Forever Bound (5 page)

“She did?” Lily asked, her eyes going big with wonder.

I nodded. “She sure did. Actually, she asked if you would maybe be her buddy during art tomorrow.”

Lily’s face was suddenly brighter, her smile lighting up her whole face. “I’d really like that, Mr. Curtis.”

I nodded again. “Then it’s settled. You are Jessileigh’s official buddy.”

Lily thanked me and turned to walk away. I thought that we were done but she turned around again to face me. “Mr. Curtis?”

“Yeah?”

“Jessileigh seems sad.”

The kid was definitely insightful. “She is.”

“Is it because she doesn’t have any friends?”

There was no easy way for me to answer that. “Maybe. Would you be sad if you didn’t have any friends?”

She thought about that for a long moment before nodding. “I would.”

“Maybe you could be Jessileigh’s friend—and her buddy at school. What do you think?”

There was that smile again. “I hope she likes to play with dolls. I have lots of them. Do you think she does?”

It seemed logical. “Sure. What little girl wouldn’t like to play with dolls?”

I could see Lily’s mind going a million miles an hour. She turned to leave again only to turn around one more time. “Mr. Curtis?”

I tried to keep my frustration out of my tone. “Yeah?”

“Do you think tomorrow we can work on math first? You know, instead of having extra reading time?”

The kid had really pulled through for me today. How could I say no? “Yeah. I think we can definitely do math first.”

“Yeah!” she cried. “Thank you, Mr. Curtis! Thank you!” Then, before I knew it, she lunged her little body at me and hugged me before running from the room excitedly.

And damn if my heart didn’t tug again.

I needed to get going. Suddenly it felt as if the walls were closing in on me. I did a quick cleanup and decided that it would have to do. I grabbed the books and folders I was going to need to work on and stalked out of the classroom.

And walked directly into Kristin.

“Oh!” she said as we collided.

I didn’t have both hands free, thanks to the load of books I was carrying, but I did manage to steady her with at least one hand. “Sorry,” I said a little distractedly.

“No, no…it was my fault,” she said.

“Is everything all right?” There was no reason for her to be here, and at the moment, I wasn’t sure I could even handle talking to her.

“I wanted to thank you. Lily just came down to my room and told me about what happened today. I know she’s a little overwhelming at times and she’s a stickler for the rules, but today you made her feel…special.”

And there was that smile.

That beautiful damn smile that took the tug I felt earlier and turned it into a full-on squeeze.

“She’s a great kid,” I said, desperate to focus on something other than her smile, her lips and how much I wanted to touch them, taste them. “I knew she’d be the perfect choice to help Jess.”

“Well, whatever the reason, I want you to know that you made a real impression on her. All of her teachers praise her for her work ethic. She’s a good student. But no one has ever given her…” She paused. “Lily’s like an old soul sometimes. And yet she’s only six. So no one treats her like anything more than a six year old. Today, you changed that.”

Her eyes met mine and I felt like I was drowning. Then her hand reached out and rested on my forearm—much like it had the other day—and the contact burned. I wanted to touch her too.

And not so innocently.

For my own self-preservation, I stepped away. “Thanks,” I mumbled, looking down at the ground. “I’m glad that she’s happy about…you know. Anyway, I need to go. Have a good night.”

And then like a coward, I turned and walked away.

And secretly hoped that this time Kristin watched me until I was out of sight.

Kristin

The following day, I was feeling rather frazzled as I walked outside to the after-school pick-up line. It wasn’t my day to help with crowd control, but I wanted to catch Lily before her grandparents picked her up.

Nick’s parents lived in town, and since he’d died, I’d done everything I could to make sure Lily continued to have a good relationship with them. She usually spent the afternoon with them once a week, coming home after dinner.

I found Lily in line with her class, talking to Jessileigh, a pretty classmate who always looked like a princess with her perfectly coifed hair and expensive clothes.

When she saw me, Lily smiled and reached her arms out for a hug.

“How was school today?” I asked, after we’d pulled back from the hug.

“It was pretty good.”

“Did you learn anything interesting?” I tried to keep the question discreet so it didn’t appear to outside observers that I was poking around for information on Declan.

After yesterday, I’d half decided that there wasn’t the cause for concern I’d originally thought, but I wasn’t completely convinced yet, so I needed more information.

“We started with math, so that was good, but we didn’t do very much. We finger-painted. Jessileigh was my partner for art.” Lily looked up at me with big eyes. “Mr. Curtis tried a science experiment.”

“Really?” I was surprised and somewhat relieved by this news—since it seemed like a sign that he was trying to take the classroom more seriously. Maybe things were really looking up. “What was the experiment?”

“He made parachutes for these little soldier men. It was supposed to show how, the wider the cloth, the slower they fell. That’s the way the air works.”

“That sounds fun. Did it work?”

Lily looked like she was almost smiling. “No. All the men fell down to the ground real fast.”

“Very fast,” Jessileigh, said. She’d obviously been listening in and now she stepped over. “One broke his leg. One broke his back. And the other broke his neck.” She giggled. “It was funny. They all had to go to the hospital.”

“Oh my.” I wasn’t sure even what to say to this, although I wanted to giggle too at the image of Declan dropping toy soldiers to the ground with parachutes that didn’t work. “What did he say about why it didn’t work?”

“He just said it was supposed to work,” Lily answered, covering her mouth with her hand. “The air wasn’t co-op-rating today. I don’t think he knew what was wrong.”

I sighed. Of course, he didn’t know. Maybe he was trying a little more, but he still seemed completely clueless as a teacher. “Well, maybe he knew, but he wanted you all to figure it out.”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t think so. He was like you when you do bumper cars with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way you pretend to have fun but really don’t know how to move them good.”

I smiled and kissed Lily on the cheek, feeling a wave of affection at the sight of her serious expression. “I’m not
that
bad at bumper cars.”

Lily turned to the other girl. “Yes, she is.”

I made a teasing face at my daughter and then said to the other girl, “Your name is Jessileigh, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s nice to meet you.” The girl had surprisingly meticulous manners.

“It’s nice to meet you too, Jessileigh.” She was definitely not the normal kind of girl Lily gravitated toward as a friend.

For some reason, I glanced across the yard and saw Declan standing on the outskirts. He was looking in our direction with a strange sort of focus.

It wasn’t his day to do crowd-control either, so I had no idea why he was just standing there watching, like he was ready to pounce or something.

The man was strange.

He was also so good-looking in the afternoon sun that I had to glance away before my mind went in wrong directions.

“Oh, there’s your grandma and granddad, Lily. We’ll see you later, Jessileigh.”

I walked Lily to the front, where her grandparents were pulling up in the line of cars. The adults picking up children weren’t supposed to get out of the car, since it slowed down the line, but Nick’s mother did anyway. She hugged Lily and then hugged me and then settled Lily in the backseat before she hugged me again, explaining that they were going to go to the zoo, which was having some sort of Christmas exhibit.

After I gave them a final wave, I also waved at Jessileigh, whose father had picked her up in a very expensive car.

Then I turned around to walk back inside, and my eyes met Declan’s across the yard.

I was strangely unsettled by the look. I had no idea what it meant. And I definitely had no idea why I was suddenly picturing him looking at me that way in bed.

That idea was more than enough to completely rattle me, so I pushed it from my mind and instead thought about what Lily had said earlier.

Declan teaching was like me trying to do bumper cars. I always felt clueless and frustrated in bumper cars, and she’d evidently picked up the same thing from Declan in the classroom.

It was the final straw.

I really didn’t want to tattle on another teacher, but I’d given him more than enough to time to get it together and deal with any new-teacher-adjustments.

This couldn’t be normal adjustments to the classroom. He was genuinely unprepared to teach a first-grade class, and Mrs. Bradbury wouldn’t return from maternity leave for ten more weeks.

I had to say something to the principal. I couldn’t just let something so important slide.

I was sure I was doing the right thing, but it left me feeling uncomfortable, so I killed some time straightening up my classroom before I headed to Chuck’s office.

He always had an open door for the hour after school ended for any teachers who had problems or concerns.

I had to wait for five minutes because he was talking to someone else, but then Rose waved me in.

“Hi, Chuck,” I said with a smile, telling myself I really had no other choice than to do this.

“Kristin. I’m glad you came by. I was wanting to chat with you anyway. Have a seat.”

“You were? What about?”

“Why don’t we deal with your issue first.” He was smiling, but there was a faint underlying of awkwardness, as if he were feeling as uncomfortable as I was.

I had no idea why he would be.

I cleared my throat. “Well, honestly, I hate to come to you like this, but I’ve tried to talk to him and can’t get any answers out of him. I’m worried about Lily’s substitute—Declan Curtis. He doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing in the classroom, and he won’t give me any information on his background. I just don’t understand why. It’s strange. Like he’s hiding something. I don’t want to get him in trouble or anything, but I also don’t want someone questionable to be teaching one of our classes.” I took a deep breath and made myself calm down, since saying it all out loud made me even more worried and frustrated.

“He hasn’t been in the class for very long. Give him some time.” Chuck sounded overly laidback—too laidback for it to be believable, given what I’d just said.

“I’ve given him a week and a half. Lily tells me every day what they do in class, and as far as I can tell, they aren’t learning much of anything.”

“That’s not true. I’ve been in that class every day just to keep an eye on it. I know Lily is a smart girl with high expectations, but it’s not been that different from most first-grade classes.”

I took another deep breath and looked at the floor again so I wouldn’t get angry. “You’re not in there all day, though. And—“

“Kristin, don’t worry about it. Even if he’s not the best teacher in the world, he’s not going to be in the classroom very long.”

“But Eileen won’t get back for two-and-a-half months.”

“But there’s nothing saying he’ll be the substitute for all that time.”

I stared at Chuck, suddenly realizing that he knew something I didn’t know. There was a secret here. He was hiding something.

Maybe it should have been a relief that Declan wasn’t going to be the teacher for the whole three months, but I was more frustrated that something was going on here that involved my daughter’s class, and I didn’t know what it was.

“Kristin, please trust me,” Chuck said, as if he realized the conclusion I’d come to.

I swallowed hard. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Chuck?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but then closed it again as if he’d changed his mind. Then he said, more slowly, “I think so. Sometimes you choose the best option, when none of them are great.”

I thought about that for a minute, still staring at him.

That was as much as he was going to admit to me. I realized it now. But my blood was still pumping with anxious confusion. “If there’s something going on that involves the children’s welfare, then the parents need to know.”

“I promise, Kristin. Lily is in absolutely no danger. The children are as safe right now as we can make them.”

I nodded, seeing he was confident about that at least. With a sigh, I got up. “Okay. I’ll trust you for now, since I have to. But I’m still going to keep an eye out.”

“I know you will.” He smiled and stood up too. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

***

I did some prep work for tomorrow and, an hour later, was heading out to the staff parking lot.

It had been a long day, and I was tired, and I was kind of looking forward to going home to an empty house where I could just collapse on the couch for an hour or so.

But, as I approached my car—a sensible sedan—I realized that my couch time wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

One of the rear tires on my car was flat.

I slumped, staring at it, hoping it would miraculously re-inflate while I watched.

No such luck.

I’d probably run over a nail or something. There was construction going on in our neighborhood. One of my neighbors had been complaining about nails on the road.

After a minute of just standing, I finally dropped my bag to the ground and opened my trunk. I did have a spare, so all I needed to do was put it on.

I could go inside and find someone to help me, but it would probably have to be Chuck, and he wasn’t in any better shape than I was. Or I could call AAA and wait for an hour or more before someone came to change the tire for me.

Or I could do it myself.

I’d changed tires with Nick before, so I knew the process. I could do it. I was sure I could do it.

Steeling my will, I hauled the spare out of the trunk and then found the small jack.

I wanted so much for Nick to be alive that I almost cried as I crouched down next to the flat tire to position the jack.

Then I remembered I’d better put the emergency brake on.

I was just standing up when a voice behind me said, “Did you piss off too many fourth-graders and one of them took revenge on your tire?”

I jerked in surprise and almost stumbled when I realized Declan was directly behind me.

He reached out, evidently to stabilize me, but his hands started on my shoulders and slid down to my waist. I knew it wasn’t intentional—he was just instinctively trying to keep me from falling. But it felt like an embrace, and I reacted that way. I flushed and felt a shiver of excitement, brutally aware of his strong, warm body and the strength of his hands.

I pulled away, rather abruptly.

“Sorry,” he said in a mild, teasing drawl. “I didn’t really think it was a tire-destroying fourth-grader.”

“I know. You just startled me.”

“Can I help?” he asked, eyeing the flat tire and the spare I’d pulled out.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess. If you don’t mind.” I felt rather befuddled, and unfortunately I probably sounded that way.

“No problem at all.”

“Thank you.” I took the opportunity of leaning into the car to pull the emergency brake to pull myself together. This was ridiculous. I wasn’t a naïve teenager who was into a boy for the first time. I was an adult. I’d already been married. I knew how to interact with a man without acting like a fool.

What the hell was wrong with me?

“I appreciate it,” I added, when he positioned the jack and started pumping it. “I think I could have done it, but it would have been a real pain.”

“I don’t mind.” He grinned at me, looking amused but not flirtatious, which was a change from the way he’d smiled at me before. “Changing tires is my specialty.”

He definitely knew what he was doing. He moved quickly and easily as he lifted the car on the jack, loosened the lug nuts, and pulled off the flat tire. He wore khakis and a short-sleeved shirt, even though it was December, and my eyes lingered on his well-developed biceps, his strong back, and his tight ass as he leaned over.

My mind went in very wrong directions, and there was no way I could rein it in, not until he secured the spare and lowered the car.

“Thank you,” I said, when he stood up.

“You’re welcome.” His eyes rested on my face, and I wasn’t sure what to make of the expression. It wasn’t that practiced flirtation I’d seen before, but it felt warm, admiring. It made a knot of excitement tighten in my gut. “My pleasure.”