“I have plans tonight,” she said stiffly, a hint of color in her cheeks. A hot date? he wondered, and was stunned at his disappointment.
“We can make an appointment to meet one day this week after school,” she offered.
“I’m leaving Monday to go to Denver on a horse-buying trip until Friday. What about tomorrow night? We’ll even throw in dinner for your trouble.”
A host of emotions flashed through those expressive eyes—reluctance at the forefront among them, something that suddenly annoyed him. “I... Yes. I suppose that would be all right.”
“Does seven sound okay?”
She nodded those soft curls. “Yes.”
“This has got to be a big misunderstanding. Ruby is a great kid. You’ll see. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“I hope so. Ruby’s negative attitude is becoming disruptive to the entire afternoon class.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow night, then. Oh, and Miss Barnes,” he said with a smile as he pushed the button to open the gate, “perhaps it would be better if you rang the buzzer when you arrive for dinner tomorrow. I wouldn’t want you to fall from the top of the gate next time and miss the appetizer.”
He laughed at the hot glare she sliced at him. As he watched her march back through the gates and climb into her fluorescent car, he was aware of the unwilling attraction settling low in his gut.
Six
HE WAS CHARMED by her, Justin thought as he watched Ruby’s teacher drive away. He had to admire any woman passionate enough about her job to climb a fence, just to get her point across. Not to mention those delectable lips....
Nothing could come of it. He knew that. Miss Ashley Barnes had commitment written all over her cute little face and he had a terrible track record in that department.
He had decided after Ruby came into his life that he just had to close the door on anything long-term. He had been burned too many times. He picked the wrong kind of women to tangle with and then ended up paying for it.
Ruby’s mother had been the final straw. Tamara Drake had been an aspiring actress he met at a party and dated a few times, unaware that underneath her fun, sexy act was a predatory woman who thought trapping him by becoming pregnant with his child would seal her celebrity status. Tamara’s pregnancy and her increasingly strident demands on him had been Justin’s wake-up call that his life was not traveling a course he wanted. He had fathered a child with a woman he barely knew and one he had come to despise, and the grim reality of it all forced him to take a good, hard look at himself.
He hadn’t been very crazy about what he saw. He was just like Tamara, he had realized. He had become selfish, materialistic, shallow. He went after what he wanted at the moment without thought of the consequences, and he knew he couldn’t continue on that road.
He started looking for a quiet western town to settle in, told Tamara he was leaving Hollywood and offered a financial settlement and annuity in return for her signing over parental rights to Ruby to him. Though she had been livid at him for walking away, she certainly hadn’t wanted to be saddled with a baby. She agreed with alacrity and died a year later of a drug overdose.
It was an ugly story, one that still made him ashamed of the man he had been six years ago.
He had changed. Ruby had seen to that, but he still didn’t trust his own judgment about women. Tamara had just been the last in a long line of mistakes, and with a child’s fragile emotions to consider, he couldn’t afford the high price anymore.
He avoided the spotlight now as much as he could, but to his jaded eye, it seemed as if every woman he met since Tamara was mostly interested in him for his ex-celebrity status, enthralled, for some crazy reason, to be seen with a man who had once been moderately famous.
It turned his stomach. He wanted them to see beyond the image that had appeared on far too much movie-related merchandise. To see the man whose favorite things now were mowing the lawn on a warm summer afternoon, playing outside in the sunshine with his daughter, training a good horse.
He didn’t trust many women and he certainly didn’t trust his own judgment. This way was better. Just him and Ruby and Lydia. They made a good team and there just wasn’t room for any more players.
Not even cute-as-pie schoolteachers with dimples and hazel eyes and blond, starlit curls.
Seven
“ALL A BIG MISUNDERSTANDING. Right. Can you believe that man? Does he think I don’t know what’s going on in my own classroom?”
“The nerve!” Josie Roundy exclaimed.
“He should be horsewhipped,” Marcy Weller agreed.
Her two best friends looked at each other and grinned, and Ashley fought the urge to bean them both with the wok she was setting up on the stove top.
She should be grateful they were there, she told herself. They had both agreed to her last-minute invitation so she wouldn’t be consumed with guilt for lying to Jason Hartford.
She hadn’t wanted to tell him the truth—that she had no plans other than lesson prep work—but she also hadn’t been ready to turn around and drive back to the Blue Sage that night, not without a little more time to psych herself up to facing him again. As salve to her conscience, she had called Josie and Marcy over for an impromptu party watching movies and making Chinese food and venting about the man himself.
“You should have seen the way he looked at me, like I was some deranged fan come to steal his boxers or something. Good grief.”
“Well, you did climb over his gate,” Marcy pointed out from the
