, getting to the end of his patience, “I’ve got a ranch to run.”

“Then have him help you,” she countered. She knew of a lot of kids who helped their fathers out on the ranch. Why was he being so stubborn about it? “And talk to him while he’s helping.”

Clint was getting really tired of having this woman tell him what she thought he should be doing with his son. “Look—”

She anticipated his protest. “Mr. Washburn, I’m not asking you to read bedtime stories to Ryan, although you might give that some thought—” Wynona couldn’t help adding.

“You’re kidding,” he cried, stunned by her suggestion. Nobody read to him when he was a kid. That kind of thing wasn’t important in his book.

“No, I’m not ‘kidding,’” she told him. “But the point I’m trying to get across to you is that you need to take an interest, a real interest, in Ryan. Treat him like a person. Like he matters. Talk to him, ask him how he’s doing in school, tell him about the things you did when you were his age—”

Clint cut her off. He didn’t have time for this. “I don’t remember,” he snapped.

Wynona’s eyes narrowed again as her frustration with this jackass of a man increased. It was obvious that he was stubbornly fighting her on this but she wasn’t about to let him win.

“Then make it up!” she cried angrily. Catching herself, she got control of her temper. “The point is communication. Because right now, every day, this boy is slipping further and further away and if you don’t try to stop that, to make him feel as if you care about him, he’s not only going to wind up being lost to you, he’s going to be lost to himself, too.”

That sounded like a bunch of garbage to him. “That’s your opinion.”

“It would be yours, too,” she informed him, “if you just stopped and assessed the situation more closely like a father.” She had almost said “like someone with a brain” but had stopped herself in time.

Clint waved her away and turned on his heel toward where Jake and Roy were waiting. “I don’t have time for any of this psychobabble,” he said as he walked away from her.

“It’s not psychobabble,” she insisted, calling after him. “It’s common sense.”

“Ha!” Clint countered, but he kept on walking.

He knew if he turned around to say anything more, she’d just drag him back into another argument and he had already wasted enough time on this woman and her crazy theory.

Clint kept walking until he got back to where Jake and his brother were working. Ryan was with them as well and the boy looked up at him the moment he drew closer. Before his son could say anything to him or ask any questions, Clint said, “Go into the house and do your homework.”

“I already finished my homework, sir,” Ryan told him quietly.

“Then go do something else,” Clint ordered, turning back to what he’d been doing before that woman disrupted his day.

To his surprise, Ryan stood his ground.

“Can I help you?” he asked in the same small, hopeful voice he’d used the morning when he had asked the same question.

The word no hovered on Clint’s tongue and he’d almost said it. But then he heard that teacher’s vehicle as she apparently started it up and then began to drive away.

Good. The woman was really going back into town, Clint thought.

But what the woman had said annoyingly refused to drive away with her. It seemed to linger in the air like a solid entity.

Clint frowned as he turned to look at his son.

“Yeah,” Clint finally said, reluctantly relenting. “You can help—as long as you promise not to get in the way.”

Stunned that his father had actually said he could help, Ryan looked at him, a wide smile spreading out over his small, angular face.

“I promise! Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, Dad,” Ryan proclaimed eagerly. “Just tell me,” he repeated.

Clint looked down at his son. Despite the boy’s eager reaction, Clint couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just unintentionally opened up Pandora’s box.

Chapter Four

Hearing the front door open and then close again, Shania came out of the kitchen and into the living room. She smiled at her cousin. “You’re home.”

“What gave it away?” Wynona asked, dropping her purse and briefcase unceremoniously on the coffee table. She dropped herself down on the sofa almost at the same time. Anger had temporarily drained her.

The sarcastic remark was totally out of character for Wynona, Shania thought, so she didn’t bother commenting on it.

Instead, she said, “You’re usually here ahead of me. If you hadn’t turned up soon, I was going to send the dogs out looking for you.”

“We have dogs?” Wynona asked.

The sarcastic edge in her voice was beginning to fade. They didn’t have dogs; they shared joint ownership of one dog, a German shepherd named Belle. Belle was more like a member of the family than a pet.

“Okay, ‘dog,’” Shania corrected needlessly. “Belle likes to think of herself as a whole army.” Because ignoring her cousin’s obviously sour mood was not making it go away, she tried addressing it head-on. “Boy, you’re certainly being unusually touchy tonight. Something go wrong today?”

Instead of pretending not to know what Shania was talking about, or denying her cousin’s assessment, Wynona came clean.

“I tried to talk some sense into a knuckle-dragging blockhead, but I should have realized that my efforts were doomed from the start,” Wynona complained. She closed her eyes, trying to center herself.

Coming farther into the room, Shania sat down on the sofa beside her cousin. “I take it we’re not talking about one of your students.”

Wynona opened her eyes and sat up, glancing at her cousin in confusion.

“My students?” she repeated. “I’d never say something like that about one of the students—”

“Then who are you talking about?” Shania asked.

“Ryan Washburn’s father, Clint.” Even as she said his name, Wynona frowned. “I went to talk to him today after school.”

Shania hadn’t heard her cousin mention the man’s name before. Was that someone she’d known before they had moved to Houston with their great-aunt? “Why would you do that?”

Wynona’s frown deepened. It was obvious she was struggling to get her temper under control. “Because the Neanderthal wouldn’t return any of the twelve hundred messages I left on his phone.”

Shania smiled. She was accustomed to her cousin’s penchant for exaggeration. She didn’t do it around anyone else, but Wynona felt comfortable around her and she relaxed the restrictions she imposed on herself when she was within earshot of other people.

“Twelve hundred?” Shania repeated. “That many times, huh?”

Wynona relented. “Okay, maybe it was more like eight.”

Shania inclined her head. “A little more manageable number,” she agreed. “What kind of messages were you leaving for this unresponsive parent?” she asked her cousin, trying to get a better picture of what had gone on.

“The kind of messages a concerned teacher leaves for the parent of one of her students,” Wynona answered. She would have thought that Shania would just naturally assume that.

But Shania was still attempting to piece the story together. She couldn’t remember seeing Wynona this angry or incensed before.

“One of the students getting into trouble and the father doesn’t want to hear about it?” she asked, thinking of the most logical reason that would set off her cousin this way.

Wynona got up and, still agitated, began to pace around. “Oh, the father clearly didn’t want to hear about it, but it wasn’t because his son was getting in trouble.” She swung around to face her cousin. “Oh, Shania, Ryan is such a sweet, sweet kid. If you saw his face, you’d think you were looking at an angel.”

Shania was still feeling her way around this subject. “And he’s not a little devil?”

“No!” Wynona cried defensively. “If anyone’s a devil, it’s that father of his.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, Wynona knew she had gone over the line. She shrugged helplessly. “Maybe that’s not exactly fair,” she admitted.

Shania took her cousin’s hand and pulled her back down onto the sofa next to her. “Wyn, why don’t you take a deep breath and tell me about this from the beginning?” she suggested.

Belle chose that moment to come walking over to the two women. As if on cue, the German shepherd put her head in Wynona’s lap.

“Better yet,” Shania said, amending her initial instruction as she smiled at the dog, “Why don’t you pet Belle and then start talking from the beginning?” She knew the animal had a calming effect on both of them, especially on Wynona.

Because she had never been able to resist the dog from the moment they had rescued the animal from a shelter literally hours before she was slated to be destroyed, Wynona ran her hand along the dog’s back, petting her. The dog seemed to wiggle into the petting motion. A smile slowly emerged on Wynona’s lips.

Watching her cousin, Shania asked, “You feel better now?”

Wynona was forced to nod. “It’s hard to stay angry petting a dog.”

“I had a feeling,” Shania said. She remained where she was. “Okay, I’m listening. Why were you talking to a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal and how did that wind up making you so late?”

Still petting Belle, Wynona answered the second part of that first. “I’m late because I didn’t want to come home angry so I drove around for a while, trying to calm down.”

That certainly hadn’t worked out well, Shania thought. Out loud she said, “If this is ‘calmed down,’ I would have hated to have seen you the way you were before you ‘calmed down,’” Shania commented. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this worked up before.”

Wynona could only shake her head, even as she continued to stroke Belle. “This guy just pushed all my buttons.”

Well, this was something new, Shania thought in surprise.

“I didn’t know you had ‘buttons’ to push. You were always the calm one,” she pointed out. “So just what was there about this student’s father that set you off this way?”

Wynona searched for a way that would make this clearer for her cousin. And then she thought of something.

“Shania, do you remember Scottie Fox’s father?” she asked.

Hearing the man’s name suddenly took her back over the years, to a time when neither of them was a decade old yet. Shania did her best not to shiver as an icy sensation ran down her spine.

“How could I forget?” she cried. “That man almost beat Scottie to death before Scottie’s mother and grandfather pulled him off Scottie.” The man’s name suddenly came back to her. Henry Fox. “Later, Henry claimed that he didn’t remember the incident at all. Is—Ryan, is it?” she asked, pausing as she tried to remember the name Wynona had just used.

Wynona nodded. “Ryan Washburn.”

“Is Ryan’s father like Scottie’s was?” Shania asked, appalled.

That had been an extreme case. From what she could see, Ryan didn’t have any visible bruises on his body and he had worn short-sleeved shirts.

“No, at least I haven’t seen any evidence of any violence, but the man is just as distant, just as removed, as Henry Fox first seemed. Washburn showed more interest in his horses than he did in his son.” Wynona looked at her cousin, a feeling of helplessness washing over her. She wanted to fix this. “That boy is starved for affection and attention.”

“And you went to tell the dad that he needed to shape up and provide that for his son,” Shania guessed.

It didn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination for Shania to reach that conclusion. Wynona had always been a softhearted person.

“Well, what would you have done?” Wynona asked.

Shania sighed. With a surrendering shrug of her shoulders she said, “Probably the same thing that you tried to do, Wyn. But realistically, that doesn’t change the fact that you realize that you can’t change the world.”

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