“You’re very good at what you do. I certainly won’t deny that.”

“What I do?” Dalton asked.

“The whole seduction bit. The oh-so-casual touches, those sexy, intimate smiles. Stepping closer and closer until I can’t focus on anything but you. I imagine most women probably melt in a big puddle at your feet.”

The cynicism in her voice smarted. “But not you?”

“I’m sorry if that stings your pride but I’m just not interested,” Jenny answered. “I believe I told you that.”

“So you did,” Dalton agreed. “But are you so sure about that, Ms. Boyer?”

Against the howl of all his instincts, he stepped closer again. The hunger inside him threatened whatever remained of his self-control and his sanity.

“Ye-es,” Jenny said, though that single word came out breathy, hushed.

“I think we know that’s not precisely true,” he murmured, then leaned down slowly….

Dalton’s Undoing
RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RAEANNE THAYNE

lives in a graceful old Victorian nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honors, including several readers’ choice awards and a RITA® Award nomination by the Romance Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com or at P.O. Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341.

To Jared, for twenty wonderful years filled with joy and laughter and midnight trips to the store when I run out of printer ink. I love you dearly!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Some little punk was stealing his car.

Seth Dalton stood on the sidewalk in front of his mother’s house, the puppy leashes in his hand forgotten, and watched three years of sweat, passion and hard work take off down the road with a flash of tail lights and the squeal of rubber.

Son of a bitch.

He stood looking after it for maybe fifteen seconds, trying to comprehend how anybody in Podunk Pine Gulch would have the stones to steal his 1969 Matador red GTO convertible.

Who in town could possibly be stupid enough to dream he could get more than a block or two without somebody sitting up and taking notice that Seth wasn’t the one behind the wheel and raising the alarm?

Just how far did the bastard think he would get? Not very, if Seth had anything to say about it. He’d worked too hard on his baby to let some sleazebag drive her away.

“Come on, kids. Fun’s over.” He jerked the leashes, grateful the dogs weren’t in midpee, and dragged the two brindle Australian herder pups up the sidewalk and back into the house.

Inside, the members of his family were crowded around his mother’s dining-room table playing one of their cutthroat games of Risk.

Looked like Jake and Maggie were kicking butt. No surprise there, with his middle brother’s conniving brain and his wife’s military experience. The Dalton clan was in its usual teams, Jake and Maggie against his mother and stepfather, with his oldest brother, Wade, and wife, Caroline, making up the third team.

That was the very reason he’d volunteered to take the puppies out for their business in the first place. It was a little lonely being the solitary player on his side of the table. Usually he teamed up with Natalie—but it was a little disheartening to find his nine-year-old niece made a more cutthroat general than he. She was in the family room watching a video with her brothers, anyway.

The only one who looked up from strategizing was his mother.

“Back so soon? That was fast!” Marjorie crooned the words, not to him but to the puppies—or her half of the dynamic duo anyway. She picked up the birthday gift he’d given her and nuzzled the little male pup.

“You’re so good. Aren’t you so good? Yes, you are. Come give Mommy a birthday kiss.”

“Don’t have time, sorry,” Seth said drily.

He ignored the face she made at him and reached for the keys to Wade’s pickup from the breakfast bar.

“I’m taking your truck,” he called on his way out the door.

Wade looked up, a frown of concentration on his tough features. “You’re what?”

He paused at the door. “Don’t have time to explain, but I need your truck. I’ll be back. Mom, keep an eye on Lucy for me.”

“I just washed that truck,” his brother growled. “Don’t bring it back all muddy and skanky.”

He wasn’t even going to dignify that with a response, he decided, as he headed down the stairs. He didn’t have the time, even if he could have come up with a sharp response.

Wade’s truck rumbled to life, smooth and well-tuned like everything in Seth’s oldest brother’s life. He threw it in gear and roared off in the direction the punk had taken his car.

If he were stealing a car, which road would he take? Pine Gulch didn’t offer a lot of escape routes. Turning south would lead him through the houses and small business district of Pine Gulch. To the east was the rugged western slope of the Teton Mountains, which left him north and west.

He took a chance and opted to head north, where the quiet road stretched past ranches and farms with little traffic to notice someone in a red muscle car.

He ought to just call the police and report the theft. Chasing after a car thief on his own like this was probably crazy, but he wasn’t in the mood to be sensible, not with thirty thousand dollars’ worth of sheer horsepower disappearing before his eyes.

He pushed Wade’s truck to sixty-five, keeping his eye out in the gathering twilight for any sign of another vehicle.

His efforts were rewarded just a moment later when he followed the curve of the road past Sam Purdy’s pond and saw a flash of red up ahead.

His brother’s one-ton pickup rumbled as he poured on the juice and accelerated to catch the little bugger.

With its 400-cubic-inch V8 and the three hundred and fifty horses straining under the hood, the GTO could go a hundred and thirty without breaking a sweat. Oddly enough, whoever had boosted it wasn’t pushing her harder than maybe forty.

His baby puttered along fifteen miles below the speed limit and Seth had no problem catching up with her, wondering as he did if there was some kind of roving gang of senior-citizen car thieves on the loose he hadn’t heard about.

He kept a respectable two-car length between them as the road twisted again. He knew this road and knew that just ahead was a straightaway that ran a couple of miles past farmland with no houses.

He couldn’t see any oncoming traffic so he pulled into the other lane as if to pass and drew up alongside his baby, intent on getting a look at the thief.

He was a punk, nothing more. The kid behind the wheel was skinny, dark-haired, maybe fifteen, sixteen. He looked over at the big rumbling pickup beside him and he looked scared to death, eyes huge and wild in a narrow face.

Good. He should be, the little dickhead. Seth rolled the window down, wishing he could reach across, pluck the kid out of the car and wring his scrawny little neck.

“Pull over,” he shouted through the window, even though he knew the kid wouldn’t be able to hear him.

He must have looked like the Grim Reaper, Freddy Kruger and the guy from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre all rolled up into one, he realized later, and he should have predicted what happened next. If he’d been thinking straight, he would have handled the whole thing differently and saved himself a hell of a lot of trouble.

Even if the car thief couldn’t hear Seth’s words, obviously the message got through loud and clear. The kid sent him another wild, scared look and yanked the wheel to the right.

Seth growled out a raw epithet at the hideous sound of metal grinding against metal as the GTO scraped a mile marker post on the right. In reaction, the kid panicked and swerved too hard to the left and Seth groaned as his baby nosedived across the road and landed in an irrigation ditch.

At least it was blessedly empty this time of year.

The sun was just a sliver above the horizon and the November air was cold as Seth hurriedly parked the pickup and rushed to his car to make sure the kid was okay.

He jerked open the door and was petty enough for just a moment to enjoy the way the kid cringed against the seat like he thought Seth was ready to break his neck with his bare hands.

He felt like it, he had to admit. He had no doubt the GTO’s paint was scraped all to hell from the run-in with the mile marker post and the left fender looked to be crumpled where she’d hit a concrete gate structure in the ditch.

He held on to his anger while he checked the thief for any sign of injury.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. I…think so.” The boy’s voice shook a little but he warily took Seth’s hand and climbed out of the car.

Seth revised downward his estimate of the boy’s age, figuring him to be no older than thirteen or fourteen. Just old enough to start shaving more than once a month, by the look of it.

He had choppy dark hair worn longer than Hank Dalton would ever have let his sons get away with and he was dressed in jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt about four sizes too big with some logo of a wild-looking music group Seth didn’t recognize.

The kid seemed familiar but Seth couldn’t immediately place him—odd, since he knew just about every kid in the small community. Maybe he was the son of one of the dozen or so Hollywood types buying up good grazing land for their faux ranches. They tended to stay away from the general population, maybe afraid the down-home friendliness and family-centered values would rub off.

“My mom is gonna kill me,” the kid moaned, burying his head in his hands.

“She can stand in line,” Seth growled. “You have any idea how much work I’ve put into this car?”

The kid dropped his hands. Though he still looked terrified, he managed to cover it with a thin veneer of bravado. “You’ll be sorry if you mess with me. My grandpa’s a lawyer and he’ll fry your ass if you try to lay a single hand on me.”

Seth couldn’t help a short, appreciative laugh even as the pieces clicked into place and he registered who the kid must be and why he had looked familiar.

With a grandfather who was a lawyer, he had to be the son of the new elementary school principal. Boylan. Boyer. Something like that.

He didn’t exactly hang around with the elementary-school crowd but Natalie had pointed out her new principal and the woman’s two kids one night shortly after school started when he’d taken his niece and nephews out to Stoney’s, the pizza place in town.

His grandfather would be Jason Chambers, an attorney who had retired to Pine Gulch for the fishing five or six years back. His daughter had moved out to join him with her kids—no husband that Seth had heard about—when the principal position opened up at the elementary school.

“That lawyer in the family will probably come in handy, kid,” he said now.

The punk groaned and his head sagged into his hands once more. “I am so dead.”

He wasn’t quite sure why but Seth was surprised to feel a few little pangs of sympathy for the kid. He remembered all too well the purgatory of this age. Hormones firing, emotions jerking around wildly. Too much juice and nothing to do with it.

“Am I going to jail?”

“You boosted a car. That’s a pretty serious crime. And you’re a lousy driver, which is worse, in my book.”

“I wasn’t going to take her far. You’ve got to believe me. Just to the reservoir and back, I swear. That’s all. When I saw the keys inside, I couldn’t resist.”

Damn. Had he really left the keys in the ignition? He looked inside and, sure enough, there they were, dangling from the steering column.

How had that happened? He remembered pulling up to his mother’s house for her birthday dinner, then rushing out to take care of business when Lucy started to squat on the floor mats. Maybe in all the confusion, he had been in such a hurry to find a patch of grass before his puppy busted her bladder that he’d forgotten his keys.

What kind of idiot left his keys in a ride like this, just begging for the first testosterone-crazed teenager to lift her?

Him. He mentally groaned, grateful at least that the boy hadn’t been hurt by their combined stupidity.

“What’s your name, kid?”

The boy clamped his teeth together and Seth sighed. “You might as well tell me. I know your last name is Boyer and Jason Chambers is your grandpa. I’ll figure out the rest.”

“Cole,” he muttered after a long pause.

“Come on, Cole. I’ll give you a lift to your grandpa’s house, then I’ll come back and pull her out with one of my brothers.”

“I can walk.” He hunched his shoulders and shoved his hands in the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt.

“You think I’m going to leave you and your sticky fingers running free out here? What if you happen to find another idiot who’s left his keys in his ride? Get in.”

Though Cole still looked belligerent, he climbed into the passenger side of the pickup.

Seth had just started to walk around the truck to get in the driver’s side when he saw flashing lights behind him.

Instead of driving past, the sheriff’s deputy slowed and pulled up behind the GTO. Seth glanced at the boy and saw he’d turned deathly white and his breathing was coming fast enough Seth worried about him hyperventilating.

“Relax, kid,” he muttered.

“I am relaxed.” He lifted his chin and tried for a cool look that came out looking more like a constipated rabbit.

Seth sighed and closed his door again as he watched the deputy climb out of the vehicle. Before he even saw her face, he knew by the curvy shape that the officer had to be Polly Jardine, the only female deputy in the small sheriff’s department.

She dimpled at him, looking not much different than she had in high school—cute and perky and worlds away from his idea of an officer of the law. Though she still looked like she should be shaking her pom-poms at a Friday night football game, he knew she was a tough and dedicated cop.

He imagined she inspired more than a few naughty fantasies around town involving those handcuffs dangling from her belt. But since her husband was linebacker-huge and also on the sheriff’s department—and they were crazy about each other—those fantasies would only ever be that.

“Hey Seth. I thought that was your car. Man! What happened? You take the turn a little too fast?”

His gaze shifted quickly to the boy inside the truck then quickly back to Polly, hoping she hadn’t noticed. He found himself strangely reluctant to throw Cole Boyer into the system.

“Something like that,” he murmured.

She followed his gaze to the boy and speculation suddenly narrowed her eyes. “You sure that’s the whole story?”

He leaned a hip against the truck, tilted his head and gave her a slow smile. “Would I lie to an officer of the law, darlin’?”

“Six ways from Sunday, darlin’.” Though her words were tart, she smiled in a way that told him she remembered with fondness the few times they’d fooled around under the bleachers before Mitch Jardine moved into town and she had eyes for no one else. “But it’s your car. If that’s the way you want to play this, I won’t argue with you.”

“Thanks, Pol. I owe you.”

“That’s the new principal’s kid, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“We’ve had a few run-ins with him in the few months they’ve been in town,” she said. “Nothing big, breaking curfew, that kind of thing. You sure letting him off is the right thing to do for him? Today a joyride, tomorrow a bank robbery.”

He didn’t know anything except he couldn’t bring himself to turn him in.

“For now.”

“Let me know if you change your mind. I’m supposed to file an accident report but I’ll just pretend I didn’t see anything.”

He nodded and waved goodbye then climbed into the truck. Cole Boyer watched him, his green eyes wary. “Am I going to jail?”

“No. Not today, anyway.”

“Friggin’ A!”

“Don’t be so quick with the celebration there,” he warned. “A week or two in juvie is probably going to look pretty damn good by the time your mother and grandfather get through with you. And that doesn’t even take into account what you’ll have to do to even the score with me.”

She was late. As usual.

In one motion, Jenny Boyer shoved on slingbacks and shrugged into her favorite brocade jacket.

“Listen to Grandpa while I’m gone, okay?” she said, head tilted while she thrust a pair of conservative gold hoops into her ears.

“I always do.” Morgan, her nine-year-old, going on fifty, sniffed just like a society matron finding something undesirable in her tea. “Cole is the one who doesn’t like authority figures.”

Didn’t she just know it? Jenny sighed. “Well, make sure he listens to Grandpa, too.”

Morgan folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. “I’ll try, but I don’t think he’ll pay attention to either me or Grandpa.”

Probably not, she conceded. Nobody seemed to be able to get through to Cole. She’d thought moving to Idaho to live with her father would help stabilize her son, at least get him away from the undesirable elements in Seattle who were leading him into all kinds of trouble.

She had hoped his grandfather would give the boy the male role model he had lost with his own father’s desertion. So much for that. Though Jason tried, Cole was so angry and bitter at the world—more furious with her now for uprooting him from his friends and moving him to this backwater than he was with his father for moving to another continent.

She glanced at her watch and groaned. The school board meeting started in ten minutes and she was scheduled to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining her efforts to raise the elementary school’s performance on standardized testing. This was her first big meeting with the school board and she couldn’t afford to blow it.

The therapist she’d gone to after the divorce suggested Jenny’s chronic tardiness indicated some form of passive aggression, her way of governing a life that often felt beyond her control.

Jenny just figured she was too busy chasing after her hundreds of constantly spinning plates.

“I’ve got to run, baby. I’ll be home before you go to sleep, I promise.” She kissed her on the forehead, wondering as she headed out of her room if she had time to hurry down to the basement to say goodbye to Cole. No, she decided. Besides her time crunch, any conversation between them these days ended in a fight and she wasn’t sure she was up for another one tonight.

“Bye, Dad,” she called down the hall as she grabbed her laptop case and her purse. “Thanks for watching them!”

“Don’t worry about a thing.” Jason Chambers appeared in the doorway, wearing his favorite Ducks Unlimited sweater and jeans that made him look far younger than his sixty-five years. “Give ’em hell.”

She mustered a distracted smile, grateful all over again that they’d been able to move past their complicated, stiff relationship of the past and find some measure of peace when she moved to Pine Gulch.

Juggling her bags and her keys, she yanked open the door and rushed out, then gave a shriek when she collided with a solid, warm male.

With a little gasp, Jenny righted herself, registering the muscles in that hard frame that seemed as immovable as the Tetons. “I’m sorry! I didn’t see you.”

She knew who he was, of course. What woman in Pine Gulch didn’t? With that slow, sexy smile and those brilliant blue eyes that seemed to see right into a woman’s psyche to all her deepest desires, Seth Dalton was a difficult man to overlook.

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.

“I’ll know better after I tow the car out to the ranch and take a look at her but from my initial look, I’d estimate there was about fix or six hundred dollars’ damage,” he was saying. “The way I figure it, if he worked for me a couple afternoons a week after school and Saturday mornings, we should be clear in a few months. Is that okay with you?”

She looked at Dalton and then at Cole, his arms still crossed belligerently across his chest, as if everyone else in the room was responsible for his troubles but himself.

He disdained everything about Idaho and would probably consider being forced to work on a ranch every bit as much punishment as going to juvenile detention, she thought.

“Yes. That’s more than fair. Wouldn’t you agree, Cole?”

Her son glared at both of them—and while Jenny felt her own temper kindle in automatic response, Seth met his look with cool challenge and Cole quickly dropped his gaze.

“Whatever,” he muttered.

“Thank you,” Jenny said again, walking with him to the door. “As tomorrow is Saturday, I’ll drive him out to the Cold Creek in the morning. What time?”

“How does eight work for you?”

“We’ll be there. I’m very sorry again about this. I can’t imagine what he was thinking.”

His smile was slow and wide and made her insides feel as if she’d just done somersaults down a steep, grassy hill.

“He’s a teenage boy, so I’d guess he probably wasn’t thinking at all. See you in the morning.”

Jenny nodded, wondering why that prospect filled her with an odd mix of trepidation and anticipation.

Chapter Two

“This is totally lame,” her son muttered the next morning. “Why do I have to give up a whole Saturday?”

Jenny sighed and cast Cole an admonishing glance across the width of her little Toyota SUV. “You prefer the alternative? I can call Mr. Dalton right now and tell him to go ahead and file charges if that’s what you’d rather see happen here.”

Cole sliced her a glare that told her quite plainly he considered her totally lame, too, but he said nothing.

“I don’t think it’s fair, either,” Morgan piped up from the backseat. “Why does Cole always get to do the fun stuff? I want to help with the horses, too. Natalie says the Cold Creek horses are the prettiest, smartest horses anywhere. They’ve won all kinds of rodeo awards and they sell for tons of money. She said her uncle Seth knows more about horses than anybody else in the whole wide world.”

“Wow. The whole wide world?” Sarcasm dripped from Cole’s voice.

Morgan either didn’t pick up on it or decided to ignore it. Judging from past experience, Jenny was willing to bet on the latter. Her daughter tended to ignore anything that didn’t fit into her vision of the way the world ought to operate.

Even during her frequent hospital stays after bad asthma attacks, she always managed to focus on some silver lining, like a new friend or a particularly kind nurse.

“Yep,” she said eagerly now, with as much pride in Seth Dalton as she might have had if he were her uncle instead of her best friend’s. “People bring their horses to the Cold Creek from all over the place for him to train because he’s so good.”

“If he knows more than anyone else in the world, why is he stuck here in Buttlick, Idaho?”

Morgan’s enthusiasm faded into a frown. “Just because you don’t like it here, you don’t have to call it mean words.”

“I thought that was the name,” Cole said with a sneer. “Right next to Hairy Armpitville and across the holler from Cow’s Rectum.”

“That’s enough.” Jenny’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she felt familiar stress weigh like a half-ton hay bale on her shoulders. She wasn’t at all sure she was going to survive her son’s adolescence.

“I hope you treat Mr. Dalton with more respect than you show me or your sister.”

“How can I not, since apparently the man knows more about horses than anybody in the whole wide world?” Cole muttered.

Who was this angry stranger in her son’s body? she wondered. Whatever happened to her sweet little man who used to love cuddling up with her at bedtime for stories and hugs? Who used to let her blow raspberries on his neck and would run to her classroom after school bubbling over with news of his day?

That sweet boy had been slipping away from her since the year he turned eleven, when Richard had moved out. Through the three ugly years since, he’d pulled deeper and deeper into himself, until now he only emerged on rare occasions.

This obviously wasn’t going to be one of them.

Somehow Cole had come to blame her for the separation and divorce. She wasn’t sure how or why she had come to bear that burden but the unfairness of it made her want to scream.

She, at least, had been faithful to her marriage vows. Though she hadn’t been perfect by any means and had long ago accepted her share of responsibility for the breakup of her marriage, in her heart she knew she had tried to be a good wife.

She had supported Richard through his last years of medical school, residency, internship. She had scrimped and saved throughout their twelve-year marriage to help pay off his student loans, had run the household virtually alone during that time as he worked to establish his career, had tried time and again to bridge the increasing chasm between them as he focused on his practice to the complete exclusion of his family.

She had tried. Not perfectly, she would admit, but she had wanted her marriage to work.

Richard had had other ideas, though. He went to Paris for a conference and met his Giselle and decided family and vows and twelve years of marriage didn’t stack up well against a twenty-year-old Frenchwoman with a tight body and pouty lips.

Jenny had long ago come to terms with Richard Boyer’s betrayal of her. But she would never forgive him for what his complete abandonment of his family had done to his children. Morgan had stopped crying herself to sleep some time ago and seemed to be adjusting, but Cole carried so much anger inside him he seethed with it.

Lucky her, she seemed to be the only outlet for his rage.

She tried to remember what the therapist she’d seen in Seattle had told her, that Cole only lashed out at her because she was a safe target. Her son knew she wouldn’t abandon him like his father, so he focused all the force of his rage toward her.

She still wasn’t sure she completely bought into that explanation. Even if she did, she wasn’t sure it would make his rebelliousness and unhappiness any more palatable.

With each mile marker, he seemed to sink further into gloom on the seat beside her.

A large timber arch across a gravel side road proudly bore the name of the Cold Creek Land & Cattle Company in cast-iron letters. She slowed the SUV and turned in.

“It won’t be so bad,” she said, fighting the completely juvenile urge to cross her fingers. “Who knows? You might even enjoy it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Cleaning up horse crap? Right. Can’t wait.”

She sighed, wondering if Seth Dalton had any clue what joy was in store for him today.

The ranch house was shielded from the main road by a long row of trees, which made the first sight of it all the more dramatic. It was perfect for the landscape here, a bold, impressive structure of rock and logs, with the massive peaks of the Tetons as a backdrop.

She’d always considered November a particularly lonely, unattractive month, without October’s swirling colors or December’s sparkling anticipation. In November, the trees were bleak and bare and everything seemed frost-dead and barren.

The Cold Creek seemed to be an exception. Oh, the gardens out front had been cut down, the beds prepared for winter, but the long rows of weathered fence line and the sheer impressiveness of the house and outbuildings gave a stark beauty to the scene.

Not sure quite where to go to find Seth Dalton, she slowed as she reached the house and then stopped altogether when she saw a figure emerge from an immense barn, carrying a bale of hay by the baling twine.

It wasn’t Seth, she realized, but his brother Wade, Natalie’s father.

The oldest Dalton brother had two children in her school—Natalie and her younger brother, Tanner. Natalie was a dear, though a little bossy, but Tanner had been in her office on more than one occasion for some mischief or other. He wasn’t malicious, just highly energetic.

The few times she had met with Wade Dalton and his wife, Caroline, at various school functions and when having discussions about Tanner’s behavior, she’d been struck by the deep vein of happiness she sensed running through the family.

She didn’t like to admit she felt envy and regret when she saw two people so obviously in love.

Wade caught sight of them now and smiled, dropping the bale and tipping his hat in a way she still hadn’t become accustomed to here in cowboy country.

He didn’t look at all surprised to see them as he crossed the yard to her SUV. Seth must have told him the whole story about Cole stealing his brother’s car. What must he think of her and her delinquent son? she wondered, her face warming.

He only smiled in welcome. “Ms. Boyer. Kids,” he said in that slow drawl she’d noticed before. “Welcome to the Cold Creek.”

She couldn’t help but smile back. “Thank you. We were supposed to be meeting your brother Seth this morning.”

“Right. He mentioned your boy would be coming by to help him. He’s up at the horse barn. Just follow the gravel road there another half mile or so and you can’t miss it.”

“Thank you,” she said, wondering how big the ranch must be if the horse barn was a half mile from the main ranch house. The road took them up a slight grade, through a heavy stand of spruce and pines and aspen and then the view opened up and she caught sight of the horse operation.

Two dozen horses grazed in the vast pasture, their coats gleaming in the cool morning sunlight.

Barn seemed a vast understatement for the imposing white-painted structure that dominated the view. It was massive, at least twice as large as the barn they had passed closer to the ranch house, and more horses were in individual corrals off it.

As she pulled up and parked, she caught sight of a small two-story log home behind it. Situated to face the Tetons, the house had one steep gable with a balcony protruding from a window in the center and a wide porch looking out over the view.

She wasn’t sure how she knew—maybe the tiny saplings out front that looked like they hadn’t been there long—but the house looked new. Everything did, she thought. From the corrals to the vast gleaming barn to the pickup truck parked outside, everything gleamed with prosperity.

She had barely turned off the engine when Seth Dalton walked out of the barn and she had to catch her breath at the picture he made. He was wearing a worn denim jacket and a black cowboy hat. As he moved with that unconscious grace she’d noticed the night before, she saw he also wore figure-hugging jeans that suddenly made her feel jittery and weak-kneed.

The man was entirely too good-looking. She wasn’t sure why that observation made her so irritable, but she found herself fighting the urge to shut the SUV door with a little more force than necessary, especially when he aimed that killer grin in her direction.

“Morning. It’s a gorgeous one, isn’t it?”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. Clouds hung low over the Tetons and the cold wind felt heavy with the promise of snow.

“If you say so.”

He laughed, a low, throaty sound that made her insides flutter, then he turned his attention to Cole, who had climbed out the other side of the vehicle to slouch against the door.

“You ready to work?”

Cole glowered at his benefactor, much to Jenny’s chagrin. “Do I have a choice?”

In answer, Dalton just gave him a long, slow look and Jenny was amazed to watch Cole be the first to back down, shifting his gaze to the work boots he’d borrowed from his grandfather.

Before she could say anything, Seth’s attention shifted to Morgan, who had climbed out of the backseat to join them.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Morgan Jeanette Boyer.” She spoke with formal precision and held out her hand exactly like a nine-year-old princess greeting her favorite courtier.

A muscle twitched in Seth’s cheek but he hid any sign of amusement as he took her hand and shook it. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Boyer. I’m Seth Dalton.”

Morgan smiled. “I know. You’re my friend Natalie’s uncle. She says you have more girlfriends than Colin Farrell.”

“Morgan!” Jenny exclaimed hotly, her cheeks fiery.

“What?” her daughter asked, all innocence.

Seth grinned, though Jenny thought she saw a hint of embarrassment behind it.

“Are all those horses your very own?” Morgan asked.

“Actually, most of them aren’t. I have six or seven of my own but the rest I guess you could say I share with my family. Plus I’m training a few for other people.”

He studied the avid interest in her eyes. “I don’t suppose you’d want to have a look around, would you?”

Morgan gave a little jump of excitement. “Yeah! Can I, Mom?”

How could she say no? “I suppose. As long as you’re sure we won’t be in the way.”

“Not at all. I have to show Cole around, anyway. No reason you two can’t tag along.”

They made a peculiar tour group, she thought as Seth led them inside the barn. It was more arena than stable, she realized. Though stalls ran around the perimeter, most of the space was taken up by a vast, open dirt floor. Handy for year-round training during the Idaho winters, she thought.

As he pointed out various features of the facility, Cole slouched along behind, Morgan asked a million questions and Jenny mainly focused on trying to keep her gaze away from Seth Dalton, difficult though it was.

“Everything looks so new,” Jenny commented while Morgan was busy patting a horse and Cole slumped against the fence ringing the arena, looking as though he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet.

“The Cold Creek has been here for five generations, but the horse operation is pretty new. My brother and I decided a few years ago to diversify. We’ve always raised and trained our own horses on a limited scale and only for ourselves. We decided a few years ago to expand that part of our operations and try the open market.”

“How has it been going?”

“I’ve got more work than I can handle right now.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Better than I ever dreamed.” His smile was slow and sexy and seemed to suck all the oxygen molecules from the vast structure.

She didn’t realize she was staring at it for several seconds, then she quickly shifted her gaze away from his mouth to find him watching her, an odd, glittery look in his blue eyes.

“What’s that room?” Morgan asked, shattering the sudden painfully awkward silence.

Seth shifted his attention to her. “That’s my office. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He opened the door to a small room several degrees warmer than the rest of the barn. When he opened the door, an oddly colored puppy blinked at them then jumped up from a blanket on the floor and started yipping a frantic greeting.

“You’re finally waking up, sleepyhead?” Seth smiled at the pup. “Come and meet our company.”

The puppy sniffed all their shoes in turn and made it as far as Morgan before the girl scooped him up and hugged him tightly. “He’s so cute! What’s his name?”

“He’s a she and her name is Lucy.”

“Oh, you are a pretty girl. Yes you are,” Morgan cooed, rubbing noses with the puppy. Jenny felt a pang. Her daughter adored animals of all shapes and sizes and used to constantly beg for a dog or cat of her own, until her pulmonologist in Seattle recommended against it.

“What kind of dog is she?” Cole asked, his first words since they’d arrived at the ranch.

“Australian shepherd. I bought her and her brother at a horse auction in Boise last month. I only meant to buy one for a birthday present for my mother but I couldn’t resist Lucy.”

“You have sheep, too?” Morgan asked.

“Uh, no.” He looked a little embarrassed. “But they work cattle, too, and I figured she can help me when I’m training a horse for cutting.”

“Cutting what?” Morgan asked.

“Cutting cattle. That’s a term for picking an individual cow or calf out of a herd. A well-trained cutting horse will do all the work for a cowboy. He just has to point out which cow he wants and the horse will separate him out of the rest of the cows.”

“Wow! Can your horses do that?”

Instead of being put off my Morgan’s relentless questions, Seth seemed charmed by her daughter. “Some of them,” he said. “Sometime when you come out I’ll give you a demonstration.”

“Cool!”

He grinned at Morgan’s enthusiasm and Jenny could swear she felt her blasted knees wobble. Oh, the man was dangerous. Entirely too sexy for his own good. She had to get out of there before she dissolved into a brainless puddle of hormones.

“Morgan, you and I had better go. Cole and Mr. Dalton have work to do.”

She was pleasantly surprised when Morgan didn’t kick up a fuss but followed her out of the barn into the cool November sunshine. Only as they approached the SUV did Jenny pick up on the reason for her daughter’s unusual docility.

In just a few seconds, Morgan had turned pale, her breathing wheezy and labored.

She should have expected it from the combination of animal dander, hay and excitement, but the swiftness of the asthma flare-up took her by surprise.

Still, Jenny had learned from grim experience never to go anywhere unprepared. She yanked the door open and lunged for her purse on the floor by the driver’s seat. Inside was Morgan’s spare inhaler and she quickly, efficiently puffed the medicine into the chamber and handed it to Morgan, then set her on the passenger seat while she drew the medicine into her lungs.

Morgan had that familiar panicky look in her eyes and Jenny spoke softly to calm her, the same nonsense words she always used.

She forgot all about Seth Dalton until he leaned past her into the SUV, big and disconcertingly masculine.

“That’s it, honey,” Seth said, keeping his own voice low and soothing. “Concentrate on the breathing and all the good air going into your lungs. You’re doing great.”

After a moment, the rescue medication did its work and the color started to return to her features. The panic in her eyes slowly gave way to the beginnings of relief and Jenny’s heart twisted with pain for her child’s trials and the courage Morgan wielded against them.

“Better?” Seth asked after a moment.

The girl nodded and Seth was grateful to see the flare-up seemed to be under control. “I’d tell you to go on back into the barn where it’s warmer,” he said to Jenny, “but I suspect the hay or the puppy triggered the attack, didn’t they?”

Her eyes widened as if surprised he knew anything about asthma. He didn’t tell her he could have written the damn book on it.

“That’s what I thought,” Jenny said. She was starting to lose her tight, in-control look, he saw, and now just looked like a worried mother. “I should have realized they might.”

“Why don’t we take her into the house over there for a minute until she feels better? This cold can’t be the greatest for her lungs.”

She looked as if she wanted to argue, but Morgan coughed just then and her mother nodded. “That’s probably a good idea.”

Seth scooped the girl into his arms easily, and headed for the house with Jenny and Cole following behind him. Morgan still breathed shallowly, her little chest rising and falling quickly as she tried to ease the horrible breathlessness he remembered all too well.

“I hate having asthma,” she whispered, her voice far too bitter for a little girl.

He recognized the bitterness, too. He knew just what it felt like to be ten and trapped with a body that didn’t work like he wanted it to. He had wanted to be a junior buckaroo rodeo champion, wanted to climb the Tetons by the time he was twelve, wanted to be the star pitcher on the Little League baseball team. Instead, he’d been small and weak and spent far too much time breathing into a lousy tube.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” he answered. “The worst is the one time you forget to take your inhaler somewhere and of course you suddenly you get hit by a flare-up.”

She blinked at him and he was struck by how sweet it was to have a child look at him with such trust. “You have it, too?”

He nodded. “I don’t have attacks very often now, maybe once or twice a year and they’re usually pretty mild. When I was your age, though, it was a different story.”

He set her down on his leather sofa and grabbed a blanket for her.

She couldn’t seem to get over the fact that he knew what she was going through. “But you’re big! You ride horses and everything.”

“You can ride horses, too. You just have to watch for your triggers, like I do, and do your best to manage things. When I was a kid, they didn’t have some of the newer maintenance meds they have now and we had a tough time finding the best treatment for me but eventually we did. You probably know you never grow out of asthma, but lots of times the symptoms decrease a lot when you get older. That’s what happened to me.”

“You probably weren’t afraid like I am when I have an attack. Cole says I’m a big wussy.”

Jenny looked pained by the admission and Seth sent the boy a pointed look. At least Cole had the grace to look embarrassed.

“I was just kidding,” the kid mumbled. He needed a serious attitude adjustment, Seth thought, wondering if he’d been such a punk when he’d gone through his rebellious teens.

“I can’t think of anything scarier than not being able to breathe,” Seth told Morgan. “People who haven’t been through it don’t quite understand what it’s like, do they? Like you’re trapped underwater and somebody’s got two fists around your lungs and is squeezing them tight so you can only take a tiny breath at a time.”

Morgan nodded her agreement. “I always feel like I’m trapped under a big heavy blanket.”

“What’s your peak flow?”

She told him and he nodded. “Mine was pretty close to that when I was about your age.” He paused and saw the conversation was starting to tire her. “Can I get you a glass of water or some juice?”

She nodded, closing her eyes, and he rose and went into the kitchen to find a glass. Somehow he wasn’t surprised when Jenny followed him.

“Thank you.” She gave him a quiet smile and he felt an odd little tug in his chest.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said as he poured a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator.

“You were very kind to her and I appreciate your sharing your own condition with her. It’s great for Morgan to talk to adults who have managed to move past their childhood asthma and go on to live successful lives. Thank you,” she said again, following it up this time with another small, hesitant smile.

He studied that smile, the way it highlighted the lushness of a mouth that seemed incongruous with her buttoned-down appearance.

What was it about her? She wasn’t gorgeous in a Miss Rodeo Idaho kind of way. Not tall and curvy with a brilliant smile and eyes that knew just how to reel a man in.

She was small and compact, probably no bigger than five foot three. He supposed he’d call her cute, with that red-gold hair and her green eyes and the little ski jump of a nose.

Seth couldn’t say he had a particular favorite type of woman—he was willing to admit he loved them all—but he usually gravitated toward the kind of women who hung out at the Bandito. The kind in tight jeans and tighter shirts, with big breasts and hungry smiles.

Jenny Boyer was just about the polar opposite of that kind of woman. Cute or not, he probably wouldn’t usually take a second look at a woman who looked like a suburban soccer mom, with her tailored tan slacks and her wool blazer. Jenny Boyer was the kind of settled, respectable woman men like him usually tended to avoid.

Yet here they were, and he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off her. She might not be his usual type but he sure liked looking at her.

He frowned a little at the unexpectedness of his attraction to her, then decided to shrug it off. He would never do anything about it. Not with a woman like Jenny Boyer, who had Complication written all over her.

Morgan’s color was much better when they returned to the living room. She was sitting up bickering with her brother, something he figured was a good sign.

She took the juice from him with a shy smile.

“Cole and I have things to do but you two are welcome to hang out here until Morgan feels better.”

“I think I’m all right now,” the girl said.

“I should get her home for a nebulizer treatment and to check her peak flow.”

“I can carry you back out to the car if you want.”

Morgan shook her head. “I can walk. But thanks.”

After her daughter was settled in the SUV, Jenny turned to him and to Cole.

“What time shall I come back?” she asked.

He thought of his schedule for the day. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be running into town about four. We should be done by then so I’ll bring him back and save you a trip. Just take care of Morgan.”

“All right. Thank you.” She looked at her son as if she wanted to say something more, but she only let out a long breath, slid into her vehicle and drove away.

“So are we going to work on the car or what?” Cole finally addressed him after the SUV pulled away.

If Seth hadn’t noticed how concerned the boy had looked during those first few moments of the flare-up, he would probably find him more trouble than he was worth.

“Oh, eventually,” he said with a smile that bordered on evil. “First, you’ve got some stalls to muck. I hope you brought good thick gloves because you’re going to need ’em.”

Chapter Three

Fourteen was a miserable bitch of an age.

Though more than half his life had passed since that notable year, it felt just as fresh and painful now as Seth watched Cole Boyer shovel manure out of a stall.

Though the kid wasn’t tall by any stretch of the imagination, he was gangly and awkward, as if his muscles were still too short to keep up with his longer bones.

Seth remembered those days. He’d been small for his age, too, six inches shorter than most of the other guys in his class, and with asthma to boot. His father’s death had been just a few years earlier. And while he hadn’t been exactly paralyzed by grief over the bastard, he had struggled to figure out his place in the world now that he wasn’t Hank Dalton’s sickly, sissy-boy youngest son.

He’d been a little prick, too, full of anger and attitude. He had brothers to pound on to help vent some of it, but since fights usually ended with them beating the tar out of him, he tended to shy away from that activity. Eventually, he’d turned some of his excess energy to horses.

He trained his first horse that year, he remembered, a sweet little chestnut mare he’d ridden in the Idaho state high school rodeo finals a few years later.

Yeah, fourteen had been miserable, for the most part. But the next year everything started to come together. Between his fourteenth and fifteenth years, he hit a major growth spurt, the asthma all but disappeared and he gained six inches of height and thirty pounds of muscle, almost as if his body had just been biding its time.

Girls who’d ignored him all his life suddenly sat up and took notice—and he noticed them right back. After that, adolescence became a hell of a lot more fun, though he doubted Jenny Boyer would appreciate him sharing that particular walk down memory lane with her son, no matter how miserable he looked about life right now.

He should be miserable, Seth thought. Though he was tempted to turn soft and tell Cole he’d done enough for the day, he only had to think about the damage to his GTO to stiffen his resolve.

A little misery never hurt a kid.

“Can you hurry it up here?” Seth leaned indolently on the stall railing, mostly because he knew it would piss the kid off.

Sure enough, all he earned for his trouble was a heated glare.

“This isn’t exactly easy.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” Seth said.

After three hours, the kid had only mucked out four stalls, with two more to go. The more he shoveled, the grimmer his mood turned, until Seth was pretty sure he was ready to implode.

Tempted as he was to wait for the explosion, he finally took pity on him and reached for another shovel.

Cole gave him a surprised look when Seth joined him in the stall. “I thought I was supposed to be doing this.”

“You are. But since I’d like to take a look at the car you trashed sometime today, I figure the only way that’s going to happen is if I lend a hand.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Cole muttered.

“I know. If I thought you were slacking, you can bet I’d still be out there watching.”

Surprise flickered in eyes the same green as his mother’s, but he said nothing. They worked in silence for a few moments, the only sounds the scrape of shovels on concrete, the whickers of the horses around them and Lucy’s curious yips as she followed them.

Only after they’d moved onto the last stall did the boy speak. “Why don’t you have a real job or something?” he asked, his tone more baffled than hostile.

Seth raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think this is real work?”

“Sure. But what kind of loser signs up to shovel horse crap all day?”

Seth laughed. “If this was the only thing I did around here all day, I’d have to agree with you. But I usually leave the grunt work to the hired help while I get to do the fun stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Working with the horses. Breeding them, training them.”

“Whatever.”

“Not a real horse fan?”

“They’re big and dumb. How hard could it be to train them?”

“You might be surprised.” He scraped another shovel full of sunshine. “I can tell you there’s nothing so satisfying as taking a green-broke horse—that means an untrained one—and working with him until he obeys anything you tell him to do without question.”

“Whatever,” Cole said again, his voice dripping with scorn.

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.”

“You think I imagined that night?”

“No. Oh, honey, I’m sure you didn’t,” Marcy had replied in her patient, kind voice. “My friends and I have a theory. We call it Seth Dalton’s School of Broncobustin’. If you’re lucky to find him turning his attention to you, just climb on and hold on tight. It probably won’t last too long, but it will be a hell of a ride.”

“I’m not like that!” Ashley had exclaimed. “I never even go to bars. I don’t drink. I probably wouldn’t even have met him if my roommate hadn’t dragged me along that night.”

“Which is probably the reason he didn’t call you,” Marcy pointed out gently. “You’re a kindergarten teacher with Marriage Material stamped on your forehead. You’re sweet and innocent, and you probably have already got names picked out for the four kids you’re going to have.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“Oh, honey, absolutely not. I think it’s wonderful, and somewhere out there is someone who is going to love those things about you. But that’s not what Seth Dalton is about.”

One of the third-graders had come in just then complaining of a stomach ache. Marcy had turned her attention to calling the girl’s mother to come get her and Ashley had returned to her class, but not before Jenny had developed a strong dislike for the man under discussion.

It was one of those weird cases where, once she heard a name, she suddenly couldn’t seem to escape it: Seth Dalton’s kept popping up.

She heard another teacher just before the start of a faculty meeting talk about running into him in the grocery store and how she’d been so flustered just because he’d smiled and asked her how she was that she’d left without half the items on her list.

When they were brainstorming ways to raise money for new library books, someone suggested a bachelor auction and someone else said they’d have enough books to fill every shelf if only they could get Seth Dalton on the auction block.

Now that she’d met him, she certainly understood all the buzz about the man. A woman could forget her own name just from one look out of those blue eyes.

“Are you done with your work?” Morgan asked from her spot on the couch, distracting her from her completely unproductive train of thought.

She closed her laptop and gathered her papers, shoving them back into her briefcase. She had learned long ago how to recognize a lost cause. “For now. Want to watch a DVD or play a game?”

“Sure. You pick.”

They were still discussing their options a moment later when she heard the back door open and a moment later her father came in, his cheeks red from the November chill and his arms full of wood to replenish the low supply in the firebox by the woodstove.

“You should let me do that,” she chided, upset at herself for being too distracted by thoughts of Seth Dalton to pay attention to her father’s activities.

“Why?” Jason looked genuinely surprised.

“I feel guilty sitting here where it’s warm and comfortable while you’re outside hauling wood.”

“I need the exercise. Keeps my joints lubricated.”

She had to laugh at that. At sixty-five, her father was more fit than most men half his age. He rode his mountain bike all over town, he fished every chance he got—winter or summer—and his new passion was cross-country skiing.

“Maybe I need the exercise, too.”

“And maybe it does my heart good to know I’m still capable of seeing to the comfort of my daughter and granddaughter. You wouldn’t want to take that away from an old man, would you?” Jason said, with a twinkle in his eyes and the incontrovertible logic that had made him such a formidable opponent in the courtroom.

She rolled her eyes and was amused to see Morgan copying her gesture.

“Grandpa, you’re silly,” her daughter said with fondness. “You’re not old.”

The two of them were kindred spirits and got along like the proverbial house on fire. Coming to Pine Gulch had been the right decision, she thought again. Even if Cole still fought and bucked against it like one of Seth Dalton’s horses with a burr under the saddle, the move had been good for all of them.

She couldn’t be sorry for it. Morgan and Cole had come to know the grandfather they had been acquainted with only distantly, and in a lot of ways, Jenny felt the same. Jason had been a distant, distracted figure in her life, even before her parents had divorced when she was twelve. Coming here had led to a closer relationship than they’d ever had.

“We’re going to watch a DVD. Are you interested? We’re debating between a Harry Potter or one of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.”

“Oh, Tolkien. By all means.”

They settled on which of the three to see and were watching the opening credits when by some mother’s intuition, she heard the low rumble of a truck out front.

“Go ahead and start the movie,” she said. “Since I’ve seen it at least a dozen times, I’m sure I won’t be too lost when I come back.”

She reached the front door just as Cole hopped down from a big silver pickup truck. Through the storm door, she studied her son intently. Though he didn’t appear to be exactly overflowing with joy, he didn’t seem miserable, either, as he headed up the sidewalk to the house.

She wasn’t really surprised when Seth climbed out the other side of the truck and followed the boy up to the house. She opened the door for her son, who would probably have walked right by without even a greeting if she hadn’t stepped right in his way.

“How did it go?” she asked, fighting the yearning to pull him into her arms for the kind of hug he used to give her all the time.

“My favorite Levi’s smell like horse crap.”

“I’m sure that will wash out.”

“I doubt it,” Cole grumbled. “They’re probably ruined forever.”

“Here’s a tip for you,” Seth spoke from the doorway with a lazy smile. “Next time you come to the ranch, maybe you shouldn’t wear your favorite pair of Levi’s.”

“If you’re going to suggest I buy a pair of Wranglers, I might just have to puke.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Seth drawled. “Then your favorite pair of Levi’s would smell like horse crap and puke.”

Cole’s snort might have passed for a laugh, but Jenny could not be quite sure.

“Wear whatever you want. But if you take the school bus to the Cold Creek on Tuesday, we might be ready to get into the real work on the car now that we’ve taken a look at the damage. Bus Fifteen is the one you want to take. Ray Pullman is the driver.”

“Right. I need to take a shower.”

“Bring your jeans out when you’re done so we can wash them,” Jenny said.

Cole didn’t answer her or even acknowledge her as he headed down the stairs to his bedroom, leaving her alone with Seth.

In part because of embarrassment over her son’s rudeness and in part because Seth was so masculine and so blasted attractive, she was intensely aware of him. He seemed to fill up all the available space in the small foyer.

She gave a small huff of annoyance at herself and tried to ignore the scent of him that seemed to surround her, of warm male and sexy aftershave.

“Tell me the truth. How did it really go today? I doubt Cole will tell me much.”

“Good. He worked hard at everything I asked him to do and some of it wasn’t very appealing. I can’t ask for more than that.”

She relaxed the fingers she hadn’t realized she’d clenched tightly in the pockets of her sweater. “Was he…” her voice trailed off and she couldn’t figure out how to ask the question in a way that wouldn’t make her sound like a terrible mother.

“Rude and obnoxious? Not much, surprisingly. He digs cars and we spent much of the afternoon working on mine, so everything was cool.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved that makes me.”

“You should probably know I did throw him up on a horse for a few minutes. He actually seemed to enjoy it. Even smiled a few times.”

She blinked, trying to imagine her rebellious city-boy “I-hate-everything-country” son on the back of a horse.

“You’re sure we’re talking about the same kid? He wasn’t possessed by alien cowboy pod people?”

Seth laughed, his blue eyes crinkled at the corners, and she could swear she felt warm fingers trickling down her spine just looking at him.

“Not a UFO in sight, I swear.”

She shouldn’t be here, sharing laughter or anything else with Seth Dalton. With sharp efforts, she broke eye contact. “Thank you for all the trouble you’ve gone to,” she said after an uncomfortable moment. “It would have been less work on your part if you had just turned him over to the authorities.”

“I’m getting free labor with my horses and with my car. Not a bad deal. I’m no saint here.”

“So they tell me.”

Had she really said that aloud? She mentally cringed at her rudeness and Seth looked startled at first, then gave her one of those blasted slow smiles that ought to come with a warning label as long as her arm.

“Who’s been talking about me, Ms. Boyer?”

Her nerve endings tingled at his low, amused voice, but she ignored it, turning her own voice prim. “Who hasn’t? You’re a favorite topic of conversation in Pine Gulch, Mr. Dalton.”

He didn’t seem bothered by town gossip—or maybe he was just used to it.

Looking for all the world as if he planned to make himself right at home, he leaned a hip against the door frame and crossed his arms across his chest. “That must tell you what a quiet town you’ve settled in, if nobody in Pine Gulch has anything more interesting to talk about than me. So what’s the consensus?”

That you’re a major-league player. That you flirt with anything female and have left a swath of broken hearts behind you. That half the women in Teton Valley are in love with you and the other half are in lust.

She so didn’t want to be having this conversation with him. She thought longingly of the paperwork she’d been putting off all afternoon and would have given just about anything right then to be sitting at her desk filling out federal assessment forms. Anything but this.

“Nothing I’m sure you haven’t already heard,” she finally said. “You’re apparently a busy man.”

A purely masculine, absolutely enticing dimple appeared in his cheek briefly then disappeared again. “Yeah, starting a full-fledged horse ranch can take a lot of hours.”

He had to know she wasn’t talking about his equine endeavors, but she decided she wasn’t going to set him straight.

“I’m sure it does,” she murmured drily. Dating a different woman every night probably tended to fill up the calendar, too. But not this woman, even if she wasn’t four years older than him and the exact opposite of all the tight, perky young things he was probably used to.

She knew all about men like him. She’d been married to one, a man compelled to charm every woman in sight.

She had worked hard to rebuild her heart and her life and her family in the last three years. After a great deal of hard work and self-scrutiny, she had finally become someone she could respect again.

She was a strong, successful woman who loved her work and her family, and she wasn’t about to let a man like Seth Dalton knock her on her butt again.

Even if he did make her hormones wake up and sing hallelujah.

“Thank you for taking the time away from your horses to bring Cole back,” she said, in what she hoped was a polite but dismissive tone.

He either didn’t pick on it or didn’t care. “No problem. How’s Morgan doing now?”

She didn’t want him to be interested in her daughter or for the simple question to remind her just how kind and patient he had been during Morgan’s flare-up.

That was the problem with charmers, she supposed. They seemed instinctively to know how to zero in on a woman’s weak spot and use that to their advantage. He’d already slipped inside her defenses a little by being so decent about Cole crashing his car. She would have preferred if he ignored Morgan altogether.

How was she to pigeonhole him as a selfish womanizer when he showed such genuine concern for her daughter’s welfare?

“She’s fine. By the time we returned home, her peak flow was about seventy percent. After we nebulized her, it went up to about eight-five percent.”

“Good. I hope the flare-up doesn’t discourage you from bringing her out to the ranch again. She’s welcome to tag along with Cole anytime. You both are.”

She smiled politely, though she had absolutely no intention of taking him up on the invitation. “Thank you. But I’m sure the very last thing you need underfoot—with you being so busy and all—is a wheezing nine-year-old girl.”

“I’d like to have her back. Both of you. Pretty ladies are always welcome at the Cold Creek.”

His smile was designed to reach right into a woman’s soul and she felt it clear to her toes. Darn him. No, darn her for this ridiculous crush, the weakness she had for handsome charmers.

She couldn’t endure his light flirtation, especially knowing he didn’t mean any of it, it was all just a game to him.

He couldn’t possibly be seriously interested in a stuffy, overstressed thirty-six-year-old elementary school principal with no chest to speak of and the tiniest bit of gray in her hair that she only managed to hide by the grace of God and a good stylist.

He wasn’t interested in her, and he had no business smiling at her as if he were.

“Do you stay up nights thinking of lines or do you just come up with them on the fly?”

He raised an eyebrow, though amusement still lurked in his blue eyes, even in the face of her frontal attack. “Was that a line? I thought I was simply extending an invitation.”

She sighed. “Look, you’ve been incredibly understanding about what Cole did to your car. If I had been in your shoes, I can’t imagine I would be nearly so magnanimous. He’s going to be working with you to make things right for at least a few months and I suppose we’ll see a great deal of each other in that time, so let’s get this out of the way.”

“I’m all ears.”

And sexy smiles and gorgeous eyes and broad shoulders that look like they could carry the weight of the world.

She frowned at herself. “I’m not interested in being charmed,” she said bluntly.

“Is that what you think I was doing?”

“Weren’t you?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I doubt you’re even aware of it, it’s so ingrained in your nature. The flirting, the slow bedroom smiles. Even if you’re not attracted to a woman, something in your blood compels you to conquer her, to find her weaknesses and exploit them until she surrenders to your charm like every other woman.”

He gazed at her, obviously taken aback by the sudden attack. She heard her own rudeness and was appalled but couldn’t seem to stop the words from gushing out.

All she could think of was Ashley Barnes crying her eyes out when Seth never called her back and Richard murmuring lies and promises while he was already sleeping with another woman and planning to abandon his children.

“It’s different if a man is genuinely interested in a woman,” she went on. “If he truly wants to know about her, if he might feel some spark of attraction and want to follow up on it. That’s one thing. But you’re not interested in me. Men like you charm just because you can.”

He straightened from the door jamb, a sudden fiery light in his eyes that had her stepping back a pace. “That’s quite a scathing indictment, Ms. Boyer, especially since you’ve known me less than a day. I thought good teachers and principals weren’t supposed to rush to snap judgments.”

His words gave her pause and she had to wonder what in heaven’s name seemed to possess her around him.

“You’re right. Absolutely. I’m very sorry. That was completely uncalled-for. I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t rush to any snap judgments provided you refrain from trying to add me to your list of conquests.”

Before he could answer, she held open the door in a pointed dismissal. Cold air rushed in, swirling around her like a malicious fog, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough to take care of her hot embarrassment. “Thank you again for bringing Cole home. I’ll be sure to send him out to your ranch on the bus Tuesday.”

Seth gave her a long, hard look, as if he had much more he wanted to say, but he finally turned around and walked outside.

She closed the door and leaned against it, her hands clenched at her sides.

How had she let him get her so stirred up? He hadn’t done anything. Not really. Sure, he’d flirted a little, but she had always been able to handle a mild flirtation. He seemed to push all her buttons—and several she hadn’t realized were there.

How on earth was she supposed to face him again after she’d all but accused him of trying to seduce her?

She would simply have to be cool and polite. She would be gracious about what he was doing for her son but distant about everything else. She had no doubt she could keep him at arm’s length, especially after she’d just slapped him down so firmly.

Keeping him out of her head was a different matter entirely.

Chapter Four

Seth stood on the porch of Jason Chambers’s red-brick rambler, the November evening air sharp with fall, and tried to figure out what the heck had just happened in there.

He wasn’t at all used to being on the receiving end of such a blunt dismissal, and he was fairly certain he didn’t care for it much. He had only been talking to the woman, just trying to be friendly, and she was treating him like she’d just caught him looking up her skirt.

He wasn’t quite sure how to react. He had certainly encountered his share of rejection. It never usually bothered him, not when there were so many other prospects out there.

He had to admit, he just wasn’t used to rejection accompanied by such blatant hostility.

He ought to just march right back in there and ask Jenny Boyer what he had done in the course of their short acquaintance to warrant it. He lifted a hand to the doorbell then let it fall again.

No. What would that accomplish, besides making him look foolish? She had the right to her opinions, even if they were completely ridiculous.

Even if you’re not attracted to a woman, something in your blood compels you to conquer her, to find her weaknesses and exploit them until she surrenders to your charm like every other woman.

That wasn’t true. He didn’t need to charm every female he came in contact with. He just happened to be a sociable kind of guy.

Where did she get off forming such a harsh opinion on him when they’d barely met?

More to the point, why did it bug him so much?

It was no big deal, he told himself as the cold wind slapped at him. Better to just forget about Ms. Uptight Jennifer Boyer and head over to the Bandito, where he could find any number of warm, willing women who didn’t think he was so objectionable.

His boots thudded on the steps as he headed off the porch toward his truck. He climbed in and started the engine, but for some strange reason couldn’t bring himself to drive away from the house just yet, too busy analyzing his own reaction to being flayed alive by a tongue sharper than his best Buck knife.

He ought to be seriously pissed off at the woman and not want anything more to do with her. He was, he told himself.

So why was he somehow even more attracted to her?

He liked curvy women who played up their assets, who wore low-cut blouses and short skirts and towering high heels that made their legs look long and sexy.

His brothers seemed to think that was just another sign that he needed to grow up and get serious about life. He had to wonder what Jake and Wade would say if they knew about this strange attraction for the new elementary school principal.

Yeah, he liked looking at her—the tilt of her chin and the flash of her green eyes and those lush lips that seemed at odds with her starchy appearance.

And she smelled good. He had definitely picked up on that. Her perfume had been soft and sweet, putting all kinds of crazy images in his head of wildflowers and spring mountain rain showers.

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