The Cowboy and the Lady. Marie Ferrarella

and overwrought, Debi upbraided herself, knowing she had turned a blind eye to one too many signs when it came to John. He’d changed. This was not the man she had fallen in love with all those years ago on the campus.

      “I can’t just leave him there, John,” she pointed out, struggling to curb her own anger.

      John obviously didn’t share her opinion. “You can and you will,” he informed her. “I think I’ve been pretty understanding about all this. It’s not everybody who’ll take his wife’s brother into his home, but this is it, the proverbial straw. I don’t want that kid in my house anymore!”

      He was doing it again. John was making her feel like an outsider in her own home. A home she had helped pay for as much as he had. Why was he behaving like a Neanderthal?

      “It’s my house, too, John,” she reminded him, her voice tight.

      “Nobody said it wasn’t,” he snapped at her. “But you’re going to have to choose, Deborah.”

      “Choose?” she repeated incredulously, her voice deadly still. John couldn’t possibly be saying what she thought he was saying to her.

      When had he gotten so cold, so unfeeling?

      There were tears gathering in her soul, but her eyes remained dry.

      “Yeah. Choose,” he emphasized. “It’s either Ryan or me, Deborah. You can’t have both.”

      She stared at the man she’d loved all through high school and college. The man she thought she knew so well, but obviously didn’t know at all.

      Just to be perfectly clear, she put the question to him. “You’re asking me to choose between my kid brother and you.”

      John continued to glare at her. His brown eyes were completely cold and flat, his stand unwavering. “That’s what I’m doing.”

      “Ryan doesn’t have anybody but me.” Had John forgotten that?

      It had only been three short years since Ryan and her parents had been involved in that horrific car accident. He was twelve at the time. The accident claimed her parents and came very close to claiming her brother, as well. It had taken close to six months of physical therapy before Ryan could get back on his feet.

      The scars on his body healed. The ones inside his head were another story. Debi was convinced that they were responsible for her brother transforming from a kind, sweet young man who got straight As into a sullen, troubled teen who ditched more classes than he attended.

      “That’s not my problem,” John informed her. “Him or me, Deborah. You have to choose.”

      If he could say that to her, then their marriage was already over, she realized. “I’m not leaving him in jail, John,” she retorted, grabbing up her shoulder bag.

      “Fine. Go.” John angrily waved her toward the door. “Rescue that sad sack of wasted flesh. But when you get back, I won’t be here.”

      Angry, hurt and exasperated beyond words that John could put her into this sort of a position when she was struggling to deal with the circumstances surrounding her brother’s arrest, she glared at her husband. “That is your choice, John. I can’t do anything about that,” she informed him coldly.

      “You’re making a big mistake, Deborah!” John shouted at her back.

      She squared her shoulders. “I think I made one four years ago,” Debi said, referring to the length of their marriage. She didn’t bother to turn around. She slammed the door in her wake, thinking that it might make her feel better.

      It didn’t.

      She had a confused, rebellious younger brother who was, unless something drastic happened, on his way to a serious prison record before his eighteenth birthday, and a husband who was bailing on her at the worst possible time rather than offering emotional support.

      She had hit rock bottom, Debi thought as she got into her car and started up the engine. Worse than that, she was in far over her head. What she desperately needed was to find a way back up to the surface before she drowned.

Chapter One

      Standing just inside the corral, Jackson White Eagle leaned back against the recently repainted railing, watching three of the current crop of teenage boys, who lived in the old converted bunkhouse, put the horses through their paces.

      They probably didn’t realize that in actuality the horses were putting them through their paces, Jackson thought. Training horses trained them.

      He felt the corners of his mouth curve just a little in satisfaction.

      Whatever the reason behind it, even after all this time, it still felt odd to glance in a mirror or a reflecting window and realize that he was smiling. The first ten or so years of his life, there had been precious little for him to smile about. He had grown up with nothing but bitter words and anger erupting, time and again, in his house.

      His parents were always fighting. His father, Ben White Eagle, was a great deal larger than his mother and Jackson had instinctively taken his mother’s side. He’d appointed himself her protector even though at ten, he had been small for his age and his father had continually referred to him as “a worthless runt.”

      Despite that demoralizing image, he had tried his best to protect the woman who had given him life. He went on being protective of his mother until the day that she walked out on his father—and him.

      At first, he had convinced himself that it was just an oversight on her part. He’d told himself that his mother was too angry at his father to realize that she’d left without him.

      Night after night, he waited, listening for her return.

      But after two weeks had passed, and then three, and then four, he knew he had to face the truth. His mother wasn’t coming back for him. That forced him to face the fact that the person who he had loved most in the world hadn’t loved him enough to take him with her. His heart broke.

      And then he just shut down.

      By then, four weeks after his mother had taken off, his father was already preparing to get married again. He was marrying the woman he’d been having an affair with. The affair that had produced another son and had been the final straw for his first wife.

      Like him, his stepmother, Sylvia, was only half Navajo. Sylvia was also the mother of his half brother, Garrett, who was five at the time of his parents’ marriage.

      The second his father brought Sylvia into the house, Jackson was certain that he was going to be locked out of the family. In his eyes, his father, Sylvia and Garrett formed a complete unit. That left him in the role of the outsider, unwanted and on the outside, looking in.

      But Sylvia hadn’t been the typical stepmother he’d expected. To his surprise, she reached out to him. She went so far as to tell him that she wasn’t going to try to take his mother’s place. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t come to her with anything that was bothering him. Knowing that he’d gone through a lot, she said that she intended to be there for him, as well as for Garrett. To her, they were both her sons.

      He’d appreciated the effort on Sylvia’s part, but he was just too angry at the world, predominantly his mother, to allow Sylvia into his life. He began acting out, taking part in unacceptable behavior.

      Things went from bad to worse.

      His father’s idea of fixing a problem was to take a belt to the cause. At first, he did it covertly, waiting until he got Jackson alone. But he soon tired of that and lashed out at him the moment his temper flared.

      The first time Sylvia became aware of what her husband was doing, she quickly put herself between him and Jackson. Ben had shoved her aside, which caused Jackson to attempt to tackle him. It ended badly for Jackson, but he had gotten a few licks in before his