At Close Range. Marilyn Tracy

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СКАЧАТЬ to meet his eyes. Hers were a deep, rich brown, he saw, like coffee liqueur. Eyes a man could get drunk and drown in. He thought it was a lucky thing she’d made her mark in radio broadcasting; those eyes on television would have made the male population newsaholics.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you ask?”

      She paraphrased her question about working at the ranch.

      He looked away from those liquid brown eyes. “I heard what you were trying to do out here. I liked the sound of it. And wanted to be a part of the miracles.” He attempted a chuckle as he finished blurting the raw truth.

      He couldn’t tell her that he’d wanted to be around the woman who had pulled him through a nightmare of torturous procedures, that he craved a slice of the joy Rancho Milagro apparently served for breakfast. At least he hadn’t blurted out that he wanted a new life.

      Simply wanted.

      He didn’t really believe wanting made anything so. He used to, once upon a distant time, but not any longer. He fought the nightmare images that threatened to rise to the surface, the tragic sound of children crying for help, the scent of burning linoleum and, ultimately, the stench of despair. He didn’t believe miracles were possible, but he wanted any and all to come his way so much more than he could ever begin to tell her.

      He felt dazed as she gave him a swift, conspiratorial smile. A knee tucked back up into her chest. She clasped it and leaned forward. “Me, too,” she said.

      She, who seemingly had everything, wanted a miracle? What could she possibly want? To meet another king, interview another world leader? What was she even doing on this lonely ranch, miles away from everything?

      He didn’t voice any of his questions, but apparently his silence seemed to make her potential-employer consciousness take over again. Her leg lowered and crossed again. He resisted the urge to look beneath the table to see if her toes even touched the floor.

      She asked, “What was it that you liked the sound of?”

      The miracles—and you, he almost said, lured by her eyes into telling more unvarnished truth. “The kids. Taking foster kids and orphans, giving them a working ranch and home environment. Letting them have half a chance before sending them out on their own,” he said.

      He’d wanted, perhaps needed, to come to work there because the tabloids and news features referred to the place as a ranch of miracles. When cynical journalists waxed ecstatic, a huge kernel of truth must lie within the story. And one truth was obvious, the Rancho Milagro partners took in the strays of the world and offered them new lives.

      He asked, “How many do you have now?”

      “What? Oh, children, you mean. For a minute, I thought you meant miracles.” She stopped on a rueful smile, drew a deep breath and continued, “We only have seven so far. Two are already adopted by Jeannie and Chance—Dulce and José—but they take lessons with the others.”

      “You already have teachers, then?”

      “Only one, Melanie Jorgensen, and she’s not here yet. She’s arriving in the fall.” She released a slight smile, as if remembering Melanie Jorgensen and liking the memory. “In the meantime, we’ve all been pitching in for various subjects.” She made a face as if the classes weren’t going well. “Right now, we’re on home-school status because it’s too far to ship the children into Carlsbad schools and because the children we have now are all somewhat behind in their schooling.”

      “So this would be a temporary arrangement?”

      He realized his question was inept when she gave him a blank stare. “Temporary? No. Oh, you mean about the home schooling. Again, no.”

      He loved the way she couched every answer in formal terms, as if he might misconstrue the slightest nuance of what she said. It was one of her trademarks on the radio, the bit they advertised before her golden voice came on. When Corrie Stratton says it’s true, it’s a fact.

      The woman with the golden voice and truth in her words tilted her head at him. “Eventually we’d like our own status as an official school. But that’s a far piece down the road, as they say around here. With the home-school status, however, and with certified teachers, we can still get these kids well grounded in what they need to know to get good college placements.”

      Her feet crept to the chair seat again. He was sure she was unaware of the fact that one of her arms wrapped around her knees, drawing them to her chest. He was also sure she was utterly unaware how attractive she was.

      “That’s the object, then?” he asked.

      She frowned and looked a question at him.

      “What you would want from a teacher?”

      “I see,” she said as carefully as she had before. “I’m not exactly sure what Leeza or Jeannie would say in answer to that. From my perspective, I think what we want is someone who will be surrogate parent, teacher, friend and mentor with a bit of a kindly uncle thrown in.”

      “A teacher of many hats,” he said, and leaned back in the chair, relaxed for the first time since he’d driven onto the ranch.

      She smiled at him—a bit wistfully, he thought. “It’s a dream, I know. But…”

      “One that’s already working.” Abruptly, it wasn’t just the job he wanted, but to reassure her that the ranch-cum-children’s-home dream was already coming true.

      “Yes,” she said, and gave him the most genuine smile she’d managed with him so far—except when she’d expressed her wish for a miracle.

      He felt that smile like a fever coming on, making him feel hot and restless.

      “So far it’s working.” She cleared her throat as if remembering she was conducting an interview. “Are you currently teaching somewhere, Mr. Dorsey?”

      “Mack,” he said.

      “Okay. Sorry. Mack, are you teaching anywhere right now?”

      “Nothing to apologize for and, no, at the moment I’m not teaching, so I’d be available immediately,” he said.

      She gave him a funny look before making another scratch in her notepad. “And when was the last time you were in the classroom, Mr. Dorsey?”

      “Mack,” he corrected. He realized then that she didn’t know who he was, that she didn’t realize that he was the so-called hero of the Enchanted Hills incident. Teacher heroically sacrifices himself to rescue ten students burning in blazing inferno. And what else was an inferno but blazing and what was a sacrifice when he had lived and five children had died?

      For a moment, as so often happened, the cries of the children, both rescued and lost, echoed in his ears and his nose stung from the acrid scent of burning schoolrooms.

      Corrie Stratton, the woman with the golden voice and the coffee-liqueur eyes didn’t blink. Lady journalist extraordinaire, this tiny scrap of a woman didn’t seem to have a clue as to his identity.

      He gave a faint and, he hoped, easy smile. “I’ve been out for two years.”

      She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. СКАЧАТЬ