Her Unforgettable Cowboy. Debra Clopton
six years, but it felt like twenty.
They were standing beneath the shade of the old oak tree, electricity humming between them. When the smile left Morgan’s eyes, Jolie sucked in a wobbly breath, forcing herself to focus on the job she’d been hired to do. “I’m curious about Sammy. Has he been here long?”
“Just a couple of weeks. He’s our newest rancher. He’s still having trouble emotionally, after his abandonment. It’s a tough situation.”
“He seems fearful.”
“He is, poor kid. He knows his dad has been gone from the picture for a long time. But his mother gave him up to the state and now he thinks his dad will find out and come for him. He’ll stretch the truth from here to Alaska, so you might want to tread lightly with everything he says until you give it a reality check.”
“He lies?” she asked, a little more frankly than she’d intended. But she needed to know the truth if she was going to help him.
Morgan grimaced. “Kinda. More like the boy who cried wolf.”
“The stories don’t ever seem to change, do they, Morgan? I just can’t imagine how these boys handle their families not wanting them. Or not caring enough to make loving homes for them.”
She’d been around kids like Sammy all the time growing up. Some handled the situation with anger, some with denial, but it was all about fear. She understood that on a personal level—three times this week she’d awakened in the middle of the night because of nightmares. She pushed the thoughts away, praying she was up for this job.
“Sammy’s a good example of how bad these kids have been hurt. They need people around them who will care for them and stick with them.” The hardness of Morgan’s tone matched the accusation in his eyes. “What are you doing here, Jolie? Why aren’t you taming rapids in some far-off place?”
“I...I’m—” She stumbled over her words, tongue-tied by his question. “I’m taking a leave from competition for a little while. I had a bad run in Virginia and I— It was bad.” She couldn’t bring herself to say that she’d almost died, that she was lucky to be standing there. “Anyway, your dad was kind enough to offer me this opportunity.”
“I heard about the accident and I’m real sorry about that, Jolie. I really am. I wish you a speedy recovery so you can get back out there doing what you love. But why come here after all this time? We dropped off your radar a long time ago.”
“This is my home. It has never been off my radar.” Jolie saw anger in Morgan’s eyes. Well, he had a right to it, and more than a right to point it straight at her. She’d just thought she was prepared for it.
She was wrong.
“Morgan,” Jolie said, almost as a whisper. “I’d hoped we could forget the past and move forward.”
Heart pounding, she reached across the space between them and placed her hand on his arm. It was just a touch, but the feeling of connecting with Morgan McDermott again after so much time rocked her straight to the core and suddenly she wasn’t so sure coming home had been the right thing to do, after all.
A jolt from a live wire couldn’t have burned Morgan more than the touch of Jolie’s hand. Shock waves coursed through him with a vengeance, his mouth went dry. There had been a time when he’d have done anything for her touch. He gulped hard and hardened his heart against a walk down memory lane.
He wasn’t some kid anymore, holding his heart in his hands. He was a thirty-two-year-old adult male with a good brain between his ears. Or at least he’d thought he had a good brain.
“I did forget the past. A long time ago,” he assured her, his skin burning where her hand still lay. He wondered if she felt the way his pulse had started galloping at her touch. They stared at each other as seconds slipped by.
“Yes, of course you would have,” Jolie said at last, her hand squeezing his arm slightly before it slipped away. “But I was hoping there would be no hard feelings.”
His jaw jerked in reflex.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said. “It really wasn’t personal.”
“You broke our engagement, then headed off in search of better things. I think I had a right to take that personal.”
“That is not fair.”
Morgan was suddenly not at all comfortable with where this was heading.
“I wasn’t searching for better,” she said. “I couldn’t stay. You know I would have regretted it for the rest of my life.”
“Well,” he drawled icily, “that makes me feel a whole heap better.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes shadowing. “Morgan, I’m so sorry for the way it ended that day. I’m sorry for letting us go so far. I never meant to hurt you. I never should have accepted the ring in the first place knowing my heart was torn.”
“On that we agree.” At least she hadn’t waited until the night before they were to walk down the aisle like Celia, the next woman he’d been fool enough to ask to marry him. Two in a row had made Morgan hang up any thoughts of ever popping the question again. Not that he ever should have started dating Celia in the first place.
“Look, Jolie, that was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore. Right now my concern is for those boys. They got hung out to dry by their parents and then their teacher left them for something better at the last minute. They don’t need another person leaving. They need someone they can count on to be here for them.”
Slapping a hand on her hip, fire flashed in her eyes. “I intend to honor my contract for the semester, and I’m going to do my best to help each of the boys any way that I can.”
Morgan met her gaze with fire of his own. “I don’t like your being here, but it doesn’t matter—you are. I’ll just have to hope and pray it all turns out okay.”
Turning away he strode back toward the schoolhouse, leaving Jolie standing beneath the old oak. He used the walk to rein in his temper so he could finish setting up the classroom. The last thing he needed was for the boys to pick up on the bad vibes between him and Jolie—and if he wasn’t careful, they would, before he even made it in the door.
How, he wanted to know as the schoolhouse got closer and his temper just got worse, was he ever going to make this work?
* * *
Infuriating man, Jolie thought, stalking after Morgan. “Stop right where you are, bucko,” she demanded, sounding as if she was calling him out to a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. He swung around at the entrance to the schoolhouse, clearly startled. She marched straight up to him.
“You might not have any faith in me.” And my faith in myself might be shaken to the core. “But while I’m here, I’ll give these kids everything I have to give. No holding back.”
For the first time since the accident Jolie felt a familiar strength ease through her, and she liked it. She’d had moments since nearly drowning when she’d felt as weak as a newborn, but she still counted herself a strong woman. She prayed that throwing herself into helping the boys of Sunrise Ranch would be a win-win situation for all of them.
“Key words, Jolie—while you are here.”
“It doesn’t matter to you if I can do a good job, does it, Morgan? This is personal on your part.”
“You bet it’s personal. These boys are my personal responsibility.”
Stung by his words and breathless with fury, she glared up at him, trying to ignore the fact that the man smelled of pine and leather. His scent played havoc with her senses. Her eyes, traitors that they were, slid down to rest on his lips. She inhaled, but all the air in the world seemed to have gone missing.
Focus, Jolie. Focus.
“Think the worst of me, Morgan