back to what he’d been doing before that woman disrupted his day.
To his surprise, Ryan stood his ground.
“Can I help you?” he asked in the same small, hopeful voice he’d used the morning when he had asked the same question.
The word no hovered on Clint’s tongue and he’d almost said it. But then he heard that teacher’s vehicle as she apparently started it up and then began to drive away.
Good. The woman was really going back into town, Clint thought.
But what the woman had said annoyingly refused to drive away with her. It seemed to linger in the air like a solid entity.
Clint frowned as he turned to look at his son.
“Yeah,” Clint finally said, reluctantly relenting. “You can help—as long as you promise not to get in the way.”
Stunned that his father had actually said he could help, Ryan looked at him, a wide smile spreading out over his small, angular face.
“I promise! Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, Dad,” Ryan proclaimed eagerly. “Just tell me,” he repeated.
Clint looked down at his son. Despite the boy’s eager reaction, Clint couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just unintentionally opened up Pandora’s box.
Hearing the front door open and then close again, Shania came out of the kitchen and into the living room. She smiled at her cousin. “You’re home.”
“What gave it away?” Wynona asked, dropping her purse and briefcase unceremoniously on the coffee table. She dropped herself down on the sofa almost at the same time. Anger had temporarily drained her.
The sarcastic remark was totally out of character for Wynona, Shania thought, so she didn’t bother commenting on it.
Instead, she said, “You’re usually here ahead of me. If you hadn’t turned up soon, I was going to send the dogs out looking for you.”
“We have dogs?” Wynona asked.
The sarcastic edge in her voice was beginning to fade. They didn’t have dogs; they shared joint ownership of one dog, a German shepherd named Belle. Belle was more like a member of the family than a pet.
“Okay, ‘dog,’” Shania corrected needlessly. “Belle likes to think of herself as a whole army.” Because ignoring her cousin’s obviously sour mood was not making it go away, she tried addressing it head-on. “Boy, you’re certainly being unusually touchy tonight. Something go wrong today?”
Instead of pretending not to know what Shania was talking about, or denying her cousin’s assessment, Wynona came clean.
“I tried to talk some sense into a knuckle-dragging blockhead, but I should have realized that my efforts were doomed from the start,” Wynona complained. She closed her eyes, trying to center herself.
Coming farther into the room, Shania sat down on the sofa beside her cousin. “I take it we’re not talking about one of your students.”
Wynona opened her eyes and sat up, glancing at her cousin in confusion.
“My students?” she repeated. “I’d never say something like that about one of the students—”
“Then who are you talking about?” Shania asked.
“Ryan Washburn’s father, Clint.” Even as she said his name, Wynona frowned. “I went to talk to him today after school.”
Shania hadn’t heard her cousin mention the man’s name before. Was that someone she’d known before they had moved to Houston with their great-aunt? “Why would you do that?”
Wynona’s frown deepened. It was obvious she was struggling to get her temper under control. “Because the Neanderthal wouldn’t return any of the twelve hundred messages I left on his phone.”
Shania smiled. She was accustomed to her cousin’s penchant for exaggeration. She didn’t do it around anyone else, but Wynona felt comfortable around her and she relaxed the restrictions she imposed on herself when she was within earshot of other people.
“Twelve hundred?” Shania repeated. “That many times, huh?”
Wynona relented. “Okay, maybe it was more like eight.”
Shania inclined her head. “A little more manageable number,” she agreed. “What kind of messages were you leaving for this unresponsive parent?” she asked her cousin, trying to get a better picture of what had gone on.
“The kind of messages a concerned teacher leaves for the parent of one of her students,” Wynona answered. She would have thought that Shania would just naturally assume that.
But Shania was still attempting to piece the story together. She couldn’t remember seeing Wynona this angry or incensed before.
“One of the students getting into trouble and the father doesn’t want to hear about it?” she asked, thinking of the most logical reason that would set off her cousin this way.
Wynona got up and, still agitated, began to pace around. “Oh, the father clearly didn’t want to hear about it, but it wasn’t because his son was getting in trouble.” She swung around to face her cousin. “Oh, Shania, Ryan is such a sweet, sweet kid. If you saw his face, you’d think you were looking at an angel.”
Shania was still feeling her way around this subject. “And he’s not a little devil?”
“No!” Wynona cried defensively. “If anyone’s a devil, it’s that father of his.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, Wynona knew she had gone over the line. She shrugged helplessly. “Maybe that’s not exactly fair,” she admitted.
Shania took her cousin’s hand and pulled her back down onto the sofa next to her. “Wyn, why don’t you take a deep breath and tell me about this from the beginning?” she suggested.
Belle chose that moment to come walking over to the two women. As if on cue, the German shepherd put her head in Wynona’s lap.
“Better yet,” Shania said, amending her initial instruction as she smiled at the dog, “Why don’t you pet Belle and then start talking from the beginning?” She knew the animal had a calming effect on both of them, especially on Wynona.
Because she had never been able to resist the dog from the moment they had rescued the animal from a shelter literally hours before she was slated to be destroyed, Wynona ran her hand along the dog’s back, petting her. The dog seemed to wiggle into the petting motion. A smile slowly emerged on Wynona’s lips.
Watching her cousin, Shania asked, “You feel better now?”
Wynona was forced to nod. “It’s hard to stay angry petting a dog.”
“I had a feeling,” Shania said. She remained where she was. “Okay, I’m listening. Why were you talking to a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal and how did that wind up making you so late?”
Still petting Belle, Wynona answered the second part of that first. “I’m late because I didn’t want to come home angry so I drove around for a while, trying to calm down.”
That certainly hadn’t worked out well, Shania thought. Out loud she said, “If this is ‘calmed down,’ I would have hated to have seen you the way you were before you ‘calmed down,’” Shania commented. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this worked up before.”
Wynona could only shake her head, even as she continued to stroke Belle. “This guy just pushed all my buttons.”
Well, this was something new, Shania thought in surprise.
“I didn’t know you had ‘buttons’