“You’re not alone in this.”

Cassie stood there looking lost and alone and upset, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to make her feel better. She’d have to ride out this storm or leave town. She’d already mentioned the possibility herself, a reminder that had left him feeling warned.

Knowing he was being a fool, but doing it anyway, he rose and went to gather her into his arms. The instant he drew her close, he realized he might have just made the biggest mistake of his life …

Dear Reader,

I’m sure most of us have been bullied at one time or another while we were in school, if not later in life, as well. Plenty of us probably remember some of it. I know I still remember a few incidents, especially the time a teacher bullied me. I didn’t want to go back to school.

The heroine of this story doesn’t realize that she carries scars from when she was bullied in school, and it takes the hero’s love to help her past them. What’s more, as a teacher now, she is again being bullied by someone hiding in the shadows and threatening her very life.

This is a deeply emotional story about caring, about community and about love. But it’s also a story of the darker side of human nature and how we triumph. For me it always comes down to love: how we love each other, both as couples and as community. Love is the best answer we have. Sometimes it’s the only answer.

Bullying can leave lifelong scars. And while this story is about love’s triumph, it also touches on an issue that we as a community need to deal with. Our kids should not be afraid to go to school.

Hugs,

Rachel

About the Author

RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve, and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times best-selling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

Rancher’s Deadly Risk
Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To all the kids everywhere who live in fear of bullies.

You are not alone.

Chapter 1

Cassie Greaves felt the winter nip in the Conard County air as she left her small rental house to head for school. The rising sun to the east cast a buttery glow over the world, and the trees that had fully turned a few weeks ago were now shedding their brilliant cloaks, leaving behind gray, reaching fingers. She scuffed her feet through the dry leaves and almost laughed from the joy of it.

For much of her teaching career, all seven years of it, she had taught in much warmer climes, places where there might be only two seasons, or at most three. Part of what had drawn her here was winter, the idea of being cold, of needing to bundle up, and cozy evenings with a cup of something hot as she graded papers or read a book.

Having grown up in the Northeast, she had found a growing desire to need extra blankets at night, to awake some morning and hear the world hushed under a fresh snowfall.

As romantic as her image was, however, she also knew there would be parts she wouldn’t exactly enjoy, but this morning she didn’t want to think about them.

She wanted to think about that invigorating nip, the possibility of rediscovering her Nordic skis and the school she was coming to enjoy so much. It was smaller than she was used to, only eight hundred students in the entire high school. And even with budget cutbacks, her classes were smaller. It was easier to get to know her students, and she was beginning to recognize most of the faces that walked the hallways.

Hallways. Another thing she liked. At her last few schools, there had been no hallways, only covered walkways, which meant moving from an air-conditioned classroom out into the heat, only to walk into another air-conditioned classroom. At times that setup had its charms, but she actually liked having interior hallways again.

She smiled and hummed to herself as she walked the four blocks to the high school. There she taught math for all four grades, which gave her days quite a bit of variety.

It had also taught her some lessons. A lot of her students had no interest in advancing to college. They were planning to take over their parents’ business or ranch and she had discovered a need to rewrite math problems in ways that seemed useful to them. Unlike some other places she had taught, many students here weren’t content to just do the work because it was required.

Plus, in perfect honesty, the students’ backgrounds encouraged her to find meaningful ways of phrasing problems because there was so much homogeneity in the things that concerned them. Her elementary algebra class didn’t look blankly at her when she asked them to calculate the storage space needed for a certain number of bales of hay. They went home, measured the bales—round or oblong, depending—and gave her answers based on a practical exercise. Now how cool was that?

Discovering the volume of a grain silo, working with board feet of lumber, sketching out plans for a shed, figuring out how many acres of pasture for a herd of a certain size—all those things enlivened them. Consequently she was discovering a new love for her subject herself.

Drawing in a deep breath of the chilly air, she decided this place was growing on her even more than she had hoped.

When she arrived on the campus, Lincoln Blair was standing outside. He was the football coach and science teacher, an absolute stud of a man who had so far remained reserved, even unapproachable, although everyone else seemed to like him a lot.

In her mind she had dubbed him “Studley Do-right” because he was appealing enough to make her constantly aware of him, sort of like an itch in her libido. He had dark hair, astonishingly bright blue eyes and there was something about him that always made her think he must have descended from a long line of Celtic warriors. Square-jawed, weathered a bit from sun and wind, with narrow hips he unconsciously canted in a way that made it impossible for a woman not to notice them.

She gathered from things the other teachers had said that he owned a ranch that had been in his family for generations, and he worked it as time allowed, which probably explained that weathered look. Regardless, while most of the teachers had certainly been welcoming enough, his air of reserve truly set him apart.

Not that she should probably blame him. She’d had enough experience with men who wanted nothing but a fling with her, and had concluded there must be something essentially wrong with her. On the other hand, she reminded herself that getting involved with a colleague was seldom wise, and in a small town like this, it might even be a wider problem if people noticed and started talking.

Nor was it as if he were the first man who had ever ignored her. Noticing him amounted to a recipe for grief, judging by her past experience.

He nodded as she approached and opened the door for her with a quiet good-morning, but didn’t follow her in. She guessed he had bus duty, the job of standing outside to make sure that no one used the space and time between getting off the bus and through the doors to make trouble.

She tried to shake away thoughts of Lincoln Blair from her mind as she passed other teachers with cheery greetings and made her way to her desk. Unlike other schools where she had taught, she had her own classroom, which also provided her with an opportunity to personalize things. It felt nice to have a space where she could hang up posters or set out cool objects for the students to explore a bit. As much as possible she tried to apply math to real life because it was part of real life, an important part. The applications were just a bit different and more focused here.

She prepared her desk quickly, then stepped into the hall to monitor arriving students. This school still had homerooms, a place where students went to have their attendance recorded and hear morning announcements, something she hadn’t seen since her own school days long ago. Then fifteen minutes later they moved on to their first classes.

In her last few schools, homeroom had been combined with the first class of the day. It might have cut down on movement, but inevitably it cut into the instructional hour one way or another.

Since it was Friday, her students were a little more restless and less focused than usual, their minds on the many things they had planned for the weekend. Or perhaps they were just thinking of escape into absolutely gorgeous weather.

Either way, she felt some fatigue by the time she was able to close her classroom for lunch. She didn’t have cafeteria or study hall duty that day, so the teachers’ lounge beckoned.

Bag lunch in hand, she entered the corridor flow as some students headed for the cafeteria and others to study hall.

The wing emptied swiftly and before she reached the end of the corridor she was alone. Or thought she was. As she turned a corner and passed the men’s bathroom, she heard a shout that made her pause.

“Stop it! Just leave me alone!”

Without even hesitating, afraid that waiting for a male teacher to arrive could allow something bad to happen, she elbowed the door open.

The five students inside didn’t even hear the door. The sight instantly disturbed her. She knew every school had its underside, but what she was seeing now horrified her.

One of her best math students, James Carney, was huddled in a corner on the floor, his arms protectively over his face. He was small for his years, and string-bean thin, and she’d already noticed he didn’t seem to have many friends, if any.

Four boys stood around him, taunting him with names like nerd, jerk, girlie, sissy … part of her was waiting to hear “fag,” but that epithet didn’t appear while she stood there taking in the scene.

She didn’t need a mental map to know what was going on. Before she could react, two of the boys spat on James and she could tell that wasn’t the first time.

Before the scene could get any uglier, she clapped her hands as loudly as she could and shouted, “Stop this now!”

Four startled faces turned her way. It took a little longer for James to lower his arms from his head.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “You shouldn’t treat anyone like this, not anyone. Ever. But this is a violation of school policy. You know what the penalty is. James, are you all right?”

The youth jumped to his feet and hurried for the door. “I’m fine,” he muttered as he rushed past her. “You’re making it worse.”

“Go to the nurse,” she called after him before turning to face the four others. As the full impact of what she had just seen began to hit, she could feel herself roiling with anger. For long seconds she simply stared at the four young men who had been taunting James. Keep it cool, she reminded herself. It was important to stay calm and reasonable.

“Bullying,” she said quietly, “is despicable. It shows you to be small men, not big ones. It isn’t tolerated by school policy and you know it. You’re coming to the principal with me.”

“Make us,” snarled one of them, then they all brushed past her, bumping her shoulder as they went, leaving her both livid and helpless. She couldn’t run out into the hall after them, nor could she physically stop them.

But there was something she could do. She picked up her bagged lunch, tossed it in the trash—she didn’t want to eat it after it had fallen to the bathroom floor—and headed for the principal’s office herself. None of this was going to be tolerated.

My God, James had looked as if he expected to be beaten … or as if he had been. She just wished she had recognized the other four boys by name. Apparently they were in Teasdale’s math classes. Gloria Teasdale was semire-tired, teaching only three classes a day. An elderly woman who wore too much perfume, she was sometimes the object of derogatory remarks from her students, but Cassie ignored the comments. Kids would talk about teachers outside the classroom, and she could see no point in stepping down on it. She was no martinet and she was equally certain some of her students had derogatory things to say about her. The nature of the beast, she thought with grim amusement.

But bullying was a whole different matter, damaging to the bullied student emotionally, if not physically, and most definitely against the school’s conduct policies.

She reached the office and asked Marian, the front desk receptionist and secretary, to call the nurse’s office and find out if James was okay. Then she joined the principal in his small office. He always ate lunch at his desk, eschewing both the teachers’ lounge and the cafeteria.

Sometimes she thought of him as barricaded away from all the possible disturbances in a high school. At other times she thought he just felt like a fish out of water, not sure of his welcome even in the faculty lounge. Or maybe he just thought people would be more comfortable if he wasn’t around. She didn’t have a good read on him yet.

His round face smiled as he greeted her. He was about fifty pounds overweight, and his lunch consisted of a few slices of lean chicken over a bed of fresh vegetables. He had confided that he was dieting without much success. She looked at that lunch and felt a pang of sympathy.

“Still starving?” she asked him.

“Unfortunately. The doc says I’ve lost two pounds, though, so I guess it’s working. Some days I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

“I can imagine.”

He leaned back, ignoring the dry salad and chicken in front of him, a meal that cried out for a little salad dressing or mayonnaise to help it go down. “Is something wrong? You look … disturbed.” He waved her to the seat in front of his desk.

She sat, trying to gather her thoughts, trying to maintain a calm she was far from feeling. “I am upset,” she admitted. “I saw an instance of bullying in the boys’ room. I stopped it, but when I tried to bring the bullies to you, they told me I couldn’t make them and they brushed past me. Les, you know bullying is a violation of the conduct code.”

“How bad was it?”

“They were spitting on him and calling him names. He was cowering on the floor in a corner as if he expected to be hit or kicked.”

He frowned. “That’s bad. That’s very bad. All of it. Who were they after?”

“James Carney.”

He shook his head. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Some people just seem to draw that kind of attention.”

“All it takes is being a little different.”

“And James is certainly that. Smarter than most, small. Did you know he skipped a grade last year? I don’t think that’s helped him any but his parents and a committee of teachers felt we couldn’t hold him back. Maybe we should have.”

“We shouldn’t have to,” she argued, getting a little hot. “That boy should be free to move ahead if he’s capable without four other boys attacking him for it.”

Les nodded slowly. “Can you identify the bullies?”

“By face, not by name. They must be in Mrs. Teasdale’s math classes.”

“If they’re still in math at all.” He sighed. “How would you prefer to handle it?”

“The rules call for suspension,” she reminded him. When he didn’t answer immediately, she started to feel both annoyed and nervous. Surely he wasn’t going to propose they simply ignore this?

Marian stuck her head in the door. “James Carney never went to the nurse.” Then she popped out again.

“So he must be all right,” Les remarked.

“That doesn’t make this all go away!”

Les lifted his brows and held up a hand. “I didn’t say that. I’m just relieved the Carney boy is okay.”

“Physically okay,” Cassie said almost sarcastically. “I’m sure I don’t need to educate you on the other effects of bullying.”

“Of course not.” He sounded almost sharp. “I’m as well-informed as you on the subject. That’s why it’s against our code of conduct.”

She tried to dial back her irritation. “I’m sorry. It just upset me, and then when they defied me that way, I got even more concerned. If they’re not going to listen to a teacher, how are we going to stop this? And what are we going to do about it?”

Les leaned forward, shoving his lunch to one side. He rested his forearms on his desk. “I don’t think suspensions would be prudent, not yet.”

“What?” She was horrified and still sickened by what she had seen. “We can’t just ignore this. And we can’t ignore the rules if we expect them to have any force.”

“Just hold on a minute and calm down a bit. I understand you’re upset and I understand why. You have every reason to be upset. But this isn’t a big-city school. I don’t favor zero tolerance for a very good reason. Kids will be kids… .”

She started to open her mouth but he waved her to silence.

“Just hear me out, Cassie. I’m not excusing what they did. It was wrong. No question. No argument. But we have to ask ourselves what will be the best way to handle this with the least amount of damage.”

It took her a moment and a deep breath, but finally she relaxed. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“We aren’t going to tolerate bullying. You and I agree on that. But we have to ask ourselves how much damage we might do with our response. You must have noticed by now that not many of our students go on to college. Some of that is because they have the family business waiting for them the day they graduate. Some is because folks simply can’t afford it. We have a handful who get scholarships and an equally small handful who can afford it. Most of our students who get any further schooling do it at the local community college.”

She nodded. All of this had been explained at the time she was hired.

“So we have to ask ourselves,” Les said patiently, “whether we want to do something that might make a student choose to drop out, or that might damage a student’s ability to get a college scholarship. We’ve got a couple, I’m sure you know, who are poised to get athletic scholarships. Suspension would take that away.”

It was then that she made a mental connection and knew who one of the bullies was. “One of them was our star basketball forward.”

Les lowered his head. “Cripes. Now you’re talking about the state championship and a boy’s entire future. He’s looking good to get a basketball scholarship. Recruiters have been here several times.”

“He should have thought of that before he started bullying James Carney.”

“I agree. But he’s still seventeen. You remember being that age? How many times did you think things through, especially when you were with a group of people your age? That’s what bothers me about zero tolerance. Why wreck any kid’s life if we can handle it another way?”

Cassie bit her lip. She wasn’t exactly a fan of zero tolerance herself, understanding that young people made mistakes almost as naturally as they breathed. “But this is a little different,” she argued. “This was no mistake. Four of them ganged up on one student. I don’t know how far they might have gone if I hadn’t barged in. And we have to consider James Carney and what this might do to him.”

“I am considering it,” Les said. “I want it stopped, but I don’t want it to result in additional bullying or anybody’s life being wrecked.”

“So what will you do?”

“You identify those students. I’ll call their parents and make it clear that if this happens again they will be suspended. In the meantime I’ll give them detention.”

Cassie felt sickened, yet she couldn’t rightly argue with what he proposed. He was right. They had to be careful not to inflame the situation, and take care that they didn’t cause students to drop out or lose scholarships, unless this continued.

“You’re not happy,” Les remarked. He poked at his lunch listlessly then ignored it again. “I understand. I’m not happy, either. We’ve always had some minor bullying—what school doesn’t? But I don’t think we’ve ever had an incident as bad as what you’re describing, at least not in my memory. If you’ve got a better solution, let me know. Just understand, there are no perfect solutions. If I bring the hammer down too hard, that could result in James being bullied worse. We’ve got to try to reason our way through this to cause the least damage to all five of those students.”

She said nothing, feeling her stomach sinking but unable to argue against his logic. “I hate bullying,” she said finally. “It damages the victim well past the incident, sometimes for life. What’s more, I hate the thuggish mentality of those who do it.”

“Then maybe we need to do something about the mentality. It’s not enough to just put a ban on it in the code. Maybe we need to use this as an instructional opportunity.”

She perked a little at that statement. “How so?”

“We need to educate our students, maybe their families. We need them to truly understand how bad this is.”

She nodded. “What those boys were doing could get them arrested.”

It seemed to her that Les blanched a bit. “Oh, let’s not go that far. Criminal records for assault? Battery, if it happened?”

“I don’t want to do that, either,” she agreed. “I’m just saying, if we can’t get through with an emotional appeal to a sense of fair play and what’s right, we could also list the criminal consequences. Bring it home. Maybe have a law enforcement officer tell them a few things.”

Les smiled. “I can see you already have ideas. So what I’d like is for you to get together with another teacher and come up with a plan for an assembly or two.”

Cassie’s mind immediately skipped ahead and was already summoning ideas for the assembly and maybe a long-term program. “Okay. Who do you suggest I work with?”

“Linc Blair. He’s the most popular teacher with the students and seems to carry a lot of moral authority with them.” Les gave a little laugh. “More than I do, certainly. Yes, I’ll explain the situation to Linc at the end of the day and see if he’s willing. In the meantime, try to get the bullies’ names for me. I want to spend some time on the phone with parents.”

He paused. “God, I hope this isn’t resulting from things that are happening to these boys at home.”

It could well be, Cassie thought as she left his office a few minutes later. Bullies were sometimes created.

Why did she feel as if she might be about to overturn a rock and discover some ugly things?

If there was any upside to this at all, she supposed it was that she would at last find out why Lincoln Blair avoided her as if she had the plague.

By close of school that day, she had the names of the four bullies. She had asked for the aid of other teachers, without explaining why she needed to know. List in hand, she headed for Les’s office and found he was already talking to Linc. He waved her in to join them and she took the second chair that faced Les’s desk.

“Cassie here can give you more detail,” Les said, “given that she’s the one who broke it up.”

She looked at Linc and noted the way those startling blue eyes of his met hers then swiftly looked away.

“I have the students’ names,” she said quickly, passing her list to Les.

He took it almost as if it might bite him, then muttered a word no teacher was allowed to use within the school. “Ben Hastings,” he said. “Damn, why did it have to be Ben?”

“He never struck me as the bullying type,” Linc remarked.

Cassie started to bristle. “I didn’t make up the names.”

Linc glanced her way again. “I didn’t say you did. I’m just surprised. As high a profile as he has because of his basketball skills, I would have thought that if he were a bully we’d have known long ago. That’s all I meant.”

Cassie caught herself, realizing that she was taking everything too personally. She’d been upset about James all afternoon, and if she were honest, she suspected some of that had to do with some bullying she had endured when she’d been a plump adolescent. Boys and even some girls had picked on her weight mercilessly.

“As far as I know,” Les said, “the worst cases of bullying we’ve had in the district have been in the elementary and middle schools. A few fights, name-calling, some blows. But it seems to get better by this age. Or at least less extreme.”

“Things have changed,” Linc remarked. “We got a lot of new people in town when the semiconductor plant opened, and even after the layoffs there are still a lot of students who didn’t grow up around here. That creates a different kind of tension.”

Les lifted a brow. “In what way?”

“Outsiders versus insiders. It used to be most of these incidents could be worked out between families who had a stake in keeping things friendly. It’s not like that anymore, and new kids make obvious targets. James Carney is a new kid, for one thing, despite the fact he was born here. The family just moved back after years away. He’s also a serious student, he’s small and he isn’t involved in sports. Very much an outsider. He makes easy pickings for a pack.”

“So what are you saying?”

Linc leaned forward. “I’m saying we have to nip this in the bud. We can’t allow serious bullying to go unchallenged or we’ll have more of it. I get why you’re reluctant to suspend these students. Hell, it’ll probably just make the whole thing worse for James Carney, and maybe even for Ms. Greaves here.”

“Cassie,” she said automatically, as she waited to hear where he was taking this.

“Cassie,” he repeated with barely a glance in her direction. “Look, Les, we have a different dynamic now from anything we’re used to around here. We’ve got new kids, new ones who don’t have to go home at night and help in the family ranch or business. Kids who are, relatively speaking, on easy street. They get fancy electronics, most have newer cars, and if they take jobs it’s for pin money. What makes you think that isn’t going to breed resentment?”

Les’s frown had deepened and Cassie felt her stomach turn over. Under no circumstances did she want to see another incident like she had today. The memory still sickened her, the sight of James cowering and those boys spitting on him.

“I’ve been watching the changes take hold,” Linc continued. “A lot of the new kids are going to go to college. They’re not going to stay here. The other students know it. Outsiders just passing through. We’ve been having more and more instances of division, separate groups forming, and some name-calling. Why the hell else do you think I have a zero-tolerance policy on bullying for my football players? I never used to need one, but I’ve made it clear over the last couple of years that one instance of bullying is enough to get a player thrown off the team.”

“You’re not proposing we suspend all these students!”

“Not yet,” Linc said quietly, sitting back. “But your idea of starting an antibullying program is a good one. We’ve got to educate before this gets out of hand. And it will get out of hand. The bullying won’t just be going in one direction, either. The factions have been forming. We can’t let the divisions get any deeper or uglier.”

As she listened, Cassie got an inkling of why Linc was so well-liked and respected by students and faculty alike. He seemed to truly have his finger on the pulse of this school.

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“I pay attention. My students talk to me.” He gave her the briefest of smiles. “I’ve been around a while, too. It’s easier for me to see what’s happening than it would be for you, or even for Les. He doesn’t have as much student interaction as I do.”

“So we start a program?” she asked.

“Definitely. As for what happened today, I’m concerned. It’s one thing when you see this among third graders or even seventh graders. But these students are on the cusp of adulthood. In the spring or in another year they’re going to walk out of here men. They should be past this by now. Sure, they might have little shoving matches, or call a name or two when they get annoyed, but this kind of ganging-up should be well behind them. We’re going to have to tread carefully so we don’t make things worse.”

Cassie spoke. “So you agree with the way Les wants to handle it?”

“We have to do something. From the minute you walked in on it, from the instant they ignored your authority as a teacher, we haven’t had a choice. There has to be a statement made, punishment doled out. We can’t let anyone think they can get away with any of that. But I’d really like it if we could find a way that wouldn’t cause more grief for James Carney.”

“He didn’t do anything,” Cassie said. “He wouldn’t even talk to me. In fact, he said I was making it worse. If they want to be mad at someone, it should be me.”

Les spoke. “We can make the detentions about the way they treated Ms. Greaves and nothing else.”

Linc looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time, and she felt an electric shock all the way to her toes. “How did they treat you exactly?”

“Well, it wasn’t just that they wouldn’t come with me to the principal’s office. When they passed me to get out the door, they made sure to bump into me, and it wasn’t exactly just brushing by.”

Linc’s dark brows lifted. “That’s definitely not good.”

Les slapped his hand on the desk. “We can’t let that pass under any circumstances. We’ll have anarchy.”

“But this isn’t about me,” Cassie protested.

“It is now,” Linc answered. “You just got bullied, too.” He sighed. “Okay, this is how I see it. Leaving out the gruesome details for now, put the bullies on detention for ignoring Ms. Greaves—Cassie. Make it about ignoring a teacher’s direction. We’ll get to the rest of it as we go, but for now let’s take the spotlight off James Carney. Maybe they’ll duck and leave him alone since he won’t be the source of their headache for the time being.”

Cassie turned the incident around in her mind, remembering the way those students had bumped her shoulder on their way out. It had been a little more than disrespectful. Almost like a hinted threat. Linc was right, she had been bullied, too. A little flicker of anger started burning in the pit of her stomach.

“I don’t want to make Cassie an inadvertent target,” Les said.

Cassie shifted in her chair. “Look, Les, we can’t let this go. What do you think those students will do to me, anyway? They can get as mad as they want. Surely you aren’t suggesting they’d physically hurt me.”

Les looked shocked. “No, of course not. You’re a teacher.”

Cassie didn’t think that was much protection, but on the other hand she figured these students wouldn’t want the veritable hell that would come their way if they treated her the way they had treated James.

Linc spoke. “Just make it clear to them that it’s unacceptable to ignore a teacher, and then add something about how touching her, so much as touching, however briefly, is a crime called battery. I don’t think any of them is stupid enough to ignore that.”

“I agree,” said Cassie. “Let’s get this program going, give the students detention for ignoring me, call their parents about their behavior and see how much help you’ll get. Keeping the spotlight off James is the best thing to do. I don’t want them turning on him any more than they already have. He’s the one in most need of protection.”

“Okay then.” Linc rose from his chair, an almost iconic figure in old jeans, cowboy boots and a faded chambray shirt. “I’ve got to get to the locker room again before the team wonders if I fell off the edge of the planet. We have an away game tonight.” Then he turned his attention to Cassie. “Are you okay with this? Really?”

“Being the center of the storm? Of course. Those bullies don’t frighten me, they make me mad.”

One corner of his mouth ticked up in a smile. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning and we’ll set up some meeting time to get this ball rolling.”

He strode out, and Cassie’s gaze followed him helplessly. Wow, she thought, he was going to call her. Maybe she didn’t stink as bad as she sometimes thought. Les called her attention back.

“If you’re okay with this, then that’s how we’ll handle the matter for right now. But not for too long. I don’t want those students to think they’re going to get away with bullying anybody.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Finally feeling satisfied with the direction they were taking, she said goodbye to Les, picked up her book bag and headed out for the weekend.

The day was still glorious, although twilight wasn’t far away. Winter nights came a lot earlier up here than she was used to.

But instead of thinking about the glorious weather or the relaxing weekend ahead, she was thinking about Linc Blair again. Dang, he almost acted like it hurt to even look at her. Had she turned ugly since yesterday?

Shaking her head, she tried to think of other things. Despite her reaction in the principal’s office, she wasn’t entirely easy about transferring the bullies’ anger toward her.

She had taught in a school where a teacher had been attacked by a student, and she didn’t labor under any delusions that her status protected her. On the other hand, bullies were usually cowards at heart.

It would be okay, she assured herself.

But it would be even nicer to know why Linc seemed so determined to keep such an obvious distance. He didn’t even make the normal friendly overtures to her, like the other teachers.

No, it was as if he, or she, were surrounded by some kind of repulsion field. Keep away seemed to bristle all over him.

It probably hurt more than it should have because of her bad experiences in the past. Guys seemed attracted to her just long enough to find out if she was willing to jump in the sack with them, and then either way they made a fast exit. It was, one of her friends admitted, weird. But the same friend had reminded her that dating was a series of “noes” followed by one “yes,” eventually.

But never before had she met a guy who seemed to see poison every time his gaze scraped over her and then headed elsewhere.

Not that it mattered, she reminded herself. He was just another guy, albeit one who got her hormones racing every time she looked at him. But just another guy.

And maybe the problem wasn’t her at all. After all, he had said he would call her tomorrow about the bullying program.

No, maybe it wasn’t her at all.

With that hopeful thought in mind, she hurried home to start dinner and get to the homework papers she needed to check. With any luck, all she’d have left to do by tomorrow was some lesson planning.

The thought brightened her mood a bit, easing the memory of the way James Carney had been cowering.

They were going to help him, and other bullied students. Wasn’t that all that really mattered?

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 rinsed his bowl and spoon and put them in the dishwasher Martha had insisted he install. It was a bit much for just one person, and he could go a week without running it, but it was convenient when he didn’t feel like washing up after himself. There were days like that, days that were just too long for one reason or another, especially during football season.

Upstairs after his shower, he stood naked in his chilly bedroom and looked out over the moon-drenched fields. There were no curtains any longer. Martha had taken down the ones that had been there at least since his mother had hung them, and replaced them with something she considered cheerier. She hadn’t been gone long when he ripped them down and got rid of all the other reminders.

A childish act, part of him judged, but necessary. He didn’t need reminders greeting him everywhere he went. Not reminders of Martha, anyway.

The air was getting downright frigid, but he ignored an impulse to turn on the heat. Once he climbed beneath the quilts he’d be warm enough for the night. In the morning he’d deal with seeing his breath and having to dress quickly in clothes that felt as if they’d been in a freezer all night.

Conservation. He preached it to his students, and practiced it himself. Like the compost pile out near the barn. Nothing wasted. He’d been raised that way, and rightfully so. So had many of his students, though not all.

He figured he had a good life in all, and was achieving some good ends, mostly. But nights like this, when the moon was full and the house so silent, he felt he could howl at the moon for a mate. Man was not meant to be solitary.

He shook his head at the turn of his thoughts and went to climb beneath the heap of quilts on his bed, quilts made by generations of women in his family. Heat tomorrow, he decided as his skin met icy sheets. Definitely. He was not going to be a happy camper come morning.

He shivered for a while until his cocoon warmed up. Closing his eyes against the bright moonlight, he thought again of Cassie Greaves. Why did she have to be such a tempting armful?

But surely he knew better now. Nevertheless, thoughts of Cassie seemed to warm that cocoon of quilts faster than usual.

Cassie awoke in a better frame of mind than when she had gone to bed the night before. As awful as the bullying she had seen had appeared to be, she was confident that with some education and a reminder of penalties they could probably lessen the problems.

And giving the boys detention for how they had ignored her should help remove James from the firing line. They would know it all had to do with what they had been doing to James, but with the detentions arising from their treatment of her, they’d have nothing to add to their scorecard against James. She hoped.

By the time she was eating her yogurt and drinking her coffee, she felt good about the program Les had proposed, even though she and Linc hadn’t started to work on it. In her experience, the important thing was to create a culture among students, and if possible among their parents, that frowned on bullying. So the question was not whether it would work, but how long it would take.

From what Linc had said yesterday, she gathered there had been a major change in dynamics owing to the new people who had moved here with the semiconductor plant. She’d already heard that sad story of boom and bust. While the plant hadn’t closed down when the recession hit, it had laid off quite a few people. A lot of lives had undoubtedly been hurt or destroyed.

But on the other hand, whatever had brought about the social dichotomy in the school, this wasn’t the first time she had seen it. Sometimes it was about race. Sometimes it was about who was a “townie” and who was a “military brat.” Sometimes it was just about how you dressed and who you hung around with. Kids could find ample reasons to form cliques and exclusive groups. It seemed to be part of human nature in general.

But it could be contained and controlled. Courtesy, which she thought of as the grease on the wheels of life, could be learned, and could overlay baser impulses.

The problem would be one of motivation.

She hoped Linc would have some idea of what would motivate these students, because she didn’t know the student body well enough yet and this was a rather late point in their education to start something that should have begun in the earliest grades.

Linc again. She supposed it would be wise to castigate herself for wasting so much thought and energy on thinking about a man who was making it as plain as day that he’d prefer not to get to know her even casually. Work with her? Yes. Anything else, not so much.

Still, she couldn’t help wandering into the bedroom to look at herself in the full-length mirror, something she usually avoided. She was plump, yes, but much as she would have liked to be built like a model or movie star, that wasn’t in her genetic makeup. She didn’t think she looked that bad, anyway. Plenty of guys had made passes at her. Full-figured but not ugly was her pronouncement. Problem was, she didn’t quite believe the “not ugly” part.

Stifling a sigh, she bathed and dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, caught her hair up in a short ponytail, and dug out her planning books. Yesterday had pretty much driven everything else out of her mind, and she needed to come up with some kind of new, hands-on project that would teach math in a real-world way.

It had, she admitted, been easier to come up with things at the start of the year, but as the weeks passed, ideas had become thinner on the ground. She scanned the topics to be covered that week, seeking some fertile soil. Unfortunately, she didn’t think most of her students were quite ready to enjoy math for the sake of math.

She was searching around on her computer looking for ideas that might work with at least some of what she would teach this week, when the phone rang. She answered, her heart lifting a bit, expecting to hear Linc’s voice.

Instead what she heard was a deep, angry voice. “Stay out of what doesn’t concern you, bitch, or you’ll pay.”

Before her jaw could even drop, the other party had disconnected. At once she pressed the caller ID button, but it told her only that the call had come from Wyoming. Great help.

She sat there, staring at her phone, shaken. Just words, she told herself. Just an empty threat. But she couldn’t quite persuade herself of that. Her stomach kept flipping nervously, and she’d have given just about anything to call back and give that man a piece of her mind. It would have relieved her anxiety just to be able to yell at him.

Just as anger began to seriously overtake uneasiness, the phone rang again. Without even looking to see who it was, she snapped, “What?”

There was a pause. Finally Linc’s familiar voice said, “Cassie?”

At once embarrassment filled her. “Sorry,” she said, aware that her voice had thickened, “I just got a nasty call. I thought it was another one.”

A moment of silence. “What kind of nasty call?”

“Telling me to stay out of things that don’t concern me, with an implied threat and a bit of name-calling. It’s nothing, it just made me mad.”

He didn’t reply directly. “Are you going out?”

“No, I’m doing my weekly planning.”

“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

Then he was gone, leaving her to wonder what had lit the fire under him. Surely the call, as annoying as it had been, didn’t require immediate action. Heck, she didn’t even know for sure what it was about.

Then it struck her that Linc was on his way over. She hurried into her bedroom and changed into something more attractive than the baggy clothes she had been working in. Nothing too much, just a more attractive blouse with a pair of reasonably new jeans. Another brushing of her hair, a tiny—just tiny—dab of makeup around her eyes and some gloss on her lips.

Then she started a fresh pot of coffee, since somehow she had managed to drink most of it while working this morning. That much caffeine? It struck her that that might have caused the stomach flips as much as the phone call.

She threw open a window to let in some of the fresh, chilly air, then tried to return her attention to her planning. It didn’t work. All she could think about was Lincoln Blair coming here. Imagining him walking through her door. Wondering how he would be able to keep up that shield he seemed so determined to place between them while they were working on a project.

God, was she really thinking like this at the age of thirty? That man had truly gotten to her, yet what did she really know about him? That he looked good enough to model on a magazine? That he was popular with both faculty and students?

That meant nothing, really. Nothing. She gave herself a firm mental shake and told herself to remember that she was simply going to be meeting him to work on a project, something she had done countless times before with teachers she found attractive or not-so attractive. So what the hey?

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help being a little nervous anyway. If he arrived here packed in his personal brand of refrigerant, she didn’t know how she would manage. Yes, she had worked with difficult people before, but there was difficult and then there was difficult.

Cussing silently, she waited for her doorbell to ring, giving up hope of focusing on her work. Instead she looked around her little office, the house’s one spare bedroom, and decided she liked what she had so far been able to do with it. Little by little she was transforming the place into a home that reflected her love of bright color and handmade crafts. Some items she had brought with her, and some she had discovered since arriving here, at a little hole-in-the-wall place that seemed left over from an earlier century.

Finally Linc arrived. Butterflies fluttered wildly in her stomach as she went to open the door.

Her memory had not exaggerated his Celtic-warrior good looks, not one bit. He stood there in a light jacket, jeans and his usual chambray shirt—it was almost a uniform. On his head sat a felt cowboy hat that looked as if it had seen better days.

“Howdy,” he said.

His deep voice seemed to pluck a string inside her and make it vibrate. She very nearly forgot to invite him in, then realized she was in danger of standing there like a starstruck kid.

“Come on in,” she said. “You didn’t have to race over here, you know.” Not that she was exactly objecting.

“Probably not, but we needed to meet anyway.” He stepped inside and looked around her cozy living room. He surprised her with his choice of words. “Very inviting,” he said approvingly.

“That’s what I hope,” she said as she closed the door behind him. “Coffee?”

“Love some.”

He followed her into the kitchen, and as naturally as if he belonged here, he pulled out a chair at her dinette and sat. She filled two mugs, vaguely remembering from school that he liked his black.

“We could go to my office in the back,” she suggested.

“This is fine for now.”

As if he didn’t want to get any deeper into her life or her house. Feeling a bit stung, she placed his coffee in front of him and sat facing him.

“So I started thinking about this program,” she began.

He shook his head a little. “In a minute, Cassie. First I want to hear more about that phone call.”

As if a switch flipped in her head, she heard that angry, deep voice again. “What’s there to say? I told you what he said. He sounded angry, and threatening, but it was just a phone call. It’s easy to make anonymous threats.”

“It may be easy, but it’s seldom pointless. Somebody’s angry with you, and I doubt that many people know yet about what happened yesterday. The boys involved, maybe their parents if Les has already called them all. Maybe a few people they talked to.”

She shook her head. “Nothing has happened. Nobody has been suspended. If this stops, nobody gets suspended. Scholarships are protected and so is the almighty state championship. If anyone hoped for anything from that call, it’s that I wouldn’t push this into a suspension.”

He set his mug down. “I agree. Essentially. What’s troubling me is the way you got treated yesterday. Your authority was ignored, you were pushed, not just brushed by, and now today a threatening call. That incident yesterday was unusually aggressive for students that age. I’m not saying they never get past name-calling and the occasional spat, but like I said yesterday, by this age they’re mostly past ganging up and getting physical. Add that to the way they treated you and I’m concerned, that’s all.”

She thought it over for a moment. “Then maybe I’m not the best choice to help with this antibullying campaign. If I’m seen as just a troublesome outsider, the message may be lost.”

“You’re not doing this alone,” he reminded her.

No, she wasn’t. She had tried to avoid meeting his gaze directly, but now she did, and felt as if she were falling into the depths of the incredible blue of his eyes. An almost electric spark seemed to zap her.

Then he broke eye contact, returning his attention to his mug. “I spent some time this morning exploring the subject,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have a dial-up connection out there and the internet moves like molasses.”

“I’ve got broadband. We can use my computer.”

“Or go to the school.”

She sensed he wanted to be out of her house and into a more neutral environment as quickly as possible. Again she felt that sting, but did her best to ignore it. No point creating a Shakespearean tragedy in her own mind.

“Sure, if you want,” she said quickly. “Let me get my jacket.”

Five minutes later, with a couple of her travel mugs filled with coffee for the two of them, they stepped outside into a brisk morning. Fluffy white clouds raced overhead in a cerulean sky.

“God, it’s beautiful here,” she said.

“Really?”

She glanced at him. “Don’t tell me you don’t notice.”

“Well, I actually do, especially out at my ranch.” For the first time he cracked a genuine smile.

It almost took her breath away. Of course she’d seen him smile on occasion around school, but never had the full wattage been directed her way. Warmth drizzled through her all the way to her toes, and she had to fight to collect her thoughts.

“What do you raise?” she asked as he helped her into his battered pickup, a truck that might have once been a bright red, but now was dulled with age and liberal applications of touch-up paint.

“Actually my dogs do the raising,” he said humorously as he climbed in behind the wheel. “They do a damn good job of looking after my sheep and goats. And I have a few horses. It’s not much, but it’s all I can handle while I’m teaching.”

“Why do you keep on doing it?”

“I enjoy it, for one thing. For another, that place has been in my family for over a hundred years. I’m not going to be the one to give it up.”

She could understand that, although it was hard to imagine. “You must feel a lot of loyalty.”

A faint smile this time, directed out the windshield as he drove toward the school. “My family invested a lot of sweat in that place. It was their place in the world, and now it’s my place. Maybe some day I’ll have kids and they won’t want it, but fact is, I’m rooted here until I die.”

“That must be a good feeling.”

“Sometimes.” He hesitated. “You?”

“Rootless. I have no way to really understand how you must feel about your ranch. My mom moved us around the country a lot. I was lucky to finish high school in the same town where I started it.”

“And you’ve continued the gypsy tradition?”

“You mean because I came here?”

“For one. But what about the past?”

“I’ve moved a lot, too. You want the truth? It’s getting old. I’ve never known anyone for more than a few years, and then they get left behind. I started thinking about that, and it struck me that’s a really lonely way to live.”

“So you’re looking for a place to stay permanently?”

“If I can find one.”

“Why this place?”

“Because it feels right. Because after I’d spent a week here considering the job, I got the feeling that if I stayed long enough to become a part of the community, I could put down some really deep roots. People wouldn’t be strangers on a busy street. They’d have names, and I’d get to know them at least a bit. That maybe someday I wouldn’t be an outsider anymore.”

“So you’ve always been an outsider?”

“I’ve never been anything else.”

He fell silent, pulling into a faculty parking spot near the west wing door. From here she could see the freshly painted and repaired roof and side wall. “Someone said a tornado hit the building?”

“Yeah, last spring. What a mess, but at least no one was killed. It just grazed the town, but the thing was a half mile wide. If you get out into the countryside you can still see the scars where it passed. At least no one was killed, although we had some injuries.”

“Is that common here? Tornadoes?”

“It’s really rare. I won’t say never, but what we saw last spring was one for the record books.”

“Nobody told me how bad it was.”

He gave her an amused glance as he turned off the ignition. “They probably didn’t want to scare you away.”

“I’ve lived in tornado country. It wouldn’t panic me. I just prefer it if they’re not common.”

“They certainly aren’t here.”

As they climbed out and headed inside, she could hear sounds from the athletic fields on the other side of the building. “Practice today?”

“Not until later. I think some youngsters must be playing on the outdoor basketball courts.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her.

“Why would the school have outdoor courts? I never got that.”

“Only the team and supervised students get to play basketball in the gymnasium. Outdoors is for fun and practice.”

“That’s really a nice idea.” But she couldn’t help thinking he had brought her to this side of the school in case some of the basketball players were out there. Or some of the kids she had interrupted yesterday. She doubted he was afraid of any of them, so he must be trying to avoid giving her a moment of discomfort. A generous thought, but really not necessary. She liked to believe she was tougher than that.

They wended their way through virtually empty hallways. In the distance they could hear a janitor working with a buffer, but other than that the place seemed abandoned.

He took her to his office just off the gymnasium, not to his homeroom. She guessed it made sense that he’d have two offices given that he wore two hats at the school.

It wasn’t a huge space, but it contained enough room for maybe half-a-dozen students to gather with him, and a counter where he had a coffeepot and microwave.

“This is positively homey,” she tried to joke.

“Given their age, high metabolism and activity level, it takes a lot of effort to keep those young men fed. That microwave gets a megaworkout.”

“I bet.”

He cleared a stack of papers to one side, pulled a chair around so she could see his computer screen and turned on the machine.

“Okay,” he said. “You’ve worked in a lot of different places. How familiar are you with antibullying programs? How much do you already know about the dangers of bullying?”

“Some,” she admitted. “In one of the schools where I worked, the program had been in place for at least ten years. It started in kindergarten, actually, and was covered every single year.”

“What were the important mechanisms?”

“First, faculty and administration. It’s so important for teachers not to ignore bullying, to listen to student complaints about it and do something, and for the administration to be fully involved. You get nowhere if the adults in the school brush it off.”

He nodded, his blue eyes touching lightly on her face before returning to the computer screen. She wondered, half-humorously, if he would have liked to dive into the monitor to escape. “And the students?”

“We tried to create a culture where bullying was frowned on. You know as well as I do that peer pressure is more important to youngsters than anything adults do or say. So if you can persuade the students to self-police, to look down on bullies, you can stop a lot of it.”

“That’s going to be the hard part.”

“No kidding. Changing a culture takes time. One assembly won’t do it, it’ll just get the ball rolling. This is going to have to be an ongoing program.”

“Where do you suggest we start?”

She liked that he was looking to her for advice. Even in this supposedly more equal time, she was used to men just taking over and directing projects. She’d always put it down to testosterone or something, but maybe it wasn’t. Linc didn’t strike her as short on testosterone or manliness, come to that.

“Ideally,” she said slowly, “we’d like to get the cooperation of students who are looked up to. The tone-setters.”

“Like some of my players.”

“Exactly. They can be our first peer-pressure group, the guys and gals most of the other students respect.”

“We need to get across how dangerous this really is. It’s not just a matter of scaring or upsetting another student.”

“No,” she agreed. “It can have lifelong consequences. It can cause posttraumatic stress disorder. And have you looked at the rate of teen suicide? A lot of those can be linked directly to bullying.”

“We’ve definitely got our work cut out for us. First to get the staff and a core of students on our side. Once we have the kernels we’ll need to help them grow.”

Then he looked at her. “Have you ever been bullied?”

“Of course. Most people have been.”

“Badly?”

She hesitated then sighed. “I guess. I got picked on a lot for my weight.”

He astonished her then. “I don’t see anything wrong with your weight. Were you heavier back then?”

“Actually, not by much.”

He shook his head. “Amazing. I would have thought most men would have thought you were gorgeous.”

Her jaw dropped but he had already turned away. “I wondered,” he said, returning to the subject at hand, “because you didn’t seem to take the way those guys brushed against you as bullying. Almost as if it were normal.”

“I didn’t think of it that way,” she admitted. “It was a little strong but I didn’t feel intimidated.”

Blue eyes settled on her again. “Really? But that’s what they intended, don’t you think? Letting you know that they were bigger and stronger and not afraid to push?”

She bit her lip, considering it. “I guess so. There was no other reason for it. They didn’t frighten me, though. I just got angrier.”

“Somebody sure tried to frighten you this morning.” He frowned then and leaned back a bit in his chair, as if thinking things over. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Bullying in general, of course, but I don’t like the way it seems to have escalated, judging by what you saw and what you experienced. Some element is getting way out of line and we need to yank them back as quickly as possible.”

“Maybe it’s just the four I caught in the act. Maybe it isn’t a trend at all.”

One corner of his mouth tipped up, and his eyes scraped over her briefly. “You’re quite the optimist. I’m more inclined to think this is the tip of the iceberg. These things don’t usually happen in total isolation.”

She rested her chin on her hand. “You might be right.”

“I hope I’m not,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, I’ve been watching that steady fracturing I mentioned yesterday ever since the semiconductor plant arrived. Little by little a line has been drawn. And when you start drawing lines, how long is it before the people on the other side of the line from you become objects of your scorn?”

“You may be right.”

“Basic social dynamics. We’ve always gone to war over our differences. A school is just a microcosm.” He shook his head. “Don’t let me start thinking about humanity as a whole. Right now we need to deal with a front-and-center neighborhood problem with as little scarring and fallout as possible.”

She gave a laugh. “Yeah, we can’t reform humanity in a day, or a school in even a week. How do you want to approach this?”

He took the task of finding the students for his core peer group, and she agreed to set about finding materials that they could use in a more public venue.

Then he rose, stretched and said, “I’ve got a team meeting in a little while. I’ll drive you home.”

“I prefer to walk, but thanks.”

“Then I’ll walk with you.”

His words stilled her. “You really are worried about that call.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m worried, but a little caution might be wise until we see if you get harassed again.”

She felt an instant of rebellion. She was an independent woman who felt perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and she didn’t need a white knight to protect her. On the other hand, it would mean a little extra time with him, which she wouldn’t mind. Maybe she could get past the force field a little.

Pulling on her jacket, she remarked, “I thought this was a friendly, nice county.”

“It is, mostly. But like any other place on the planet, not everyone is nice.”

Outside, the air still had that wonderful crisp feel of fall, and she almost thought she could smell snow in the air even though the sun was bright. After he locked the door, they began to stroll toward her house, carrying the travel mugs. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

“How do you like living here so far?” he asked.

“I’m loving it, actually.”

“Not dying for lack of nightclubs, theaters and huge shopping malls?”

She laughed. “Not at all. I’ve never enjoyed mall-crawling, for one thing. I’m always looking for little out-of-the way places full of different things.”

“We have plenty of those.”

“I’ve noticed. It’s one of the things that charmed me. I haven’t been in a department store like Freitag’s since I was a little kid. I get a kick out of having the wood floors creak under my feet. Besides, if you’ve seen one mall, you’ve pretty much seen them all. The homogenization of America. You can’t tell what city you’re in.”

“That’s my impression. But what about things to do?”

“There’s plenty to do.” She glanced at him, wondering about the line of questioning. “I get together with some teachers to play cards a couple of times a month. We go out for lunch and sometimes dinner. I never liked the club scene. I guess most people would find me dull.”

“Not around here.”

“And if I ever get an overwhelming urge for a museum or the theater, I can take a weekend and go to Denver. Come on, Linc. You teach. You know how little free time you have.”

He chuckled. “You’re right. And there’s even less with my ranch.”

“And football,” she reminded him. “Anyway, I really like it here so far. It’s different from the places I lived before, but I’m finding it comfortable.”

“I’ll ask for your opinion again come early March.”

She was laughing when he left her at her door, but his smile was faint, and she could almost hear the shield cranking back into place.

What was it with that man?

Sighing, she went inside, taking his advice to lock up behind herself, and decided she would probably never know.

Whatever his problem, Linc had clearly decided not to let her into his circle.

To hell with him, she thought, returning to work on her week’s plans. She needed an idea to excite her students more than she needed him.

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