Chapter Two
“Did you see that?” Mason Starkwell cackled, slapping his knee. “That poor woman was covered in lemonade!”
Adam Summers placed a firm hand on the shoulder of his thirteen-year-old ranch hand in training. “Don’t laugh at people, Mason,” he said firmly. “What if it had been you that lemonade had spilled on? What if you were the one everyone was laughing at?”
Mason’s laughter faded. He looked up at Adam sullenly and curled his lip. “It wouldn’t have been me,” he said. “You saw what happened. The other woman knocked over the glasses on purpose. They must be enemies. I haven’t got any enemies.”
“Well, you will if you keep that behavior up,” Adam warned.
Mason turned away and folded his arms, scowling.
His temper was as fiery as his flaming red hair, and Adam often found him difficult to manage.
But sending him back to his abusive father wasn’t an option Adam was willing to consider.
No matter how smart-mouthed Mason was, Adam was determined to provide the boy with a place to live and work to do.
He had seen the incident with the lemonade, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.
From what he had seen, the woman in the green dress hadn’t done anything to provoke the attack.
She had just been standing there watching the dancing when the other woman had come up to her and started shouting.
There must be some sort of history there.
But it always mystified him how people could be so cruel to one another for no apparent reason.
He looked in the direction she’d run off, but there was no sign of her anymore. He turned back to Mason. “Twenty more minutes,” he said. “Then it will be time to head home.”
Mason groaned. “Don’t punish me,” he begged. “I’m sorry I laughed at that woman.”
“I’m not punishing you,” Adam reassured him. “But we do have to call a halt to things. You know I’m supposed to go out and talk to a few women around town today to see if any of them are able to fill in as teachers now that Mrs. Garrett has gotten married and left for Montana with Mr. Garrett.”
“I still think of her as Miss Libby,” Mason chuckled. “And I’m sorry she’s gone. No other teacher can hope to be as good as she was.”
“I’m sorry she’s gone too.” Adam reflected on Mason’s year in school thus far.
The boy was a troublemaker, but Miss Libby—Mrs. Garrett, now—had taken him in hand, and he had begun to turn his behavior around.
Adam worried that all that progress would be undone.
The new teacher was going to have to be someone special.
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “I’ll be meeting today with a woman named Jennifer Foster,” he said. “Apparently she went to teachers’ college and is ready to find a job of her own. Nathan Foster’s daughter, I can only imagine, though I’ve never met the woman.”
“If you’ve never met her then how can you know she’s going to be a good teacher?” Mason demanded. “She’ll probably be terrible.”
“That’s why I’m going to meet her today, Mason,” Adam said patiently. “And that’s why we need to leave the fair early. So take the next few minutes to walk around and see anything you’d still like to see, but be back here in twenty, please.”
***
It was no surprise to Adam that he was running late by the time he and Mason made it back to his ranch on the outside of town.
Keeping the boy on a schedule was borderline impossible—he seemed to relish thwarting expectations.
Ordinarily, Adam wouldn’t have liked the idea of offering a bribe, but the promise of candy had finally gotten Mason into the wagon and enabled the two of them to make their way home.
He checked his reflection in the small, cracked mirror above his bathroom sink.
His brown hair, for once, was neatly combed.
His clothes were free of wrinkles—he’d exchanged his usual flannel and trousers for his best collared shirt, and it was done up to the top button.
He would make a good impression on this schoolteacher, he thought.
He turned away from the mirror and went out into the living room.
Like the rest of the house, it was spare, with only a couple of wooden chairs that he had made himself.
Mason had chosen to lie on the floor instead, a toy horse in one hand.
He was making it trot through the air over his head.
It made Adam smile to see it. It was rare for Mason to just relax and be playful, to act like a child.
Adam couldn’t remember the last time he had seen the boy play with a toy.
And indeed, upon realizing that he was being observed, Mason rolled to a sitting position and cast the horse aside. “I don’t know about all this new teacher business,” he said.
“You’ll grow to like her, just as you did your last teacher,” Adam assured him. “Get up off that floor now, Mason. I need you to get dinner started while I go and tend to this meeting.”
Mason’s trademark scowl reasserted itself and he got to his feet. “Why can’t Ruth make the dinner? That’s a woman’s job.”
“You know why,” Adam said firmly. “Ruth’s job is to bring in the cattle.”
“I never heard of a woman cowboy,” Mason said.
“Of course you’ve heard of cowgirls, Mason.” Adam sighed. “You just want to get out of work.”
“She should make the dinner and I’ll do the roping.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Adam walked over to the boy and held out a hand.
Mason took it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.
“If you’d like to start learning to do more things around the ranch, you certainly may.
I’m happy to add to your chores. But we all have to pitch in when it comes to things like cooking.
Now, all I need you to do is boil the vegetables and put the casserole in the oven, and when I get back from meeting with Miss Foster we’ll sit down to a nice dinner together.
” He smiled, offering the boy an olive branch.
“If you do this, we can eat the blackberry pie I bought at the fair today.”
Mason perked up, lifting his chin. “Really? Blackberry pie?”
“Well, I know it’s your favorite,” Adam said. “But only if you handle dinner like I’m asking you to, all right? If I can’t count on you for that, I’ll take the pie to the Fosters’ house with me and give it to them as a gift.”
“All right, all right,” Mason said, turning away. “I’ll deal with dinner.”
“Good lad.” Adam clapped him on the shoulder. “If you want to go out and help Ruth a bit once you’ve got things started, that would be all right. I’ll be home in an hour, I’d wager.”
He headed for the door.
Mason was right about one thing—keeping him doing household chores wasn’t going to be a solution for much longer.
The boy had an itch to do ranch work, and Adam fully intended to train him as a ranch hand.
That was what he’d had in mind when he had brought Mason on.
Getting him away from his father was only a small part of what he hoped to do for the boy.
It wasn’t enough to protect a young man.
You had to give him something meaningful to do with himself as well.
His horse, Chestnut, was tied to the hitching rail a few yards away from the front porch.
Adam patted the horse’s brown flank and mounted, settling into the worn and familiar saddle.
There were few things as relaxing as riding Chestnut—the two of them had been together for years now and knew one another very well.
In fact, he barely had to nudge the horse at all before Chestnut had started off, moving at a gentle trot in the direction of the road.
“Good boy.” Adam stroked the horse’s neck. Chestnut flicked his ears in response.
Adam took advantage of the ride to ponder the conversation that lay ahead.
The Silverleaf Town Committee had assigned him the task of finding a new teacher for the school.
In truth, Adam wasn’t convinced he was the best person for that job—what did he know about teaching?
The other committee members had assured him that they were confident in their choice.
They’d reminded him that he had taken in Mason, that he had done a good job of raising and providing for the boy even though he wasn’t his father.
But to Adam, that wasn’t the same as being a teacher.
He had provided Mason with structure and discipline, but education was another thing altogether.
The North Carolina scenery relaxed him as he rode.
He took in the familiar sweet scent of the pines, and occasionally the trees broke and allowed him a view of mountains in the distance.
He loved this place—it was his home and always had been.
The clip-clopping of Chestnut’s hooves against the road was a familiar music that soothed his spirit.
He’d have liked very much to ignore his responsibilities, to go on riding for a while until he felt relaxed and then to go back home, but before he knew it he was moving through the outside of town, and then coming upon the house where the Foster family lived.
It was a small, neat house, painted white and looking tidy. Through the front window, he could see soft white curtains. He dismounted and wound Chestnut’s reins around the top rail of the fence at the edge of the property. “You just wait here,” he murmured.
Chestnut opened and closed his mouth a few times.
Adam sighed and turned toward the house.
No one here was expecting him. It occurred to him that perhaps he should have sent a letter in advance, but he had been so eager to get this task accomplished quickly.
Knowing that the children were without a teacher ate at him and made him feel the same gnawing dread as he did when chores were unfinished back at the ranch.
He walked up the porch steps and knocked at the door.
There was no response.
He frowned. Perhaps no one was home? It seemed unlikely at this time of day on a Saturday. The Spring Fair had ended about an hour ago, so they wouldn’t still be there, and after a busy morning and afternoon most people would be settling in for a quiet evening with family.
He raised his hand to knock again, but before he could do so, the door flew open. Had he not stepped back quickly, it would have hit him in the face. As it was, he nearly fell off the porch stairs, so fast was he forced to stagger backward.
A woman came rushing out the door without seeming to see him at all. She ran down the porch steps and into the yard.
Adam only got a momentary look at her face, but he recognized her at once.
This was the same woman who had had the lemonade spilled on her.
He hadn’t realized that her green eyes had made such an impression on him before, but he realized now that he had noticed them welling up with tears and hurt, and that his heart had ached for her at the realization.
She wasn’t tearful now. Her jaw was set, perhaps in anger, maybe in determination. She clutched a small brown suitcase in one hand, and as Adam watched, she began to charge across the yard.
His mind caught up with him. She was of a likely age—this must be Jennifer Foster. And if it was, she was running off precisely when he needed to speak with her.
He hurried after her. “Miss!” Running in front of her, cutting off her path, he held out a hand to stop her from going any further. “Miss, wait, I need to speak with you.”
She stared at him. “What are you doing? Get out of my way.” She lifted up the suitcase as if she was thinking of using it to push him out of the way—or maybe she was defending herself with it.
The rudeness startled him. He drew back a pace. This was a schoolteacher? If this was the way she spoke to people, perhaps she wouldn’t be a good fit for the job after all. What would she do if she ever became angry with the students? He didn’t like to imagine her yelling at children like that.
Give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, she had a difficult afternoon, with that lemonade being poured on her! He could see that she had cleaned herself up a bit in the interim, at least. She wore a plain brown dress that was frayed at the hem, but there was no hint of lemonade on it.
Adam forced his shoulders to relax. “I just wanted to speak with you,” he said, gesturing to the porch. “Perhaps we could go back inside and talk for a minute?”
“No, we couldn’t,” she barked. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I have places I need to be. I have no time for conversation with strangers. Now, step aside, and hurry.”
She didn’t wait to see if he was going to comply with her request. She started to make her way around him.
Adam did not try to stop her. He shook his head in exasperation.
This woman wasn’t right for a position as a schoolteacher.
She didn’t have the temperament. Coming here had clearly been a waste of time, but at least he had found out quickly.
He would move on to the next name on his list of possibilities and forget all about Jennifer Foster.
He turned back toward Chestnut, meaning to leave.
And then a carriage pulled up in front of the house.
The woman froze. Her suitcase slipped from her fingers and thudded on the ground.
A man climbed out of the carriage. A moment later, Adam recognized him. He’d seen Nathan Foster around town plenty of times, though the two of them rarely had reason to speak to one another. He would have known that red face and portly figure anywhere.
Nathan Foster stared at the woman standing in the yard, his jaw grinding with anger.
“Rachel,” he snapped, “you have a world of explaining to do.”