Dalton's Undoing

Not that she didn’t try her best. The youngest Dalton was exactly the kind of man she tried to avoid at all cost. She’d had more than enough, thank you very much, of smooth charmers who swept a woman off her feet with flowers and champagne only to leave her dangling there, hanging by her fingernails when they decide young French pastries are more to their taste.

What earthly reason would Dalton have for showing up at her doorstep? He had no children at her school, he was years past his own education and somehow she couldn’t picture him as the type to bake cookies for the PTA fundraiser.

She couldn’t think of anything else that would bring him to her door and the clock was ticking.

“May I help you, Mr. Dalton?”

Surprise flickered in those eyes for just a moment, as if he hadn’t expected her to know his name. “Just making a delivery.”

She frowned, impatient and confused, as he reached around the door out of her view, tugging something forward. No something, someone—someone with a sullen scowl, a baggy sweatshirt and a chip the size of Idaho on his narrow shoulders.

“Cole!”

Beneath her son’s customary sulky defiance, she thought she saw something else beneath the attitude, something nervous and on edge.

“What’s going on? You’re supposed to be down in your room working on geometry!” she exclaimed.

“Geometry blows. I went out.”

“You went out,” she repeated, frustration and bewilderment and a terrible sense of failure rising in her chest. How could she possibly reach the students at her school when she couldn’t manage to find even the tiniest connection to her own son? “Out where? I didn’t hear you leave.”

“Ever hear of a window?” he sneered. Nothing new there. He had been derisive and mean to her before they ever came to Pine Gulch. He blamed her for everything wrong in his life, from his short stature to Richard’s affair and subsequent abandonment.

She was mortified that a stranger had to witness it. She was even more mortified when Seth Dalton raised one of those sexy dark eyebrows and placed a firm hand on Cole’s shoulder. “Now, do you really think that’s the proper way to address your mother?”

Jenny gave the man a polite smile, wishing him to Hades. “Thank you, Mr. Dalton, for bringing him home, but I believe I can handle things from here.”

For some reason, either her words or her tone seemed to amuse him. His mouth quirked up and a masculine dimple appeared in his cheek briefly. “Can you, now? I’m afraid we still have a few matters of business to discuss. May I come in?”

“This isn’t a good time. I’m late for a meeting.”

“Sorry about that,” he drawled, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to make time for this.”

He didn’t wait for permission, just walked through her father’s entry into the living room. She had no choice but to follow, noting as she went that Jason and Morgan were nowhere to be seen.

“Cole, you want to tell her what you’ve been up to?”

Her son crossed his arms, his expression even more belligerent, but again she caught a faint whiff of fear beneath it. Her stomach suddenly twisted with foreboding.

“What’s going on? Cole, what is this about?”

He clamped his mouth shut, freezing her out again, but once more Seth Dalton placed a firm hand on his shoulder.

Cole suddenly seemed to find the carpet endlessly fascinating.

“Istolehisride,” he mumbled in one breath and Jenny’s heart stopped, hoping she’d heard wrong.

“You what?”

Cole finally lifted his gaze to hers. “I took his car, okay? What did he expect? He left the frigging keys in it. I was only going to take it for a mile or two. I figured I’d have it back before he even knew it was gone. But then I crashed…”

“You what! Are you hurt? Did you hurt anyone else?”

Cole shook his head. At least he had enough guilty conscience to look slightly ashamed.

“He scraped a mile marker post and front-ended into an irrigation ditch. The only thing damaged was my car.”

She sagged into the nearest chair as her career suddenly flashed in front of her eyes. She could almost hear the echo of gossip across shopping carts at DeLoy’s, under the hair dryers at the Hairport and over beer at the Bandito.

Did you hear about that new principal’s wild boy? She can’t control him a lick. That little delinquent stole a car. Crashed it right into a ditch! Seems to me a woman who can’t control her own son sure don’t belong in that nice office down at the elementary school.

She screwed her eyes shut, wishing this was all some terrible dream, but when she opened them, Seth Dalton was still standing in front of her, as dangerous and sexy as ever.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Dalton. I…don’t know what to say. Are you pressing charges?”

She thought she heard Cole make a small sound, but when she glanced at him, he looked as prickly and angry as ever.

“It’s going to take me considerable work to fix it.”

“We will, of course, cover any damages.”

He suddenly sat down on the sofa across from her, crossing his boots at the ankle. “I had something else in mind.”

She stiffened. “I’m an elementary school principal, Mr. Dalton. If you’re looking for some kind of huge financial settlement, I’m afraid you’re off the mark.”

“I’m not looking for money.” He glanced at Seth. “But I will need another set of hands while I’m doing the repair work. I figured the kid could work off the damages by helping me out with the repair work and around my ranch with my horses until the bodywork is done.”

Cole straightened. “I’m no stupid-ass cowboy.”

Seth Dalton gave him a measuring look. “No, from here you look like a stupid-ass punk who thinks he’s living out some kind of video game. This isn’t Grand Theft Auto, kid, where you can always hit the restart button. You broke it, now you’re going to help me fix it. Unless you’d rather serve the time, of course.”

Cole subsided back into his customary slouch as Jenny considered his proposal. Her gut wanted her to tell him to forget it. She didn’t want her son to have anything to do with Pine Gulch’s busiest bachelor.

Cole had had enough lousy male role models in his life—he didn’t need a player like Seth teaching him all the wrong things about how to treat a woman.

On the other hand, her son stole the man’s car—not only stole it, but wrecked the blasted thing. That he wasn’t in police custody right now seemed nothing short of a miracle.

What choice did she have, really? Seth could easily have called the police. Perhaps he should have. Maybe a hard gut check with reality might be just what Cole needed to wake him up, as much as she hated the idea of her son in juvenile detention.

Seth Dalton was being surprisingly decent about this. From what little she knew about him—and she had to admit, most of her biased information came from overheard conversations and breathless comments in the teacher’s lounge about his many flirtations—she would have expected him to be hot-tempered and petulant.

Instead, she found him rational, calm, accommodating.

And extremely attractive.

She let out a slow, nervous breath. Was that the reason for her instinctive opposition to the man’s reasonable proposal? Because he was sinfully gorgeous, with that thick, dark hair, eyes a stunning, heartbreaking blue and chiseled, tanned features that made him look as though he should be starring in Western movies?

He made her edgy and ill at ease and that alone gave her enough reason to wish for a way to avoid any further acquaintance between them. She was here in Pine Gulch to help her little family find some peace and healing—not to engage in useless, potentially harmful fantasies about a charming, feckless cowboy with impossibly blue eyes and a smile that oozed sex.