Chapter 2
Linc headed home after the game. It was late because the next high school was so far away, a major problem for running athletics in this part of the country. Ordinarily they avoided night games because of the travel time involved, but this week had been different because the other high school had some construction work going on over the weekend.
They’d gotten their usual shellacking at the other school’s hands, though. Nothing different there. Busby somehow always managed to field a stellar team.
But, as he kept telling his players, winning wasn’t the point. Playing the game was. As long as they loved to play, the rest didn’t matter. Sometimes he wondered if they believed him. Regardless, he always had plenty of students turn up for spring tryouts.
But after he shepherded them off the buses and toward their waiting parents, making sure everyone got a ride home, he still had a forty-five-minute drive of his own to his ranch, and some animals waiting for him.
The sheep and goats were okay in their fenced meadows, watched by the dogs, who were probably wondering by now when they’d see their next bowl of kibble. He had a couple of horses in a corral he never left out overnight, but always safely stalled in the barn. It wouldn’t take him long, but he was beginning to feel weary. He started his days at five in the morning, taking care of livestock, and finished at one-thirty in the morning … well, he was getting damn tired.
As the noise of the game and the racket from the players on the team bus began to fade from his immediate memory, along with a running analysis of how the team could improve, Cassie Greaves popped up before his eyes.
Damn, that woman was stunning. Not in a movie-star sort of way, but more like a … a what? Earth mother? She was full-figured enough to qualify, he supposed, though he wouldn’t classify her as heavy. No, she was luxuriously built, exactly the kind of female form that had always appealed to him. With bobbed honey-blond hair and witchy green eyes, she was a looker. Every time he glanced at her, he felt swamped by desire. Amazing, almost like he was in high school himself.
But he’d lived his entire life in this county, and he knew how many people came here, thinking they’d found something wonderful, and then after one winter packed up and left because of the cold, the isolation, the lack of excitement. Hell, even people who grew up here left so why wouldn’t people who didn’t have any roots?
Some people didn’t find enough excitement in days filled with work or with people they saw every day. His own fiancée had headed out after just two years here, swearing she would die from boredom. She probably would have, too, he had finally admitted. Who wanted a life with a guy who was either tied up at his job or working a ranch? Much fun he was.
So he just tried to avoid the whole thing. When it came to a woman who attracted him the way Cassie did, a woman who hadn’t even survived her first winter here, his guard slammed up like some kind of shield in a science fiction movie.
But he was getting to the point of appearing rude, and that had to stop. When Les had asked him to work on this project with her, he’d had the worst urge to refuse. Proximity with that woman?
But then his better angels had taken over. He and Cassie had to deal with this bullying before it got any worse. And it would if they didn’t find a way to get through to these students. Ignoring it because “kids will be kids” was a recipe for serious problems. Yes, they’d do it. Most of them probably had bullied at one time or another, and most had probably been the victims of it.
But the problem still couldn’t be ignored. That was one thing educators and psychologists had learned over the last few decades. And with the dynamic he’d been watching develop between the students, he suspected that it could get way out of hand.
As the incident had today. As upset as he was for the Carney kid, he also saw a big danger in the way those boys had treated Cassie. So he’d bite the bullet, keep his guard up and do what he could to get the students to understand that bullying wasn’t funny, it wasn’t a joke, and it was never permissible.
He was glad, though, to reach his ranch and deal with the dogs and the horses. They centered him, these animals he kept. Reminded him he was part of nature, too, and that a lot of nature was actually prettier than human nature.
After he’d greeted, petted, stabled and fed, he went inside and made himself a bowl of instant oatmeal. It had been a long time since dinner, and while team parents made sure there were plenty of snacks and water for the players, he was usually too uptight to eat at all during a game. He was like a father with thirty sons on the field or bench.
Sitting at the kitchen table, eating his solitary oatmeal, he noticed for the first time in a long time just how silent the house was. He’d noticed it after his father had died eight years ago, and he’d noticed it again when Martha had left her engagement ring on this very table.
Silence, usually a good companion given his busy days, sometimes seemed lonely and empty. Tonight it definitely felt empty.
This big old house had been meant for a large family. Built back around the turn of the twentieth century, he had only to look at old family photos to know how full it had been at one time. His great-grandfather must have kept awfully busy expanding the place as well as running the ranch and farm. But after the Second World War, youngsters had moved away. The G.I. Bill had offered them different opportunities, and only his own grandfather had chosen to remain after returning from the South Pacific.
So the old days of a dozen kids had trailed away, his grandmother had born only one child that survived, and then his own mother had died giving birth to him, and his dad had never remarried.
From many to just him. Sometimes when he walked around and counted dusty, empty bedrooms, and imagined what this place might have been like in its heyday, he felt the lack of human contact. Five years ago he’d tried a family reunion, met some of his great-uncles and cousins he hardly knew, and some he’d never met, and after a rush of “we have to keep in touch” from everyone, keeping in touch had ended when they left town. They felt no ties to this place, or to him.
He didn’t blame them for that. Time had moved on, and with it so had their lives, which were so far removed now from this thinly populated county that he was sure most of them couldn’t imagine why he remained.
But his roots were very real to him. He felt them dig deeper every time he walked the land, or tended to his livestock, or even did a repair around the house. He was a man of this land and he wanted no other.
Martha couldn’t grasp it, either, although for a while she had tried. He just hadn’t guessed how hard she was trying. Maybe it had been easier for her when everything was new and fresh. Then it had become all humdrum and endless for her, a routine that never changed. He supposed he was to blame for at least some of that, but the fact was, he had two jobs, one teaching, the other tending this place, and he couldn’t simply ignore either one. Animals needed daily care. A teaching job required hours not only at school, but also in the evenings and on weekends.
All work and no play apparently had made Linc a very dull boy, he thought. He needed, he supposed, to find a woman from around here who understood the demands and isolation, someone who could be self-sufficient in more ways than Martha. Someone who would be willing to lend her shoulder to the ranch work and make it part of her life, too.
So far no luck. Judging by his attraction to Cassie Greaves, that was most likely his own fault. He never seemed to be drawn to women who had lived here all their lives. Maybe that was his own form of looking for something different. Whatever, it had left his life very empty.
He
