Lone Wolf Cowboy Read online

  Not that Vanessa seemed to require much of anything. Just as she’d done before, she calmly outlined the purpose of the class while Jacob leaned up against the counter in the back of the classroom.

  She spoke with a no-nonsense tone, but it wasn’t brisk or unkind. In fact, she somehow managed to seem both soft and laced through with steel all at the same time. She was something, this woman. And he could see that the rebellion against the assignment sat uncomfortably with the three boys, who had likely never met a rebellion they weren’t entirely at peace with before.

  But just like the first two, they didn’t make a move to do as they were told.

  “You can paint whatever you like,” Vanessa said after sitting there for a good ten minutes and simply observing the inactivity of the three boys. Her hands were clasped in her lap, her expression serene.

  “What is this dumb shit for?” Calvin asked.

  He had a permanently angry expression, with light brown hair that stuck out at odd angles. He was skinny, the collar of the white T-shirt he was wearing stretched out, revealing protruding collarbones. His pale green eyes glittered with anger. He was a sharp contrast to Marco, who was at least six inches taller, with dark hair and a carefully blank expression. He seemed content to watch and maybe follow the lead of the other two. Or maybe just pick whichever path would work best for him.

  Aiden had the smirk of a cocky bastard. And Jacob should know because he was one from the cradle. Aiden didn’t possess the self-preservation inherent in that careful neutrality on Marco’s face. Nor did he possess the earnestness required for the kind of anger that Calvin carried around on his scrawny shoulders. No, that boy was 100 percent pure smart-ass, and when he chose to speak—and Jacob knew he would—he was going to take the path of greatest irritation for all involved.

  “You might like it,” Vanessa said. “Have any of you ever taken art class before?”

  The smirk on Aiden’s face deepened. And Jacob could see the smart-ass remark coming before the kid’s mouth opened. “I’ve been told what I do in the bedroom is something like art,” he said.

  “Didn’t know your right hand was so chatty,” Marco said, his expression still blank.

  And Jacob found himself pleasantly surprised by that boy. Because it was a good burn, but not one that Jacob would have been able to level at a seventeen-year-old without causing some trouble. He imagined.

  “It’s not,” Aiden said. “But your mom has a lot to say.”

  Jacob sighed heavily.

  That earned him looks from the boys and from Vanessa. He shouldn’t get involved. He didn’t have a right to, not really. He was here to observe, not to...say things. But this just reminded him of...well, him.

  He hadn’t used anger. He’d been brash, he’d been inappropriate and loud and quick with a joke. He’d never taken much of anything seriously, and his willingness to play the fool had often given him the upper hand in social situations.

  The control.

  And as a bonus side effect, it kept it from being sincere. And nothing had scared him more than sincerity.

  These kids needed a dose of it.

  “Predictable,” Jacob said.

  Aiden frowned. “What?”

  “That was boring. If you’re going to bother to open your mouth to shock the world you might want to make it a little something better than a joke that has been around since the early 90s.”

  “And you are?”

  “The asshole that has been making jokes like that since before you were born.”

  “Are you a teacher?” Aiden asked.

  Jacob snorted. “Hell no. And good for you too.”

  “Thank you,” Vanessa said. “But I won’t be requiring your intervention.”

  “You’re welcome. But I’m not offering an intervention. I’m just responding to this kid’s lame-ass commentary.”

  “If you’re not a teacher, then what are you?” Calvin asked.

  “I’m here to make sure you don’t get out of line.”

  “Are you a cop?” Marco asked.

  “Also no. I’m just here doing what I’m told.”

  “Well,” Calvin said, “I’m not.”

  “Yeah. And look how far it’s gotten you. Shipped off to school in Nowhere, Oregon. Congratulations. That whole rebellion thing is going great.”

  “Do you guys want to start painting so he’ll shut up?” Vanessa asked.

  “It’s better than where I was,” Calvin said.

  “Then maybe you should lose the chip on your shoulder and pick up a paintbrush,” Jacob said, ignoring Vanessa.

  Vanessa was beginning to look testy, but she didn’t interject again.

  “Why? So we don’t fail art class?”

  So you didn’t destroy your life. So people didn’t get hurt. So people didn’t die.

  “Let me tell you something. From one screwup to another. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of battles in your life. But there isn’t one in here. Just a paintbrush and a damn can of paint. You can fight but for what? To prove you’re a badass? To prove that you are tougher than a canvas? Or you can just do as you’re told. Maybe you’ll like it. Maybe you won’t. But you won’t have wasted your energy on a battle that doesn’t actually matter to you. At this point, kid, I think you’re so angry you would fight anything. But you better save it. Because life is gonna come try to kick your ass, more than it already has. I don’t care what you’ve been through, and I don’t care what you think I’ve been through. Believe me when I tell you, life is gonna keep kicking your ass. It’s not going to decide that it’s done just because you already had a bad time. So if I were you...I’d paint a damn picture in here. Fight the dragons when they show up.”

  “Thank you,” Vanessa said, her voice soft. But he had a feeling he was going to earn himself a lecture later.

  The glitter in her dark brown eyes told him that she had identified her own personal dragon. And that right now it was him.

  The boys sat frozen, but after a few minutes, Calvin picked up a paintbrush. And then, so did Marco.

  Aiden sat resolutely, his arms crossed, his dark brows locked together. But the other two painted. And then, with five minutes left, Aiden picked up a paintbrush and with just a few intense strokes wrote fuck this on a blank canvas.

  Jacob was about to get in the kid’s face, but Vanessa wandered around the back to look at the canvases, and her expression was completely different to what he had imagined it might be.

  Calvin had done the canvas all in black. Except red at the center. Marco’s was a mix of colors, all dark, blending together until they were muddy.

  And then there were the simple words scrawled out by Aiden.

  “I know you’re trying to show me that you didn’t participate,” Vanessa said quietly. “But I hate to tell you this, even that says something about you. And that’s okay. Whatever you feel. I’m not here to judge you, I’m not here to grade you. I’m here to help you figure out how to put what’s in here on here,” she said, touching the canvas again.

  “You don’t want to see what I feel,” Calvin muttered from his position next to Aiden.

  “It doesn’t matter if I want to or not. Maybe it will make me uncomfortable. Maybe it will make the people around you uncomfortable. Art isn’t supposed to be easy. This is a place where you don’t have to worry about what anyone wants to see. Fighting me... There’s no point. Just paint.”

  And with those words, the session ended, the three boys walking back out, where they were met by Ellie, who was ushering them to one of the larger classes of the day.

  “I didn’t mean to step on your toes,” he said.

  “I mean, I guess it worked,” she responded.

  “Still.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted to do anything with the kids.”

  “I don’t. But they’re such little punk asses.”

  “No argument,” she said, stifling an amused smile. “Where did you get all that?” she asked, her voice softer now.


  “Where did I get what?”

  “Everything you said. About saving your battles. About fighting dragons.”

  “Everyone’s fighting. When you’re angry...that’s what you do. You fight yourself. You fight the people around you. Kids like Aiden...they’re fighting too. They do it with that shit-eating grin, but they fight. They do it by giving up. By not trying. And it’s all going to blow up in their faces eventually. So you have to know. You have to know why you fight. You have to know what matters. Because if you don’t, eventually nothing will matter. Or at least, you’ll treat some very special things like they don’t matter. And it will be too late to do anything. You won’t realize it until it all goes to hell. I’m an expert in that.”

  “Well, look at you. You’re much more self-actualized than you led me to believe.”

  “I’m not self-actualized. I’m not even entirely sure what that means. But I recognize a mirror when I see one. And that kid...”

  “You know, it probably wouldn’t hurt you to paint a giant fuck this on a canvas.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think you have some issues.”

  He frowned. “I don’t have punk-ass kid issues. I had a friend who died. That really messed some things up.”

  “You think these kids are just rebelling against their parents? Some of them have suffered pretty serious abuse. Abandonment. Just because they’re young doesn’t make their issues less.”

  “I get that,” he said. Except, he hadn’t really given it any thought.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “But you might try taking some of your own advice.”

  “I’m not fighting against anything. I’m here. I’m helping. I’m done with being selfish. With being thoughtless about my actions and how they affect other people. I lived life like that for a long time and it cost my best friend. I’m different now.”

  “So you’ll paint me a picture?”

  “No,” he said. “Because I’m not a troubled kid that got sent to a special school. And I don’t need therapy. Your brand of it or otherwise.”

  “A pretty bold statement.”

  “Well, that’s the kind of guy I am.”

  “Great. Since it’s not your class, though, you can tone down the boldness there.”

  “Sure.”

  “You can just sit quietly until there are some dragons to slay.”

  * * *

  JACOB HAD SPENT long hours on the fire lines. He had pulled all-night shifts driving ambulances. He had put in punishing twelve-hour workdays on the ranch. And he didn’t think he had ever been so tired before in all of his life as he was after dealing with a bunch of kids all day.

  They weren’t even kids. It wasn’t like he had been dealing with a passel of toddlers. No. He had been sitting in an art class with teenagers. That should have been easy. Nothing.

  It was a strange kind of exhaustion. Not the aching muscles he was accustomed to having at the end of the day. It was a foreign, sand-behind-the-eyelids sensation accompanied by no small amount of brain fog.

  He walked into the main schoolroom, where Gabe had asked the group of them to meet after the day was over.

  Yet again, Vanessa was nowhere to be seen, but Gabe was seated on top of one of the desks, his feet propped up on a chair. Jamie was sitting down in a chair beside him, her arm draped over his thighs. Jamie looked about as exhausted as Jacob felt.

  Ellie was seated on the floor next to Amelia, who was playing with two bedraggled-looking plastic ponies, one of which was wearing a tutu. Caleb was standing on the periphery of the group, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, as if he didn’t know quite what to do with them.

  Jacob assumed a similar position.

  “Now that we are all here,” Ellie said, giving him a smile, “how was the day?”

  “Good,” Gabe said.

  “Exhausting,” Jamie replied, draping yet more resolutely over Gabe’s lap.

  “You normally lead fifty-mile trail rides, girl,” he said, shaking his leg. “Why are you so tired?”

  “Youths,” she said.

  “It’s not for the faint of heart,” Ellie said.

  “You don’t look tired,” Jamie responded.

  “I have experience teaching. And for me...it was good to get back into it,” she said softly, looking down at Amelia. “It was good to have something other than our little world to focus on.”

  “Where’s Vanessa?” Jacob asked.

  “She said she would email me a full report,” Gabe said. “I don’t require anybody to be social as long as they get their job done.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jacob said. “You didn’t say that to me. Do I have to be social as long as I’m getting my job done?”

  “You do, because you’re my brother. And I want you here.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Because the alternative is that you’re going to be up at your cabin all the time.”

  Jacob couldn’t really argue with that.

  But he thought of the way his interest had been sparked looking at Vanessa’s body earlier today, and he wondered if he just should have stayed up in the mountains.

  “So all of the kids hate us,” Caleb said. “I’m not the only one that noticed that, am I?”

  “I felt like they liked me,” Jamie said.

  “I think they like your ass,” Gabe said.

  Jamie looked up at him and glared. “That is inappropriate.”

  “It wouldn’t have been more appropriate for anyone else here to say it.”

  “He has a point,” Jacob said.

  “Are you saying they don’t like my ass?” Ellie asked.

  “You were in a classroom environment,” Gabe said, having the decency to look slightly perturbed by the line of conversation. “Jamie was showing them the horses. And bending over and grabbing things.”

  “I think you were looking at her ass,” Ellie said.

  “I was,” Gabe said. “She’s my fiancée, and I’m allowed.”

  “Can I not be reduced to my ass, please? And that is not a sentence I thought I would ever have to say.”

  “Sorry,” Gabe said, not looking at all sorry.

  “My point is, these kids are kind of miserable,” Caleb said.

  “They’re going to be miserable for a while,” Ellie said. “And you know what, they might not even be miserable. But they don’t know how to show that they aren’t. Not without losing their shields. And those shields are very, very important to them.”

  “So basically, we signed on to do this job where a bunch of kids snarl at us twenty-four hours a day?” Jacob asked.

  “Not twenty-four hours a day,” Gabe said. “They’re gone now.”

  “True,” Jacob responded. “So tomorrow, same as today? Verbal abuse from snot-nosed teenagers and then collapse into a heap?”

  “Yeah,” Gabe said.

  “Great. Then I’m out.”

  “Just a second before you go.”

  Jacob held back a groan. He wasn’t going to let his brother know he was irritated with him. Because of maturity. Or something like that.

  Gabe followed him outside, and Jacob waited. Because he had learned that if he came at Gabe swinging, snapping at him and asking him what the hell he wanted, then his brother would only feel all the more justified in prying.

  He and Gabe had never been the close ones. Not really. That had been him and Caleb. Always. But the thing with Clint had done strange things to his relationship with Caleb. Hell, it had done strange things to his relationship with everyone if he were honest. But the biggest difference was Caleb.

  “I heard from West,” Gabe said.

  “Really?” West Caldwell, their half brother who none of them had ever met.

  Gabe had come clean with them all a few months back about the fact that their father had illegitimate children not even he’d known about.

  They had a half sister, McKenna, who’d found them last Christmas, but the revelations of other child
ren were more recent.

  Their mother, Tammy, had known about them. Some twenty-five years ago she’d paid off women who’d attempted to extort money from her husband, and they’d left with their money, and without Hank or anyone else other than Gabe knowing about the kids.

  Gabe felt compelled by guilt now to find the other kids and bring them into the fold. They’d managed to track down one of the women and, through her, had found her son West. But she’d been unwilling to share the names of the other mothers, so they were at a standstill.

  “Yes,” Gabe said.

  “Why are you telling me? Separately from everyone else.”

  Gabe looked around, as if he hadn’t considered that. “I told Jamie.”

  “McKenna? Caleb?”

  “No. Because I have the feeling that all of this bothers you, and I can’t really figure out why.”

  “It doesn’t bother me. Not any more than anything else.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I can’t help what you do or don’t believe,” he said, feeling frustrated. “I’m not going to live my life trying to make you feel comfortable.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “You’ve been weirdly up on me about your plans. About all of this. About your plans for the ranch, telling me about all of it before you told anyone else, and about this. I’m not sure exactly when you thought I became a safe space, Gabe.”

  “Somebody has to be,” Gabe said. “I mean, someone has to be for you.”

  This came close to sending Jacob straight over the edge into a rage. He was trying to reach him, or whatever. Trying to turn him into one of the troubled kids he was helping out on the ranch, and Jacob didn’t know what the hell was going on in his brother’s psyche to put him in this space, but he was definitely in it, and Jacob didn’t have any desire to be part of it.

  “I feel like you’re doing some kind of metaphorical baptism or emotional stuff here,” Jacob said. “And I’m not buying into being part of it.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You found love, great. I’m really glad for you. You decided to leave the rodeo and that you’d found a calling here. Great. I’m happy for you there too. But you changing has nothing to do with anyone else around you needing to change.”