More Than a Rancher. Claire McEwen

The turns fit beautifully.

      Jenna did a few basic steps through the next verse and tried the turns again. Still perfect. She closed her eyes and pictured what came next. Oh, yes, a shimmy, then a body roll down...and then she heard a cough and whirled around in horror, yanking the earbuds out.

      A man on horseback was watching her from a small rise several yards away. Wariness flooded Jenna as her urban instincts set in. She inched a little closer to the jack and casually picked up the handle. Weapon in hand, she felt embarrassment follow. Why had she decided to dance here, of all places?

      The man walked his horse closer and she waited, shoving her iPod into the back pocket of her jeans. Then she saw a huge smile emerge from under the wide brim of the man’s cowboy hat. He was laughing. Relief seeped in when she saw that he wasn’t a man at all but a teenage boy with a wide, goofy grin. She set the jack handle down.

      “Morning.” The boy stopped laughing and rode his horse a few steps closer. The big chestnut almost dwarfed his slight frame. “You’re a good dancer.”

      Jenna looked up at him, shading her eyes against the sun to better see his face. He had olive skin and black hair under his straw hat. His eyes were wide and dark, framed in thick lashes. His grin was friendly, not sarcastic or self-conscious like some of the more surly teens who showed up at her youth dance classes.

      “Thank you,” she said. “And that’s a lovely horse.” She stepped forward and held out her hand, the horse’s silky nose brushing gently over her knuckles. Looking down its flank, she saw the big hindquarters. “A quarter horse?”

      “You know horses?” The boy seemed genuinely surprised and Jenna smiled for the first time that day.

      “They do have them in other places,” she teased gently. “I grew up riding.” The scent from the horse’s strong, sun-warmed neck took her back in time to long adolescent afternoons at the stable in rural Marin County, north of San Francisco. She’d loved horses then. She’d even abandoned dance for a few years to ride as much as possible.

      “Do you always dance outside?”

      It was an innocent question but Jenna blushed. “My tire’s flat. I was trying to figure out how to fix it, but I got a bit distracted.”

      “That happens to me all the time! It makes my dad crazy. My brothers, too. Well, everyone, really.”

      “You mean you get distracted? Or get distracted and start dancing?”

      His laugh was genuinely merry. “Both.” He swung a leg over the horse’s back and dismounted gracefully. “You look like you could use a rescue.”

      She did need rescuing, but usually the damsel in distress had a handsome prince coming to her aid, not a kid. Just her luck. “I could absolutely use a rescue. I must’ve turned the wrong way off the highway. Is this your land? I’m sorry if I’m trespassing.”

      “Don’t worry about it.” He waved his arm around in a vague gesture that encompassed the gigantic landscape around them. “It’s my family’s ranch.”

      “Really?” Jenna asked. “Does that make you a cowboy?”

      The boy grinned and pointed to his hat. “Well, I’ve got the gear. But we mainly have sheep. Shepherd doesn’t sound quite so good, though.” He walked his horse a little ways off the road to where a patch of weathered brown grass grew between the sagebrush. He left it to nibble and came back toward her, his eyes on the Mini. “That’s an awesome car.”

      “It’s great for San Francisco—that’s where I live,” she told him. “It fits into the tiniest parking spaces.”

      “Not so great for out here, though.” His smile was infectious and softened his words.

      “Obviously not! I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I do, actually. I was lost.” Distracted first, then lost. Distracted by a phone call from her traitorous, cheating boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, she reminded herself with a twisting feeling in her heart.

      “Where were you headed?”

      “My friend’s ranch. I think I turned off too soon. Or maybe in the wrong direction.”

      “Well, I can help you get going again. But you need to be careful out here. No more off-roading.”

      “Point taken.” Jenna smiled. She liked his teasing—he seemed like a sweet kid.

      The “kid” didn’t even look at her manual. He just grabbed the jack and started cranking up the car. Jenna felt silly. He changed the tire as if it were the easiest chore in the world, and she hadn’t even been able to figure out if the jack was a jack.

      In no time, he had the flattened tire off and was pulling her spare out of the trunk. “Can I ask you something?” He suddenly looked shy, more of an awkward teenager than he’d seemed before.

      “Of course,” Jenna answered.

      “Are you a dancer? A real dancer?”

      Jenna looked at the boy in surprise. “Well, I’m not sure what you mean. I dance, I teach, I compete—does that make me a real dancer?”

      He grinned. “Yes!” he answered emphatically as he set the spare tire in place and picked up a bolt.

      “Well, this might make you change your mind about that—I’m a ballroom dancer,” she said.

      The boy’s eyes widened. “You mean like on TV, on that celebrity dance show?”

      Jenna couldn’t help it. His words were so unexpected she started to laugh. “I’m sorry.... It’s just not what I expected! You watch dancing? Ballroom dancing?”

      “Yeah! I watch all the shows. I try to learn stuff off of the internet, too.”

      The excitement in his voice was palpable and Jenna was amazed. She would never have pegged this boy, who looked so at home in this rugged country, to be a fan of television dance programs. “Do you study dance?” she asked.

      He shook his head regretfully. “We have line dancing, Western dancing, that kind of stuff. But no dance school around here.” He glanced around as if worried someone might hear him. “Even if there was, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to take classes.”

      “Why not?”

      “My family doesn’t exactly approve of boys—” he made quotation marks in the air in front of him “—waltzing around in tights.”

      “Oh, it’s like that, huh?” Jenna asked softly, studying the teen’s profile. His focus was back on the tire but his mouth was a grim, frustrated line. “If it’s any consolation, my family’s still trying to get me to go to law school.” She truly felt for him.

      “Really?” His expression brightened at that. “Are you gonna go?”

      “No,” she answered. “I’m a dancer, even if they don’t see it.”

      “That’s how I feel!” He had the spare on now and was staring at her, eyes wide. Jenna realized she was probably the first person he’d ever met who understood that. She wished there were something she could do for him. If he lived in San Francisco, she’d give him her card and encourage him to come to the ballroom for lessons. But out here? Somewhere beyond the tiny town of Benson? There wasn’t much she could do.

      She moved her bags to the backseat and the boy loaded the flat tire into her trunk.

      “I can’t thank you enough,” she told him. The flat tire had been just one more bad event in a terrible day, but right now she was almost glad it had happened. She liked this kid.

      He blushed and looked away. “It’s no big deal,” he said.

      “I never got your name.”

      “Paul.”

      “Paul, I’m Jenna. I wish there was more I could do to help you get started dancing, but I’m