Rancher's Deadly Risk. Rachel Lee

before the team wonders if I fell off the edge of the planet. We have an away game tonight.” Then he turned his attention to Cassie. “Are you okay with this? Really?”

      “Being the center of the storm? Of course. Those bullies don’t frighten me, they make me mad.”

      One corner of his mouth ticked up in a smile. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning and we’ll set up some meeting time to get this ball rolling.”

      He strode out, and Cassie’s gaze followed him helplessly. Wow, she thought, he was going to call her. Maybe she didn’t stink as bad as she sometimes thought. Les called her attention back.

      “If you’re okay with this, then that’s how we’ll handle the matter for right now. But not for too long. I don’t want those students to think they’re going to get away with bullying anybody.”

      “I couldn’t agree more.” Finally feeling satisfied with the direction they were taking, she said goodbye to Les, picked up her book bag and headed out for the weekend.

      The day was still glorious, although twilight wasn’t far away. Winter nights came a lot earlier up here than she was used to.

      But instead of thinking about the glorious weather or the relaxing weekend ahead, she was thinking about Linc Blair again. Dang, he almost acted like it hurt to even look at her. Had she turned ugly since yesterday?

      Shaking her head, she tried to think of other things. Despite her reaction in the principal’s office, she wasn’t entirely easy about transferring the bullies’ anger toward her.

      She had taught in a school where a teacher had been attacked by a student, and she didn’t labor under any delusions that her status protected her. On the other hand, bullies were usually cowards at heart.

      It would be okay, she assured herself.

      But it would be even nicer to know why Linc seemed so determined to keep such an obvious distance. He didn’t even make the normal friendly overtures to her, like the other teachers.

      No, it was as if he, or she, were surrounded by some kind of repulsion field. Keep away seemed to bristle all over him.

      It probably hurt more than it should have because of her bad experiences in the past. Guys seemed attracted to her just long enough to find out if she was willing to jump in the sack with them, and then either way they made a fast exit. It was, one of her friends admitted, weird. But the same friend had reminded her that dating was a series of “noes” followed by one “yes,” eventually.

      But never before had she met a guy who seemed to see poison every time his gaze scraped over her and then headed elsewhere.

      Not that it mattered, she reminded herself. He was just another guy, albeit one who got her hormones racing every time she looked at him. But just another guy.

      And maybe the problem wasn’t her at all. After all, he had said he would call her tomorrow about the bullying program.

      No, maybe it wasn’t her at all.

      With that hopeful thought in mind, she hurried home to start dinner and get to the homework papers she needed to check. With any luck, all she’d have left to do by tomorrow was some lesson planning.

      The thought brightened her mood a bit, easing the memory of the way James Carney had been cowering.

      They were going to help him, and other bullied students. Wasn’t that all that really mattered?

       Chapter 2

      Linc headed home after the game. It was late because the next high school was so far away, a major problem for running athletics in this part of the country. Ordinarily they avoided night games because of the travel time involved, but this week had been different because the other high school had some construction work going on over the weekend.

      They’d gotten their usual shellacking at the other school’s hands, though. Nothing different there. Busby somehow always managed to field a stellar team.

      But, as he kept telling his players, winning wasn’t the point. Playing the game was. As long as they loved to play, the rest didn’t matter. Sometimes he wondered if they believed him. Regardless, he always had plenty of students turn up for spring tryouts.

      But after he shepherded them off the buses and toward their waiting parents, making sure everyone got a ride home, he still had a forty-five-minute drive of his own to his ranch, and some animals waiting for him.

      The sheep and goats were okay in their fenced meadows, watched by the dogs, who were probably wondering by now when they’d see their next bowl of kibble. He had a couple of horses in a corral he never left out overnight, but always safely stalled in the barn. It wouldn’t take him long, but he was beginning to feel weary. He started his days at five in the morning, taking care of livestock, and finished at one-thirty in the morning … well, he was getting damn tired.

      As the noise of the game and the racket from the players on the team bus began to fade from his immediate memory, along with a running analysis of how the team could improve, Cassie Greaves popped up before his eyes.

      Damn, that woman was stunning. Not in a movie-star sort of way, but more like a … a what? Earth mother? She was full-figured enough to qualify, he supposed, though he wouldn’t classify her as heavy. No, she was luxuriously built, exactly the kind of female form that had always appealed to him. With bobbed honey-blond hair and witchy green eyes, she was a looker. Every time he glanced at her, he felt swamped by desire. Amazing, almost like he was in high school himself.

      But he’d lived his entire life in this county, and he knew how many people came here, thinking they’d found something wonderful, and then after one winter packed up and left because of the cold, the isolation, the lack of excitement. Hell, even people who grew up here left so why wouldn’t people who didn’t have any roots?

      Some people didn’t find enough excitement in days filled with work or with people they saw every day. His own fiancée had headed out after just two years here, swearing she would die from boredom. She probably would have, too, he had finally admitted. Who wanted a life with a guy who was either tied up at his job or working a ranch? Much fun he was.

      So he just tried to avoid the whole thing. When it came to a woman who attracted him the way Cassie did, a woman who hadn’t even survived her first winter here, his guard slammed up like some kind of shield in a science fiction movie.

      But he was getting to the point of appearing rude, and that had to stop. When Les had asked him to work on this project with her, he’d had the worst urge to refuse. Proximity with that woman?

      But then his better angels had taken over. He and Cassie had to deal with this bullying before it got any worse. And it would if they didn’t find a way to get through to these students. Ignoring it because “kids will be kids” was a recipe for serious problems. Yes, they’d do it. Most of them probably had bullied at one time or another, and most had probably been the victims of it.

      But the problem still couldn’t be ignored. That was one thing educators and psychologists had learned over the last few decades. And with the dynamic he’d been watching develop between the students, he suspected that it could get way out of hand.

      As the incident had today. As upset as he was for the Carney kid, he also saw a big danger in the way those boys had treated Cassie. So he’d bite the bullet, keep his guard up and do what he could to get the students to understand that bullying wasn’t funny, it wasn’t a joke, and it was never permissible.

      He was glad, though, to reach his ranch and deal with the dogs and the horses. They centered him, these animals he kept. Reminded him he was part of nature, too, and that a lot of nature was actually prettier than human nature.

      After he’d greeted, petted, stabled and fed, he went inside and made himself a bowl of instant oatmeal. It had been a long time since dinner, and while team parents made sure there were plenty of snacks and water for the players, he was usually too uptight to eat at all during a