Kelton's Rules

He couldn’t see very well without them. He wasn’t blind as a bug-eyed bat, the way that jerk Timmy Ryder at school was always telling everybody, but things got kind of…blurry when he took them off. “Move over, fur brain.” Shoving the cat to the left with his foot, Sky squeezed under the steering wheel and cautiously down. “Where are they?”

He patted under the high-set pedals. Nope. “What are you doin’, sitting on ’em?” He pulled the cat up onto his knee, ignoring his warning growl. DC was too timid to bite even a mouse.

“Or maybe—ooof—keep still!” He twisted around to grope under the seat and— “Yeah, got ’em.” Unbroken; for once in his life he was lucky. He jammed them on top of his head, let go of the exasperated tom and, reaching up to the dash, caught hold of something, a handle of some kind, and started wriggling up past the steering wheel.

Thock! The handle jumped in his hand. The bus quivered and groaned.

“What was that?”

No comment from the cat. Ears flattened to his head, DC was doing his best to exit left, wedging his plump body between the driver’s seat and the side of the bus in an unsuccessful effort to reach the back. His tail lashed in frustration.

Sky grabbed the wheel to pull himself off the floorboard—and it spun hard to the right. “Hey!” Something felt wrong. The wheel was shuddering in his grasp. Gravel rumbled under the tires. As he squirmed into the driver’s seat and pulled his glasses down onto his nose, things swam into focus—and streamed away. No, it was the bus that was moving, he realized, as it gave a horrible lurch.

And kept on rolling.

Backward.

Swerving with a ponderous, dreadful deliberation off the road, then down across the pasture.

CHAPTER TWO

MARYLOU WON’T DO, Jack Kelton told himself, aiming his open Jeep down the road to Durango.

The baby-sitter might be five years older than his daughter, Kat, but she was three jumps behind every time. Missing Kat’s straight-faced jokes and veiled warnings. Failing to foresee her pranks, or knowing how to handle them once they’d been played. Worst of all, the girl was gullible, taking Kat at her word when she shouldn’t. Apparently they weren’t teaching critical thinking in high school these days, or if they were, Marylou was failing.

“And now, shoot me if she’s not in love,” Jack muttered, scrubbing a hand through his wind-whipped hair as the Jeep topped the hill. A fifteen-year-old in calf-love was useless! Lethally oblivious to the world and her responsibilities.

With Marylou lost in love, Kat would run wild this summer. She was probably contemplating mayhem this very moment, since she’d wanted to accompany him into Durango. She’d pulled a major pout when he refused to let her go to a kickboxing movie alone while he met with an after-hours’ client. Right now, back in Trueheart, Marylou was probably sprawled on Jack’s couch, bare feet up on the backrest, spooning the last of their chocolate-chip ice cream out of the carton as she giggled on the phone with the Love of her Life. While forgotten Kat was probably somewhere down the street, hot-wiring somebody’s car. She’d pass him any second now with a whoop and a wave and an offer to drag race. Automatically he glanced in his mirror.

Nothing but empty road back there. Still, facts had to be faced. He’d have to find another sitter, and soon. Not that Trueheart had much to offer in the baby-sitting department.

The Jeep crested the next rise and Jack cocked his head. Fifty yards downslope, a bright red, sawed-off school bus was parked by the edge of the road, facing his way. Not from around here; Trueheart school buses were yellow and full-size. Jack’s brows drew together as his Jeep closed the distance. Was it—?

It was rolling. Backing down the road. Or, no— “What the devil?”

As Jack’s foot moved to his brake, the bus curved slowly off the shoulder and trundled out into the field. Some idiot had left it parked without shifting into first! Most likely the emergency brake had let go.

Well, so be it. Whoever the idiot was, he was about to learn his lesson the hard way. The narrow band of brush and cottonwoods at the bottom of the hill screened a twenty-foot drop-off to a nifty little trout stream where Jack sometimes fished. Once the bus had gathered momentum, it would blow right through that fragile barrier.

“Hope to God the moron’s not directly in line below, communing with na—” Jack’s eyes narrowed. He stomped down on the gas, then spun the wheel. The Jeep swerved off into the pasture, bucked over a hummock and roared in pursuit. There was somebody in that bus, a head bobbing above the steering wheel! “Step on the brake, bozo!” Or could the brakes have failed? Swearing out loud, Jack floored the accelerator.

A race between gravity and distance, speed and time. Eyes sweeping the slope below, gauging probable trajectories and possible outcomes, Jack spotted the woman. Bursting from the trees, a blur of yellow with flailing arms. Pale flapping hair, a mouth open wide in what must be a scream, though he couldn’t hear her over his engine’s roar. “Get the hell out of our way, lady!” What did she think she could do—catch the damn bus like a fly ball? “Move it, woman!”

Well, she’d have to take care of herself. The Jeep closed the last few feet, bounding along driver’s side to driver’s side, and Jack stared up through the open window—into a small, wide-eyed face. Jeez, a kid! “Step on the brake!”

“I can’t!” His voice squeaked with panic. “My cat’s stuck under the—” He swung back into the bus, yanking desperately at the gearshift.

Jack gritted his teeth at the agonized squawk of stripping gears. So much for the transmission. “Step on the brake and damn the cat! Do it now!”

The boy shook his head frantically. “He w-w-won’t move! If I could shift into—”

The bus must’ve been doing twenty by now. Maybe a hundred yards to the trees—a hundred and three to the cliff. The woman had vanished behind the bulk of the vehicle. “Forget shifting, kid, and listen!” Jack yelled, leaning halfway out of the Jeep. “Grab the top of your wheel—yeah, that’s right! Now slo-owly—ve-er-ry slowly—turn it toward me!”

A calculated risk. If the kid panicked and swung the wheel too fast, the Jeep, running parallel, would smash into the bus’s left flank. “Good! That’s good.” Thank God he could take directions.

“Now slowly. Turn another inch toward me—excellent!” If the bus didn’t flip, if they still had room to pull off the maneuver, the kid could steer it in a gentle curve away from the creek, gradually swinging cross-hill till the bus coasted to a halt. “Gimme another inch—good!”

Jack turned his own wheel; they were now running side by side, not three feet apart. He flinched as the bus slammed into something solid—a rock or a log—and the exhaust system peeled away. He glanced back in his mirror as tailpipes and other parts popped into view and clattered along in their wake. “So who needs a muffler?” he assured the kid, sending him a rakish grin.

Yeah, right, we’re all under control here. Having the time of our lives!

But the kid actually smiled back at him and Jack laughed out loud. Spunky little devil! “Turn it a little more—ea-aa-sy does it. Yeah!” He sucked in his breath as the bus wobbled, trying to lift onto its right-side wheels—then settled back four-square. Whew! I owe You one, up there!

One more in a long list.

“Give it another inch. You’re doing great!” And he’d better be—they had forty feet left to the trees and the bus was angled roughly fifty degrees to the fall line. Jack corrected his own course, nodding fiercely. “Now one last time, son—gently—a couple of inches.”

As it curved cross-slope, the bus had been gradually losing momentum. It was doing maybe ten when it plowed into the bushes. But hitting them almost broadside, it didn’t slice on through. Branches shrieked along steel. Slender tree trunks crackled and snapped. An avalanche of baggage inside the vehicle rumbled to the far side. The bus rocked up onto its off-side wheels for a heart-stopping moment—then, supported by the bushes, settled back again.

As he braked to a halt alongside, Jack blew out his breath. And thank You! He stepped out and sauntered on shaking legs over to the kid’s window. “That was exciting.” They measured each other solemnly—then grinned from ear to ear. “Well done,” Jack told him, socking his shoulder. “Very well done ind—”

“Sky! Oh, baby!”

And here came Momma at last, panting and wind-torn and half-hysterical, clutching a forgotten bunch of crumpled wildflowers. A small frantic tornado, she roared down the narrow gap between the vehicles and actually bumped Jack aside, getting to her child. “Oh, sweetie!” She wrenched open the kid’s door. Jack winced as the edge of it banged into the Jeep. So much for his paint job.

“Are you all right?” But she wasn’t waiting to hear; apparently touch would tell her faster. Her fingers flew over the boy’s face, his arms, his ribs. Tugging at his clothes, smoothing his hair. “Where does it hurt?”

Jack met the kid’s eyes over her shoulder and gave him a commiserating grin. Sometimes a guy just had to put up with the mushy stuff.

“Aw-ww, Mom! I’m fine.” The boy twisted away as she tried to pull him into a hug, then dived under the wheel. “It’s DC…”

The largest cat Jack had ever seen crouched behind the pedals, tail fluffed to the size of a firehose, eyes like black saucers. Moaning throatily, he slashed at the boy’s outstretched hand.

“Ouch! He’s never done that before!” The boy— Sky?—brought scratched fingers to his lips.

“Reckon you’ve never run him backward down a mountain before,” Jack said mildly. “Give him a minute.”

Momma swung around, registering his presence at last.

And worth the wait, Jack decided as his gaze dropped from wide green eyes still dilated with shock, down over a lush trembling mouth, over a pair of still heaving, just-the-right-size breasts, to—oh, boy, forget it! To a slogan emblazoned across the T-shirt, claiming: A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle.

Hoo-boy, one of those. A lady with an ax to grind. His eyes flicked back to the bus, filled almost to window level with its assortment of household rubble. Jeez, that thing on its side—could that be a washing machine?

“Been divorced long?” he asked casually.

She blinked. Blinked her long lashes again, grateful smile fading to wariness as she raised her chin. “H-how did you guess?”

Jack threw back his head and laughed.