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Holden grinned and readjusted his hat. “No. I’ve enough money to replace that dress a thousand times over. I just wish I would have been there to see the look on your face when you realized Jesse was back in town.”
“Why?” Her pulse leaped for reasons she didn’t want to examine. “Him being in town again doesn’t matter to me.”
“Really?” He was still grinning. “Do I have to remind you that you two being caught kissing in the school house was the reason it burned down?”
Her face heated at the memory. She’d never live that event down. No one in town would let her forget it either. The one moment she lost her mind and let Jesse Samuels kiss her, they’d been caught. Her trying to run away and knocking the oil lamp over in her haste had caused a fire big enough the blaze had been seen for miles. And her shame was now Willow Creek history.
She shrugged her shoulders and looked at anything but him. “Hopefully I won’t have to deal with him much.”
“Well, he’s back in town to stay from what I hear. It’ll be hard to avoid him.”
“Wonderful,” she muttered under her breath. “Where’s the horse I rode in on? I want to get back to town.”
“Why not stay the night? You can have a bit of supper with us and tell us about your trip to Missoula.”
She considered the offer and finally nodded her head. Maybe after a good nights sleep, she’d be ready to broach the subject of her job. Her father may be more receptive, too. She smiled, leaned up to kiss him on the cheek and turned back to the house. “I’ll see you inside.”
“You could probably see betterif you actually crossed the creek.”
Jesse straightened and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, casting a sideways glance at his brother. “I’m not trying to see anything in particular.”
Rafe laughed. “You always were a lousy liar.”
The Avery ranch was a hazy blur on the horizon. Jesse could just make out a few lights in the windows of the main house. Activity around the place was a constant flow of movement and those fuzzy shapes were hard to make out. None of them was the person he was looking for, though.
“I thought you were supposed to be in town with Ben and Aaron causing trouble and drinking the saloon dry.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t much feel like it tonight.”
“You saw her didn’t you?”
He didn’t have to ask who Rafe was talking about.
“She’s only at the ranch on weekends now.”
“I heard.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I’m still not sure I believe she’s the school teacher in town.”
Visions of Alex standing in the school, her hair pulled up neatly at the back of her head while she read from some book to a room full of kids amused him enough he laughed. He remembered the last time he’d been inside the school with her, the memory causing the smile on his face to grow until he knew he looked stupid but found little reason to care. “How did she end up the school teacher? Was it some form of punishment?”
Rafe grinned and shrugged his shoulder. “I wouldn’t know but to hear her tell it, it is.”
Jesse pictured her in his mind’s eye as she stood again in front of those same imaginary kids, reading from her book through clenched teeth. “To her, I’m sure it is punishment. She never liked school. She’d rather be out there on the range somewhere herding horses or mucking out stalls.”
“And that’s exactly what she does every Friday before heading back to town on Sunday. She lives in the room behind the school like every other teacher has since the day it was built.”
Jesse turned and leaned against the tree to his right and gazed across the creek to the Avery pasture, trying to take his mind off Alexandra Avery. Lord knew thoughts of her tormented him enough as it was. He focused his attention on the cattle moving in a rolling tide of blacks and browns. “I can’t imagine you handling a herd that size yourself.”
Rafe crossed his arms across his chest. “Me handling them would be a bit of a stretch.” His brother smiled, small age lines forming on his face. “If Holden hadn’t sent his men over every evening most of the herd would have died or just wandered off. I had no idea Ben Crowley had taken so many of them from us. The judge awarded me nearly every head the man had, even some that weren’t ours to begin with.”
“That why you sold them to the Avery’s?”
Rafe nodded. “For the most part.” He glanced his way. “Grace didn’t want me out on the range all day either. She’s not the same person she was ten years ago.”
Jesse looked away, guilt causing a painful tug in his gut. So much had changed since he’d been gone. He barely even recognized Willow Creek now. The town had grown. Newcomers crowded the streets and the friends he’d grown up with had lives of their own. He wasn’t even sure he could call half of them friends anymore.
He pushed the front of his hat up and smiled even though he knew it wouldn’t reach his eyes. “Think Grace would be up to making me one of those apple pies she used to bake for us?”
Rafe grinned. “If you asked her just right she would. You know she loved to mother you.”
