Dalton's Undoing

To his surprise, Seth found he was more amused by the kid’s attitude than he’d been by anything in a long time. “Come on. I’ll show you. Drop your shovel.”

Cole didn’t need a second invitation. He dropped it with a clatter and followed Seth toward a stall at the end of the row, where his big buckskin Stella waited.

In moments, he had her saddled, then led her outside to one of the corrals where he kept a dozen or so cattle to help with the training.

“Okay, now pick a steer.”

“Why?”

He had to laugh at the boy’s horrified expression. “I’m not going to make you ride the thing, I promise. Remember how I was telling Morgan about cutting? Stella’s going to cut whatever steer you pick out of the herd for you. Just tell me which one you want her to go after.”

“How the hell should I know? They all look the same!”

“You’ve got a lot to learn, city boy. How about the one in the middle there, with the white face?”

At least the kid had lost his belligerence, though he was looking at Seth like he’d been kicked by a horse one too many times.

“Sure. Get that one.”

He gave the commands to Stella then sat back in the saddle and let her do her thing. She was brilliant, as usual. In minutes, she had the white-faced Hereford just where Seth wanted him, away from the herd and heading for the fence where Cole had perched to watch the demonstration.

“There you go. He’s all yours,” Seth called over the cattle’s lowing.

The boy jumped down faster than a bullet at the sight of a half-ton animal heading toward him.

Seth pulled Stella off and let the steer return to the rest of the herd, then led the horse back through the gate.

“So what do you think? She’s brilliant, isn’t she?”

“You told her what to do.”

“Sure. But she did it, didn’t she? Without even hesitating. She’s a great horse.” He slid out of the saddle, then sent the kid a sidelong glance. “You do much riding?”

Cole snorted. “There aren’t too many horses on Seattle street corners sitting around waiting to be ridden.”

“You don’t have that excuse here. Get on.”

Before Cole could argue, Seth handed him the reins and hefted him into the saddle.

He looked even smaller than his age up on the big horse, though Seth gave him points for not sliding right back down. With one hand on the bridle, he led them back inside the training facility.

“You probably know the basics, even if you’ve never ridden before, just from watching TV. Keep a firm hand on the reins, pull them in the direction you want her to go. Above all, have fun.”

He let go of the bridle, confident the horse was too well-trained to unseat her rider, no matter how inexperienced.

Sure enough, she started a slow walk around the arena. Cole looked terrified at first, then he gradually started to relax. By the second time around the arena, he even smiled a little, though he bounced in the saddle like a particularly hapless sack of flour.

“I suck, don’t I?” he said ruefully as they passed Seth.

Sit up, boy. Or are you too tired to learn to be a man? You’ll never be able to ride the damn thing if you slouch in the saddle like that and gasp like a trout on the end of a frigging hook every time the horse takes a step.

He pushed away the echo of his father’s voice, wondering if he’d been four or five during that particular riding lesson. “You don’t suck,” he assured Seth. “You just have to learn to move with the rhythm of the horse. It takes a while to figure it out. For your first time, you’re kickin’ A.”

For one shining instant, Cole looked thrilled at the praise. He must have felt himself smile, though, because he quickly retreated back into his brittle shell.

“Am I done here? My butt’s starting to hurt.”

Seth sighed as the momentary animation slipped away. He shrugged and held Stella again so Cole could slide down.

“We’ve got one more stall to finish. Work on that while I take off Stella’s saddle.”

Cole grimaced but headed back to his shovel.

He couldn’t expect to change the kid’s attitude with one horseback ride, Seth thought. But maybe the car would do the trick.

He caught his own thoughts and grimaced at himself. Since when was he the do-gooder of Pine Gulch? He had no business even trying to fix this troubled kid’s problems. Better just to get his money’s worth out of him in labor to compensate for the car damage and leave the attitude-adjusting to his mother.

Saturdays were usually one of her most productive days of the week, away from the office and all the distractions of running an elementary school with four hundred students.

She usually accomplished more in a few hours than she could do in two days at school, between lunch duty and phone calls from concerned parents and dealing with state and federal education regulations.

Today, Jenny couldn’t seem to focus on work at all while she waited for Seth Dalton to return with Cole.

After trying for an hour and a half to slog through some paperwork while Morgan rested on the couch next to her in the den watching television, she finally gave it up for a lost cause.

She wasn’t worried about Cole. Not precisely. She was more concerned that her belligerent son would forget Seth was doing him a huge favor and instead would vent his unhappiness in all the usual ways.

She couldn’t stress about that. Something told her a man like Dalton was more than capable of holding his own against a fourteen-year-old rebel.

He struck her as a man who could handle just about anything. She thought of those strong, capable shoulders and had to suppress a sigh. Why couldn’t she seem to get the man off her mind?

She’d had an unwilling fascination for him since the first time she heard his name, long before her son’s recklessness brought them into his orbit. It had been a month or so after school started and she’d been in her office after lunch when one of her brand-new teachers, just out of college and still half terrified of her students, stopped in during her prep hour to talk to Marcy, the school secretary.

It hadn’t surprised her the two were friends. Marcy was only a few years older than Ashley Barnes, the new kindergarten teacher. Beyond that, she was warm and bubbly, the kind of person who drew everyone to her. Not only was she great at her job but the children adored her and Jenny had learned most of the other teachers did, too.

She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but her door had been open and she’d been able to hear every word.

“He said he’d call me,” Ashley complained. “How stupid was I to believe him?”

Marcy had only laughed. “You’re human and you’re female. There’s not a woman in town who can resist Seth Dalton when he gives that smile of his. Heck, he even has all the old ladies in my grandma’s quilting club batting their fake eyelashes at him.”

“That night at the Bandito, you’d think I was the only woman in the world,” Ashley said, the bitterness in her voice completely at odds with her usual sunny disposition. “He never left my side all night and we danced every single dance. I thought he really liked me.”

“I’m sure he did like you that night. But that’s the thing about Seth. He lives completely in the moment.”

“He’s a dog.” Ashley sounded close to tears.

“No he’s not. Believe it or not, he’s actually a pretty decent guy. He’s the first one out on his tractor plowing his neighbors’ driveways after a big snowstorm and he always stops to help somebody in trouble. But he was blessed—or cursed, however you want to look at it—with the kind of good looks that make women go a little crazy around him.”