LITMIR.BIZ

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Ryan repeated. “Is this where you bring out a bunch of robotlike zombies and tell me they’re going to be my new best friends and roommates? Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

      “Ryan, apologize right now, do you hear me?” Debi ordered. Her words might as well have been in Japanese for all the impression they made on Ryan. Watching her brother being taken in hand had her looking both relieved and tense.

      “Ryan, drop the attitude,” Jackson told him. “You’ll find it a whole lot easier to get along with everyone if you do.”

      Ryan drew himself up to his full six-foot-two height. “Maybe I don’t want to get along with ‘everyone,’” he retorted.

      Jackson looked at the teenager, his expression saying that he knew better than Ryan what was good for him.

      But for now, he merely shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he told Ryan. Jackson turned toward the distraught-looking young woman he had spoken to on the phone several days ago. He could feel that protective streak that had turned his life around coming out. “Why don’t you come with me to the main house and we’ll go over a few things?” he suggested.

      She looked over her shoulder back to the bunkhouse. Garrett was already herding her brother over to the structure.

      “Debi!” Ryan called out. It was clearly a call for help.

      It killed her not to answer her brother. Debi worked her lower lip for a second before asking Jackson, “Is he really going to be staying in that barn?” she asked uncertainly.

      “It’s the bunkhouse,” Jackson corrected politely, trying not to make her feel foolish for getting her terms confused. “And back in the day, that was where ranch hands used to live. It’s been renovated a couple of times since then. Don’t worry, the wind doesn’t whistle through the mismatched slates.” The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “The bunkhouse also has proper heating in the winter and even air-conditioning for the summer. All the comforts of home,” he added.

      Apparently, Ryan wasn’t the only family member who needed structure and reassurance, Jackson thought. Ryan’s sister had all the signs of someone who was very close to the breaking point and was struggling to hold everything together, if only for appearance’s sake.

      “If home is a bunkhouse,” Debi interjected. It obviously seemed incongruous to her.

      “A renovated bunkhouse,” Jackson reminded her with an indulgent smile. “Don’t worry, your brother will be just fine.”

      Well, if nothing else, Ryan had certainly proven that he was a survivor, she thought—if only in body. His spirit was another matter entirely. But then, that was why she had brought Ryan here. To “fix” that part of him.

      “Right now, I think I’m more worried about you and your brother,” she said.

      “Why?” Jackson asked, curious. This, he had to admit, was a first, someone bringing him a lost soul to set straight and being worried about the effect of that person on him. “Is Ryan violent?” The teen seemed more crafty than violent, but it paid to be safe—just in case.

      “Oh, no, nothing like that,” Debi was quick to clarify. “Under all that, he’s basically a good kid—but I’ll be the first to admit that Ryan is more than the average handful.”

      “If he wasn’t,” Jackson pointed out as they made their way to the main house, “then he wouldn’t be here—and neither would you.”

      “True,” Debi readily agreed—and then she flushed slightly, realizing what the man with her had to think. “I’m sorry if I sound like I’m being overly protective, but I’m the only family that Ryan has left and I don’t feel like I’ve been doing a very good job of raising him lately.” She looked over her shoulder again in the direction her brother had gone as he left the area.

      She spotted him with Garrett. The two were headed for the bunkhouse. Garrett had one arm around her brother’s shoulders—most likely, in her estimation, to keep Ryan from darting off. Not that there was anywhere for him to go, she thought. The ranch was some distance from the stamp-sized town they had driven through.

      “He’ll be all right,” Jackson assured her. “Garrett hasn’t lost a ranch hand yet.”

      “Is that what you call the boys who come here?” she asked, thinking it wasn’t exactly an accurate label for them. After all, they were here to be reformed, not to work on the ranch, right?

      She looked at Jackson, waiting for him to clarify things. What he said made her more confused. The man seemed very nice, but nice didn’t get things done and besides, “nice” could also be a facade. That was the way it had been with John. And it had fooled her completely.

      “I found that ‘ranch hand’ is rather a neutral title and, when you come right down to it, the boys do work on the ranch. My office is right in here,” he told her as he opened the door for her.

      She was going to ask him more about having the boys work on his ranch—had she just supplied him with two more hands to do his bidding?—but when he opened the door to his ranch house without using a key, her attention was diverted in an entirely different direction.

      “Your door’s not locked,” she said in surprise.

      He heard the wonder in her voice and suppressed a smile. He knew exactly what she had to be thinking. “No, it’s not.”

      “Do you think that’s wise?” she asked. “I mean, if you and your brother are outside, working, isn’t that like waving temptation right in front of the boys that you’re trying to reform?”

      “They’re on the honor system,” he explained, closing the door behind her. “I want them to know that we trust them to do the right thing. You have to give trust in order to get it. Around here, the boys keep each other honest. For the most part, the ones who have been here the longest set an example and watch over the ones who came in last.”

      She looked at him skeptically. “That sounds a little risky.”

      “We find it works,” he told her. “And just for the record, ‘I’ don’t reform them. What we do here is present them with the right set of circumstances so that they can reform themselves. Most of the time I find that if I expect the best from the teens who come here, they eventually try to live up to my expectations.”

      Debi looked around. The living room she had just walked into was exactly what she would have expected: open and massive, with very masculine-looking leather furniture, creased with age and use. The sofas—there were two—were arranged around a brick fireplace. The ceiling was vaulted with wooden beams running through the length of it. The only concession to the present was the skylight. Without it, she had a feeling that the room would have a dungeonlike atmosphere.

      The rustic feel of the decor seem like pure Texas. Debi really had no idea why that would make her feel safe, but it did.

      Maybe it had to do with the man beside her. There was something about his manner that gave her hope and made her feel that everything was going to work out.

      She knew she wasn’t being realistic, but then, she’d never been in this sort of situation before.

      Realizing that she’d fallen behind as he was walking through the room, Debi stepped up her pace and caught up to Jackson just as he entered a far more cluttered room that she assumed was his office.

      “Sounds good in theory,” she acknowledged, referring to his ideas about trust.

      “Works in practice, too,” he told her with just the tiniest bit of pride evident in his cadence.

      Sweeping a number of files, oversized envelopes and a few other miscellaneous things off a chair, Jackson nodded toward it. He deposited the armload of paraphernalia on the nearest flat surface.

      “Please, sit,” he requested.

      Debi did as he asked, perching

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