Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(94)

She sighed.

Sometimes she wondered if the kids—especially the high schoolers—listened in class at all.

When she’d taken the job at the beginning of the last school year, she really hadn’t known what to expect. A massive ranch in the middle of nowhere in Oregon, Four Corners was almost its own town. A couple hundred people worked the ranch and those families lived on or around the property. There was no school close by and a hundred and ten years earlier they’d built the schoolhouse on the grounds to teach all of the kids.

Some kids, it was her understanding, had been there all their lives. Some rotated in and out quickly, their families more transient in nature than the others.

One thing was certain—it wasn’t boring.

And this was...

Well, it was a life. One far away from Kansas and free from her overbearing mother and all of her sisters, who were still so deeply entrenched in their mother’s neuroses and control that they fluttered around her like hens in modest dress, constantly seeking to please her, never putting a foot out of line...

Tala had gone to college.

Her mother had hated that. She’d been naturally suspicious of higher learning, especially for women.

In fairness, her mother was suspicious of everything.

Movies, TV, sugar, food coloring, men, the postal service, books...

The list went on.

But Tala had always felt like it was wrong.

They’d only gone to school for one year that Tala could remember, but it had changed her life. Miss Taylor had been the sweetest, most wonderful woman Tala had ever met. And she’d answered Tala’s questions.

She hadn’t told her that questions led to judgment. She hadn’t made her feel like she was bad or guilty for wanting answers about the world.

Miss Taylor had made Tala certain, at eight years old, that she wanted to be a teacher too.

So she would know things. So she could tell other people.

“And now all this is mine.” She lifted her teacup and waved it around the room.

Maybe her life wasn’t particularly glamorous, but it never had been. It was hers. That was what mattered.

She heard a resounding thump outside and jumped. It was the wind, she reassured herself. Of course it was the wind.

Her little cottage was nestled into the back corner of Sullivan’s Point, which was a horse ranch and farm, one of the four parcels of land that made up the larger ranch. Many of the cabins on the property were rustic, but her place was a cute little cottage with flower boxes on the windows and yellow shutters and she loved it.

And if a tree branch landed in her flowers she would...

Well, she’d be mad.

She stood up and she heard the thump again. She really needed to stop watching murder mysteries this late.

But too bad, she already had.

It was the wind, which could get crazy during storms, and that was all it was.

Except then the next thump was accompanied by a groan.

She looked across the space at her bright blue front door and saw she hadn’t turned the lock. She stood there frozen. Should she jump for the dead bolt?

She would if her feet worked.

But the ranch was full of people who lived and worked here and it was possible someone had gotten displaced during the storm and...

The front door swung wide-open and there was a man standing there. A tall, broad man with a long black coat and black cowboy hat. Hs eyes were dark, glittering in the light, and his jaw was unshaven with dark stubble covering it.

An outlaw.

The man took two steps into the room, then stumbled down onto the floor.





CHAPTER TWO


WELL, HE WAS in the shit now.

He really was.

He’d thought he’d left Jake and all his bullshit behind years earlier, but he supposed his brother was right. In the end you couldn’t escape family. They were blood. And they’d think nothing of spilling that blood in an aim to protect themselves.

Clayton added that last part himself. As he bled onto a stranger’s carpet.

He’d managed to shake Jake about a mile or so down the road, and he’d ditched his car in a secluded overhang of foliage and gone it on foot, into the woods.

He had reason to be in these woods anyway.

He and his brother had grown up over in Copper Ridge, but Jake had left a long time ago and moved to a ranch farther east. But Clayton had made a hideaway here, and he’d been careful to make sure there was no paper trail and that his brother didn’t have any idea.

But it had been a mistake. The bullet had only grazed his side, but he was bleeding like hell and he was starting to feel light-headed. He was disoriented, and he had not found his way to the place he’d needed to get. He’d had no idea where in hell he was at all. Every step he took, he bled more. He needed to sit and put pressure on the damn thing, but with his brother actively trying to kill him...

Yeah, that made it hard.

He hoped Jake would think he’d kept on driving. In the end, Clayton had known he was running out of time, and continuing to run wouldn’t work.

So he’d figured he’d hunker down, and hope Jake wouldn’t expect that. Hope Jake figured Clayton was too scared to do anything but run.

Sadly for Jake, Clayton wasn’t a six-year-old boy anymore who could be bullied into running drugs or guns in his backpack.

He wasn’t afraid.

Well, not in the general sense, but this whole bleeding-out thing was an experience he wasn’t looking to repeat. Then, it may not be an issue if he succeeded in bleeding all the way out.