The Rancher and the Girl Next Door

“I hear you were a wild man back in the day,” Claire said softly.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Out and about. You were a rodeo star…?”

“Yeah, I was.” Too close for comfort. Those days had ended up being the dark turning point of his life and he wasn’t going to discuss them. Period. Brett popped the cork back into the bottle. He pushed it across the table towards her.

She stood. “You keep it.”

“You’ll probably need it more than me.” He picked it up and pressed it into her hands.

“Thanks for the help,” she said. “See you around.”

He watched her walk down the path for a moment, admiring the subtle swing of her hips beneath the swirly skirt she wore.

Claire Flynn was not going to be good for his peace of mind.

Available in July 2009

from Mills & Boon® Superromance

A Mum For Amy

by Ann Evans

Because of a Boy

by Anna DeStefano

The Rancher and the Girl Next Door

by Jeannie Watt

Doctor in Her House

by Amy Knupp

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JEANNIE WATT lives with her husband in an isolated area of northern Nevada, and teaches science in a town forty miles away from her home. She lives off the grid in the heart of ranch country, and considers the battery-operated laptop to be one of the greatest inventions ever. When she is not writing, Jeannie likes to paint, sew and feed her menagerie of horses, ponies, dogs and cats. She has degrees in geology and education.

The Rancher and the Girl Next Door

JEANNIE WATT

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Gary, with love.

CHAPTER ONE

NO ONE EXPECTED Claire Flynn to last long in Barlow Ridge. Even Claire had her doubts about making the transition to life in the tiny Nevada community, but she had sworn to herself that no matter how great the emergency or how dire the circumstances, she would not ask for help. It was a matter of pride.

And now here she was, going in search of help.

Drat.

She trudged up the rickety wooden steps leading to Brett Bishop’s front door. Technically he was her landlord and therefore the logical person to help her with domestic emergencies. But he was also her sister’s new brother-in-law, and a bit of an enigma. An interesting combination, Claire mused as she raised her hand to knock on his weathered kitchen door. It opened before her knuckles touched wood.

Brett did not look pleased to see her, but then he never looked too pleased about anything. That enigma thing. Claire enjoyed enigmas.

“There’s a snake in my house.”

His brown eyes became even more guarded than usual. “What kind of snake?”

“Grayish, no markings, maybe twelve to eighteen inches long. Very fast and uncooperative.”

It had scared the daylights out of her when she’d moved a box and found it curled up in a corner. The feeling had apparently been mutual, since the creature had shot off toward the washing machine before Claire’s feet were back on the ground. It was then that she’d decided to go for reinforcements. If her computer had been connected to the Internet, she might have done some quick research on snake removal, but it wasn’t, so she took the coward’s way out. When she’d made her vow of independence, she hadn’t factored in reptiles.

Brett regarded her for a moment, his mouth flattening exactly the way it had when she’d made the mistake of flirting with him during their wedding-duty dance just over a year ago. And then he gave his dark head a fatalistic shake.

“Let’s go see what you’ve got,” he said.

WHEN CLAIRE FLYNN SMILED, she looked like she knew a secret, and if you treated her right she might just tell you what it was. Brett did not want to know Claire’s secrets. He’d had enough secrets for one lifetime.

He stepped out onto the porch, preparing himself for the inevitable. His brother, Will, had asked him to give Claire a hand when necessary, and Brett had agreed, but he hadn’t anticipated snake removal as one of the services required.

“I appreciate this,” Claire said as he pulled the door shut behind him.

“No problem.” But he did wonder how much more help she was going to need before her year of teaching was over. And he also wondered just how well she was going to fit into this small community, with her choppy blond hair and trendy clothing. Not many women in Barlow Ridge wore skirts that clung and swirled, strappy tops or flimsy sandals. In fact, none of them did. He imagined the locals were going to have a fine old time discussing her.

Claire walked briskly beside Brett as they left the homestead house and headed across the field toward the single-wide trailer she was now calling home. The field had just been mowed and baled with third-cutting alfalfa, so although the walking was easy, he expected the hay stubble was probably scratching up Claire’s bare ankles pretty good. She didn’t say a word, though, which kind of surprised him.

And she hadn’t whined about the condition of the trailer—the only place to rent in Barlow Ridge—which happened to sit on the edge of his hay field. Another surprise. The previous teacher to rent it, a guy named Nelson, had registered at least a complaint a day.

“Where’d you last see the snake?” Brett asked when they were a few yards from the house. Dark clouds were moving in from the south. The evening thunderstorm was brewing early today and Brett hoped he’d be able to get rid of the snake and return home before lightning began to strike.

“It went behind the washer.”

Brett grimaced. Nothing like moving a heavy major appliance with his worst nightmare lurking behind it.

Claire opened the trailer door and stood back. The interior smelled of industrial-strength cleanser. Brett wheezed as the stringent odor hit his nostrils.

“You know,” he said, “if you just close the door and give the snake a little time, it’ll probably pass out from the fumes.”

“Very funny.”

He sucked in a breath of fresh air, then stepped inside and headed down the hall to a narrow alcove where the washer was installed. Claire was close behind him. He grabbed a broom propped against the wall and handed it to her before taking hold of the washer, keeping his feet as far away as possible.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked, lifting the broom, a clunky wooden bracelet sliding down her arm in the process. Who cleaned house wearing a bracelet?

“Defend us.”

Brett took a firm hold and started rocking the appliance toward him, fully expecting the snake to shoot straight up his pant leg at any moment. Damn, he hated snakes.

He finally got the heavy machine pulled out far enough so that he could see the snake coiled in the corner, looking as threatened as Brett felt. A blue racer. Fast but not dangerous. Unless it went up your pant leg.

He reached his hand out for the broom. “Better stand back.”

Brett gently nudged the snake into the hall, trying not to dance too much as he blocked the reptile’s repeated escape attempts with the broom, before finally managing to send it sailing through the front door. For several seconds it remained motionless, but then it came back to life and slithered off into the grass.

From behind him, Brett heard Claire sigh with relief. He turned to give her an incredulous look.

“Just because I don’t want it living with me doesn’t mean I want it to get hurt.”

Brett closed the door. Sweat beaded his forehead, and it wasn’t entirely due to the hellishly hot interior of the trailer. He set the broom back against the wall, noticing that it was damp. He touched the surface again, experimentally, with the palm of his hand. She’d washed the walls.

“Are you some kind of germophobe?” he asked as he pushed the door wide to let out both the heat and the cleaning fumes. She had the windows open, but the air was still in the heavy pre-thunderstorm atmosphere.

“I prefer it to ophidiophobia.”

“Ophidio…”

“Fear of—”

“I know what it is,” he snapped. Or at least he could make a good guess. He hadn’t realized it was that obvious. “I’m not afraid of snakes. I’m just cautious.” Like all sensible Nevadans. He wiped his sleeve over his damp forehead. “Why don’t you turn the cooler on?”

“It made a funny noise, like it was losing a bearing.” Her green eyes were steady on his. “I didn’t want to bother you. I thought I’d find out who the local handyman was.”

Brett walked over to the cooler panel and flipped the pump switch, followed by the blower switch. A low screech became progressively louder as the blower wheel began to turn. He quickly snapped both switches off. Yes, it did sound like a bearing was going, and for some reason he hated the fact she had figured that out.

“I’ll have a look at it.” He could not leave her in a hotbox until Manny Fernandez had time to come round and fix the cooler. She’d likely be using the furnace by that time—which was also probably in need of repair.

“I don’t suppose you have any tools?”

She walked into the kitchen and returned a few seconds later with a zebra-striped tool kit.

“It was a gift,” she said before he had time to comment. “From the class I student—taught last year.”

Brett felt an unexpected desire to smile at the defensiveness in her voice. So Claire’s fashion sense had its limits. “They must have liked you.”

“We…developed a rapport,” she said cryptically, as she followed him outside.

There was an old wooden ladder lying beside the trailer, and Brett propped it up against the siding. A sudden gust of wind almost knocked it over again. He waited a moment until the wind settled down, making the air seem heavier than before, and then he began to climb.

Swamp coolers were not complex machines, and it wasn’t too difficult to tell that this one was on its last legs. Claire was in for a warmish time in her trailer. He’d have to see about ordering parts, if they still made them for this dinosaur.

The ladder shifted, and a moment later Claire climbed up onto the roof herself. Somehow he wasn’t surprised.

“Another snake?” he asked wryly.

“Just curious. Someday I may have to fix this thing myself.”

“You going to be here that long?”

“Ten months, and then back to grad school. What’s the prognosis?” she asked.

“Terminal.” The wind gusted again and the first faint rumblings of thunder sounded in the distance. The storm was moving in fast. “We’d better get down to the ground.” He closed the cooler’s heavy hinged cover.

Once they were back on solid earth, Brett put the ladder beside the trailer and handed Claire her tools. “I’m going to Wesley tomorrow. I’ll see about getting some parts, if they still make them. If not, I’ll see about a new cooler.” He felt bad leaving her in an oven. “It’s going to be kind of hot without it.”

“That’s the beauty of being a Vegas native. I’m used to it.” She pushed her choppy bangs away from her forehead. They stuck up, giving her a punk rock look. She smiled. “So…You want to go down to the bar and grab a bite or have a drink? As a thank-you?”

He hesitated just a little too long.

“I take it that’s a no.”

He wasn’t sure how to say what he needed to without being insulting and possibly pissing off his brother for not being nice to Claire. “Look,” Brett said in what he hoped was a reasonable tone, “I’ll help you out whenever you need it, but I’m not much of a socializer.”

“What does that mean?”

That I’m not going to risk screwing up again with someone so closely tied to my brother?

“It just means I’m not much on socializing,” he said with a touch of impatience. “It’s nothing personal.” Not the total truth, but close enough.

“All right.” She didn’t look particularly offended, but the smile was gone from her eyes. “I guess I’ll get back to work. Thanks for the help. I’ll call you if I need anything.” She started for the trailer door.

“There’s something you should know, Claire.”

She looked back. “What’s that?”

“I don’t think it was an accident that there was a snake in your house. There was a bunch of kids hanging around, just before you got here. I went to see what they were doing, and they took off running.”

“You think they were my students?”

“I’d say it’s a real possibility.”

Claire considered his words for a moment. “Should make for an interesting year, don’t you think?”

“Uh, yeah.” That was one way of putting it.

“I think I can probably handle anything they might dish out.” She sounded confident.

Brett nodded, wondering if she knew what she was up against. Apparently not. There was a flash of lightning, followed by thunder. “I think I’ll head back before it rains.”

SO HER STUDENTS HAD PUT a snake in her house and Brett didn’t want to socialize with her. Claire shook her head as she went through the door. Not exactly a welcoming beginning to her new life in Barlow Ridge. She was surprised about her students, and not so surprised about Brett. She’d only met him three times before deciding to take the teaching job here, but every time they’d been together she’d been struck by his standoffish attitude. With her and with his family.

Well, Claire didn’t do standoffish. With the exception of her mother, Arlene, who could still make her quake in her boots, she’d never met anyone who intimidated her. Maybe she should thank her mother for that.

The trailer was starting to cool off as the wind grew stronger, blowing in through the open windows. Another flash of lightning lit the sky, and Claire wondered how safe it was being in a metal can during a thunderstorm. It had to be safe, though. There were lots of trailers in the world and she’d never heard of one being struck by lightning. But leave it to her to be the first.

She sank down in the reclining chair, pulling her knees up to her chest as the sky flashed and a blast of thunder shook the trailer almost simultaneously. This was not only her first night alone in her new home, it was one of her first nights really alone anywhere. As in, no family down the hall, no neighbor on the other side of the wall. No neighbors within a quarter of a mile, for that matter.

It felt…strange.

But she could handle it.

In fact, she had a feeling that she might even grow to like it. If not, she only had ten months to get through before she moved back to Vegas.

Her cell phone buzzed. Claire glanced at the number, debated, and then gave in to the inevitable.

“Hi, Mom.” She forced a note of cheerful optimism into her voice. Nothing set her mother off like Claire doing what she pleased and enjoying it. Arlene had wanted her to be an engineer. Claire was talented in math, but hated the cut-and-dried engineering way of thinking. She was more free-form—way more free-form—and didn’t understand why Arlene couldn’t see that a free-form engineer who hated to double-check her equations was probably going to be a dangerous engineer. Arlene resented the fact that neither of her daughters had gone into the high-profile, high-paying professions she had chosen for them before they’d entered preschool. And she still hadn’t given up on turning their lives around.

“I called to see how you’re settling in.”

“Just fine,” Claire said breezily, deciding not to share her snake adventure just yet. “I’ll be going to school tomorrow to see my new room and do some decorating.”

“Any regrets?” her mother asked hopefully.

“Not yet, but there’s still time.” Claire knew that Arlene wanted her to at least entertain the possibility that she’d be sorry for putting off grad school for a year.

“Well, there’s a reason they can’t keep a teacher at that school.”

“Any idea what it is?” Claire asked innocently.

Arlene did not deign to answer, and Claire decided to change the subject while they were still on polite terms. She sifted through several topics and dismissed them all. Her stepfather, Stephen, was off-limits, since he had moved out of the house, informing Arlene that he would not come back unless she decided being a companion was as important as running her business. Claire wasn’t all that sure that Stephen would ever be coming back.

She couldn’t ask her for career advice—or decorating advice, since she was living in a rundown rented trailer on the edge of a hay field. But she could try cooking, their only common ground.

“Hey, Mom…” A boom of thunder nearly drowned out her words.

“What on earth?”

“Thunderstorm.”

“You shouldn’t be on the phone.”

“It’s a cell phone.” Claire decided not to argue. “You’re right.” She smiled slightly. “Thanks for calling, Mom. I was lonely.”

“Goodbye, Claire. It was good talking to you.”

Claire pushed the end button. It really hadn’t been too bad a conversation. They’d both behaved fairly well. She held the phone in her hand for a moment, then punched in her sister’s number. Regan answered on the first ring.

“I’ve been waiting,” she said.

“Why?” Claire knew why. For about nine-tenths of her life, she’d run every decision past Regan, even if she rarely followed her sister’s advice. It was a habit that had started when they were young, and continued well into college. It wasn’t until Regan had moved away from Las Vegas that Claire realized maybe life wasn’t always a joint venture.

“Because you’ve never lived alone before.”

“Well, I’ve been alone,” Claire said, “and this isn’t all that different.”

“So how are you settling in?”

“Fine, now that Brett got the snake out of the house…”

“The snake?”

“My students hid a snake in my house before I got here. It scared the daylights out of me when I found it, and since I don’t know anything about snakes, I had Brett come and remove it. Then I asked him out for a beer as a thank-you and he told me he doesn’t socialize.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, and then Regan murmured, “Don’t take it personally.”

“That’s what he said,” Claire replied, swinging her legs over the one arm of the chair and leaning back against the other. “And I’m not. I just thought it was odd, which makes me wonder, why are the gorgeous ones always tweaked in some weird way?”

Regan laughed.

“What?”

“Oh, I was just thinking that you could take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself that same question.”

“Ha, ha, ha.” They talked for a few more minutes, making plans to meet when Claire made her next trip to Wesley for supplies.

“Speaking of shopping,” Regan said, “Kylie is planning an Elko trip and she wants to know when you can come. She says your taste is better than mine, which, I have to tell you, worries her father a bit.”

“Tell her to name the day,” Claire said with a laugh. Elko shopping was nothing like Vegas shopping, but it was a heck of a lot better than Barlow Ridge shopping or Wesley shopping. And Kylie, Regan’s stepdaughter, was a girl after Claire’s own heart. A true renegade.

Claire finally hung up and set the phone back on the side table. The thunderstorm had passed without dropping any rain, but the air in the trailer felt fresher, cooler. She got to her feet and headed down the narrow hallway to her bedroom, walking a little faster as she passed the washing machine. Logic told her there were no more snakes lying in wait for her, but her instincts told her to take no chances. She’d yet to have much experience with animals, but when she did, she wanted them to be furry and friendly.

“YOU THE NEW TEACHER?”

Claire smiled at the grouchy-looking woman behind the mercantile counter. “Yes, I am.”

“Gonna stay?”

“One year.” Claire spoke easily, truthfully.

The woman snorted. “That’s the reason the kids are running wild, you know.”

“What is?”

“The fact that none of you will stay.”

“Yes, well, there’s not a lot to do here, is there?”

The woman gave her another sour look, but didn’t argue. It would have been hard to. The community had one store, a bar that served food and a community center that looked as if it was well over a hundred years old. Actually, everything in the town looked a hundred years old. Including the proprietress of the store, who was still glaring at Claire as if it were her fault teachers didn’t want to settle permanently in a community a zillion miles from civilization.

“I’m Claire Flynn,” she said with her best smile.

“Anne McKirk,” the woman grudgingly replied.

“You have a nice store.” It was definitely an everything-under-the-sun store. Food, hardware, crafts, clothing. One of the soda coolers held veterinary medications. It wasn’t a large space, but it was packed to the rafters.

“I try.”

Claire unloaded her basket on the counter. She would have liked some fresh fruit, but considering the circumstances, she’d take what she could get.

“Your sister taught here.”

“Yes. Three years ago.”

“She was good, but she didn’t last long.”

“She would have had a bit of a commute if she’d stayed,” Claire pointed out. Will Bishop, the man Regan had married, lived seventy miles away in Wesley, Nevada, where she now taught.

“Well, it would have been nice if Will had taken over the old homestead, instead of his brother. Then she would have stayed.”

“Yes, she would have,” Claire agreed. But it hadn’t worked out that way, so now the town was stuck with the wrong brother and the wrong sister.

“You interested in joining the quilting club?”

“I, uh, don’t know,” Claire hedged. She had never done anything more complicated with a needle than sew on the occasional button. She did it well, but she had a feeling that quilting was more difficult than button attachment.

“I’ll have Trini give you a call. Everybody joins quilting club.”

“Then I’ll join.”

Claire said goodbye, then strolled down the five-block-long street to Barlow Ridge Elementary, which was situated at the edge of town. Her trailer was only a half mile away, so she could walk to work on the nice days.

The school, constructed in the 1930s, had a certain vintage charm, but Claire knew from her initial visit that it would have been a lot more charming had it benefited from regular upkeep. It consisted of three classrooms—one used as a lunchroom—a gymnasium with a velvet-curtained stage at one end, two restrooms and a tiny office barely big enough to hold a desk and a copy machine.

Claire unlocked the stubborn front door and went into her room, setting her lunch on the shelving unit just inside. The space was of adequate size, but the equipment it contained was old, tired and makeshift. With the exception of a new computer on the teacher’s desk, everything dated from the previous century. There was no tech cart for projecting computer images, only an old overhead projector. No whiteboards or dry-erase markers, but instead a grungy-looking blackboard and a few small pieces of chalk.

She went to run her hand over the board, and found the surface grooved and wavy. Picking up a piece of chalk, she experimentally wrote her name. The chalk made thin, waxy lines, barely legible. Something needed to be done about this.

The desks came in a hodgepodge of sizes and shapes, all of them old-fashioned, with lift-up lids. She’d been thinking about how she would arrange them. Rows…a horseshoe…in groups. The students should probably have a say.