The Cowboy Who Broke The Mold. Cathleen Galitz

glove compartment, he pulled out an envelope with her name typed upon it and handed it to her through the open window.

      With that, Judson tipped his hat and threw the pickup into gear.

      Something in that simple gesture made Carrie’s heart beat more quickly. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but there was something undefinably sexy about that damned cowboy hat.

      As dust rose about the receding vehicle, she noticed that Judson Horn didn’t so much as glance back.

      She was on her own.

       Chapter Three

      School was to start in less than a week, and she didn’t know where to begin. First there was enough house cleaning in both buildings to keep her busy for a month. Then there was the fact that she wasn’t sure how to organize one schoolroom to accommodate eighteen children at six different grade levels. Still, those worries would have to be temporarily put aside. Right now food was her most imminent problem. Aware that the half a hamburger she’d eaten in Atlantic City wouldn’t last her long, she realized that somehow she was going to have to get comfortable driving a beat-up, old stick shift— and fast.

      Sinking to the front steps of the schoolhouse, Carrie felt the tears spill down her face. The surprising thing was that they weren’t tears of self-pity but rather of unexpected joy. Beneath the never-ending Wyoming sky, she felt spiritually cleansed. The sun filtered through the quaking aspen, splaying exquisite patterns upon the ground. The air she breathed was sweet and clean. The rippling of the river and the rustling of the Jeaves seemed to her the most soothing sounds on earth.

      High above two eagles circled, brushing wing tips on clouds before separating and going their own ways. A sharp pain ripped through Carrie as she was reminded of the engagement she had severed back in Chicago. From the very start she had worried about the possible consequences of mixing business with pleasure. Never get involved with the boss, she had told herself, but Scott Ballson insisted that the fact that he was her prin- cipal had nothing to do with their out-of-school rela- tionship. He assured her that their private lives were their own.

      Then again, Carrie reminded herself bitterly, he had also told her he’d back her a hundred percent. In truth, Scott had stood behind her only long enough to stab her in the back.

      “Just because I changed a student’s grade?” he had sputtered incredulously, staring at the engagement ring she had pressed into his palm. “I can’t believe you’re acting so childishly.”

      “It’s a matter of betrayal.”

      “It’s a matter of politics,” he had scoffed, alluding to the fact that Cindy Lawton’s father was on the school board and that the failing mark the senior had earned in Carrie’s class not only rendered her ineligible to play in the state basketball tournament but also jeopardized the pretty senior’s graduation, as well. When Carrie had adamantly refused Scott’s request to raise the grade, he exercised the “administrative privilege” of changing it himself—without her consent or knowledge.