Rocky Mountain Rebel (40 page)

I pet Josh’s back, breathing against the solid weight of his sleeping body pressing into my neck, my breasts, my belly. I wouldn’t trade him for the world.

I want him to have everything, but all he has is me.

Lisa’s students call her Lisa. Mine call me Professor Sharp. I suspect this is no mere accident. I’m a nice person but a hard grader. I kick them out of my classroom for texting, and I tell them things about Indian nations and white-male privilege that disturb their comfortable worldviews.

My students walk into my classroom expecting odes to the American frontier and walk out disgusted with their ancestors, incapable of waving a flag or watching a Fourth of July parade without deconstructing it.

Some of them dislike me for this, but the best ones love having their eyes opened. They sit in my office and wax enthusiastic about prejudice and abuse, nattering on about how the readings I’ve assigned them have recast the way they look at everything.

I used to be like them. It’s hard to remember now, but that sort of critical idealism is what got me into grad school in the first place. These days, I fill my grocery-store cart up with packaged baby foods and state-government-subsidized milk, and it’s harder to get fired up about any of it. The condition of my bank account and Josh’s diaper seem to be about all the worries I can handle.

I’m a professor of American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, the most recent hire in an abysmal job market. I got the job three months before I got Josh. I was packing up to move when Paige died and everything changed.

Now I’m in my second year in Green Bay, and I like it well enough. It’s the sort of place people don’t move away from, which means I’ll be an outsider even if I live here until I die. Which I might. There are pitifully few jobs in my field, and I hadn’t liked being on the market. So many sharks fighting over so little chum.

I’m Mandy to my friends, Amanda to my mother when she calls, which is not all that often. She lives in Oregon, and she’s mourning Paige’s death with long stretches of silence and solo camping trips that worry me. I’ve tried to talk her into relocating to Wisconsin so we can have each other for company and she can help me with Josh. She says she needs the quiet and the high desert to heal.

Josh calls me Mama, which is my favorite name. I love him with a ferocity that scares me. I once made myself retch thinking about what would happen if he died in a plane crash or got sick or abused.

But having a baby is like having a bad boyfriend. Josh will kiss me one minute and smack me in the face with a sharp-edged block the next. If he could talk, he’d say,
I need you, Mama. I need you so bad.

It wears me out, being needed.

Lisa calls me a martyr and tells me to stop trying to save everybody and take care of myself.

I do,
I tell her.
I do.

But it’s not exactly true. One night a month, I let somebody else take care of me.

Rocky Mountain Rebel

Vivian Arend

The best type of growing up involves getting down and dirty.

Six Pack Ranch, Book 5

Vicki Hansol made different choices than her less-than-reputable mom and sister, yet her fiery temper has left her branded with the same town-bad-girl label. When she desperately needs a change of scenery, her get-out-of-town-free ticket arrives—and requires she face down one of her deepest fears.

Easygoing Joel Coleman has nothing to complain about, but he’s never really done anything to brag about either. The youngest member of the Six Pack Ranch is looking to make some changes in his life that include stepping out from under his twin brother’s shadow.

So when the bold beauty with the smart mouth approaches him with a proposition, Joel is intrigued. Her request for him to
teach her to ride
soon takes on a whole new meaning. All that passion in his arms, his bed, in the barn…hell, anywhere he can get it?
Bring it on.

But tangling the sheets leads to unanticipated complications, and by the time the dust settles, everything family means is going to be challenged.

Warning: Saddle up for some youthful vigor applied with great enthusiasm. Ropes, rails and raunchy sex—there’s more places to get dirty around the ranch than first meets the eye.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

Rocky Mountain Rebel

ISBN: 978-1-61921-540-5

Edited by Anne Scott

Cover by Angela Waters

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: May 2013

www.samhainpublishing.com