Liz Ireland (7 page)

The trouble was, he’d only finished seven years of schooling himself. When his father had had the ranch, Jake couldn’t be spared once he was grown enough to work. Then, when his family had lost their farm due to Otis Darby’s greed, he’d had to work even harder trying to do enough odd jobs to keep him and his mother going.

Burnet Dobbs had saved their lives by offering him the deputy job. It didn’t offer much as far as pay went, but it gave him a sense that he was working for right, for justice. Sending Otis Darby up the river had been one of the high points of his life, like vindicating his father’s death. But that had been before justice had backfired on him.

The upshot was that he hadn’t ever expected to step inside a school again, except maybe for a town meeting. Now he was forced to dredge up memories of lessons he’d learned nearly twenty years ago. The school had few books, just enough math primers to go around. Jake spent a lot of the day on spelling, because the school did boast a new dictionary. Besides, he’d always been a good speller.

Saturday, when Jake had first arrived, Beasley had touted some newly bought readers, but Jake hadn’t been paying attention, and now he didn’t see them. For lack of any other inspiration, he’d brought out one of Pendergast’s books,
Dancehall Gunfight,
and read it aloud today. Perhaps it wasn’t great literature, but the children’s faces had been rapt as he’d read the story of Two-step Pete, desperado turned federal marshal, and Willa the dance hall girl. Some of the girls had even cried at the point when Willa thought Two-step Pete had been fatally wounded.

Bea Beasley had cried. And now, as she looked at him as lovingly as Willa had gazed at Pete, Jake felt a shiver go down his spine. If the kid used her noggin, she’d have no trouble figuring out he was an impostor. All she had to do was tell her daddy that the new schoolteacher wasn’t up to snuff—and just like that, he’d be out of a job. Maybe he should be thankful for her schoolgirl crush, he reasoned. Better she see him as a hero than a deputy turned ranch hand doing a poor imitation of a teacher.

He smiled at Bea, put his hat on his head and hurried down the stairs. Bea fell into step beside him with Mr. Wiggles right at her heels.

“Are you going to read us more about Pete and Willa tomorrow, Mr. Pendergast?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Do you like that story?”

“Oh, yes! I’m going to ask my father if I can grow up to be a dance hall girl, just like Willa.”

“Don’t do that!” he said too hastily. Imagining what Lysander Beasley would think of that book put him in a panic. Mr. Wiggles growled and Jake stared at Bea’s surprised face. “Uh, I mean...stories lose their magic when you tell other people about them.”

Bea looked shocked. “They do?”

“Absolutely.” Jake winced at how easily the silly lie had jumped to his lips. Nevertheless, he breathed easier when he saw she was falling for the line. “You have to keep them to yourself.” Lord, he prayed that would make the pesky kid keep her lip buttoned!

“Oh.” Bea appeared worried. Probably thinking about all the stories she’d demystified through the years, Jake guessed.

Just then, he caught sight of Cecilia and Buck across the street, in front of the defunct blacksmith’s shop. Cecilia had the ranch hand practically pinned against the storefront and appeared to be working him over about something or other. Jake felt his spine stiffen at the sight of the two of them together. Undoubtedly, it meant more trouble brewing.

Didn’t Buck ever go home?

Without thinking, Jake veered so that he was walking straight toward the blacksmith shop. Bea and her dog did the same. He just couldn’t shake that kid.

* * *

“Aw, Cecilia, why?” Buck’s expression was petulant.

“Because, Dolly’s one of the best cooks in town. Why, Mr. Walters
pays
to eat there!”

“I know, but...but isn’t it more fun to walk around and talk on the street?”

Cecilia put her hands on her hips, took one step forward and glared at him crossly. “I’ll thank you to show the decency to at least pretend to care about my reputation.”

“What reputation?”

“Precisely,” Cecilia snapped. Trying to convince Buck to visit her at Dolly’s was harder than she’d thought it would be. Even the promise of better chow wasn’t bringing him around. “I won’t have a reputation left if you continue to chase me around the great outdoors like you do. So you can either come for a nice sit-down dinner at Dolly’s or just leave me alone entirely.”

He took on a kicked-puppy appearance, leaned against the blacksmith’s wall and stubbed his toe in the dirt. “But Dolly’s so—”

“It’s no wonder you’re intimidated by her,” Cecilia broke in. “I’ve always thought she was the most beautiful woman in the county.”

“Dolly?” Buck asked, astonished.

“And the funniest.” As if to demonstrate, Cecilia looked at the empty September sky and chuckled merrily.

“What is it?”

Cecilia shook her head. “Oh, I was just thinking of this story Dolly told me the other day.” She put a hand to her mouth. “But I forgot. You were in it.”

“Dolly was talking about me?” He cocked his head first in surprise, then in wonder.

“She talks about you all the time.” This, at least, was the horrible truth. Now that the matter was out in the open, Dolly used every free moment to drag details about Buck out of Cecilia.

“Really?” Buck rubbed his chin thoughtfully and glanced around, as if Dolly was going to pop around the corner of the building any second now.

“Only in passing, of course,” Cecilia said, her heart tripping a little faster. She almost had him. “But I do think I’ve heard her say that you were a good-looking man.” She looked up again, squinting in thought. She could practically feel Buck’s curiosity awaiting her next words. “Yes, I do believe ‘good-looking’ is exactly how she phrased it. Or was it ‘handsome’?”

“Me?” Buck asked, his bug-eyed look indicating he considered the idea absurd. Still, he was holding his breath.

“Or maybe she was referring to Mr. Pendergast.”

“Pendergast! Why—”

“Oh, I can’t remember,” Cecilia interrupted, waving her hand as if to dismiss the whole dull topic. Five more minutes, and Buck would be planted at Dolly’s dinner table for the next week.

“Well,” Buck said, peering over her shoulder with narrowed eyes, “speak of the devil.”

Cecilia twisted to follow Buck’s gaze. Pendergast and Bea Beasley were striding toward them two abreast, Pendergast with the strangest, most determined look on his face.

Her heart sank. This was the last thing she needed! If not the devil, he was her own personal demon at this moment.

Nosy Pendergast
would
show up just when she was managing to make some headway with Buck. Now all her hard-planted information about poor Dolly would be forgotten, and she’d have to wait until Buck came to town again and start from scratch. And if Dolly became impatient, there was no telling what she would do.

This time next week, Cecilia could well imagine herself back on the ranch, bored, bored, bored. And all because Pendergast couldn’t mind his own business.

From his angle, Jake didn’t know why the two were frowning at him so vehemently, but he could hazard a guess. Obviously he was busting up an intimate discussion. He didn’t stop to think why that should annoy him. It just did. If only to be perverse, he decided to stick around. Maybe he could intimidate the ham-fisted cowpoke all the way back to the ranch.

“Howdy,” he said. “To put it in your own language.”

Cecilia’s lip curled up in a halfhearted attempt at a smile. “What are you doing here?”

“Yeah,” Buck said belligerently. “We’re talking.”

“A private conversation on a public street?” Jake asked, amused and intrigued by the way Buck appeared to be sizing him up, almost as if they were rivals. But why would he do that? Jake looked at Cecilia. Could she have said something to Buck that would have made him jealous?

Although at first she met his gaze defiantly, color soon rose in her cheeks. “Yes, this is private,” she said.

“I guess that means we should go,” Bea said, tugging at Jake’s sleeve cuff.

“Wait just a minute,” Jake drawled, a smile touching his lips. He stepped closer, enjoying Cecilia’s disquiet. “You mean you’re just going to send me away, just like that?”

His voice dripped with hurt, a lover’s pain, and Cecilia looked at him more anxiously as she crept backward, away from him. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, I thought that after the other night...”

“What happened the other night!” Buck exclaimed, his face immediately red and explosive.

“Don’t you remember?” Jake teased. “You were there.”

“Why, you—”

Buck burst forward, but Cecilia shot out a restraining arm. “Buck, down.”

“If he took advantage of you...” he growled warningly.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Cecilia said with an exasperated sigh. “What’s gotten into you two? You’re behaving as though this were the Dark Ages.”

“Well, certainly,” Jake said, smiling at Buck. “After all, when a lady enters a man’s bedroom, people are bound to make a fuss.”

“Bedroom!” Bea cried, her eyes bugging to the rims of her glasses.

“Cici, is that true?” Buck demanded.

“I was carrying your inebriated body, you fool,” Cecilia said. She turned on Pendergast, her eyes flashing angrily. “As for you, what kind of teacher goes around knowingly spreading lies like that? Why, if this story
got back to Mr. Beasley,
” she said pointedly, darting a meaningful glance at Bea, “he just might have your job.”

Bea shook her head emphatically as she spoke to her hero. “I would never say anything bad about
you,
Mr. Pendergast. Or Miss Summertree. I swear.”

Jake patted the girl’s head.

“I still want to know what happened,” Buck insisted.

Cecilia huffed out a sigh. “Nothing, absolutely nothing,” she said, her voice squeaking with frustration. As he continued to stare at her, his innocent face veiled with confusion, Cecilia rolled her eyes. “Go home, Buck.”

“But—”

“I’ll explain later,” Cecilia said firmly.

His shoulders rounded with defeat, Buck looked from her to Pendergast and then back to her. “I don’t like to leave you like this—”

“I’ll be fine.” She extended a hand and warmly squeezed his arm. Jake could barely swallow as she bestowed her warmest smile on the dim cowboy. “Thank you for walking with me, Buck.”

Buck, hardly believing his luck in her change in tone, blinked, then puffed up his chest in response. He shot Jake a warning glance. “If you need me—” he said to Cecilia.

“I’ll let you know,” she said obligingly.

He gave Jake a final smug glare and swaggered away toward the saloon, where his roan mare was tethered. Cecilia watched him until he was out of earshot, then turned on Pendergast.

“I don’t know what you’re up to, Pendergast,” she said angrily, moving in on him, “but I do know that it’s not going to work.”

He stood firm and forced his mouth into a grin. “You don’t honestly have feelings for that cowhand, do you?”

She threw a glance to Buck, then crossed her arms. “What if I do? Is that your business?”

“I leave that up to you.” He stepped forward and spoke in a low voice. “Is it?”

Her eyes widened as he came closer to her, and she bit her lower lip anxiously. Suddenly, she threw another glance over her shoulder, but Buck was already mounted and heading out to the north.

“Buck is an old friend,” she said evasively, still not willing to back down.

Jake guessed that his first hunch was correct—Cecilia was keeping the cowboy at arm’s length because she didn’t like him but didn’t want to hurt his feelings by saying so. Besides, in country like this, as isolated as folks were, having people available to talk to was a luxury you didn’t throw away lightly. The fact that Cecilia wasn’t actually considering Buck as a potential husband made him inordinately happy.

Not that it truly mattered, he thought. But Cecilia was a cute thing, and he was going to be in town for a good solid spell. Female companionship wasn’t something to throw away lightly, either.

“I’m glad you’re just friends,” he said.

“I didn’t say that,” Cecilia corrected. “He’s been coming to town regularly since I opened the school early last month.”

“But you aren’t in charge of the school anymore.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “No, I’m not. At the moment,” she said, attempting to look down her nose at him, which was difficult, since he was a foot taller.

He admired her backbone. Wrongheaded though she was, he couldn’t blame Cecilia for trying to hold on to what was hers. He himself had made the mistake of running once, and since then he’d been playing the role of mouse in a cat-and-mouse chase. He couldn’t allow himself to forget that Cecilia had her own agenda, but that didn’t mean they had to be enemies. Or that he couldn’t enjoy being her antagonist.

“If he was really your sweetheart, you would have gone back to the ranch like a shot.” Jake moved almost imperceptibly closer. “Wouldn’t that be more convenient, so you could see each other more often?”

Cecilia’s throat worked visibly as she swallowed a dry gulp of air. She didn’t like the predatory glint in Pendergast’s eye. Or the quivery feeling in her stomach.

She glanced down to his vest. It wasn’t buttoned all the way to the top, and without that comical effect, she saw that his chest was quite expansive—not burly, but wide and lean. Catlike. And his arms, encased though they were in a starchy white cotton shirt, up close seemed as sculpted and muscled as those on the men at the ranch. Physically, she’d underestimated him, which was not a smart thing to do, she realized, when a person was two of you.

“I’m glad he’s not your sweetheart,” he said, his voice a low, husky drawl.

Somewhere in the distant recesses of her mind, warning bells sounded. But for now, all her attention was held by those deep brown eyes. They came nearer and nearer, until she was completely captivated.

“Why?” she asked.

He smiled, and Cecilia’s heart hammered against her breastbone with heavy uneven thuds.

“Can’t you guess?”