The Rancher and the Girl Next Door. Jeannie Watt

said goodbye, then strolled down the five-block-long street to Barlow Ridge Elementary, which was situated at the edge of town. Her trailer was only a half mile away, so she could walk to work on the nice days.

      The school, constructed in the 1930s, had a certain vintage charm, but Claire knew from her initial visit that it would have been a lot more charming had it benefited from regular upkeep. It consisted of three classrooms—one used as a lunchroom—a gymnasium with a velvet-curtained stage at one end, two restrooms and a tiny office barely big enough to hold a desk and a copy machine.

      Claire unlocked the stubborn front door and went into her room, setting her lunch on the shelving unit just inside. The space was of adequate size, but the equipment it contained was old, tired and makeshift. With the exception of a new computer on the teacher’s desk, everything dated from the previous century. There was no tech cart for projecting computer images, only an old overhead projector. No whiteboards or dry-erase markers, but instead a grungy-looking blackboard and a few small pieces of chalk.

      She went to run her hand over the board, and found the surface grooved and wavy. Picking up a piece of chalk, she experimentally wrote her name. The chalk made thin, waxy lines, barely legible. Something needed to be done about this.

      The desks came in a hodgepodge of sizes and shapes, all of them old-fashioned, with lift-up lids. She’d been thinking about how she would arrange them. Rows…a horseshoe…in groups. The students should probably have a say.

      Behind her desk was a door in the wall that opened into a long, narrow closet jammed to the ceiling with junk. Probably seventy years’ worth of junk, from the look of things. She’d be doing something about this. Claire hated disorganization and wasted space.

      She left her classroom and walked through the silent school. There was another mystery door, at the opposite end of the hall from the restrooms. She pulled the handle, and though the door proved to be a challenge, it eventually screeched open. A set of stone steps led downward.

      A school with a dungeon. How nice.

      There was no light switch, but a solitary bulb hung from a cord at the bottom of the steps, adding to the torture-chamber ambience.

      Claire started down the steps. The smell of dampness and mildew grew stronger as she descended. She pulled the string attached to the light, illuminating most of the basement and casting the rest into spooky shadows. The floor was damp and there were dark patches on the walls that looked like moss. A frog croaked from somewhere in the darkness.

      Stacks of rubber storage bins lined the walls, labeled Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter. Others were marked History, English and Extra. Probably some great stuff in that last one, Claire thought as she went to lift the corner of a lid. The bin was filled with old blue-ink ditto papers. There were also several tables, a plastic swimming pool and a net bag of playground balls hanging from an antique metal hook on the wall.

      The frog croaked again and Claire decided she’d seen just about all there was to see. She went back upstairs, the air growing warmer and dryer with each step. Once she reached the top she wrestled the door closed and pushed the latch back into place.

      “Is that you, Claire?”

      The unexpected voice nearly made her jump out of her skin. She pressed her hand to her heart as she turned so see Bertie Gunderson, a small yet sturdy-looking woman with short gray hair, peeking out of the office doorway. Claire had met her the first time two days earlier at the district staff development meeting.

      “Darn it, Bertie, you scared me.”

      The other teacher smiled. “It’s refreshing to hear that I’m more frightening than the basement.”

      Claire followed her back into the office, where she was copying papers on the antique copy machine—a hand-me-down from another school, no doubt. Regan had told her that Barlow Ridge Elementary got all the district’s reject equipment. “I was wondering about the blackboards.”

      “What about them?”

      “They’re unusable. Is there any chance of talking the district into putting up whiteboards?”

      Bertie cackled. “Yeah. Sure.”

      Claire felt slightly deflated, which, for her, was always the first step toward utter determination.

      “You can try,” the veteran teacher said.

      “I’ll do that.”

      Bertie was still in her classroom working when Claire finally left three hours later. She’d started sorting through her storage closet but gave up after a half hour, concentrating instead on making her first week’s lesson plans. She would be teaching five different subjects—some of them at four different grade levels. Regan had already explained that she could combine science and social studies into single units of study for all her grades, but English and math had to be by grade level. The challenge was scheduling—keeping one grade busy while another was being taught.

      But Claire loved a challenge, and this would be just that. Plus, she’d have an excellent background for her planned master’s thesis on combined classroom education. Old equipment and a wavy blackboard were not going to slow her down.

      BRETT’S CELL PHONE RANG at seven-thirty, while he was driving the washboard county road that led to Wesley.

      Phil Ryker. His boss.

      “Hey, pard,” Phil drawled, setting Brett’s teeth on edge. He had to remind himself to practice tolerance. Phil was an urban boy who wanted to be a cowboy, and being heir to the man who owned most of the land in the Barlow Ridge area, including Brett’s family homestead, he was wealthy enough to indulge his dreams. Brett considered himself fortunate to be leasing his homestead with an option to buy, which he was close to exercising, and also to be working for Phil, managing the man’s hobby ranch during the three hundred days a year he was not in residence. Those two circumstances were enough to help Brett overlook a fake drawl and words such as pard.

      “Hi, Phil.”

      “I won’t be able to get to the ranch next week like I planned, but I did buy a couple of horses and a mule, and I’m having them shipped out.”

      “All right.” What now? Brett knew from past experience that the horses could be anything from fully trained Lipizzans to ratty little mustangs.

      “One of them is a bit rough. I thought maybe you could tune him up for me.”

      “Define ‘a bit rough.’” Brett’s and Phil’s idea of rough were usually quite different.

      “Seven years old and green broke, but he’s beautiful,” Phil said importantly. “You’ll see what I mean when he arrives.”

      “He isn’t…”

      “He’s a stud. I’d like to show him, so I need him fit for polite society.” Phil laughed. “I’ll get a hold of you closer to the delivery date. Hey, did you figure out that problem with the north well?”

      “Yeah. Yesterday. The water level is fine, but the pump needs to be replaced. I sent you an estimate.”

      “Just take care of it. We can’t have that pivot go down.”

      “Sure can’t.” Because that would mean that he wouldn’t be able to grow hay at a loss. Brett figured Phil knew what he was doing. A hobby ranch that was slowly losing money was a tax write-off and apparently Phil needed write-offs. Brett had tried to interest him in a number of ideas that would make the ranch more economical, perhaps even profitable, but he had his own ideas. Brett gave up after the third set of suggestions was rejected, finally understanding that Phil wasn’t particularly concerned about losing money. Must feel good, he mused as he hung up the phone.

      Amazingly, Brett found the parts he needed for the swamp cooler at the hardware store in Wesley. Now all he needed to do was go home and get them installed—with luck, while Claire was still at school mucking out her classroom.

      He didn’t want to spend a lot of time around