Teaching the Cowboy (11 page)

Oh, yeah. Big-ass ulcer.

“Have fun.” He closed her door and continued down the hall. He sat on the upholstered chair next to the bed, opened the folder, and dialed the number at the top of the stationery. When the receptionist answered on the second ring, he said, “Hi, Erin. This is Johan, J-O-H-A-N, Lundstrom. Junior. Could you please transfer me to Mick Collins? I’m sure he knows what I want.”

She put him on hold.

While cheery sixties pop music played on the on hold track, John pushed open the curtains and stared at Landon’s old pickup truck parked nearby. No way was he going to be able to drive that thing cross country. He’d have to fly back and forth and just get over the inconvenience. Most of the schools Landon was looking at didn’t want freshmen to have cars on campus, anyway. Landon had been vociferously arguing in favor of living off-campus, but John wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on that just yet, even if the kid was not exactly a kid. Still
his
kid.

“John, John, John,” Mick boomed when he picked up the line.

“I guess you know why I’m calling.”

“Oh, I could guess. Took you long enough to wake up that common sense of yours. What did it? New girlfriend?”

John held his tongue.

“No matter. What kind of info do you have for me?”

John sat again and flipped through the contents of the folder. “I’ve been paying her rent monthly for the past two years. Have records of that. L.A. rent ain’t cheap.”

“So I’ve heard. Anything else?”

“I’m not sure how true it is given the source, but Sid told Kitty who told Landon who told
me
Charlene may be living with some guy. I don’t give a shit about the guy. Probably deserves her. But if they’re in a committed relationship,
he
should marry her and pay her bills instead of me footing the bill for both of them.”

“Hey, now, Sid’s a pretty reliable source or else I wouldn’t be her lawyer. If Sid said Charlene’s shacking up, she probably is. If you want, I can put an investigator on it.”

John closed his eyes and breathed deep. “How much is that going to cost me?”

“Less than the cost of you paying her maintenance for another month. She knows you have the money. You still getting oil out of that derrick?”

“Yes.”

“Then let me give you some advice. That’s what you’re paying me for anyway, right? The judge is going to need a reason to make a sudden change to the order. I told you in the first place that you had no reason to pay that woman support, and that your kids wouldn’t give two shits whether she was living under a bridge or in an apartment somewhere. Know why?”

“Why, Mick?” He already knew why, but he was too tired to fight the lecture.

“Because the only mothering that woman has done in her entire life was providing three ova for insemination. I think you’ve paid her enough for that.”

John cringed. He
had
loved the woman. Hadn’t he? Shit. Hard to even tell now with everything that’d happened. With the way she’d ran without so much as a goodbye to him
or
the kids.

“Fine.”

“Yeah? Get the investigation?”

“Might as well. If she has no plans to see the kids again, and she hasn’t in at least eighteen months, why don’t we go ahead and make a clean break on that, too?”

“I’ll shuffle some paperwork and get back to you.”

“Yep.”

John hung up the extension, feeling a sense of relief that he’d finally stood against the thing that had been demoralizing him every month on the first, but at the same time feeling an encroaching sense of dread because he suspected if Charlene got served with forms requesting she terminate her rights, she’d sign them and return them via the fastest thing smoking. That’s what he wanted, but there’d be a certain burn to it.

He tossed the folder on the floor and buried his face in his hands. “Fuck.”

Chapter Nine

“R
onnie?” John’s voice was heavy and thick. Drowsy, even. She looked down at her watch and shifted her phone to the other ear.

“Yes?” She stood and walked into the hallway so as not to disturb the reading exercise she’d started Peter on. She wasn’t supposed to be working with Peter just yet, but he’d stumbled into the office while Landon was examining an independent study unit so she had decided to press him to work. It was almost dinnertime, as Anna kept reminding her. What was he doing?

“Where are you, honey?”

“I’m in your office with the boys. Same place I’ve been all afternoon.”

“Oh. Good. You’re on the right side of the property line.”

She scratched her head. “John, did you want something? I need to get back to Peter.”

“That John on the phone? You tell him to get here for dinner,” Anna shouted from the kitchen.

“Anna says it’s time for dinner.”

“You can start without me,” he said.

“Where are you?”

“At the guest house.” There was a slight slur to his words so “house” came out sounding like “housh.”

Ronnie lowered her voice to a whisper and moved into the mudroom. “John, have you been drinking?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why does anyone drink?”

Well, that was a loaded question. “Stay where you are. I’ll get the kids to the table and have Landon distract them until bedtime.”

“Yep. He’s good at that. He’s a good boy. You coming over here, honey?”

“In a while. Don’t drink yourself stupid.”

“Too late.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He hung up.

Fuck
. She clamped the phone into its holster and squared her shoulders to face Anna in the kitchen. There must have been something curious in her demeanor because the typically stoic woman had concern written all over her face. “What happened?”

“Don’t know. John has himself locked up in the guesthouse.”

“Drinking?”

“Sounded like it.”

Anna blew out a long sigh. “Must be bad whatever it is. He hasn’t done that in a while. Usually burns it off by working.”

“Burns what off?”

“Everything.”

Ronnie hooked a thumb toward the hallway. “I’ll go get the kids ready for dinner and sneak out. I’ll make up some excuse.”

Anna gave her a dismissive wave. “Yep.”

Ronnie checked on Landon and Peter. “Hey, guys, time for dinner. Pete, you can just leave that there until tomorrow, kiddo.”

Pete shrugged and turned into a blond blur heading toward the scent of meatballs. Landon approached the door next. When he took off his glasses and wiped them on the hem of his T-shirt, she was struck by how much he really did resemble John. If it weren’t for the fact she’d seen a picture of Charlene, she wouldn’t have seen any of the woman in him at all. It was different with Peter and Liss. Peter had his mother’s wide eyes and pouty lips. Liss could have been Charlene’s doppelganger, minus the genetic quirk that made the child’s hair a curly bird’s nest whereas Charlene’s was stick straight.

“Why are you making that face, Ronnie?”

“What face?” She tried to smooth it to blankness, but it was too late.

Landon had his glasses back on and was wearing an expression far too prescient for a young man. “It’s the funeral face. Either someone died or shit has hit the fan. Which is it?”

She shifted her weight. “Dinner’s ready. Can you help Anna get Liss and Peter to bed before she leaves?”

He gave her a long stare before nodding. “Yeah.”

“I’ll get Liss to the table,” she said.

Landon followed after Peter, and she went the other way to fetch the girl. She poked her head into the room and found Liss sitting on a little stool in front of her vanity, sobbing. Ronnie ran to her.

“Felicity, what’s wrong?”

She turned her pink, tear-stained face to her and with trembling lips just barely made out, “It’s—it’s stuck!” She pointed to the roller brush lodged into the right side of her head.

“Oh, sweetie, you should have let me help you.”

“Why is…is…is it so
hard
?”

Ronnie started to gently unwind what she could from the complex tangles. “Liss, it’s just one of those things. Everyone has something about themselves they’d change. Heck, doing my hair is a big pain, too. It’s why I straighten it.”

“Can you straighten mine?” she whimpered.

“I don’t think your daddy would like that, sweetie. We’ll figure out how to make it easy for you to do all by yourself, okay? Maybe we can go through my bucket of stuff and find something that works for you.”

Liss tried to nod and went “Ow” when Ronnie’s grip on the brush impeded her.

“Oops. Sorry. We’ll fix it.”

At least it wasn’t gum. The year Ronnie had student-taught, she’d been charged with removing gum from hair twice. She thought she was off the hook from that chore when she started working with high schoolers.

Ronnie managed to get the brush unspooled and Liss to the table. Liss still wouldn’t let her comb her hair, but it was a start.

With one final, knowing stare from Landon, Ronnie edged out the back door, car keys in hand. Dread settled into her as she parked in the guesthouse’s carport and tried the side door. Locked. She sighed. “Don’t make this hard for me, John.” What she liked about teaching was that it was mostly predictable, give or take a few parental interactions. But this scenario was devolving into a mess she never could have anticipated in her wildest dreams. She wasn’t just a teacher now in the same way Anna wasn’t
just
a housekeeper. Getting physical with John had been a mistake, and now he was tangling emotions up into the mess, too.

She walked around front and pulled the knob. Also locked. A growl escaped her throat as she pried her phone out of its holster and recalled the last connection.

“Ronnie?”

“Yes. I’m outside. Open the door.”

“Go away.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Rage mounted in her gut, the sort of ire she couldn’t just funnel off to the school principal by having the administrator come fetch some trouble student from her class. In this case, she
was
the teacher and principal all rolled up into one. She ground her teeth and counted to three through them.

“John, if you don’t open this door right now, so help me I will make sure I will never have another meal on this ranch for as long as I’m here.”

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“You called
me
. I’m sorry you’re sobering up now and realize it, but either open this door, or you’re going to regret it.”

He sighed. “Go around to the side.” He hung up.

She stomped down the stairs and retraced her footsteps to the carport where she returned to the side door right as he opened the inner portal. He leaned into the doorway looking, well, rough was an understatement. His short hair stood up at odd spikes as if he’d been trying to yank it out from his scalp with his bare hands, his eyes were bloodshot, his five o’clock shadow had come and gone so his face looked
remarkably
like midnight, his plaid shirt was untucked and wrinkled, and he was still in muddy boots. Oh. And he reeked.

She pinched her nose closed and sidled in beside him. “Jesus Christ himself wouldn’t want to get close enough to you to secure your salvation, Johan Lundstrom. Go outside and take those boots off right now.”

He raised a brow as he turned very slowly and leaned against the inner door.

“Now. I mean it.”

He huffed and pushed the latch on the storm door to let himself down. He mumbled some incoherent oaths while sitting on the stoop and then finally gathered his boots and propped them next to the steps. He stomped back up and inside, now wearing a lecherous smirk.

“What did you do? Try to douse your clothes in scotch so you could set yourself on fire later?”

“Something like that.” He rubbed his eyes.

“Take them off.”

The smirk broadened into a grin.

She rolled her eyes. “Go straight to the laundry room and take them off unless you want to go home to your kids smelling like you’ve been sopping up the moisture on the floor at Moe’s Bar.”

“Aye-aye.” He gave her a limp salute and opened the door to the basement. He flicked on the light, and she followed him down the stairs to make sure he didn’t fall on some sharp object and stake himself, though with as pickled as he seemed to be, any organ damage he sustained may well have been self-healing.

She sped her pace and raced around his slow-moving form to open the washing machine door in advance of his arrival.

He finally got there, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, swearing all the while.

She tapped her foot against the concrete floor with impatience as he clumsily forced the small fasteners through.

I don’t get paid well enough for this.

Finally, he made it down the placket to the bottom hem and shrugged out of the offensive shirt. He held it out to her.

“Nope. Don’t give it to me. I’m not your housekeeper. Even Anna wouldn’t touch that thing. Stick it in the hole.” She bobbed her bun in the direction of the open washing machine flap.

“In the hole. Will do.” His smile broadened again and he tossed the shirt inside.

She rolled her eyes.

Next came his socks. He tossed those into the machine without further instruction. Once he was upright again, he began fiddling with his belt buckle. He worked it loose and slipped the leather strap out of his jeans. That he held out to her.

“Fine.” She studied the detail work on the silver buckle while he fumbled with the buttons of his jeans. There was a relief of a bucking bronco over a setting sun. Or a rising sun. She couldn’t tell which and didn’t really care. When she looked up again, he had his jeans on the floor and was stepping out of them and his briefs. She let her eyes stay affixed there on his legs as he bent. She really hadn’t gotten that great of a look at the guy. Every time they’d had sex she hadn’t really been in a position to idle.

She could admit when she was in the presence of a hunk of man. He was finely muscled from neck to toe with just the right amount of bulk. She couldn’t stand a weak man, and judging by the impressive girth of his calves and the cut of his biceps, she knew he was anything but. Nice. She wanted to wrap her hands around those thighs of his and give the poor lush a nice little massage up to his…

She cleared her throat and tossed a detergent pellet in after his liquor and ranch-soiled duds. She closed the door, changed her mind, and tossed another pellet in. Then she turned the dials on the machine to get it going. When she stood up again, she found him reaching his arms over his head, elongating his torso in a stretch as he yawned. Her gaze trailed down his the downy fur of his chest, past the tautness of his belly, down to the shaft hanging limp between his legs. Flaccid, but still impressive. Her gaze was back up to his shadowed face before his eyes were open again.

“What now, taskmistress?” he asked. He crossed his arms over that barrel chest and stood there completely unabashed in his nudity.

She swallowed hard and welled up her teacher reserve. “Shower. Now.”

“Oh, are you going to clean me?”

“No, you’re going to clean your damned self. Get moving.”

“You’ve got a dirty mouth for a schoolteacher.” He laughed and then cringed as he rubbed his head. He started shuffling toward the basement stairs in his bare feet.

“Actually, I’ve got a pretty clean set of vocabulary for a schoolteacher.”
Fucking internal dialogue aside
. She gave him about a six-step head start, but that still wasn’t enough of a gap between her and John’s cowboy rear end. She stared so hard at the thing as she moved she nearly missed a step. He didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t wait for her at the top of the stairs, instead moving straight on to the master suite without further instruction.

He paused at the linen closet for a stack of towels, yawning again, and continued to the walk-in shower. He turned the water on hot and high and as soon as he stepped in with a sigh, she reached an arm in toward the handle and ratcheted the temperature in the other direction.

“Motherfuck, woman.” He dialed it back to hot as soon as her fingers had cleared the handle and pushed the shower door closed on her.

She laughed. “At least now you won’t drown in the shower, you big oaf.”

He mumbled something vicious under his breath, but she saw him reaching for the soap through the privacy glass as she retreated from the bathroom. Mission accomplished.

Landon pushed himself back from the dinner table as Anna whisked his plate away. “That was great, Anna. Thanks.” He stood and dropped his cloth napkin on the tabletop.

“Where are you going?” she asked as he downed what was left of his milk. “Don’t you want dessert?”

“I’ll get it later. You can leave it out, if it’s no trouble. I need to catch someone before they go offline for the night. I’ll only be a little bit.”

She narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t push.

Once in his bedroom, he woke up his slumbering laptop computer and opened his e-mail client. He drummed his fingers on the desk as the slow satellite connection fed in the new messages. Twenty-three, most from Kitty. He ignored those for the moment and found what he was looking for second from the top.

“Ah.”