Dalton's Undoing

“What’s going on? Cole, what is this about?”

He clamped his mouth shut, freezing her out again, but once more Seth Dalton placed a firm hand on his shoulder.

Cole suddenly seemed to find the carpet endlessly fascinating.

“Istolehisride,” he mumbled in one breath and Jenny’s heart stopped, hoping she’d heard wrong.

“You what?”

Cole finally lifted his gaze to hers. “I took his car, okay? What did he expect? He left the frigging keys in it. I was only going to take it for a mile or two. I figured I’d have it back before he even knew it was gone. But then I crashed…”

“You what! Are you hurt? Did you hurt anyone else?”

Cole shook his head. At least he had enough guilty conscience to look slightly ashamed.

“He scraped a mile marker post and front-ended into an irrigation ditch. The only thing damaged was my car.”

She sagged into the nearest chair as her career suddenly flashed in front of her eyes. She could almost hear the echo of gossip across shopping carts at DeLoy’s, under the hair dryers at the Hairport and over beer at the Bandito.

Did you hear about that new principal’s wild boy? She can’t control him a lick. That little delinquent stole a car. Crashed it right into a ditch! Seems to me a woman who can’t control her own son sure don’t belong in that nice office down at the elementary school.

She screwed her eyes shut, wishing this was all some terrible dream, but when she opened them, Seth Dalton was still standing in front of her, as dangerous and sexy as ever.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Dalton. I…don’t know what to say. Are you pressing charges?”

She thought she heard Cole make a small sound, but when she glanced at him, he looked as prickly and angry as ever.

“It’s going to take me considerable work to fix it.”

“We will, of course, cover any damages.”

He suddenly sat down on the sofa across from her, crossing his boots at the ankle. “I had something else in mind.”

She stiffened. “I’m an elementary school principal, Mr. Dalton. If you’re looking for some kind of huge financial settlement, I’m afraid you’re off the mark.”

“I’m not looking for money.” He glanced at Seth. “But I will need another set of hands while I’m doing the repair work. I figured the kid could work off the damages by helping me out with the repair work and around my ranch with my horses until the bodywork is done.”

Cole straightened. “I’m no stupid-ass cowboy.”

Seth Dalton gave him a measuring look. “No, from here you look like a stupid-ass punk who thinks he’s living out some kind of video game. This isn’t Grand Theft Auto, kid, where you can always hit the restart button. You broke it, now you’re going to help me fix it. Unless you’d rather serve the time, of course.”

Cole subsided back into his customary slouch as Jenny considered his proposal. Her gut wanted her to tell him to forget it. She didn’t want her son to have anything to do with Pine Gulch’s busiest bachelor.

Cole had had enough lousy male role models in his life—he didn’t need a player like Seth teaching him all the wrong things about how to treat a woman.

On the other hand, her son stole the man’s car—not only stole it, but wrecked the blasted thing. That he wasn’t in police custody right now seemed nothing short of a miracle.

What choice did she have, really? Seth could easily have called the police. Perhaps he should have. Maybe a hard gut check with reality might be just what Cole needed to wake him up, as much as she hated the idea of her son in juvenile detention.

Seth Dalton was being surprisingly decent about this. From what little she knew about him—and she had to admit, most of her biased information came from overheard conversations and breathless comments in the teacher’s lounge about his many flirtations—she would have expected him to be hot-tempered and petulant.

Instead, she found him rational, calm, accommodating.

And extremely attractive.

She let out a slow, nervous breath. Was that the reason for her instinctive opposition to the man’s reasonable proposal? Because he was sinfully gorgeous, with that thick, dark hair, eyes a stunning, heartbreaking blue and chiseled, tanned features that made him look as though he should be starring in Western movies?

He made her edgy and ill at ease and that alone gave her enough reason to wish for a way to avoid any further acquaintance between them. She was here in Pine Gulch to help her little family find some peace and healing—not to engage in useless, potentially harmful fantasies about a charming, feckless cowboy with impossibly blue eyes and a smile that oozed sex.

“I’ll know better after I tow the car out to the ranch and take a look at her but from my initial look, I’d estimate there was about fix or six hundred dollars’ damage,” he was saying. “The way I figure it, if he worked for me a couple afternoons a week after school and Saturday mornings, we should be clear in a few months. Is that okay with you?”

She looked at Dalton and then at Cole, his arms still crossed belligerently across his chest, as if everyone else in the room was responsible for his troubles but himself.

He disdained everything about Idaho and would probably consider being forced to work on a ranch every bit as much punishment as going to juvenile detention, she thought.

“Yes. That’s more than fair. Wouldn’t you agree, Cole?”

Her son glared at both of them—and while Jenny felt her own temper kindle in automatic response, Seth met his look with cool challenge and Cole quickly dropped his gaze.

“Whatever,” he muttered.

“Thank you,” Jenny said again, walking with him to the door. “As tomorrow is Saturday, I’ll drive him out to the Cold Creek in the morning. What time?”

“How does eight work for you?”

“We’ll be there. I’m very sorry again about this. I can’t imagine what he was thinking.”

His smile was slow and wide and made her insides feel as if she’d just done somersaults down a steep, grassy hill.

“He’s a teenage boy, so I’d guess he probably wasn’t thinking at all. See you in the morning.”

Jenny nodded, wondering why that prospect filled her with an odd mix of trepidation and anticipation.

Chapter Two

“This is totally lame,” her son muttered the next morning. “Why do I have to give up a whole Saturday?”

Jenny sighed and cast Cole an admonishing glance across the width of her little Toyota SUV. “You prefer the alternative? I can call Mr. Dalton right now and tell him to go ahead and file charges if that’s what you’d rather see happen here.”

Cole sliced her a glare that told her quite plainly he considered her totally lame, too, but he said nothing.

“I don’t think it’s fair, either,” Morgan piped up from the backseat. “Why does Cole always get to do the fun stuff? I want to help with the horses, too. Natalie says the Cold Creek horses are the prettiest, smartest horses anywhere. They’ve won all kinds of rodeo awards and they sell for tons of money. She said her uncle Seth knows more about horses than anybody else in the whole wide world.”

“Wow. The whole wide world?” Sarcasm dripped from Cole’s voice.

Morgan either didn’t pick up on it or decided to ignore it. Judging from past experience, Jenny was willing to bet on the latter. Her daughter tended to ignore anything that didn’t fit into her vision of the way the world ought to operate.

Even during her frequent hospital stays after bad asthma attacks, she always managed to focus on some silver lining, like a new friend or a particularly kind nurse.

“Yep,” she said eagerly now, with as much pride in Seth Dalton as she might have had if he were her uncle instead of her best friend’s. “People bring their horses to the Cold Creek from all over the place for him to train because he’s so good.”

“If he knows more than anyone else in the world, why is he stuck here in Buttlick, Idaho?”

Morgan’s enthusiasm faded into a frown. “Just because you don’t like it here, you don’t have to call it mean words.”

“I thought that was the name,” Cole said with a sneer. “Right next to Hairy Armpitville and across the holler from Cow’s Rectum.”

“That’s enough.” Jenny’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she felt familiar stress weigh like a half-ton hay bale on her shoulders. She wasn’t at all sure she was going to survive her son’s adolescence.

“I hope you treat Mr. Dalton with more respect than you show me or your sister.”

“How can I not, since apparently the man knows more about horses than anybody in the whole wide world?” Cole muttered.

Who was this angry stranger in her son’s body? she wondered. Whatever happened to her sweet little man who used to love cuddling up with her at bedtime for stories and hugs? Who used to let her blow raspberries on his neck and would run to her classroom after school bubbling over with news of his day?

That sweet boy had been slipping away from her since the year he turned eleven, when Richard had moved out. Through the three ugly years since, he’d pulled deeper and deeper into himself, until now he only emerged on rare occasions.

This obviously wasn’t going to be one of them.

Somehow Cole had come to blame her for the separation and divorce. She wasn’t sure how or why she had come to bear that burden but the unfairness of it made her want to scream.

She, at least, had been faithful to her marriage vows. Though she hadn’t been perfect by any means and had long ago accepted her share of responsibility for the breakup of her marriage, in her heart she knew she had tried to be a good wife.

She had supported Richard through his last years of medical school, residency, internship. She had scrimped and saved throughout their twelve-year marriage to help pay off his student loans, had run the household virtually alone during that time as he worked to establish his career, had tried time and again to bridge the increasing chasm between them as he focused on his practice to the complete exclusion of his family.

She had tried. Not perfectly, she would admit, but she had wanted her marriage to work.

Richard had had other ideas, though. He went to Paris for a conference and met his Giselle and decided family and vows and twelve years of marriage didn’t stack up well against a twenty-year-old Frenchwoman with a tight body and pouty lips.

Jenny had long ago come to terms with Richard Boyer’s betrayal of her. But she would never forgive him for what his complete abandonment of his family had done to his children. Morgan had stopped crying herself to sleep some time ago and seemed to be adjusting, but Cole carried so much anger inside him he seethed with it.

Lucky her, she seemed to be the only outlet for his rage.

She tried to remember what the therapist she’d seen in Seattle had told her, that Cole only lashed out at her because she was a safe target. Her son knew she wouldn’t abandon him like his father, so he focused all the force of his rage toward her.

She still wasn’t sure she completely bought into that explanation. Even if she did, she wasn’t sure it would make his rebelliousness and unhappiness any more palatable.

With each mile marker, he seemed to sink further into gloom on the seat beside her.

A large timber arch across a gravel side road proudly bore the name of the Cold Creek Land & Cattle Company in cast-iron letters. She slowed the SUV and turned in.

“It won’t be so bad,” she said, fighting the completely juvenile urge to cross her fingers. “Who knows? You might even enjoy it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Cleaning up horse crap? Right. Can’t wait.”

She sighed, wondering if Seth Dalton had any clue what joy was in store for him today.

The ranch house was shielded from the main road by a long row of trees, which made the first sight of it all the more dramatic. It was perfect for the landscape here, a bold, impressive structure of rock and logs, with the massive peaks of the Tetons as a backdrop.

She’d always considered November a particularly lonely, unattractive month, without October’s swirling colors or December’s sparkling anticipation. In November, the trees were bleak and bare and everything seemed frost-dead and barren.

The Cold Creek seemed to be an exception. Oh, the gardens out front had been cut down, the beds prepared for winter, but the long rows of weathered fence line and the sheer impressiveness of the house and outbuildings gave a stark beauty to the scene.

Not sure quite where to go to find Seth Dalton, she slowed as she reached the house and then stopped altogether when she saw a figure emerge from an immense barn, carrying a bale of hay by the baling twine.

It wasn’t Seth, she realized, but his brother Wade, Natalie’s father.

The oldest Dalton brother had two children in her school—Natalie and her younger brother, Tanner. Natalie was a dear, though a little bossy, but Tanner had been in her office on more than one occasion for some mischief or other. He wasn’t malicious, just highly energetic.

The few times she had met with Wade Dalton and his wife, Caroline, at various school functions and when having discussions about Tanner’s behavior, she’d been struck by the deep vein of happiness she sensed running through the family.

She didn’t like to admit she felt envy and regret when she saw two people so obviously in love.

Wade caught sight of them now and smiled, dropping the bale and tipping his hat in a way she still hadn’t become accustomed to here in cowboy country.

He didn’t look at all surprised to see them as he crossed the yard to her SUV. Seth must have told him the whole story about Cole stealing his brother’s car. What must he think of her and her delinquent son? she wondered, her face warming.

He only smiled in welcome. “Ms. Boyer. Kids,” he said in that slow drawl she’d noticed before. “Welcome to the Cold Creek.”

She couldn’t help but smile back. “Thank you. We were supposed to be meeting your brother Seth this morning.”

“Right. He mentioned your boy would be coming by to help him. He’s up at the horse barn. Just follow the gravel road there another half mile or so and you can’t miss it.”

“Thank you,” she said, wondering how big the ranch must be if the horse barn was a half mile from the main ranch house. The road took them up a slight grade, through a heavy stand of spruce and pines and aspen and then the view opened up and she caught sight of the horse operation.

Two dozen horses grazed in the vast pasture, their coats gleaming in the cool morning sunlight.

Barn seemed a vast understatement for the imposing white-painted structure that dominated the view. It was massive, at least twice as large as the barn they had passed closer to the ranch house, and more horses were in individual corrals off it.

As she pulled up and parked, she caught sight of a small two-story log home behind it. Situated to face the Tetons, the house had one steep gable with a balcony protruding from a window in the center and a wide porch looking out over the view.

She wasn’t sure how she knew—maybe the tiny saplings out front that looked like they hadn’t been there long—but the house looked new. Everything did, she thought. From the corrals to the vast gleaming barn to the pickup truck parked outside, everything gleamed with prosperity.

She had barely turned off the engine when Seth Dalton walked out of the barn and she had to catch her breath at the picture he made. He was wearing a worn denim jacket and a black cowboy hat. As he moved with that unconscious grace she’d noticed the night before, she saw he also wore figure-hugging jeans that suddenly made her feel jittery and weak-kneed.

The man was entirely too good-looking. She wasn’t sure why that observation made her so irritable, but she found herself fighting the urge to shut the SUV door with a little more force than necessary, especially when he aimed that killer grin in her direction.

“Morning. It’s a gorgeous one, isn’t it?”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. Clouds hung low over the Tetons and the cold wind felt heavy with the promise of snow.

“If you say so.”

He laughed, a low, throaty sound that made her insides flutter, then he turned his attention to Cole, who had climbed out the other side of the vehicle to slouch against the door.

“You ready to work?”

Cole glowered at his benefactor, much to Jenny’s chagrin. “Do I have a choice?”

In answer, Dalton just gave him a long, slow look and Jenny was amazed to watch Cole be the first to back down, shifting his gaze to the work boots he’d borrowed from his grandfather.

Before she could say anything, Seth’s attention shifted to Morgan, who had climbed out of the backseat to join them.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Morgan Jeanette Boyer.” She spoke with formal precision and held out her hand exactly like a nine-year-old princess greeting her favorite courtier.

A muscle twitched in Seth’s cheek but he hid any sign of amusement as he took her hand and shook it. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Boyer. I’m Seth Dalton.”

Morgan smiled. “I know. You’re my friend Natalie’s uncle. She says you have more girlfriends than Colin Farrell.”

“Morgan!” Jenny exclaimed hotly, her cheeks fiery.

“What?” her daughter asked, all innocence.

Seth grinned, though Jenny thought she saw a hint of embarrassment behind it.

“Are all those horses your very own?” Morgan asked.

“Actually, most of them aren’t. I have six or seven of my own but the rest I guess you could say I share with my family. Plus I’m training a few for other people.”

He studied the avid interest in her eyes. “I don’t suppose you’d want to have a look around, would you?”

Morgan gave a little jump of excitement. “Yeah! Can I, Mom?”

How could she say no? “I suppose. As long as you’re sure we won’t be in the way.”

“Not at all. I have to show Cole around, anyway. No reason you two can’t tag along.”

They made a peculiar tour group, she thought as Seth led them inside the barn. It was more arena than stable, she realized. Though stalls ran around the perimeter, most of the space was taken up by a vast, open dirt floor. Handy for year-round training during the Idaho winters, she thought.

As he pointed out various features of the facility, Cole slouched along behind, Morgan asked a million questions and Jenny mainly focused on trying to keep her gaze away from Seth Dalton, difficult though it was.

“Everything looks so new,” Jenny commented while Morgan was busy patting a horse and Cole slumped against the fence ringing the arena, looking as though he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet.

“The Cold Creek has been here for five generations, but the horse operation is pretty new. My brother and I decided a few years ago to diversify. We’ve always raised and trained our own horses on a limited scale and only for ourselves. We decided a few years ago to expand that part of our operations and try the open market.”

“How has it been going?”

“I’ve got more work than I can handle right now.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Better than I ever dreamed.” His smile was slow and sexy and seemed to suck all the oxygen molecules from the vast structure.

She didn’t realize she was staring at it for several seconds, then she quickly shifted her gaze away from his mouth to find him watching her, an odd, glittery look in his blue eyes.

“What’s that room?” Morgan asked, shattering the sudden painfully awkward silence.

Seth shifted his attention to her. “That’s my office. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He opened the door to a small room several degrees warmer than the rest of the barn. When he opened the door, an oddly colored puppy blinked at them then jumped up from a blanket on the floor and started yipping a frantic greeting.

“You’re finally waking up, sleepyhead?” Seth smiled at the pup. “Come and meet our company.”

The puppy sniffed all their shoes in turn and made it as far as Morgan before the girl scooped him up and hugged him tightly. “He’s so cute! What’s his name?”

“He’s a she and her name is Lucy.”

“Oh, you are a pretty girl. Yes you are,” Morgan cooed, rubbing noses with the puppy. Jenny felt a pang. Her daughter adored animals of all shapes and sizes and used to constantly beg for a dog or cat of her own, until her pulmonologist in Seattle recommended against it.

“What kind of dog is she?” Cole asked, his first words since they’d arrived at the ranch.

“Australian shepherd. I bought her and her brother at a horse auction in Boise last month. I only meant to buy one for a birthday present for my mother but I couldn’t resist Lucy.”

“You have sheep, too?” Morgan asked.

“Uh, no.” He looked a little embarrassed. “But they work cattle, too, and I figured she can help me when I’m training a horse for cutting.”

“Cutting what?” Morgan asked.

“Cutting cattle. That’s a term for picking an individual cow or calf out of a herd. A well-trained cutting horse will do all the work for a cowboy. He just has to point out which cow he wants and the horse will separate him out of the rest of the cows.”

“Wow! Can your horses do that?”

Instead of being put off my Morgan’s relentless questions, Seth seemed charmed by her daughter. “Some of them,” he said. “Sometime when you come out I’ll give you a demonstration.”

“Cool!”

He grinned at Morgan’s enthusiasm and Jenny could swear she felt her blasted knees wobble. Oh, the man was dangerous. Entirely too sexy for his own good. She had to get out of there before she dissolved into a brainless puddle of hormones.

“Morgan, you and I had better go. Cole and Mr. Dalton have work to do.”

She was pleasantly surprised when Morgan didn’t kick up a fuss but followed her out of the barn into the cool November sunshine. Only as they approached the SUV did Jenny pick up on the reason for her daughter’s unusual docility.

In just a few seconds, Morgan had turned pale, her breathing wheezy and labored.

She should have expected it from the combination of animal dander, hay and excitement, but the swiftness of the asthma flare-up took her by surprise.

Still, Jenny had learned from grim experience never to go anywhere unprepared. She yanked the door open and lunged for her purse on the floor by the driver’s seat. Inside was Morgan’s spare inhaler and she quickly, efficiently puffed the medicine into the chamber and handed it to Morgan, then set her on the passenger seat while she drew the medicine into her lungs.

Morgan had that familiar panicky look in her eyes and Jenny spoke softly to calm her, the same nonsense words she always used.

She forgot all about Seth Dalton until he leaned past her into the SUV, big and disconcertingly masculine.

“That’s it, honey,” Seth said, keeping his own voice low and soothing. “Concentrate on the breathing and all the good air going into your lungs. You’re doing great.”

After a moment, the rescue medication did its work and the color started to return to her features. The panic in her eyes slowly gave way to the beginnings of relief and Jenny’s heart twisted with pain for her child’s trials and the courage Morgan wielded against them.

“Better?” Seth asked after a moment.

The girl nodded and Seth was grateful to see the flare-up seemed to be under control. “I’d tell you to go on back into the barn where it’s warmer,” he said to Jenny, “but I suspect the hay or the puppy triggered the attack, didn’t they?”

Her eyes widened as if surprised he knew anything about asthma. He didn’t tell her he could have written the damn book on it.

“That’s what I thought,” Jenny said. She was starting to lose her tight, in-control look, he saw, and now just looked like a worried mother. “I should have realized they might.”

“Why don’t we take her into the house over there for a minute until she feels better? This cold can’t be the greatest for her lungs.”