Rancher's Deadly Risk Read Online Free Page B

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 game. He was like a father with thirty sons on the field or bench.
    Sitting at the kitchen table, eating his solitary oatmeal, he noticed for the first time in a long time just how silent the house was. He’d noticed it after his father had died eight years ago, and he’d noticed it again when Martha had left her engagement ring on this very table.
    Silence, usually a good companion given his busy days, sometimes seemed lonely and empty. Tonight it definitely felt empty.
    This big old house had been meant for a large family. Built back around the turn of the twentieth century, he had only to look at old family photos to know how full it had been at one time. His great-grandfather must have kept awfully busy expanding the place as well as running the ranch and farm. But after the Second World War, youngsters had moved away. The G.I. Bill had offered them different opportunities, and only his own grandfather had chosen to remain after returning from the South Pacific.
    So the old days of a dozen kids had trailed away, his grandmother had born only one child that survived, and then his own mother had died giving birth to him, and his dad had never remarried.
    From many to just him. Sometimes when he walked around and counted dusty, empty bedrooms, and imagined what this place might have been like in its heyday, he felt the lack of human contact. Five years ago he’d tried a family reunion, met some of his great-uncles and cousins he hardly knew, and some he’d never met, and after a rush of “we have to keep in touch” from everyone, keeping in touch had ended when they left town. They felt no ties to this place, or to him.
    He didn’t blame them for that. Time had moved on, and with it so had their lives, which were so far removed now from this thinly populated county that he was sure most of them couldn’t imagine why he remained.
    But his roots were very real to him. He felt them dig deeper every time he walked the