The Complete Mackenzie Collection by Linda Howard

here, had married a local boy. Everyone in Ruth knew every one of the other one hundred and eighty inhabitants; they all knew each other’s business and saw nothing unusual about it. Small towns were merely large extended families. Mary wasn’t taken aback by Sharon’s open curiosity, having already experienced it.
    “The state board. I needed some information on teaching requirements.”
    Sharon looked alarmed. “Do you think you aren’t properly certified? If there’s any trouble, the school board will likely commit mass suicide. You don’t know how hard it is to find a teacher with the proper qualifications willing to come to a town as small as Ruth. They were almost at the panic stage when you were located. The kids were going to have to start going to school over sixty miles away.”
    “No, it isn’t that. I thought I might begin private tutoring, if any of the kids need it.” She didn’t mention Joe Mackenzie, because she couldn’t forget the warnings both he and his father had given her.
    “Thank goodness it isn’t bad news,” Sharon exclaimed. “I’d better get back to the kids before they get into trouble.” With a wave and a smile she withdrew her head, her curiosity satisfied.
    Mary hoped Sharon didn’t mention it to Dottie Lancaster, the teacher who taught grades five through eight, but she knew it was a futile hope. Eventually, everything in Ruth became common knowledge. Sharon was warm and full of good humor with her young charges, and Mary’s teaching style was rather relaxed, too, but Dottie was strict and abrupt with the students. It made Mary uncomfortable, because she sensed Dottie regarded her job as merely a job, something that was necessary but not enjoyed. She had even heard that Dottie, who was fifty-five, was thinking about an early retirement. For all Dottie’s shortcomings, that would certainly upset the local school board, because as Sharon had pointed out, it was almost impossible to get a teacher to relocate to Ruth. The town was just too small and too far away from everything.
    As she taught the last classes of the day, Mary found herself studying the young girls and wondering which one had daringly flirted with Joe Mackenzie, then retreated when he had actually asked her out. Several of the girls were very attractive and flirtatious, and though they had the shallowness typical of teenagers, they all seemed likable. But which one would have attracted Joe, who wasn’t shallow, whose eyes were far too old for a sixteen-year-old boy? Natalie Ulrich, who was tall and graceful? Pamela Hearst, who had the sort of blond good looks that belonged on a California beach? Or maybe it was Jackie Baugh, with her dark, sultry eyes. It could be any of the eight girls in her classes, she realized. They were used to being pursued, having had the stupendous good luck to be outnumbered, nine to eight, by the boys. They were all flirts. So which one was it?
    She wondered why it mattered, but it did. One of these girls, though she hadn’t broken Joe’s heart, had nevertheless dealt him what could have been a life-destroying blow. Joe had taken it as the final proof that he’d never have a place in the white man’s world, and he’d withdrawn. He still might never re-enter this school, but at least he’d agreed to be tutored. If only he didn’t lose hope.
    When school was out, she swiftly gathered all the materials she would need that night, as well as the papers she had to grade, and hurried to her car. It was only a short drive to Hearst’s General Store, and when she asked, Mr. Hearst kindly directed her to the stacks of shelving in a corner.
    A few minutes later the door opened to admit another customer. Mary saw Wolf as soon as he entered the store; she had been examining the shelving, but it was as if her skin was an alarm system, signaling his nearness. Her nerves tingled, the hair at the nape of her neck bristled, she looked up, and there he was. Instantly she shivered, and her