Rancher's Deadly Risk

Cassie stood there looking lost and alone and upset, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to make her feel better. She’d have to ride out this storm or leave town. She’d already mentioned the possibility herself, a reminder that had left him feeling warned.

Knowing he was being a fool, but doing it anyway, he rose and went to gather her into his arms. The instant he drew her close, he realized he might have just made the biggest mistake of his life …

Dear Reader,

I’m sure most of us have been bullied at one time or another while we were in school, if not later in life, as well. Plenty of us probably remember some of it. I know I still remember a few incidents, especially the time a teacher bullied me. I didn’t want to go back to school.

The heroine of this story doesn’t realize that she carries scars from when she was bullied in school, and it takes the hero’s love to help her past them. What’s more, as a teacher now, she is again being bullied by someone hiding in the shadows and threatening her very life.

This is a deeply emotional story about caring, about community and about love. But it’s also a story of the darker side of human nature and how we triumph. For me it always comes down to love: how we love each other, both as couples and as community. Love is the best answer we have. Sometimes it’s the only answer.

Bullying can leave lifelong scars. And while this story is about love’s triumph, it also touches on an issue that we as a community need to deal with. Our kids should not be afraid to go to school.

Hugs,

Rachel

About the Author

RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve, and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times best-selling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

Rancher’s Deadly Risk

Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the kids everywhere who live in fear of bullies.

You are not alone.

Chapter 1

Cassie Greaves felt the winter nip in the Conard County air as she left her small rental house to head for school. The rising sun to the east cast a buttery glow over the world, and the trees that had fully turned a few weeks ago were now shedding their brilliant cloaks, leaving behind gray, reaching fingers. She scuffed her feet through the dry leaves and almost laughed from the joy of it.

For much of her teaching career, all seven years of it, she had taught in much warmer climes, places where there might be only two seasons, or at most three. Part of what had drawn her here was winter, the idea of being cold, of needing to bundle up, and cozy evenings with a cup of something hot as she graded papers or read a book.

Having grown up in the Northeast, she had found a growing desire to need extra blankets at night, to awake some morning and hear the world hushed under a fresh snowfall.

As romantic as her image was, however, she also knew there would be parts she wouldn’t exactly enjoy, but this morning she didn’t want to think about them.

She wanted to think about that invigorating nip, the possibility of rediscovering her Nordic skis and the school she was coming to enjoy so much. It was smaller than she was used to, only eight hundred students in the entire high school. And even with budget cutbacks, her classes were smaller. It was easier to get to know her students, and she was beginning to recognize most of the faces that walked the hallways.

Hallways. Another thing she liked. At her last few schools, there had been no hallways, only covered walkways, which meant moving from an air-conditioned classroom out into the heat, only to walk into another air-conditioned classroom. At times that setup had its charms, but she actually liked having interior hallways again.

She smiled and hummed to herself as she walked the four blocks to the high school. There she taught math for all four grades, which gave her days quite a bit of variety.

It had also taught her some lessons. A lot of her students had no interest in advancing to college. They were planning to take over their parents’ business or ranch and she had discovered a need to rewrite math problems in ways that seemed useful to them. Unlike some other places she had taught, many students here weren’t content to just do the work because it was required.

Plus, in perfect honesty, the students’ backgrounds encouraged her to find meaningful ways of phrasing problems because there was so much homogeneity in the things that concerned them. Her elementary algebra class didn’t look blankly at her when she asked them to calculate the storage space needed for a certain number of bales of hay. They went home, measured the bales—round or oblong, depending—and gave her answers based on a practical exercise. Now how cool was that?

Discovering the volume of a grain silo, working with board feet of lumber, sketching out plans for a shed, figuring out how many acres of pasture for a herd of a certain size—all those things enlivened them. Consequently she was discovering a new love for her subject herself.

Drawing in a deep breath of the chilly air, she decided this place was growing on her even more than she had hoped.

When she arrived on the campus, Lincoln Blair was standing outside. He was the football coach and science teacher, an absolute stud of a man who had so far remained reserved, even unapproachable, although everyone else seemed to like him a lot.

In her mind she had dubbed him “Studley Do-right” because he was appealing enough to make her constantly aware of him, sort of like an itch in her libido. He had dark hair, astonishingly bright blue eyes and there was something about him that always made her think he must have descended from a long line of Celtic warriors. Square-jawed, weathered a bit from sun and wind, with narrow hips he unconsciously canted in a way that made it impossible for a woman not to notice them.

She gathered from things the other teachers had said that he owned a ranch that had been in his family for generations, and he worked it as time allowed, which probably explained that weathered look. Regardless, while most of the teachers had certainly been welcoming enough, his air of reserve truly set him apart.

Not that she should probably blame him. She’d had enough experience with men who wanted nothing but a fling with her, and had concluded there must be something essentially wrong with her. On the other hand, she reminded herself that getting involved with a colleague was seldom wise, and in a small town like this, it might even be a wider problem if people noticed and started talking.

Nor was it as if he were the first man who had ever ignored her. Noticing him amounted to a recipe for grief, judging by her past experience.

He nodded as she approached and opened the door for her with a quiet good-morning, but didn’t follow her in. She guessed he had bus duty, the job of standing outside to make sure that no one used the space and time between getting off the bus and through the doors to make trouble.

She tried to shake away thoughts of Lincoln Blair from her mind as she passed other teachers with cheery greetings and made her way to her desk. Unlike other schools where she had taught, she had her own classroom, which also provided her with an opportunity to personalize things. It felt nice to have a space where she could hang up posters or set out cool objects for the students to explore a bit. As much as possible she tried to apply math to real life because it was part of real life, an important part. The applications were just a bit different and more focused here.

She prepared her desk quickly, then stepped into the hall to monitor arriving students. This school still had homerooms, a place where students went to have their attendance recorded and hear morning announcements, something she hadn’t seen since her own school days long ago. Then fifteen minutes later they moved on to their first classes.

In her last few schools, homeroom had been combined with the first class of the day. It might have cut down on movement, but inevitably it cut into the instructional hour one way or another.

Since it was Friday, her students were a little more restless and less focused than usual, their minds on the many things they had planned for the weekend. Or perhaps they were just thinking of escape into absolutely gorgeous weather.

Either way, she felt some fatigue by the time she was able to close her classroom for lunch. She didn’t have cafeteria or study hall duty that day, so the teachers’ lounge beckoned.

Bag lunch in hand, she entered the corridor flow as some students headed for the cafeteria and others to study hall.

The wing emptied swiftly and before she reached the end of the corridor she was alone. Or thought she was. As she turned a corner and passed the men’s bathroom, she heard a shout that made her pause.

“Stop it! Just leave me alone!”

Without even hesitating, afraid that waiting for a male teacher to arrive could allow something bad to happen, she elbowed the door open.

The five students inside didn’t even hear the door. The sight instantly disturbed her. She knew every school had its underside, but what she was seeing now horrified her.

One of her best math students, James Carney, was huddled in a corner on the floor, his arms protectively over his face. He was small for his years, and string-bean thin, and she’d already noticed he didn’t seem to have many friends, if any.

Four boys stood around him, taunting him with names like nerd, jerk, girlie, sissy … part of her was waiting to hear “fag,” but that epithet didn’t appear while she stood there taking in the scene.

She didn’t need a mental map to know what was going on. Before she could react, two of the boys spat on James and she could tell that wasn’t the first time.

Before the scene could get any uglier, she clapped her hands as loudly as she could and shouted, “Stop this now!”

Four startled faces turned her way. It took a little longer for James to lower his arms from his head.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “You shouldn’t treat anyone like this, not anyone. Ever. But this is a violation of school policy. You know what the penalty is. James, are you all right?”

The youth jumped to his feet and hurried for the door. “I’m fine,” he muttered as he rushed past her. “You’re making it worse.”

“Go to the nurse,” she called after him before turning to face the four others. As the full impact of what she had just seen began to hit, she could feel herself roiling with anger. For long seconds she simply stared at the four young men who had been taunting James. Keep it cool, she reminded herself. It was important to stay calm and reasonable.

“Bullying,” she said quietly, “is despicable. It shows you to be small men, not big ones. It isn’t tolerated by school policy and you know it. You’re coming to the principal with me.”

“Make us,” snarled one of them, then they all brushed past her, bumping her shoulder as they went, leaving her both livid and helpless. She couldn’t run out into the hall after them, nor could she physically stop them.

But there was something she could do. She picked up her bagged lunch, tossed it in the trash—she didn’t want to eat it after it had fallen to the bathroom floor—and headed for the principal’s office herself. None of this was going to be tolerated.

My God, James had looked as if he expected to be beaten … or as if he had been. She just wished she had recognized the other four boys by name. Apparently they were in Teasdale’s math classes. Gloria Teasdale was semire-tired, teaching only three classes a day. An elderly woman who wore too much perfume, she was sometimes the object of derogatory remarks from her students, but Cassie ignored the comments. Kids would talk about teachers outside the classroom, and she could see no point in stepping down on it. She was no martinet and she was equally certain some of her students had derogatory things to say about her. The nature of the beast, she thought with grim amusement.

But bullying was a whole different matter, damaging to the bullied student emotionally, if not physically, and most definitely against the school’s conduct policies.

She reached the office and asked Marian, the front desk receptionist and secretary, to call the nurse’s office and find out if James was okay. Then she joined the principal in his small office. He always ate lunch at his desk, eschewing both the teachers’ lounge and the cafeteria.

Sometimes she thought of him as barricaded away from all the possible disturbances in a high school. At other times she thought he just felt like a fish out of water, not sure of his welcome even in the faculty lounge. Or maybe he just thought people would be more comfortable if he wasn’t around. She didn’t have a good read on him yet.

His round face smiled as he greeted her. He was about fifty pounds overweight, and his lunch consisted of a few slices of lean chicken over a bed of fresh vegetables. He had confided that he was dieting without much success. She looked at that lunch and felt a pang of sympathy.

“Still starving?” she asked him.

“Unfortunately. The doc says I’ve lost two pounds, though, so I guess it’s working. Some days I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

“I can imagine.”

He leaned back, ignoring the dry salad and chicken in front of him, a meal that cried out for a little salad dressing or mayonnaise to help it go down. “Is something wrong? You look … disturbed.” He waved her to the seat in front of his desk.

She sat, trying to gather her thoughts, trying to maintain a calm she was far from feeling. “I am upset,” she admitted. “I saw an instance of bullying in the boys’ room. I stopped it, but when I tried to bring the bullies to you, they told me I couldn’t make them and they brushed past me. Les, you know bullying is a violation of the conduct code.”

“How bad was it?”

“They were spitting on him and calling him names. He was cowering on the floor in a corner as if he expected to be hit or kicked.”

He frowned. “That’s bad. That’s very bad. All of it. Who were they after?”

“James Carney.”

He shook his head. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Some people just seem to draw that kind of attention.”

“All it takes is being a little different.”

“And James is certainly that. Smarter than most, small. Did you know he skipped a grade last year? I don’t think that’s helped him any but his parents and a committee of teachers felt we couldn’t hold him back. Maybe we should have.”

“We shouldn’t have to,” she argued, getting a little hot. “That boy should be free to move ahead if he’s capable without four other boys attacking him for it.”

Les nodded slowly. “Can you identify the bullies?”

“By face, not by name. They must be in Mrs. Teasdale’s math classes.”

“If they’re still in math at all.” He sighed. “How would you prefer to handle it?”

“The rules call for suspension,” she reminded him. When he didn’t answer immediately, she started to feel both annoyed and nervous. Surely he wasn’t going to propose they simply ignore this?

Marian stuck her head in the door. “James Carney never went to the nurse.” Then she popped out again.

“So he must be all right,” Les remarked.

“That doesn’t make this all go away!”

Les lifted his brows and held up a hand. “I didn’t say that. I’m just relieved the Carney boy is okay.”

“Physically okay,” Cassie said almost sarcastically. “I’m sure I don’t need to educate you on the other effects of bullying.”

“Of course not.” He sounded almost sharp. “I’m as well-informed as you on the subject. That’s why it’s against our code of conduct.”

She tried to dial back her irritation. “I’m sorry. It just upset me, and then when they defied me that way, I got even more concerned. If they’re not going to listen to a teacher, how are we going to stop this? And what are we going to do about it?”

Les leaned forward, shoving his lunch to one side. He rested his forearms on his desk. “I don’t think suspensions would be prudent, not yet.”

“What?” She was horrified and still sickened by what she had seen. “We can’t just ignore this. And we can’t ignore the rules if we expect them to have any force.”

“Just hold on a minute and calm down a bit. I understand you’re upset and I understand why. You have every reason to be upset. But this isn’t a big-city school. I don’t favor zero tolerance for a very good reason. Kids will be kids… .”

She started to open her mouth but he waved her to silence.

“Just hear me out, Cassie. I’m not excusing what they did. It was wrong. No question. No argument. But we have to ask ourselves what will be the best way to handle this with the least amount of damage.”

It took her a moment and a deep breath, but finally she relaxed. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“We aren’t going to tolerate bullying. You and I agree on that. But we have to ask ourselves how much damage we might do with our response. You must have noticed by now that not many of our students go on to college. Some of that is because they have the family business waiting for them the day they graduate. Some is because folks simply can’t afford it. We have a handful who get scholarships and an equally small handful who can afford it. Most of our students who get any further schooling do it at the local community college.”

She nodded. All of this had been explained at the time she was hired.

“So we have to ask ourselves,” Les said patiently, “whether we want to do something that might make a student choose to drop out, or that might damage a student’s ability to get a college scholarship. We’ve got a couple, I’m sure you know, who are poised to get athletic scholarships. Suspension would take that away.”

It was then that she made a mental connection and knew who one of the bullies was. “One of them was our star basketball forward.”

Les lowered his head. “Cripes. Now you’re talking about the state championship and a boy’s entire future. He’s looking good to get a basketball scholarship. Recruiters have been here several times.”

“He should have thought of that before he started bullying James Carney.”

“I agree. But he’s still seventeen. You remember being that age? How many times did you think things through, especially when you were with a group of people your age? That’s what bothers me about zero tolerance. Why wreck any kid’s life if we can handle it another way?”

Cassie bit her lip. She wasn’t exactly a fan of zero tolerance herself, understanding that young people made mistakes almost as naturally as they breathed. “But this is a little different,” she argued. “This was no mistake. Four of them ganged up on one student. I don’t know how far they might have gone if I hadn’t barged in. And we have to consider James Carney and what this might do to him.”

“I am considering it,” Les said. “I want it stopped, but I don’t want it to result in additional bullying or anybody’s life being wrecked.”

“So what will you do?”

“You identify those students. I’ll call their parents and make it clear that if this happens again they will be suspended. In the meantime I’ll give them detention.”

Cassie felt sickened, yet she couldn’t rightly argue with what he proposed. He was right. They had to be careful not to inflame the situation, and take care that they didn’t cause students to drop out or lose scholarships, unless this continued.

“You’re not happy,” Les remarked. He poked at his lunch listlessly then ignored it again. “I understand. I’m not happy, either. We’ve always had some minor bullying—what school doesn’t? But I don’t think we’ve ever had an incident as bad as what you’re describing, at least not in my memory. If you’ve got a better solution, let me know. Just understand, there are no perfect solutions. If I bring the hammer down too hard, that could result in James being bullied worse. We’ve got to try to reason our way through this to cause the least damage to all five of those students.”

She said nothing, feeling her stomach sinking but unable to argue against his logic. “I hate bullying,” she said finally. “It damages the victim well past the incident, sometimes for life. What’s more, I hate the thuggish mentality of those who do it.”

“Then maybe we need to do something about the mentality. It’s not enough to just put a ban on it in the code. Maybe we need to use this as an instructional opportunity.”

She perked a little at that statement. “How so?”

“We need to educate our students, maybe their families. We need them to truly understand how bad this is.”

She nodded. “What those boys were doing could get them arrested.”

It seemed to her that Les blanched a bit. “Oh, let’s not go that far. Criminal records for assault? Battery, if it happened?”

“I don’t want to do that, either,” she agreed. “I’m just saying, if we can’t get through with an emotional appeal to a sense of fair play and what’s right, we could also list the criminal consequences. Bring it home. Maybe have a law enforcement officer tell them a few things.”

Les smiled. “I can see you already have ideas. So what I’d like is for you to get together with another teacher and come up with a plan for an assembly or two.”

Cassie’s mind immediately skipped ahead and was already summoning ideas for the assembly and maybe a long-term program. “Okay. Who do you suggest I work with?”

“Linc Blair. He’s the most popular teacher with the students and seems to carry a lot of moral authority with them.” Les gave a little laugh. “More than I do, certainly. Yes, I’ll explain the situation to Linc at the end of the day and see if he’s willing. In the meantime, try to get the bullies’ names for me. I want to spend some time on the phone with parents.”

He paused. “God, I hope this isn’t resulting from things that are happening to these boys at home.”

It could well be, Cassie thought as she left his office a few minutes later. Bullies were sometimes created.

Why did she feel as if she might be about to overturn a rock and discover some ugly things?

If there was any upside to this at all, she supposed it was that she would at last find out why Lincoln Blair avoided her as if she had the plague.

By close of school that day, she had the names of the four bullies. She had asked for the aid of other teachers, without explaining why she needed to know. List in hand, she headed for Les’s office and found he was already talking to Linc. He waved her in to join them and she took the second chair that faced Les’s desk.

“Cassie here can give you more detail,” Les said, “given that she’s the one who broke it up.”

She looked at Linc and noted the way those startling blue eyes of his met hers then swiftly looked away.

“I have the students’ names,” she said quickly, passing her list to Les.

He took it almost as if it might bite him, then muttered a word no teacher was allowed to use within the school. “Ben Hastings,” he said. “Damn, why did it have to be Ben?”

“He never struck me as the bullying type,” Linc remarked.

Cassie started to bristle. “I didn’t make up the names.”

Linc glanced her way again. “I didn’t say you did. I’m just surprised. As high a profile as he has because of his basketball skills, I would have thought that if he were a bully we’d have known long ago. That’s all I meant.”