Praise for Marie Ferrarella

“A joy to read”

—RT Book Reviews on Christmas Cowboy Duet

“Ferrarella’s romance will charm with all the benefits and pitfalls of a sweet small-town setting.”

—RT Book Reviews on Lassoed by Fortune

“Heartwarming. That’s the way I have described every book by Marie Ferrarella that I have read. In the Family Way engenders in me the same warm, fuzzy feeling that I have come to expect from her books.” —The Romance Reader

“Ms Ferrarella warms our hearts with her charming characters and delicious interplay.”

—RT Book Reviews on A Husband Waiting to Happen

“Ms Ferrarella creates fiery, strong-willed characters, an intense conflict and an absorbing premise no reader could possibly resist.”

—RT Book Reviews on A Match for Morgan

The Cowboy and the Lady

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Stella Bagwell,

who I always channel

when I go to Texas in my mind.

Thank you for your eternal patience,

and most of all, for your friendship.

Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“You’re going where?” John Kincannon demanded angrily.

A high school basketball coach, Deborah Winters Kincannon’s husband had just come home to find her shaken and pale as she was terminating a phone call. Her next words to him had obviously taken him by surprise.

From the look on his face, it was rather an unpleasant surprise.

He glared at her. It was supposed to make her back down. But she couldn’t. Not this time. If she did, she had a strong feeling the results would turn out to be fatal, if not now, then soon.

Debi felt almost numb as she replaced the receiver on the kitchen wall phone. Part of her refused to believe that the conversation she had just had was real, that it wasn’t the product of some recurring nightmare she just couldn’t seem to wake up from.

Another part of her knew that this was all too real—and something, frankly, she had been expecting even as she’d been dreading it.

When her husband didn’t seem to absorb what she’d said to him, Debi repeated it. “I’m going down to the police station to bail Ryan out.”

The simple statement—voiced for a second time—infused her husband with pure rage. His complexion actually reddened as he shifted, blocking her path to the front door.

“Oh, no, you’re not,” he declared heatedly. “This is it! I have had it with that kid, Deborah.”

For a second, Debi closed her eyes, digging deep for patience. She wasn’t up to another argument. She’d gotten home just ten minutes ago herself, after putting in a very long day in the OR with three back-to-back surgeries. It wasn’t supposed to have been three, but one of the other surgical nurses had called in sick and she had wound up pulling an extra shift.

She was bone weary and this was just the absolute very last thing she needed to cap off a day that had dragged on much too long.

“Look, I know you’re angry,” Debi began wearily, “but—”

“No, uh-uh, no ‘buts,’” John informed her firmly as well as loudly. “We’ve given that kid every chance and it’s gotten us nowhere. He can stay in that jail and rot for all I care. You’re not going down there to bail him out. I refuse to allow it, do you hear me?”

Debi looked at her husband, stunned. Had John always been this hard-hearted and she’d just missed it?

Upset and overwrought, Debi upbraided herself, knowing she had turned a blind eye to one too many signs when it came to John. He’d changed. This was not the man she had fallen in love with all those years ago on the campus.

“I can’t just leave him there, John,” she pointed out, struggling to curb her own anger.

John obviously didn’t share her opinion. “You can and you will,” he informed her. “I think I’ve been pretty understanding about all this. It’s not everybody who’ll take his wife’s brother into his home, but this is it, the proverbial straw. I don’t want that kid in my house anymore!”

He was doing it again. John was making her feel like an outsider in her own home. A home she had helped pay for as much as he had. Why was he behaving like a Neanderthal?

“It’s my house, too, John,” she reminded him, her voice tight.

“Nobody said it wasn’t,” he snapped at her. “But you’re going to have to choose, Deborah.”

“Choose?” she repeated incredulously, her voice deadly still. John couldn’t possibly be saying what she thought he was saying to her.

When had he gotten so cold, so unfeeling?

There were tears gathering in her soul, but her eyes remained dry.

“Yeah. Choose,” he emphasized. “It’s either Ryan or me, Deborah. You can’t have both.”

She stared at the man she’d loved all through high school and college. The man she thought she knew so well, but obviously didn’t know at all.

Just to be perfectly clear, she put the question to him. “You’re asking me to choose between my kid brother and you.”

John continued to glare at her. His brown eyes were completely cold and flat, his stand unwavering. “That’s what I’m doing.”

“Ryan doesn’t have anybody but me.” Had John forgotten that?

It had only been three short years since Ryan and her parents had been involved in that horrific car accident. He was twelve at the time. The accident claimed her parents and came very close to claiming her brother, as well. It had taken close to six months of physical therapy before Ryan could get back on his feet.

The scars on his body healed. The ones inside his head were another story. Debi was convinced that they were responsible for her brother transforming from a kind, sweet young man who got straight As into a sullen, troubled teen who ditched more classes than he attended.

“That’s not my problem,” John informed her. “Him or me, Deborah. You have to choose.”

If he could say that to her, then their marriage was already over, she realized. “I’m not leaving him in jail, John,” she retorted, grabbing up her shoulder bag.

“Fine. Go.” John angrily waved her toward the door. “Rescue that sad sack of wasted flesh. But when you get back, I won’t be here.”

Angry, hurt and exasperated beyond words that John could put her into this sort of a position when she was struggling to deal with the circumstances surrounding her brother’s arrest, she glared at her husband. “That is your choice, John. I can’t do anything about that,” she informed him coldly.

“You’re making a big mistake, Deborah!” John shouted at her back.

She squared her shoulders. “I think I made one four years ago,” Debi said, referring to the length of their marriage. She didn’t bother to turn around. She slammed the door in her wake, thinking that it might make her feel better.

It didn’t.

She had a confused, rebellious younger brother who was, unless something drastic happened, on his way to a serious prison record before his eighteenth birthday, and a husband who was bailing on her at the worst possible time rather than offering emotional support.

She had hit rock bottom, Debi thought as she got into her car and started up the engine. Worse than that, she was in far over her head. What she desperately needed was to find a way back up to the surface before she drowned.

Chapter One

Standing just inside the corral, Jackson White Eagle leaned back against the recently repainted railing, watching three of the current crop of teenage boys, who lived in the old converted bunkhouse, put the horses through their paces.

They probably didn’t realize that in actuality the horses were putting them through their paces, Jackson thought. Training horses trained them.

He felt the corners of his mouth curve just a little in satisfaction.

Whatever the reason behind it, even after all this time, it still felt odd to glance in a mirror or a reflecting window and realize that he was smiling. The first ten or so years of his life, there had been precious little for him to smile about. He had grown up with nothing but bitter words and anger erupting, time and again, in his house.

His parents were always fighting. His father, Ben White Eagle, was a great deal larger than his mother and Jackson had instinctively taken his mother’s side. He’d appointed himself her protector even though at ten, he had been small for his age and his father had continually referred to him as “a worthless runt.”

Despite that demoralizing image, he had tried his best to protect the woman who had given him life. He went on being protective of his mother until the day that she walked out on his father—and him.

At first, he had convinced himself that it was just an oversight on her part. He’d told himself that his mother was too angry at his father to realize that she’d left without him.

Night after night, he waited, listening for her return.

But after two weeks had passed, and then three, and then four, he knew he had to face the truth. His mother wasn’t coming back for him. That forced him to face the fact that the person who he had loved most in the world hadn’t loved him enough to take him with her. His heart broke.

And then he just shut down.

By then, four weeks after his mother had taken off, his father was already preparing to get married again. He was marrying the woman he’d been having an affair with. The affair that had produced another son and had been the final straw for his first wife.

Like him, his stepmother, Sylvia, was only half Navajo. Sylvia was also the mother of his half brother, Garrett, who was five at the time of his parents’ marriage.

The second his father brought Sylvia into the house, Jackson was certain that he was going to be locked out of the family. In his eyes, his father, Sylvia and Garrett formed a complete unit. That left him in the role of the outsider, unwanted and on the outside, looking in.

But Sylvia hadn’t been the typical stepmother he’d expected. To his surprise, she reached out to him. She went so far as to tell him that she wasn’t going to try to take his mother’s place. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t come to her with anything that was bothering him. Knowing that he’d gone through a lot, she said that she intended to be there for him, as well as for Garrett. To her, they were both her sons.

He’d appreciated the effort on Sylvia’s part, but he was just too angry at the world, predominantly his mother, to allow Sylvia into his life. He began acting out, taking part in unacceptable behavior.

Things went from bad to worse.

His father’s idea of fixing a problem was to take a belt to the cause. At first, he did it covertly, waiting until he got Jackson alone. But he soon tired of that and lashed out at him the moment his temper flared.

The first time Sylvia became aware of what her husband was doing, she quickly put herself between him and Jackson. Ben had shoved her aside, which caused Jackson to attempt to tackle him. It ended badly for Jackson, but he had gotten a few licks in before his father had gotten the better of him.

Sylvia had called the reservation police. Ben White Eagle took off for parts unknown that same night, before they came for him.

Jackson was relieved that his father was gone, but the absence of his father’s salary made life very difficult for Sylvia, his half brother and him. Sylvia never blamed him, never threw the incident in his face. This didn’t change the fact that he felt as if he was to blame for everything that had gone wrong.

Things got even worse.

He got arrested—more than once. And each time he did, Sylvia would go to the local law enforcement establishment on the reservation, pay whatever fines needed to be paid and bring him back home.

Jackson secretly felt sorry for what he was putting her through, but even her tears hadn’t gotten him to change. Angry at the world and with little to no self-esteem to speak of, for a while it looked as if his fate was predestined—and cast in stone.

And then his stepmother, in what she later admitted to him was one final act of desperation, turned to his father’s older and far sterner, as well as far more stable, brother, Sam, for help. Sam White Eagle had pulled himself out of poverty and had, Jackson later found out, managed to survive personal tragedy, as well, although at the time it had been touch and go. His wife of less than eighteen months died giving birth to his son. Beset by a number of complications, the baby had died a couple of days later. Sam had them buried together. And then he had shut himself down emotionally, losing himself in bottle after bottle until he finally pulled himself up out of what he recognized would have been a death spiral.

Emotionally stoic, he did feel for his brother’s sons as well as for Sylvia, which led to his taking her up on her plea.

Sam became the male role model for both him and for Garrett. Initially, his uncle put them both to work on his small horse ranch. His reasoning was that if they were kept constantly busy, they wouldn’t have the time, not to mention the energy, to act out.

His uncle turned out to be right. Jackson knew that to the end of his days, no matter what he accomplished, he would owe it all to Sam. When his uncle died, leaving the ranch to him and to Garrett, Jackson decided that Sam’s work should continue. He broached the idea to Garrett, who didn’t need to be sold on it. His brother wholeheartedly agreed with him before he’d had a chance to finish a second sentence.

And that was how The Healing Ranch came to be. Five years after Sam had passed away, the ranch was still in existence, turning out top-quality quarter horses and transformed juvenile offenders who had learned to walk the straight and narrow.

Secretly, Jackson had thought that, after a while, this so-called crusade he had undertaken would get old for him. When he had first started all this, he hadn’t realized that there was a part of him that actually enjoyed the challenge, that looked forward to that rush that came when he knew that the misdirected kid he was working with had turned a corner and no longer was interested in gaining notoriety for what he did wrong but for what he did that was right.

“Wish you were here, Sam, to see this,” Jackson murmured under his breath. He glanced up at the all but cloudless sky. “This is all your doing, you know,” he added.

“You know, they lock people up who talk to themselves with such feeling,” Garrett said to his older brother as he came over to join him.

Five years younger than Jackson, and with only their father in common, the whole world could still easily identify the two as brothers. They almost looked alike, from their deep, thick, blue-black hair to their hypnotic blue eyes. Jackson’s had come directly from his mother while with Garrett it was most likely someone somewhere within his family tree.

“Just your word against mine, Garrett. No one else is anywhere within earshot so there’s no one around to back up your claim. They’ll think you just want the ranch all to yourself and that you’re looking for a way to get me out of the picture,” Jackson told him.

So saying, Jackson eyed his half brother. They had gone through a lot together, he thought with affection. That didn’t mean that either of them ever purposely missed a chance to zing the other.

Garrett grinned. “I guess you saw right through my plot.” He snapped his fingers like someone acknowledging a missed opportunity. “Foiled again. Looks like I’m just going to have to come up with another way to take over the old homestead.”

Jackson glanced at his watch. The latest applicant he had accepted at the beginning of the week should have arrived by now. He wondered if something had happened to bring about a change in plans. It wouldn’t be the first time a teen’s parent or guardian had backed out of the arrangement before it ever started. Total commitment was required and sometimes that didn’t pan out.

“I take it there’s no word yet on our latest resident ‘bad boy’?” he asked Garrett.

Heaven help him, he needed a new challenge, Jackson thought. Needed to be given another teen to turn around and thereby rescue. With each and every one that he and Garrett rehabilitated, he was paying off a little more of the debt that he owed to Sam, a debt that he could never really fully repay. And although his uncle had been gone for a few years now, Jackson felt that somehow, Sam knew the good that was being done in his name by the boy he had saved from coming to a very an unsavory end.

Garrett climbed onto the corral, straddling the top rail.

“Not yet,” he answered. “I just checked phone messages, emails and text messages. Unless the kid and his guardian are using smoke signals to communicate, they haven’t tried to get in touch with us.” Garrett shrugged casually. “Could be they just decided to change their minds at the last minute.”

“Always possible,” Jackson admitted—although he really doubted it. The call he had received from the troubled teen’s guardian made him feel that the woman thought that the situation was desperate—just as desperate as she was. He’d heard things in her voice that she hadn’t knowingly put into words, but he’d heard them just the same. Things that told him that even if he didn’t have a ready bed for this latest applicant, he would have found a way to make room somehow.

Luckily, he hadn’t had to get creative on that front. When he’d inherited the ranch, he and Garrett had renovated the bunkhouse so that it could handle eight boys with ease. Ten would have necessitated bringing in two extra twin beds and space would have been rather limited, but it could be done.

Currently, there were seven boys living on the ranch besides Garrett and himself. His latest success story, Casey Brooks, had graduated less than a week ago. Upon his initial arrival, Casey had been one seriously messed-up, lost sixteen-year-old. His parents had gotten in contact with him because they were genuinely afraid that their son would either be killed or eventually land in prison, where heaven only knew what would happen to him.

Casey had been so tightly wound up it was a wonder he hadn’t just exploded before he ever came to The Healing Ranch.

Getting through to the inner, hidden, decent teen had required an extreme amount of patience and going not just the extra mile but the extra twenty miles. There were times when he was certain that Casey was just too far gone to reach. Those were the times that he had made himself channel Sam, recalling how his uncle had managed to get to him back when he was just like Casey.

It worked, and in the end it had all paid off. That was all he—and Garrett—were ever interested in. The final results. That made everything that had come before—the strategizing, the enduring of endless hostility and curses—all worth it. And he also kept in contact with former “graduates,” taking an interest in their lives and making sure that they remained proud of their own progress—and didn’t backslide.

So far, he hadn’t lost a single teen. He intended to keep it that way.

“Hey, you think that’s them?” Garrett asked. Shading his eyes with one hand, he pointed at something behind his brother’s back with the other.

Jackson turned around to see a beige, almost non-descript sedan that had definitely seen better days approaching from the north. The road was open, but the driver refrained from speeding, something that tempted a lot of drivers around the area, whether they were tourists or natives.

The closer the vehicle came, the dustier it appeared. Jackson recalled that his new challenge hailed from the state of Indiana. Indianapolis to be precise. And unless the Dallas airport car rental agency was dealing in really beaten-up-looking vehicles these days, his latest boarder had been driven down to Forever rather than coming in by airplane.

Interesting, Jackson thought.

* * *

RESTLESS, IMPATIENT AND WORRIED, Ryan Winter shifted in his seat for the umpteenth time even though he had decided more than several hundred miles ago that there was no such thing as a comfortable position in his sister’s beat-up, secondhand sedan.

Ryan glared out the window, sulking.

He’d always been able to get his sister to come around to his way of thinking. But the other morning, when she had told him—not asked, but told, something he was still angry about—that they were going to a place called Forever, Texas, he’d thought she was kidding. It wasn’t until she’d marched into his room and thrown some of his clothes into a suitcase, then grabbed him by the arm and all but thrown him into the car after the suitcase, that he realized she was serious.

Dead serious.

He’d tried to reason with her, then he threatened, cajoled and pleaded, going through the entire gamut of ordinarily successful avenues of getting her to change her mind. But every attempt had failed. One by one, his sister had tossed them all by the wayside. She wasn’t going to let him talk or con his way out of going to this stupid, smelly horse place, and he was furious.

He’d had all those miles to sufficiently work himself up.

He thought he knew why this was happening. Because he was the reason why her stick-in-the-mud husband had left. But just because her life was falling apart was no reason for her to take it out on him.

Making one last-ditch attempt to get her to turn the car around, Ryan said, “Look, I’m sorry about your marriage breaking up, but the way I see it, I did you a favor. John was a loser, and you’re a hell of a lot better off without him. If you’re dumping me here at this stupid prison ranch just to get even, it’s not going to work because I swear I’m taking off the first chance I get,” he added for good measure, thinking that would really get to his sister. Debi was very big on family and he was officially all she had. He felt confident that the threat of losing him would be enough to get his sister to back off about this prison ranch and give him the space he needed. “And if I do leave, you’ll never find me.”

* * *

DEBI’S HANDS TIGHTENED on the steering wheel. It had been a long drive from Indianapolis. She was hot, she was tired and she’d gotten lost half a dozen times during the trip down to this ranch. She fervently hoped this place dealt in miracles on a regular basis because she really, really needed one.

Badly.

Debi had a feeling that nothing short of a miracle was going to save her brother. And maybe even that wasn’t enough.

She spared her brother a quick glance. He always had a habit of trying to turn things around, of putting her on the defensive. Well, not this time. She couldn’t allow it.

“This isn’t about my marriage, or lack thereof, this is about you. You’re broken, Ryan, and I don’t know how to fix you.” Even saying it pained her, but it was the truth. Somehow, Ryan had lost his way and she had lost the ability to connect with him. She wasn’t too proud to admit that she needed help in both departments.

“Drop-kicking me here to this dude ranch that’s built out of horse manure sure as hell isn’t going to do it, Debs.”

She sincerely hoped that wasn’t a prophecy. “I’ve tried everything else with you and it hasn’t worked. Maybe the people who run this ranch will have better luck.”

Even as she said it, she mentally crossed her fingers. She’d been at her wits’ end and more than desperate the day after she had bailed her brother out of jail. True to his word, John had been gone when she came home with Ryan. The following morning, she’d broken down in the hospital’s fifth-floor break room. Trying to comfort her, Sheila, another nurse on the floor, told her about The Healing Ranch.

It turned out that Sheila’s cousin had a son who was well on his way to a long rap sheet and possibly life in prison. She had sent him to The Healing Ranch in a last-ditch attempt to save him from himself. According to Sheila, it had worked. Three months later, she’d gotten back the decent kid she’d always known was in there.

Debi had called the number Sheila had given her that very day. She’d had to leave a message on the answering machine, which didn’t fill her with much confidence, but that all changed when she received a call back that evening from the man who ran the place. She remembered thinking that Jackson White Eagle had a nice, calming voice. Just talking to him had made her feel that maybe it wasn’t really hopeless after all.

He hadn’t made her any lofty promises, he’d just said that he would see what could be done and invited her to come down with her brother. Debi hadn’t wanted a tour, she’d wanted to sign Ryan up right then and there, afraid that if this Jackson person had a chance to interact with her brother first, he couldn’t accept him into the program.

“You’re sure you don’t want to see the ranch and think about it first?” he had asked her.

Her online research had told her that the man who ran the ranch had a perfect track record so far. That was definitely good enough for her—especially since she had nowhere else to turn.

“I’m sure,” she had replied.

She’d taken a leave of absence from the hospital, gotten together what there was in her meager savings account, transferring it into her checking account, and driven down here with Ryan. John’s divorce papers were tucked into her purse. She had no one to lean on but herself.

Ryan had put up a huge fuss about being taken away from his friends. He’d also threatened to run away the first chance he got.

He repeated the threat every hour on the hour in case she hadn’t heard him the first half a dozen times.

Debi told herself that Ryan only threatened to run away because he wanted to frighten her into turning around and driving back to Indianapolis. Maybe a year ago, she might have, but what stopped her now was that she knew if she did, for all intents and purposes she would have been signing her brother’s epitaph because as sure as day followed night, Ryan was on a path headed straight for destruction.

“Well, the clowns who run this place aren’t going to get the opportunity to brainwash me because I’m taking off first chance I get. You know I will,” he threatened again.

Debi sighed as she stared at the road before her. She wasn’t all that sure the threats were empty ones. Ryan could very well mean what he said. That was why she wasn’t going back home once she had finished registering him and got him settled in. If Ryan did take off, she wanted to be right here where she could go after him and bring him back. He was her brother and at fifteen, obviously still a minor. She was responsible for him, and she would have felt that way even if he were eighteen.

She prayed that it wouldn’t come to that, but considering what she had already gone through with Ryan, she wasn’t counting on it being easy.

“I mean it. I’m gone. First chance I get,” Ryan repeated with emphasis.

“Yes, I heard you,” Debi replied stoically. She also heard the fear in his voice. God, let these people here reach him, she prayed. She saw the cluster of people in and around the corral. “Okay, we’re here. For my sake, try not to insult the man in the first five minutes.”

Ryan’s laugh had a nasty sound to it, and she knew this was not going to go well. “Hey, I don’t want to spoil the man, now, do I?”

She didn’t bother answering her brother. Anger and despair had grabbed equal parts of her. Anger that he had allowed himself to become this destructive, negative being and despair because she couldn’t snap him out of it and had been forced to turn to strangers for help. She’d thought she was too proud for that but obviously pride had withered and died in the face of this situation.

There were two cowboys by the corral as she pulled up. Were they just workers, or...?

She saw the slightly taller of the two draw away from the enclosure and approach her car. Debi turned off the engine, carefully watching the approaching cowboy’s every move. He strolled toward them like a sleek panther, with an economy of steps.

Debi got out of the vehicle. Ryan remained where he was. She wasn’t about to leave him in the car, not even if she was only inches away and had the car keys in her hand. She knew her brother, knew that he could hot-wire anything with an engine and take off at a moment’s notice. She had no doubt that he probably thought that he could propel himself into the driver’s seat and just take off without a single backward glance.

Well, not today, she told herself. Bending down, she looked in through the open window on the driver’s side. “Get out of the car, Ryan.”

“No,” he informed her flatly.

At fifteen, Ryan was taller than she was and while scrawny-looking, he was still stronger. The only time she ever managed to get him to move was when she caught him off guard.

That wasn’t going to work here, she realized, looking down into his defiant face.

Jackson White Eagle chose that exact moment to enter into her life. “Trouble, ma’am?”

Chapter Two

“‘Ma’am’?” Ryan echoed with a sneer. “Is this guy for real?” he jeered, turning toward his sister.

“Very real,” Jackson assured him in an even voice that was devoid of any emotion. “Why don’t you get out of the car like your sister requested?” he suggested in the same tone.

“Why don’t you mind your own freakin’ business?” Ryan retorted, sticking up his chin the way he did whenever he was spoiling for a fight.

“For the next month or two or three,” Jackson informed him slowly with emphasis, “you are my business, Ryan,” he concluded in the same low, evenly controlled voice with which he had greeted the teen’s sister.

Jackson opened the door on the passenger side, firmly took hold of Ryan’s arm and with one swift, economic movement, pulled his newest “ranch hand,” as he liked to call the teens who arrived on his doorstep, out of the car and to his feet.

“Ow!” Ryan cried angrily, grabbing his shoulder as if it had been wrenched out of its socket. “You going to let this jerk manhandle me like that?” he demanded angrily, directing the question at his sister.

Before Debi had a chance to respond, Jackson told her brother matter-of-factly, “That didn’t hurt, Ryan.”

“How do you know?” Ryan cried, still holding his shoulder as if he expected his arm to drop off.

“Because,” Jackson said in a calm, steely voice, “if I had wanted to hurt you, Ryan, trust me, you would have known it. To begin with, the pain would have thrown you off balance and you would have dropped like a stone to your knees.” He released his hold on Ryan’s arm, but his eyes still held Ryan prisoner. “Now then, why don’t you get your things out of the car and come with me? I’ll show you and your sister where you’ll be staying for the next few months.”

“Few months?” Ryan repeated indignantly. “The hell I will.”

Jackson suppressed a sigh. He turned from the woman who he was about to escort to the ranch house and looked back at the teen she had brought for him to essentially “fix.” This one, he had a feeling, was going to take a bit of concentrated effort.

“By the way,” he said to Ryan, “I let the first two occasions slide because you’re new here and this is your first day—”

“And my last,” Ryan interjected.

Debi had stood by, quiet, until she couldn’t endure it any longer. “Ryan!”

The smile Jackson offered to the woman who had brought the teen to him was an understanding one.

“That’s all right. Ryan will come around.” His eyes shifted to the teen. Under all that bravado was just a scared kid, he thought. A kid he intended to reach—but it wouldn’t be easy. “There’s a fine for every time you curse. You put a dollar into the swear jar.”

“Curse?” Ryan mocked. “You call that a curse?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, I do. While you’re here you’re going to have to clean up your language as well as your act,” Jackson informed the teen.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Pay him the damn fine so he’ll stop whining,” Ryan told his sister.

“That’s three now,” Jackson corrected quietly. “That one isn’t free. And you’re the one who needs to pay, not your sister. Time you learned to pull your own weight. Your sister can’t be expected to always be cleaning up your messes.”

“Yeah, well, a lot you know,” Ryan retorted, an underlying frustration in his voice. “My sister’s the one with all the money.”

“That’ll change,” Jackson informed him. “You’ll be earning your own money while you’re here. Everyone at The Healing Ranch earns his own money by doing the chores that are assigned to him. You’ll get yours after you settle in.”

“Wow,” Ryan marveled. “How lame can you get?”

Ryan shifted from foot to foot, eyeing his sister and obviously waiting for her to say something to back him up—or better yet, to spring him so he could stop playing this ridiculous game and go home.

Debi’s cheeks began to redden. “I’m sorry about this,” she apologized to Jackson.

Jackson waved away the apology. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve had a lot worse here.”

“Gee, thanks,” Ryan sneered. “You know I’m right here.”

“Wouldn’t forget it for a second,” Jackson assured him.

By then, Garrett had come over to join them. Behind him, the three teens who were in the corral had stopped working with their horses and were now watching the newest arrival at the ranch try to go up against Jackson. It played out like a minidrama.

Garrett flashed a wide, easy smile at both the newest addition to the crew on the ranch and the young woman who had brought him to them.

“This is my brother, Garrett.” Jackson made the introduction to Ryan’s worried-looking sister. “We run the ranch together,” he added rather needlessly, since the information was also on the website he’d had one of Miss Joan’s friends put together for him, Miss Joan being the woman who ran the town’s only diner and who was also the town’s unofficial matriarch.

Taking the attractive young woman’s hand in his, Garrett slipped his other hand over it and shook it. “Welcome to The Healing Ranch, ma’am,” he said in all sincerity.

“Who came up with that stupid name, anyway?” Ryan asked. “You?” The last part was directed toward Jackson. “’Cause it sounds like something you’d say,” the teen concluded condescendingly.

Garrett treated the question as if it was a legitimate one. He was attempting to defuse the situation. Once upon a time, Jackson had quite a temper, but he now prided himself on keeping that temper completely under wraps.

“Actually,” Garrett told Ryan, “it was our uncle. He came up with the name. This was his ranch first,” Garrett remembered fondly.

“Oh,” Ryan mumbled, looking away. He shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged, lifting up bony shoulders. “Still a lame name,” he muttered not quite under his breath.

Jackson pretended not to hear. “The bunkhouse is right over there,” he pointed out.

“Yeah? So what? Why would I want to know where the stupid bunkhouse is?” Ryan asked, the same uncooperative attitude radiating from every word.

“Because that’s where you’ll be staying,” Jackson said. Inwardly, he was braced for a confrontation between the teen and himself.

Ryan’s deep brown eyes darkened to an unsettling murky hue. “The hell I am.”

“You’d better get to work soon, Ryan. You’ve already got several fines—and counting—against you,” Jackson informed him. “Garrett, why don’t you take Ryan here—” he nodded at the teen “—and introduce him to the others?”

“Others?” Ryan repeated. “Is this where you bring out a bunch of robotlike zombies and tell me they’re going to be my new best friends and roommates? Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“Ryan, apologize right now, do you hear me?” Debi ordered. Her words might as well have been in Japanese for all the impression they made on Ryan. Watching her brother being taken in hand had her looking both relieved and tense.

“Ryan, drop the attitude,” Jackson told him. “You’ll find it a whole lot easier to get along with everyone if you do.”

Ryan drew himself up to his full six-foot-two height. “Maybe I don’t want to get along with ‘everyone,’” he retorted.

Jackson looked at the teenager, his expression saying that he knew better than Ryan what was good for him.

But for now, he merely shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he told Ryan. Jackson turned toward the distraught-looking young woman he had spoken to on the phone several days ago. He could feel that protective streak that had turned his life around coming out. “Why don’t you come with me to the main house and we’ll go over a few things?” he suggested.

She looked over her shoulder back to the bunkhouse. Garrett was already herding her brother over to the structure.

“Debi!” Ryan called out. It was clearly a call for help.

It killed her not to answer her brother. Debi worked her lower lip for a second before asking Jackson, “Is he really going to be staying in that barn?” she asked uncertainly.

“It’s the bunkhouse,” Jackson corrected politely, trying not to make her feel foolish for getting her terms confused. “And back in the day, that was where ranch hands used to live. It’s been renovated a couple of times since then. Don’t worry, the wind doesn’t whistle through the mismatched slates.” The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “The bunkhouse also has proper heating in the winter and even air-conditioning for the summer. All the comforts of home,” he added.

Apparently, Ryan wasn’t the only family member who needed structure and reassurance, Jackson thought. Ryan’s sister had all the signs of someone who was very close to the breaking point and was struggling to hold everything together, if only for appearance’s sake.

“If home is a bunkhouse,” Debi interjected. It obviously seemed incongruous to her.

“A renovated bunkhouse,” Jackson reminded her with an indulgent smile. “Don’t worry, your brother will be just fine.”

Well, if nothing else, Ryan had certainly proven that he was a survivor, she thought—if only in body. His spirit was another matter entirely. But then, that was why she had brought Ryan here. To “fix” that part of him.

“Right now, I think I’m more worried about you and your brother,” she said.

“Why?” Jackson asked, curious. This, he had to admit, was a first, someone bringing him a lost soul to set straight and being worried about the effect of that person on him. “Is Ryan violent?” The teen seemed more crafty than violent, but it paid to be safe—just in case.

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Debi was quick to clarify. “Under all that, he’s basically a good kid—but I’ll be the first to admit that Ryan is more than the average handful.”

“If he wasn’t,” Jackson pointed out as they made their way to the main house, “then he wouldn’t be here—and neither would you.”

“True,” Debi readily agreed—and then she flushed slightly, realizing what the man with her had to think. “I’m sorry if I sound like I’m being overly protective, but I’m the only family that Ryan has left and I don’t feel like I’ve been doing a very good job of raising him lately.” She looked over her shoulder again in the direction her brother had gone as he left the area.

She spotted him with Garrett. The two were headed for the bunkhouse. Garrett had one arm around her brother’s shoulders—most likely, in her estimation, to keep Ryan from darting off. Not that there was anywhere for him to go, she thought. The ranch was some distance from the stamp-sized town they had driven through.

“He’ll be all right,” Jackson assured her. “Garrett hasn’t lost a ranch hand yet.”

“Is that what you call the boys who come here?” she asked, thinking it wasn’t exactly an accurate label for them. After all, they were here to be reformed, not to work on the ranch, right?

She looked at Jackson, waiting for him to clarify things. What he said made her more confused. The man seemed very nice, but nice didn’t get things done and besides, “nice” could also be a facade. That was the way it had been with John. And it had fooled her completely.

“I found that ‘ranch hand’ is rather a neutral title and, when you come right down to it, the boys do work on the ranch. My office is right in here,” he told her as he opened the door for her.

She was going to ask him more about having the boys work on his ranch—had she just supplied him with two more hands to do his bidding?—but when he opened the door to his ranch house without using a key, her attention was diverted in an entirely different direction.

“Your door’s not locked,” she said in surprise.

He heard the wonder in her voice and suppressed a smile. He knew exactly what she had to be thinking. “No, it’s not.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” she asked. “I mean, if you and your brother are outside, working, isn’t that like waving temptation right in front of the boys that you’re trying to reform?”

“They’re on the honor system,” he explained, closing the door behind her. “I want them to know that we trust them to do the right thing. You have to give trust in order to get it. Around here, the boys keep each other honest. For the most part, the ones who have been here the longest set an example and watch over the ones who came in last.”

She looked at him skeptically. “That sounds a little risky.”

“We find it works,” he told her. “And just for the record, ‘I’ don’t reform them. What we do here is present them with the right set of circumstances so that they can reform themselves. Most of the time I find that if I expect the best from the teens who come here, they eventually try to live up to my expectations.”

Debi looked around. The living room she had just walked into was exactly what she would have expected: open and massive, with very masculine-looking leather furniture, creased with age and use. The sofas—there were two—were arranged around a brick fireplace. The ceiling was vaulted with wooden beams running through the length of it. The only concession to the present was the skylight. Without it, she had a feeling that the room would have a dungeonlike atmosphere.

The rustic feel of the decor seem like pure Texas. Debi really had no idea why that would make her feel safe, but it did.

Maybe it had to do with the man beside her. There was something about his manner that gave her hope and made her feel that everything was going to work out.

She knew she wasn’t being realistic, but then, she’d never been in this sort of situation before.

Realizing that she’d fallen behind as he was walking through the room, Debi stepped up her pace and caught up to Jackson just as he entered a far more cluttered room that she assumed was his office.

“Sounds good in theory,” she acknowledged, referring to his ideas about trust.

“Works in practice, too,” he told her with just the tiniest bit of pride evident in his cadence.

Sweeping a number of files, oversized envelopes and a few other miscellaneous things off a chair, Jackson nodded toward it. He deposited the armload of paraphernalia on the nearest flat surface.

“Please, sit,” he requested.

Debi did as he asked, perching on the edge of the seat. She appeared as if she was ready to jump to her feet at any given moment for any given reason, he noted.

This woman was wound up as tightly as her brother. Maybe more so. Undoubtedly because she was constantly on her guard and vigilant for the next thing to go wrong. And he had a feeling that she was doing it alone. She’d said she was the teen’s only family.

“So,” Jackson began as he sat down in his late uncle’s overstuffed, black leather chair. It creaked ever so slightly in protest due to its age. To Jackson, the sound was like a greeting from an old friend. “What do you think is Ryan’s story?”

Debi blinked, caught completely off guard. His wording confused her. Did he believe she wasn’t involved in her brother’s life and could only make a wild guess as to why he was the way he was? Her problem was she was too involved in her brother’s story.

“Excuse me?” she demanded, forgetting all about feeling as if she had failed her brother.

Jackson patiently explained the meaning behind his question. “Every parent or guardian who comes to us usually has some sort of a theory as to why the boy they brought to us is the way he is. They give me a backstory and I take it from there. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong. Not everything is black or white.” He leaned back in the chair. The motion was accompanied by another pronounced creak. “What’s Ryan’s backstory?”

He did think she wasn’t involved, Debi thought. She set out to show this man how wrong he was by giving him a summarized version of Ryan’s life.

“As a little boy, Ryan was almost perfect,” she recalled fondly. “Never talked back, went to school without a single word of protest. Kept his room neat, ate whatever was on his plate. Did his homework and got excellent grades. He was almost too good,” she added wistfully, wishing fervently for those days to be back again.

No one was ever too good, but he refrained from commenting on that. Instead, Jackson gently urged the woman on. “And then...?”

It took her a moment to begin. Remembering still hurt beyond words. “And then, three years ago, he was involved in a car accident. He was in the car with my parents.” A lump formed in her throat, the way it always did. “They were coming out to visit me—I was away at college.”

She would forever feel guilty about that. Guilty about selecting her college strictly because that was where John was going. If she’d attended a college close to home, the way her parents had hoped, this wouldn’t have happened.

“Except that they never made it,” she said after a beat, forcing the words out. “A truck hauling tires or car batteries or something like that sideswiped them.” She had no idea why it bothered her that she didn’t have all the details down, but it did. “The car went off the side of the road, tumbled twice and when it was over...” Her voice shook as she continued. “My parents were both dead.” Taking a breath, she continued, “And Ryan was in ICU. They kept him in the hospital for almost a month. Even when he got out, he had to have physical therapy treatments for the next six months.”

Jackson listened quietly. When she paused, he took the opportunity to comment. “Sounds like he had a pretty hard time of it.”

Debi took in a long, shaky breath. It hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park for her, either. But this wasn’t about her, she reminded herself sternly. It was about Ryan. About saving Ryan.

“He did,” she answered. “He kept asking me why he was the one who got to live and they had to die.” A rueful smile touched her lips. “That was while he was still talking to me. But that got to be less and less and then the only time we talked at all was when I was nagging him to do his homework and stop cutting classes.” The sigh escaped before she could stop it. “I guess you could say that they were one-way conversations.”

He was all too familiar with that—from both sides of the divide, he thought.

“What brought you here to The Healing Ranch?” he asked her. When Debi looked at him, confused, he explained, “It’s usually the last straw or the one thing that a parent or guardian just couldn’t allow to let slide.”

She steeled herself as she began to answer the man’s question. “I had to bail Ryan out of jail. He ditched school and was hanging around with a couple of guys I kept telling him to avoid. One of them stole a car.” She had a pretty good idea which one had done it, but Ryan refused to confirm her suspicions. “According to what another one of the ‘boys’ said, the guy claimed he was ‘borrowing’ it just for a quick joy ride. The owner reported the car missing and the police managed to track it down fairly quickly. The boys were all apprehended.”

Age-wise they were still all children to her, not young men on their way to compiling serious criminal records.

“But first they had to chase them through half the city.” She didn’t want to make excuses for her brother, but she did want Jackson to know the complete truth. “Ryan didn’t steal the car, but he knew it didn’t belong to the kid behind the wheel. He should have never gotten into the car knowing that.” This time, she didn’t even bother trying to suppress her sigh or her distress. “He used to make better decisions than that,” she told the man sitting opposite her.

A lone tear slid down her cheek. She could feel it and the fact that it was there annoyed Debi to no end. She didn’t want to be a stereotypical female, crying because the situation was out of her control. She couldn’t, wouldn’t tolerate any pity.

Using the back of her hand, she wiped away the incriminating stain from her cheek.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m just a little tired after that long trip.”

Rather than comment on what they both knew was an extremely lightweight excuse, Jackson took the box of tissues he’d kept on his desk and pushed it over toward the young woman.

He watched her pull one out, his attention focused on her hand. Her left hand. There was no ring on her ring finger—but there was a very light tan line indicating that there’d been a ring there not all that long ago.

“Did your marriage break up over that?” he asked her gently.

Debi raised her eyes to his in wonder as she felt the air in her lungs come to a standstill.

How did he know?

Chapter Three

Debi stared at the man sitting across from her. Had Sheila called him to set things up for her? She hadn’t mentioned anything, but if her coworker and friend hadn’t called this man, then how did Jackson know about the current state, or non-state, of her marriage?

“Excuse me?” she said in a voice filled with disbelief.

Even as he asked the question, Jackson was fairly certain that he already knew the answer. Whoever this woman’s husband had been, the man was clearly an idiot. Two minutes into their interview, he could tell that Deborah Kincannon was a kind, caring person. That she seemed to be temporarily in over her head was beside the point. That sort of thing happened to everyone at one point or another. It certainly had to his stepmother.

The fact that Ryan’s sister was exceedingly attractive in a sweet, comfortable sort of way wasn’t exactly a hardship, either. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that her choice in men, or at least in this man, left something to be desired.

“Did your marriage break up over that?” he repeated. Jackson could almost hear the way the scene had played out. “Your husband said he’d had enough of your brother’s actions and told you to wash your hands of him, am I right?”

Debi could feel herself growing pale. The second this man said the words, she remembered the awful scenario and how it had drained her.

Her mouth felt dry as she asked, “How did you...?” Her voice trailed off as she looked at Jackson incredulously.

“Your ring finger,” he answered, nodding at her left hand. “There’s a slight tan line around it, like you’d had a ring on there for a while—until just recently.”

Debi nodded and looked down at her left ring finger. It still felt strange not to see her wedding ring there. She hadn’t taken the ring off since the day she’d gotten married, not even to clean it. She’d found a way to accomplish that while the ring remained on her finger. But now there seemed to be no point in continuing to wear it. If she did, it would not only be perpetuating a lie, it would also remind her that she had wasted all those years of her life, loving a man who was more a fabrication than real flesh and blood.

The John Kincannon she had loved hadn’t existed, except perhaps in her mind.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, she couldn’t help thinking. There had been signs. Why hadn’t she allowed them to register?

She supposed the answer lay in the fact that she just couldn’t admit to herself that she could have been so wrong about a person for so many years. A person she had given up so much for. A person who had inadvertently caused her to sacrifice her parents’ lives. So when warning signs had raised their heads, she’d ignored them, pretending that they didn’t exist. Whenever she found herself stumbling across another warning sign, she’d just pretended that it was a little rough patch and everything was all right. How wrong she’d been.

Debi cleared her throat and sat a little straighter in her seat.

“I don’t see how that would matter, one way or another,” she finally replied, sounding somewhat removed and formal.

Jackson pretended not to take notice of the shift in her voice and demeanor. “Oh, it does,” he assured her. “It does. I’m not trying to pry into your private life. I just want to identify all the pieces that make up your brother’s life. If your marriage broke up because of him, then Ryan might have that much more guilt he’s carrying around.”

The laugh that suddenly left her lips had a sad, hollow sound. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that, Mr., um, White Eagle—”

“Jackson,” he corrected.

That felt easier for her. As if they were in this together.

“Jackson,” she repeated, then continued with what she wanted to tell him. “If Ryan feels responsible for my marriage falling apart, to him that’s a very good thing. He and John never got along and he never really liked him. The feeling, I’m sorry to say, was mutual. If anything, that’s the one thing Ryan feels good about,” she said ruefully. “Getting John to leave our house.”

She seemed very sure of that, Jackson observed, but for his part, he wasn’t, not at this point. “You might be surprised.”

“Surprised? Mr. Wh— Jackson, I would be completely flabbergasted if this didn’t thrill my brother to death,” she said, waving her hand dismissively as if literally pushing this subject to the side. There were more pressing things she wanted to get straight. “Exactly how does your program work?” she asked.

Jackson had always favored an economy of words. “Very simply, we put the boys to work.”

“In other words, free labor.”

“No, not free,” he corrected. “They earn a small salary. The exact amount depends on how well they do the job they’re assigned.”

Everything he was talking about was entirely new to her. “You grade their work?”

“Sure,” he freely admitted. Seeing that she was having trouble digesting what he was telling her, he decided to try to clarify things for her. “Let me give you an example. If the job is to clean out the horse stalls and he does the bare minimum, his ‘pay’ reflects that. If, on the other hand, the stall is clean, there’s fresh hay put out, fresh water in the trough, that kind of thing, then his pay reflects that. It gives them an incentive to work hard and do well. It also teaches them that doing a good job pays off. We want them feeling good about what they accomplish and, by proxy, good about themselves.

“What we’re hoping for, long-term, is that the guys get used to always doing their best and trying their hardest.”

“Why horses?” she asked.

The question seemed to come out of nowhere.

Jackson smiled, more to himself than at her. His first response was one he didn’t voice. He was simply passing on the method that his uncle had used with him. For the most part, though he dealt with tough cases and teens that came with extrawide chips on their shoulder, Jackson was a private person who would have been content just to keep to himself. But after his uncle’s death, he’d felt compelled to take his uncle’s lessons and methods and put them to use.

Still, that didn’t mean baring his own soul—or parts thereof—to someone he really didn’t know.

“Easy,” he answered. “I work with what I have. Besides, it’s been proven that people bond more easily with animals than they do with other people. Having a hand in the care, feeding and grooming of these horses brings order and discipline into the boys’ lives. It teaches them patience—eventually,” he specified, recalling that the horse Sam had given him to work with had seemed to be every bit as headstrong and difficult to deal with as he was at the time. It had been a battle of wills before he finally emerged victorious.

The greatest day of his life had been when he finally got Wildfire to respond to his key signals. He’d felt high on that for a week. After that, he no longer had any desire to seek out artificial ways of escape—he’d found it in working with Wildfire.

Debi leaned forward, folding her hands before her—making him think of an earnest schoolgirl. “Do you think you can help my brother?”

He didn’t answer her immediately. Instead, he had a question of his own first. “Is going along for a joy ride in the car his friend stole the worst thing he’s ever done?”

“Yes,” she answered with conviction, then realized that she had no right to sound that sure. “To the best of my knowledge,” she qualified in a slightly less certain voice.

“Then it’s my opinion that Ryan can be turned around,” he told her. “Since you’re here, I’ll need to have you fill out some forms. Nothing unusual, just education level, how many run-ins with the police he’s had, how long he’s had an attitude problem, any allergies, medical conditions, where we can get in contact with you, that sort of thing,” he explained, opening a deep drawer on the right side of his desk.

Digging into it, he found what he was looking for and placed the forms in question on his desk while he shut the drawer.

“To answer your last question, I’ll be close by while Ryan’s here at the ranch,” she told him as she accepted the papers he handed her.

For the most part, guardians asked to be called and then returned home, wherever home happened to be. “Define ‘close by,’” he requested.

It was Debi’s turn to smile.

Even the slight shift in her lips seemed to bring out a radiance, just for a moment, that hadn’t been noticeable before. Jackson caught himself staring and forced himself to look away.

An unsettled feeling in his gut lingered a little longer.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to be parked on some hillside, looking down and watching his—and your—every move if that’s what you’re worried about,” she told Jackson.

“I just thought it might be uncomfortable for you to sleep in your car,” he said. She had no idea whether or not he was kidding or serious. It shouldn’t matter whether or not she was uncomfortable or not. “If you need a place to stay, Miss Joan is always willing to open her doors and temporarily take someone in.”

“Miss Joan?” Debi repeated quizzically. The setup he mentioned sounded suspiciously like a brothel to her. When had she gotten so distrusting? she wondered. It had crept up on her when she hadn’t been paying attention.

Jackson nodded. “She runs the local diner and is kind of like a self-appointed mother hen to the town in general.”

There was a fondness in his voice whenever he mentioned the outspoken older woman. Miss Joan had a no-nonsense way of talking and a big heart made out of pure marshmallow. When Sam had taken him under his wing, his uncle and Miss Joan were seeing one another. The relationship continued for a couple of years before they unexpectedly just went their separate ways. At the time, he was curious as to why they had split up, but when he brought the matter up, Sam merely gave him a long, penetrating look and said nothing. Any attempt to get information from Miss Joan went nowhere, as well. Miss Joan wasn’t one to talk about herself at all.

Consequently, he’d never found out what had gone wrong, but whenever he did find time to stop by the diner for a cup of coffee, Miss Joan always told him it was on the house, adding that Sam would have disapproved if she charged him for it.

“Why would I stay with her?” Debi asked.

It didn’t make any sense to her. After all, the woman didn’t know her from Adam—or Eve. If she were in this woman’s place, she certainly wouldn’t take in a stranger. Things like that just weren’t done these days. There was trusting, and then there was being incredibly naive.

She had a feeling that if she said as much to this cowboy, she’d offend him, so she kept her comment to herself. But it didn’t change her opinion.

“I thought I saw a sign when I was passing by Forever that said something about a new hotel having a grand opening.”

He’d forgotten about that. In his defense, he didn’t get to town very often these days and the hotel was practically brand-new, having opened its doors less than five months ago. What he recalled was that building the hotel had been a huge shot in the arm for a lot of his friends on the reservation, providing many of them with construction work.

“It’s not just a new hotel,” he informed her. “It’s Forever’s only hotel, as well.”

“You don’t have any other hotels in town?” she asked in wonder.

That sounded almost impossible, Debi thought. Indianapolis had over two hundred of them. How could this town have just one—and recently built at that?

Maybe she had made a mistake in bringing Ryan here after all.

What choice did you have? she asked herself. And this wasn’t about how big or little the town was. This was about the ranch’s track record, which, according to Sheila, as well as the internet, was perfect so far.

“If you’d have come here a year ago, we wouldn’t have had this one,” Jackson was telling her. “The people in Forever don’t exactly believe in rushing into things,” he explained with a soft laugh.

Debi was unprepared for the sound to travel right under her skin, but it did, probably because she was vulnerable. Having the man she had once thought of as the love of her life walk out on her had sent her self-esteem crashing to subbasement level. It made her doubt all of her previous assumptions and had her feeling that she couldn’t trust her own judgment. Everything that she had believed she’d had turned out to be a lie—why would anything be different from here on in?

“Apparently,” she agreed, feeling as if she was moving through some sort of a bad dream—a dream she couldn’t wake up from.

She glanced down at the forms he’d just given her and tried to shake off her mood. “Do you want me to fill them out now?” she asked. It might be easier for her to tackle the forms tonight, after she checked in to this new hotel and went to her room.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like that, yes,” he told her. “I learned that it’s better not to put things off,” Jackson explained. Rising to give her some breathing room while she filled the forms out, he asked, “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

Or me?

Now where the hell had that come from? Jackson upbraided himself. That had to be something he’d unknowingly picked up from a program that had been playing in the background, or that he’d seen as a kid. When his parents were arguing, he’d turn the TV up loud to block them out so he could pretend that everything was really all right and that they weren’t screaming all sorts of terrible things to and about each other.

Jackson looked a little closer at Ryan’s sister. There was something almost appealingly vulnerable about her that brought out the protector in him. He was going to have to be careful to keep that under wraps, he warned himself.

Debi stopped perusing the forms and looked up at him, clearly surprised. “You have tea?”

“Yes. We’re not entirely barbaric out here in Texas,” Jackson told her, amused by her surprised expression.

Realizing that she might have insulted the man, Debi did what she could to backtrack and remove her foot from her mouth.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just that, well, I can’t visualize you actually drinking tea.”

“I don’t,” he told her, then answered the question he knew she was thinking. “I keep tea around for guests. I like being prepared.” He paused, waiting. But she didn’t comment or make a request. He tried again. “So, can I get you that tea?”

Debi shook her head. “No, that’s okay,” she answered. “I’m good.”

Yes, you are.

There it was again, he thought. Unbidden thoughts popping up in his head. This wasn’t like him. Besides, the woman wasn’t even his type. Any woman he had ever socialized with either came from the reservation, or had ties to it.

Maybe he’d been spending too much time with the horses in his off hours. Lately, he’d been devoting himself to the boys and the ranch to the exclusion of everything else. Maybe that had taken its toll on him and this was his body’s way of getting back at him. It was reminding him that he needed to get out and mingle a little bit with people who didn’t come with a list of problems and lives they needed to have turned around.

It was getting to the point that he was forgetting that there were people like that out there. People whose souls weren’t troubled.

Jackson forced his mind back to the woman who regarded him as if he was her last hope in the world. At this point in time, he probably was.

“We’ve also got a couple of cans of diet soda and then there’s always that old standby, water.”

But Debi shook her head to that as she started filling out the forms. “No, really, I’m fine. Nothing to drink for me, thank you,” she told him, sparing Jackson a quick glance before looking back at the questionnaire on the desk before her.

“Would you know of anywhere that I could get a job?” she asked.

If she needed a job, that was going to put an entirely different spin on matters, Jackson thought. Most likely, the woman wouldn’t be able to afford the down payment for her brother’s treatment.

Since he prided himself on never turning away anyone in need, he was going to have to come up with a way to fix that situation.

He approached the subject cautiously. “You’re out of work?”

Her head popped up. “What? Oh, no, I have a job waiting for me back home. I just took a leave of absence so that I could be close by if either Ryan or you needed me.”

Now that was a loaded sentence that he wasn’t about to allow himself to touch with a ten-foot pole, Jackson thought.

“What kind of work do you do?” he asked her. “Because Miss Joan could always give you work at the diner. She’s got a lot of part-time waitresses and a good many of them come and go, especially the ones who work at the diner just to get some extra cash that’ll supplement their regular income.”

“I’m a surgical nurse,” she replied. “You wouldn’t be hiding a regular hospital out here, would you?” She hadn’t seen evidence of one when she’d driven down the town’s Main Street, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a hospital around somewhere.

Jackson shook his head. “It’s a real pity, but we don’t have one,” he confirmed. “The closest hospital to Forever is in the next town, some fifty miles down the road.”

He made it sound as if it was just a hop, skip and a jump away—and it was a little more than that. She supposed it was all in how a person viewed things and where they grew up. Compared to where she came from—Indianapolis—Forever seemed incredibly tiny. Not only that, but the city had its share of hospitals, as well.

Why would anyone stay in a place like this where their options were so limited? she couldn’t help wondering. It was a surprise to her that everyone didn’t just pick up and leave town the minute that they graduated high school. She knew she would have. The pace here felt as if it had been dipped in molasses on the coldest day in January.

“We do, however,” Jackson told her after a beat, “have a medical clinic, and the doctors there are always looking for more help.”

A medical clinic. She could work with that. “They might just have found it,” she told him with a relieved smile.

Chapter Four

Jackson thought of Daniel Davenport and Alisha Cordell-Murphy, the two doctors who ran the clinic, and the overworked nurse at the desk, Holly Rodriguez. He’d had occasion to interact with all of them at one time or another. Not directly for himself, but he’d brought several of his friends from the reservation in to be treated there.

The clinic was definitely a godsend, seeing as how not all that long ago there hadn’t been any doctor within fifty miles of Forever.

However, godsend or not, the clinic was woefully understaffed. He wasn’t sure if Forever and its surrounding area was growing, or if the doctors had just become overwhelmed and slowed down. But it was clear that help was definitely needed.

The doctors would be thrilled at the mere thought of getting even temporary help for a short respite. He knew that for certain, recalling what Dr. Davenport had said when it had been just him running the clinic with Holly’s help, and Dr. Cordell-Murphy—she’d been just Dr. Cordell at the time—had arrived in response to an open recruitment letter he’d sent to his old hospital in New York.

“After you finish filling out the paperwork,” Jackson told the nurse, “I can have one of the boys take you to the clinic.”

Debi paused for a moment. “Is it in town?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

She winced at the word he’d used to address her. “Please, don’t call me ma’am,” she requested earnestly. “It makes me feel like I’m at least eighty years old.”

“Just a sign of respect, nothing more,” he replied. “And just for the record, you’d be the youngest-looking eighty-year-old on the planet,” Jackson told her with a wink.

Debi felt something in her stomach flutter in response to the wink. Whether the man knew it or not, that was an extremely sexy wink.

Even so, she had no business reacting like that. She told herself that it was just because she hadn’t really eaten in more than twenty-four hours.

This decision to drag her brother to a horse ranch almost fifteen hundred miles from home hadn’t been an easy one for her. Neither had driving all the way to Forever by herself.

Ryan didn’t have a license, but he did, she’d discovered, know how to drive. That changed nothing. There was no way she would have allowed him behind the wheel, despite the volley of curses he’d sent her way. Had she given in—there were exceedingly long, lonely stretches of road with nothing in sight—she had no doubt that he would have driven them to who-knows-where while she caught a few much-needed winks.

So she had loaded up on energy drinks and coffee and driven the entire distance by herself. Fast.

That left her exhausted and yet wired at the same time.

The thought of being in the car with someone who had been sent to The Healing Ranch to be reformed made her somewhat uncomfortable. She would have no idea what to expect—or what could happen. What if, like Ryan, her would-be guide would use the opportunity to try to escape from Forever and the ranch?

“No need to take up anyone’s time,” she told Jackson. “I can get to the town on my own. But after we get all this paperwork squared away, I would like to see the bunkhouse, please.”

“So you can see for yourself that it’s not some primitive dungeon?” Jackson guessed, deliberately exaggerating what she probably assumed about the conditions in the bunkhouse.

Debi opened her mouth, then decided there was no point in trying to deny what he seemed to have already figured out. “Yes.”

Her admission surprised him a little. But it also pleased him. She was brave enough not to try to divert or dress up the truth.

“Sounds to me like Ryan has a good role model to look up to once we get him straightened out and back to tapping into his full potential,” Jackson observed.

“I don’t know about that,” she said as she continued filling in the forms. “If I’m such a good role model, why did he get to the point that I had to bring him somewhere like this or risk losing him altogether?”

Jackson had been doing this for a while now and it never ceased to amaze him how many different reasons there were for teens to act out. “It’s not always clear to us,” he told her. “Sometimes it takes a while to understand.”

“So,” Debi observed wryly, “you’re a philosopher as well as a cowboy.”

“A man wears a lot of hats in his lifetime,” was Jackson’s only reply.

Working as quickly as she was able, Debi filled out all the forms and signed her name on the bottom of the last one. After she was finished, she gathered all the pages together, placing them in a small, neat pile. She felt exhausted and was running pretty close to empty, but the espresso coffee she had saved for last on her trip here was giving her a final shot in the arm.

Pushing the pile of forms to one side, Debi took out her checkbook. Funds were growing dangerously low, thanks to John and the divorce he seemed to have processed at lightning speed. Bringing Ryan here was probably going to eat up every spare dime she had. That was one of the reasons she’d driven here instead of flying.

“I assume you prefer being paid up front.” Turning to the next blank check, Debi asked, “What should I make it out for?”

If the woman was taking a leave of absence to be near her brother while he was here and if she was looking for employment, that meant she was probably living close to hand to mouth.

Jackson placed his hand over her checkbook, stopping her from beginning to date the check. “Why don’t you hold off on that until he’s been here a week?”

“Why? Because you might decide he’s incorrigible and you’ll hand him back to me? Won’t you still want to get paid for ‘time served’ if that’s the case?”

“Actually, I was thinking about you,” Jackson said simply. “I figured that you might decide you’re not happy with the program we have here and want to take your brother home.”

She flushed, embarrassed for the conclusion she’d leaped to. Lately, she’d been too edgy, too quick to take offense where none was intended.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t used to be this way,” she apologized. “The last six months have taken a toll on...on all of us,” she said, changing direction at the last minute. She’d meant to say that the past six months had taken a toll on her, but that sounded terribly selfish and self-centered to her own ear—even though arguing with John over Ryan had completely worn her down to a nub.

“All?” Jackson questioned, his tone coaxing more information out of her.

Debi obliged without even realizing it at first. “On Ryan, and me—and John.” She saw the unspoken question in Jackson’s eyes. “John is my ex.”

“Oh.” The single word seemed to speak volumes—and yet, how could it? she thought. Maybe she was just getting punchy.

She avoided Jackson’s eyes and got back to her initial apology. “I apologize if I sound abrupt.”

“No apologies necessary,” Jackson told her, carelessly waving her words away like so much swirling dust. “I’ve heard and seen a lot worse than anything you might think you’re guilty of.”

Every time he dealt with the parents or guardians of one of the teens brought or sent to his ranch, it reminded him just what he had to have put his stepmother through. The woman had been nothing but fair and good to him when she didn’t have to be, taking him in after his father had taken off. Heaven knew his own father never felt anything for him, neither affection nor a sense of responsibility.

Yet somehow Sylvia had, and in return he had treated her shamefully, putting her through hell before he finally was forced to get his act together, which he did, thanks to Sam.

She was gone now, but remembering her made him more considerate of the people who brought their troubled teens to him to be, in effect, “fixed.”

“Okay, everything looks in order,” he told Ryan’s sister, glancing through the forms quickly. “Let me take you on that tour of the bunkhouse to set your mind at ease,” he offered.

“I’d like that,” she told him. She wanted to see the bunkhouse and felt that since he was the one in charge of the ranch and its program, he would be the best one to conduct the tour.

And if something turned out to be wrong in her eyes, he was the one to be held accountable.

Debi got up and immediately paled. She’d risen a little too quickly from her seat. As a result, she immediately felt a little light-headed and dizzy. Trying to anchor herself down, she swayed ever so slightly. Panicked, she made a grab for the first thing her hand came in contact with to steady herself.

It turned out to be the cowboy standing next to her.

Jackson seemed to react automatically. His free arm went around her, holding her in place. Thanks to capricious logistics, that place turned out to be against his chest.

The light-headedness left as quickly as it had appeared.

The air in her lungs went along with it as it whooshed out the second she found herself all but flush against the cowboy’s chest and torso.

Their eyes met and held for an eternal second—and then Jackson loosened his hold on her as he asked, “Are you all right?”

Yes!

No!

I don’t know.

All three responses took a turn flashing through her brain as the rest of her tried to figure out just what had happened here.

Bit by bit, what transpired—and why—came back to her in tiny flashes. “Sorry, I got a little dizzy,” she apologized. Dropping her line of vision back to the floor, she murmured, “I think I got up too fast.” Looking at the arm she had grabbed, she realized that she must have dug her nails into his forearm. There were four deep crescents in his skin. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.” She didn’t need confirmation that she had done that. She knew.

“No harm done,” he told her good-naturedly. Jackson took a step back from her slowly, watching her for any signs that she was going to faint. “We can stay here a little longer if you like.”

“No, that’s all right. I’d like to see the bunkhouse before your...ranch hands come back to use it.”

The bunkhouse, for the most part, was used for sleeping and winding down in the evening after a particularly long, hard day filled with chores.

“The day’s still young,” he replied. “We have plenty of time.” As he spoke, he studied her more closely. She looked exhausted, as well as a little disconnected. “Did you drive here?” he asked.

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