ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (82 page)

I don’t think I’ve ever mattered that much to a man before. There were men in my life. Boys, really. I dated in high school, but never anything serious, and most of those guys were married with small children now. And college. There’d been one guy in college I would have done almost anything for. But he was so focused on his studies that I’m not sure he ever realized just how deep my feelings for him went. And the man in New York. But I hadn’t heard from him in more than a year. He’d clearly moved on. And I…I suppose I was just a memory to him now.

At least, I hope I was.

“Do you have others?”

Mr. James looked at me as though he’d forgotten I was there.

“Others?”

“Tattoos.”

“A few.” He touched his forearm. “There’s one here.” Then he touched his chest. “One here.”

I started to ask what they were, but the way he spoke, especially when he touched his chest, left the impression that they were kind of personal and he really didn’t want to talk about them.

“We don’t get many teachers out here with tattoos.”

“I got that impression on the first day of school when I took off my jacket and half the class gasped and the other half stood up to get a better look.”

I smiled. I could imagine.

“This town is pretty tight. People are friendly, but they don’t let you in easily.”

“We don’t get a lot of outsiders around her.”

“Do you like living in such a small town?”

I shrugged. “It has its pros and cons, just like any other place.”

“You’ve lived here all your life?”

“No. We moved here when I was thirteen. Just in time to start junior high.”

“Must have been tough.”

“I hated it,” I admitted. “It took forever to make friends and I struggled with the curriculum for a while.”

“But you settled in.”

“Eventually.”

“Would you have come back, if not for what happened?”

“No. I was happy in my life.” I looked out at the field, watched as JT high fived a couple of his teammates following a turn over. “I mean, I would have come back to visit. But I don’t think I would have lived here again.”

He nodded. I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind. I wondered if I’d said something I shouldn’t have. After all, this was the teacher who’d threaten to have my brother taken from our home. But he seemed—

The crowd erupted into loud cheers and stomping that vibrated the metal stands under my ass. I stood up, realizing a little too late that we’d just made a touchdown and it was JT holding the ball in the in zone. I shook the cowbell and screamed his name, forcing more enthusiasm into my voice than I felt. Someone behind me patted my shoulder as though it was as much my achievement as it was JT.

The extra point kick was good. The crowd cheered again, the band playing a triumphant melody, and then everyone settled back for the next set of downs.

A couple of teenagers wandered toward us, one of the girls waving with a deep blush on her cheeks at Mr. James.

“They seemed to really like you.”

He shrugged.

“They’ll all be talking about how you sat with me at the game. By Monday, they’ll have us engaged.”

He cocked an eyebrow as he glanced at me. “You think so?”

“Oh, sure. You have to be really careful who you spend time with at these public events.”

He started to say something, but then his cellphone rang. He tugged it out of his jeans pocket and I caught sight of a woman’s name—Libby—before he muttered, “I have to take this,” and wandered off.

He had a girlfriend.

Why wasn’t I surprised?

Chapter 4

Harrison

I left the stands and wandered toward a quiet spot at the back of the stadium as I answered the phone.

“Hey, Lib. What’s up?”

“Where are you? I can barely hear you.”

“Football game.”

“Oh? How’s JT doing?”

“Just scored a touchdown.”

“Awesome.”

I stood with my back to the fence, watching the game progress through a crowd of bored teenagers and parents with small children who refused to sit still. My thoughts, though, were on Penelope, that enigmatic beauty who seemed so vulnerable and so resilient all at the same time. She was clearly suspicious of me, the way she looked at me spoke of a fear that was very basic, very instinctual. But there was something else there…and the way she engaged in casual conversation spoke of a basic kindness and charm that was beginning to make me think that maybe I didn’t want to just snatch JT from her custody as coldly as I had planned. And that made me wonder what other options I might have.

“We have a little problem here,” Libby said, breaking into my thoughts. “That contract that was supposed to go so smoothly with the lumber people didn’t go quite as well as we had hoped.”

“What’s wrong?”

“They insist that we make changes. They don’t like some of the changes you made to the original contract.”

I groaned. “We had a deal.”

“I know. And I reminded them of that. But their representative says he needs to talk to you directly. He’s going to be here for the rest of the weekend…”

A cheer drowned out all sound around me. I stepped forward a little and just caught sight of JT running down the field, yards ahead of the opponent, scoring another touchdown. The band began to play as cowbells, foghorns, and all kinds of noise filled the air around me. Pride swelled in my chest as I watched JT celebrate with his teammates.

That was my kid.

“Send the jet. I can fly out in the morning,” I said to Libby, wondering what JT would think if he could see the company’s private jet, if he could see my impressive house built into the side of a cliff overlooking Ashland, if he could see the corporation I’d built, see the press that had forced me to use a false name here so that no one would realize who I really was before I had a chance to tell JT the truth about me, about our relationship.

I needed to tell him soon. The truth was becoming a burden I wasn’t sure I could carry much longer.

But then I thought about Penelope, and a part of me wanted to hide the truth for a while longer if it meant protecting her from a reality she wasn’t prepared to face. I don’t know why I should care about some small town girl who’d made her own bed. She could have taken JT to New York, could have kept her job, her tiny apartment with a plush address. She would still have those things that had clearly meant so much to her. It wasn’t my fault she’d made the choices she had.

Yet, I still felt bad when I thought about the moment when I would leave this small town with JT.

I hung up and made my way back into the stands just as the refs called halftime. Penelope was talking to some older man, smiling through the exhaustion that clouded her face. Another teacher from the high school waved me over, asking about a staff meeting that took place that afternoon. It took me a minute to get her caught up, earning myself a grateful smile and another tally mark on the cooperative coworker column. Penelope was once again alone when I slid back into my seat beside her.

“Some half,” I said.

She nodded. “JT’s on fire tonight.”

“Must be all that rest he’s getting in my class.”

She stiffened and I immediately regretted the quip. But before I could say anything, JT came running up into the stands still in full uniform.

“Hey, sis,” he said, sliding backward onto the bench in front of us. “What did you think of that?”

Penelope’s eyes burst with light as she leaned into him, a smile on her full lips.

“You were brilliant.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

He beamed. “Coach says that if I get an average of three touchdown in the rest of the games this year, I’ll make some sort of record. Isn’t that cool?”

“Very cool.”

His smile widened. It was pretty obvious Penelope’s approval was deeply important to him. It changed the dynamics I’d thought existed between the two of them. I had assumed things were more contentious than they clearly were. I had thought that taking him away wouldn’t matter as much to him. But now I was having a few more doubts.

“Listen,” JT said, leaning close enough to Penelope that his sweaty forehead was nearly touching hers, “Sean’s having a party at his house after the game. Would it be okay if I go for a couple of hours? I promise I’ll be in bed by two.”

Penelope’s shoulders tightened. “You have chores that need to be done.”

“I know. I promise I’ll do them tomorrow. All of them.”

“Even cleaning your bathroom?”

JT groaned, but he nodded. “Even the bathroom.”

Penelope smiled, though the tension in her shoulders stayed. “You’ll text me when you get there and you’ll text me if you’re going to be late.”

“Of course.”

“Okay.”

JT burst into a huge grin that reminded me of the one I often flashed when I got what I wanted at his age. He leaned close and kissed Penelope on the cheek.

“Thanks!”

He ran off without acknowledging my presence, calling out to one of the cheerleaders as he headed back to the dressing room where the rest of the team was hanging out during halftime. Penelope and I both watched him go, likely both lost in very different thoughts. Then she glanced at me, a guarded look in her eyes.

“I guess you don’t approve. But I’ve learned that you sometimes have to bend the rules a little to get him to follow them at all.”

“No. I get it.”

“He really is a good kid. He’s just…”

“A teenager.”

She nodded. “A teenager who’s been through an awful lot these last few years. The night our parents died, he was at home alone when the police came to make the notification. And I couldn’t get a direct flight, so he was pretty much on his own for forty-eight hours afterward. That’s a lot to ask a twelve year old to deal with. Then the funeral and everything that came after…I tried to protect him from the reality of our situation as best as I could, but he is pretty intuitive.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“It’s been hard. So if sleeping in class is the worst of it, I think that’s pretty good.”

I nodded. “You’re right.”

Surprise lit her eyes. She studied me in the bright stadium lights, emotions dancing in her eyes with such intensity I could almost read her thoughts. She didn’t know if she could trust me, didn’t know if I was being honest or just placating her until I could…what? Get evidence to take JT from her? Was that what I was doing? In reality, it probably was. And that didn’t sit well all of a sudden.

I turned away, using the excuse of our school band coming on to the field. As I watched the students, quite a few of whom were in my classes, march across the field in their heavy uniforms with their instruments in their hands, I found myself having second thoughts for the first time since Julia told me that she had my child fifteen years ago. I knew that he would have a family, that someone out there had wanted a child bad enough that they would take my son—the son who was taken from me without my knowledge. I knew they brought him into their lives, loved him, and experienced all the things that I should have experienced with him. I knew all this, but I was so focused on what I lost that I forgot that someone would lose when I took him back.

Did I really want to hurt Penelope? Did I really want to destroy the relationship she had with JT? Did I really want to hurt JT by taking Penelope away from him?

There had to be a better way. I just wasn’t sure I knew what that better way was.

~~~

It felt kind of odd to be back in a suit. I stood in the front of the conference table, gesturing to an electronic white board, feeling so much like I was back in the classroom that the expensive Italian suit I was wearing felt wrong. Thank God the meeting was just wrapping up.

“Very smooth, Mr. James,” Libby said to me a few minutes later as we walked out of the room behind the lumber executives who’d just signed a very lucrative deal for both them and us.

“It’s Mr. Philips to you.”

She smiled. “Are you enjoying teaching?”

I moved the files I was carrying from one hand to the other so that I could slip my arm around her shoulders.

“Nothing like I thought it would be.”

“I bet.”

“But it’s been interesting. The kids are…a challenge.”

“Any super stars? Like me?”

I laughed, remembering how we used to tease Libby for being a goody two shoes. There were actually several kids in my classes that reminded me of her. But not necessarily for that reason.

“There is no one in the world quite like you.”

We walked into my office then. She stepped away, all business as she took the files out of my hands and handed them to my assistant, Tamera, with instructions on how many copies had to be made and where they had to be sent or filed. I only half listened, my thoughts back in Texas even as I stood at the wall to ceiling windows at the back of my office and looked down over the small community of Ashland.

“Tell me about him,” Libby said a moment later, coming to stand behind me.

“I’ve already told you everything.”

“Not really. You’ve sent me pictures of a dark haired boy in a football uniform and talked with frustration about a student who sleeps through your class. But you haven’t really talked to me about your son.”

I turned and leaned back against the window. “It’s all so surreal, you know? Even when he walks into my classroom and I can see the resemblance…it’s just so hard to wrap my mind around the reality of it all.”

“What are you going to do?”

I rolled my head back and stared up at the ceiling, a heavy sigh slipping from between my lips. “I thought that it would be simple. I’d pretend to be his teacher for a few months, then I’d pull him aside and tell him the truth. And he’d be so grateful that he’d give up everything to come back to Oregon to live with me. Then I saw him in school, watched him with his friends, and I guess I went looking for an excuse to take him away. He acts out, he does things he probably shouldn’t do and…it seemed easy to convince myself that his current situation isn’t good. That he’d be better off with me.”

I closed my eyes and I could see Penelope sitting there, the exhaustion written all over her face. I’d wanted to wrap my arm around her last night, wanted to reassure her and help her. I was starting to feel sorry for her, and I really didn’t want that.

“But you don’t feel that way now?”

I focused on Libby, took in her familiar features—her dark hair, dark eyes, and oh, so familiar compassion in her expression—and shrugged.

“The situation isn’t good. The sister works long hours and she’s barely making ends meet. My investigator tells me that the parents left them with huge debts that she had to mortgage both the business and the family home to pay off. But now she’s got these huge debts on top of the expense of running the business and their daily expenses. So she’s never home and JT is left to run wild. He stays up late at night, apparently eats whatever he wants, and hangs out with these kids whose parents are less than interested in their extracurricular activities. It’s not a good situation and I can’t see it ending well.”

“Then do something.”

“But what do I do that doesn’t cause JT to resent me for the rest of his life?”

“There’s the question.” Libby took my hand and held it gently between both hands. “You aren’t dad. You’re not a bishop in your church embarrassed by your wild sons. You’re just a guy trying to do the right thing. JT will see that.”

“And if he doesn’t? If he resents me for taking him away from the only home, the only friends, he’s ever known? For taking him away from his sister?”

“He will.”

I groaned. “You’re supposed to be reassuring me, here, remember?”

“Do you want me to lie? Or do you want the truth?”

I thought about it for a minute, then sighed. “The truth.”

“He will resent you. Especially if you aren’t careful with the way you present the whole thing to him. But if you do it right, he’ll come around sooner rather than later.”

“And how do you know?”

She stood and pressed a soft kiss to my jaw. “Because I know you. You are a good man, and both JT and his sister will see it sooner rather than later.”

~~~

I flew back to Texas the next afternoon, holding on to my sister’s words and hoping that she was right in her statements. Maybe if I went to Penelope first, if I told her the truth, maybe she could help me find a solution that would work for all three of us. Maybe she would even help me explain the situation to JT. If I had her on my side…but then I walked into my first period class Monday morning.