think a working rancher had better things to do than hang around outside a schoolyard. He was there to pester her; she was convinced of it. His lanky arms were crossed and his head bowed, with his Stetson riding low on his forehead, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. His posture resembled that neon sign of a cowpoke in downtown Vegas, she thought.
She knew exactly why Lonny had come to the school. He was planning to cause her trouble. Joy rued the day she’d ever met the man. He was rude, unreasonable, juvenile, plus a dozen other adjectives she didn’t even want to think about in front of a classroom full of young children.
Children.
Sucking in a deep breath, Joy returned her attention to her class, only to discover that all the kids were watching her expectantly. Seeing Lonny standing outside her window had thrown her so badly that she’d forgotten she was in the middle of a spelling test. Her students were waiting for the next word.
“Arrogant,” she muttered.
A dozen hands shot into the air.
“Eric,” Joy said, calling on the boy sitting at the front desk in the second row.
“Arrogant isn’t one of our spelling words,” he said, and several protests followed.
“This is an extra-credit word,” she said. Squinting, she glared out the window again.
No sooner had the test papers been handed in than the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Her students dashed out the door a lot faster than they’d entered, and within minutes, the entire schoolyard was filled with youngsters. As luck would have it, she had playground duty that afternoon. This meant she was required to step out of the shelter of the school building and into the vicinity of Lonny Ellison.
Because Red Springs was a ranching community, most children lived well outside the town limits. Huge buses lumbered down country roads every morning and afternoon. These buses delivered the children to school and to their homes, some traveling as far as thirty miles.
Despite Lonny’s dire predictions, Joy was surprised by how successfully she’d adjusted to life in this small Wyoming community. Born and raised in Seattle, she’d hungered for small-town life, eager to experience the joys of living in a close, family-oriented community. Red Springs was far removed from everything familiar, but she’d discovered that people were the same everywhere. Not exactly a complicated insight, but it was as profound as it was simple. Parents wanted the best for their children in Red Springs, the same way they did back home. Neighbors were friendly if you made the effort to get to know them. Wyoming didn’t have the distinctive beauty associated with Puget Sound and the two mountain ranges; instead, it possessed a beauty all its own. Joy had done her research and was fascinated to learn that this was the land where dinosaurs had once roamed and where more than half the world’s geysers were located, in Yellowstone National Park. Much of central Wyoming had been an ancient inland sea, and she’d gone on a few fossil-hunting expeditions with friends from school.
It was true that Joy didn’t have access to all the amenities she did in a big city. But she’d found that she could live without the majority of convenient luxuries, such as movie theaters and the occasional concerts. Movies went to DVD so quickly these days, and if the small theater in town didn’t show it, Joy could rent it a few months after its release, via the Internet.
As for shopping, virtually everything she needed was available on-line. Ordering on the Internet wasn’t the same as spending the day at the mall, but that, too, had its compensations. If Joy couldn’t step inside a shopping mall, then she didn’t squander her money on impulse buys.
The one thing she did miss, however, was her family and friends. She talked to her parents every week, and regularly e-mailed her brother and her closest friends. At Christmas or during the summer, she visited Seattle to see everyone. Several of her college classmates were married now. Three years after receiving her master’s in education, Joy was still single. While she was in no rush, she did long for a husband and family of her own one day. Red Springs was full of eligible men; unfortunately, most of them were at least fifty. The pickings were slim, as Letty was eager to remind her. She’d dated, but none of the men had interested her the way Lonny once had.
Since there was no avoiding it, Joy left the school and watched as the children formed neat rows and boarded the buses. She folded her arms and stood straight and as tall as her five-foot-ten-inch frame would allow. Thankfully she’d chosen her nicest jumper that morning, a denim one with a white turtleneck. She felt she needed any advantage she could get if she had to face Lonny Ellison. The jumper had buckle snaps and crisscrossed her shoulders, helping to disguise her slight build.
“Miss Fuller, Miss Fuller,” six-year-old Cricket Brown shouted, racing across the playground to her side. The first-grader’s long braids bounced as she skipped over to Joy. Her cherub face was flushed with excitement.
“Hello, Cricket,” Joy said, smiling down at the youngster. She’d witnessed a remarkable change in the little girl since Letty’s marriage to Chase Brown. Despite her friendship with Letty, Joy wasn’t aware of all the details, but she knew there was a lengthy romantic history between her and Chase, one that had taken place ten years earlier. Letty had moved away and when she’d returned, she had a daughter and no husband.
Letty was gentle, kind, thoughtful, the exact opposite of her brother. Out of the corner of her eye, Joy noticed he was striding toward her.
Cricket wasn’t in the line-up for the bus, which explained Lonny’s presence. He’d apparently come to pick up his niece. Preferring to ignore him altogether, Joy turned her back to avoid looking in Lonny’s direction. The students were all aboard the waiting buses. One had already pulled out of the yard and was headed down the street.
“My Uncle Lonny’s here.” Cricket grinned ecstatically.
“I know.” Joy couldn’t very well say she hadn’t seen him, because she had. The hair on the back of her neck had stood on end the minute he parked outside the school. The radar-like reaction her body continued to have whenever he made an appearance confused and annoyed her.
“Look! He’s coming now,” Cricket cried, waving furiously at her uncle.
Lonny joined the two of them and held Joy’s look for a long moment. Chills ran down her spine. It was too much to hope that Lonny would simply collect Cricket and then be on his way, too much to hope he wouldn’t mention the stop sign incident. Oh no, this man wouldn’t permit an opportunity like that to pass him by.
“Mr. Ellison,” she said, unwilling to blink. She kept her face as expressionless as possible.
“Miss Fuller.” He touched the brim of his Stetson with his index finger.
“Yes?” Crossing her arms, she boldly met his gaze, preferring to let him do the talking. She refused to be intimidated by this ill-tempered rancher. She’d made one small mistake and run a stop sign, causing a minor near-accident. The stop sign was new and she’d been so accustomed to not stopping that she’d sailed through the intersection.
She’d driven at the legal speed limit, forgetting about the newly installed stop sign. She’d noticed it at the last possible second; it was already too late to stop but she’d immediately slowed down. Unfortunately, Lonny Ellison had entered the same intersection at the same time and they’d experienced a trivial mishap. Joy had been more than willing to admit that she was the one at fault, and she would gladly have accepted full responsibility if he hadn’t behaved like an escaped lunatic. In fact, Lonny had carried this incident far beyond anything sane or reasonable.
It
