“Not again.” Flint Rawlings frowned as he clicked up the volume on his cell phone and backed into the barn. He motioned to the three teenagers in front of him to keep working on the hay swather that lay disassembled in the dirt parking area.
“I’m terribly sorry.” Mrs. Toler, his son’s elderly nanny, sounded upset. “I’ve looked all around the cabin and yard. I suspect he’s run off with that gang of hooligans from the ranch.”
“He won’t have gotten far. I’m sure he’s up at the main house, just like last time.” At six, Logan had developed a habit of running away, but he always went to the same place. “Don’t you get yourself stressed out, Mrs. Toler. I’ll go right over there and find him.”
“All right, but, Flint...” Mrs. Toler paused, then spoke again, her voice shaky. “This just isn’t going to work.”
“What’s that?” He pinched the bridge of his nose as the rising sound of a teen argument came through the barn’s open doors.
“He’s picking up some of the same bad habits that brought those delinquent boys to the ranch. Why, you wouldn’t believe how he mouthed off when I told him he couldn’t have a second piece of cake.”
“The mouthing off will stop. I’ll talk to him.”
“Please, do. But meanwhile, I’m too old to be running all over the Triple C looking for that boy. I’m giving notice.”
Flint restrained the groan that wanted to emerge from deep in his chest. “You go home and get some rest, and we’ll talk later tonight.” More like he’d beg her to stay on. “Don’t worry about Logan. I’ll find him. I always do.”
The stack of overdue paperwork he’d hoped to tackle this afternoon seemed to glare at him, but he turned away and headed outside. The teenagers were arguing over what engine part went where. Flint put a stop to that and explained to the boys that they’d have to take up their large-equipment-repair lesson tomorrow after school.
Then he headed up to the main house double time. He’d spoken reassuringly to Mrs. Toler, but the reality was that Logan was just six. Although the two of them had moved to their little cabin on the Triple C Ranch over a month ago, Logan didn’t know the Triple C nearly as well as he’d known the Silver Star, the previous location of the Lone Star Cowboy League’s Boys Ranch.
What if Logan had gotten lost? The days were at their shortest in early December, and the weather was getting steadily cooler. Logan was notorious for forgetting to grab a jacket before running outside.
And Flint, rushed as he’d been with the move and the general craziness of a working ranch for at-risk boys, didn’t always think to remind him.
A familiar sense of inadequacy rose in him. He’d been doing his best to raise Logan alone, but he wasn’t one of those cookie-baking, playgroup-organizing kind of fathers featured in the parenting magazines he dutifully subscribed to. He was a ranch foreman, a veteran, a man’s man. Which worked great with older boys, but as the single dad of a six-year-old, he wasn’t passing muster.
Two of the teenagers he’d been working with raced ahead toward the main ranch house. Automatically he turned to see whether the third boy was coming, the one who’d looked the most disappointed when Flint had postponed the lesson. Robby Gonzalez was a new resident at the ranch, thirteen but big for his age, and he was kicking at a stone as he walked along behind.
Flint felt a twist of sympathy despite his own troubles. “C’mere, Robby.” He gestured for the boy to join him. “Need some help.”
Robby brightened and jogged to catch him. “¿Qué pasa? I mean, what’s up?”
Flint considered trying to answer the kid in Spanish and decided against it. He knew a little, like most folks in this part of Texas, but he was too worried to find the right words. “Know where the younger kids are hanging out?”
“Sí. Most of them were going to the library. They said Senorita Alvarez was doing story time.”
Miss Alvarez. Logan’s pretty teacher, who volunteered at the ranch after school. Flint’s certainty about where Logan had gone bumped up a notch, along with his discomfort.
“I saw Senorita Alvarez,” Robby continued with a sly grin. “She could read me a story anytime. Es muy atractiva!”
“Respect, Robby,” Flint said automatically. The boy was probably too young to be interested in girls his own age, or at least, too awkward to know how to interact with them. But a crush on an older teacher? Maybe. Or maybe the kid was just trying to get attention—something all the at-risk boys craved. Flint thumped Robby’s shoulder. “You did a good job helping to take apart that swather,” he told the young teenager. “Make sure you show up tomorrow, and we’ll put it back together.”
Robby beamed and turned toward the main ranch house, and Flint veered off toward the little library behind it. He wished he could put his life back together as easily as a broken piece of farm equipment.
Mrs. Toler, their third babysitter this year, had seemed like a perfect solution to Flint’s child-care problems. But Flint should have known it wouldn’t work for long. The Lord didn’t tend to look out for Flint and Logan. Never had.
Consciously relaxing his fists, Flint strode toward the library. Once inside the doorway, he stopped dead.
Amid a small group of the ranch’s youngest residents, Logan was cuddled up on a low couch right beside his slender, long-legged teacher. His towhead shone bright against her dark, wavy hair.
The sight hurt. It was what he’d imagined he’d see with Logan’s mother, until Stacie had decided she was too young to be tied down and dumped them both. As he’d scrambled to learn to care for his baby son alone, he’d vowed he wouldn’t let a woman get close again, lest she break Logan’s heart.
Never mind his own heart. After six years, it had pretty much frozen over.
Which didn’t explain why he felt compelled to stand, watching, just one more minute. Watching his son laugh and cuddle in a carefree way, looking happier than he had in weeks. Just one more minute before he went and tore Logan away from the things he wanted most in the whole world: a big family of boys, and a whole lot of warm mothering.
Flint forced down his emotions. Logan wasn’t one of the ranch’s troubled residents. Whatever Flint’s failings as a father, he’d provided his son with a safe home and good discipline. Flint didn’t mind Logan’s befriending the residents—after all, they all rode the same bus to the local public school and played together on the playground—but from what Mrs. Toler had said, Logan was picking up some bad habits. And while Flint didn’t consider the young residents hooligans and delinquents, as Mrs. Toler did, he had to acknowledge that Logan might have learned some inappropriate language and attitudes.
Which had to stop.
Not only that, but Logan was distracting Lana Alvarez from the boys clustered around her feet, the ones she’d come to work with. He was taking attention from kids who truly needed her help.
And in the process,