The Cowboy and the Lady

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.”