One Summer (21 page)

But even as the watcher turned back toward town, he knew that he would return another night. Soon.

Seeking his prey.

21

T
he presence of her sister and three nieces kept Rachel so busy over the next two days that it was easy to hold thoughts of Johnny at bay. Mornings were spent playing with the girls, who were seven, five, and two. Lisa, the oldest, was a black-haired sprite who reminded Rachel strongly of Becky as a girl. Loren and Katie both took after Michael, who was tall and fair-haired. All three girls were thrilled to be visiting their aunt and grandparents. If they knew the reason for their visit, none of them, not even Lisa, gave the smallest sign.

Rachel, Becky, and Elisabeth lunched at the club both days, then Rachel drove over to the high school to get ready for the coming school year. The school had recently undergone extensive renovations—getting central air for the first time was one—and there was a great deal to be done to make her classroom fit for human habitation, let alone turn it into the optimum learning environment touted by the school board.

The first day of school dawned, as first days of school always did, with a rush of excitement. Rachel still felt it even after all these years. The prospect of expanding the boundaries of young minds filled her with an almost evangelical zeal. If she could just turn her students on to books, she could open the whole world to them!

Her students—she had homeroom, four English classes, and a study period—were, already, well known to her. Not only did she know the teenagers themselves, she knew their sisters and brothers and parents and grandparents and cousins and even their pets. She knew which kids would have trouble and which would whiz through the year. She knew which came to school to play sports, which came to socialize, and which were actually eager to learn. These last few she treasured because they were rare.

At the end of the first day, Rachel was exhausted. She heard the final bell with a silent sigh of thanksgiving and sat at her desk for a moment methodically gathering up books and papers as, with a chorus of good-byes, the students rushed past her for the hall and freedom.

“Miss Grant, are we going to have to do a term paper on Elizabeth Browning this semester?” Allison O’Connell and her two dearest friends fell into step beside Rachel after she worked up the energy to exit the building.

Rachel shook her head. “We did Elizabeth Barrett Browning last year. We’ll do somebody different this time.”

“Oh, shoot!” Allison pouted.

“You like Elizabeth Barrett Browning?” Rachel looked up at Allison in some surprise. A pretty, popular girl some inches taller than herself, Allison was not a reader. In fact, Rachel found it somewhat surprising that Allison even knew who Elizabeth Barrett, Browning was.

“She’s got Brian Paxton’s term paper from last year,” Gretta Ashley explained with a devilish grin, earning an elbow in the ribs from Allison.

“I do not!” Allison, red-faced, took a single look at Rachel’s face and amended, “Well, I might have seen it, but I certainly wasn’t going to use it!”

“I’m sure you weren’t, Allison,” Rachel said straight-faced, while Gretta and Molly Fox, who completed the nearly inseparable trio, snickered.

“I’d like to do one on somebody interesting, like Michael Jackson,” Molly said.

“Michael Jackson isn’t a poet, or even an author.” Gretta sounded scandalized.

“Yes, he is. I read his book. Remember? You borrowed it.”

“What I mean is, he’s not an important author. Not somebody Miss Grant would let us write a term paper on. Would you, Miss Grant?”

“Probably not,” Rachel agreed with a smile.

“It’ll be somebody boring,” Molly said gloomily. They were walking along the emptying sidewalk past the three boxy yellow school buses that were already filled to overflowing with hooting teens. As they passed, the first bus started to pull out. The others followed.

“Do you girls have a way home?” Rachel asked.

“Allison got a car over the summer. She’s driving,” Gretta answered.

“How nice,” Rachel said, now understanding why they were walking her all the way to the parking lots. There were two, a large one for students and a smaller one for teachers, situated side by side in front of the school.

“Yeah, I wish—” Gretta began, then broke off, her eyes widening as she glanced ahead. “Who’s
that?”

“Where?” the other two chorused, while Rachel, following the path of Gretta’s eyes, faltered. It was all she could do not to turn and run the other way.

At the edge of the teachers’ parking lot, wheels brushing a bright yellow curb that clearly meant no stopping, stood a large red and silver motorcycle. Leaning against it, looking very tall and muscular in his tight jeans and a black leather jacket, arms crossed over his chest, black hair pulled back into a ponytail, was Johnny. He was unsmiling. His eyes were fastened on Rachel.

Recovering her poise, conscious of the girls’ widening eyes turning from Johnny to herself, Rachel clamped her teeth together and continued to put one foot in front of
the other. Heartstopping memories of their last encounter rose unbidden to taunt her. Taking a quick, steadying breath, she fought to banish them. She could not face him while such searing images played themselves out across the screen of her mind.

“He’s cute,” Allison breathed. Gretta punched her in the ribs with an elbow.

“Don’t you know who that is? That’s
Johnny Harris
,” Gretta hissed.

“Oh, my God!” Allison gasped.

Molly looked scared. “What’s
he
doing here?”

Lagging behind, Rachel fervently hoped that Molly’s question would remain forever unanswered. But she was out of luck. He uncrossed his ankles and his arms and straightened away from the motorcycle, obviously having seen his quarry. Casting him sidelong glances, the girls scuttled past him along a sidewalk that was some twenty feet away from where he stood. Rachel, after acknowledging him with an impersonal smile and wave, would have walked by behind them, but he pointed at her and crooked his finger.

“Oh, Miss Grant,” he called in a dulcet tone, and beckoned. Rachel, scaldingly conscious of the girls’ goggling eyes turned upon her, realized that, unless she wished to make a scene, there was no escape.

22

S
he walked over to him.

“Hello, Johnny,” she said with as much poise as she could muster. With the bright sun shining on his black hair and his blue eyes gleaming in pleasing contrast to the bronze of his skin, he looked handsome enough to knock a teenager’s socks off. Fortunately, she was not a teenager. Her pantyhose stayed firmly in place—although her knees quivered. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I took the afternoon off. Zeigler was glad to be rid of me.” His eyes narrowed at her determined nonchalance. It was all Rachel could do not to drop her eyes before that assessing gaze. Incredibly, she felt like a teenager, felt as young and idiotic as Allison and Gretta and Molly, who now had their heads together over a yellow Subaru that she could only assume was Allison’s new car. They were talking a mile a minute as they watched their teacher with the town’s most notorious bad guy. At that moment it was Johnny who seemed the more mature, the more in control of the situation. Rachel nervously realized that by sleeping with him, she had caused their entire relationship to change.

“Not taking phone calls lately?” he asked, his tone perfectly pleasant but something less so in his eyes.

“What?” She frowned up at him, bewildered.

“I’ve called you at least six times since I woke up to find that you’d flown the coop. Even at ten o’clock at night, you weren’t home, which I find kind of hard to believe.”

“I didn’t know you’d called.” That was the truth.

“I’m glad to hear that.” Some of the tension around his mouth eased. “I don’t think your mother likes me.”

“You talked to Mother?”

“If you want to call it that. Our conversations usually went something like this: I’d say, ‘This is Johnny Harris. May I speak to Rachel?’ and she’d say, ‘She is not here,’ in a very frosty tone, and hang up the receiver. I thought maybe you’d told her to say that.”

“No.”

“So you haven’t been deliberately avoiding me?”

Rachel glanced up into those penetrating blue eyes, hesitated, and sighed. “Well, maybe a little.”

“I thought so.” Johnny nodded once, crossed his arms over his chest, and stood looking down at her meditatively. “The question is, why? Because I made a total ass of myself the other night, or because we made love?”

At his plain speaking, coupled with a searching stare that seemed to see into her very soul, Rachel crimsoned. But she sensed that though his words and demeanor were almost nonchalant, his memories of sobbing his heart out to her with his head on her lap embarrassed him profoundly. And for him to be embarrassed for such a reason was something she couldn’t bear.

“You did not make a—a fool of yourself,” Rachel said firmly.

“Ahh.” Johnny smiled a slow, warm, and sexy smile that did funny things to Rachel’s insides, then reached out and took the pile of books and papers from her arms before she realized what he was about.

“What are you doing?” He placed her things on a rack behind the motorcycle’s leather seat and strapped them on with thick, brightly colored bungee cords.

“Get on.” With her books secure, he turned and handed her a shiny silver helmet.

“What? No!” She automatically accepted the helmet, but stared from it to him to the motorcycle as if he’d lost his mind.

“Get on, Rachel. The alternative is to finish this very interesting talk right here, with your giggly students looking on.”

“There is no way that I am going to roar off with you on this—thing!”

“It’s a motorcycle, not a thing. Haven’t you ever ridden one?”

“Certainly not!”

He shook his head at her, reaching for his own helmet, which was hooked over a handlebar. “Poor repressed teacher. Well, just think of it as an educational experience. Get on.”

“I said no, and I mean it. I’m wearing a dress, for goodness’ sake.”

“I noticed, and very nice, too. I think you might try shortening your skirts some, though. You’ve got killer legs.” He pulled on his helmet as he spoke.

“Johnny—”

“Miss Grant, are you all right? Should we go get help?” Allison called. The three girls were huddled together by the side of the yellow Subaru, their expressions anxious as they alternated between watching Rachel and Johnny and conferring among themselves.

“I’m fine, Allison. You girls can go ahead. Mr. Harris is a former student of mine,” Rachel called back. Her efforts at reassurance were not helped by Johnny’s rather mocking smile at the trio.

“They think I’m trying to abduct you.”

“Aren’t you?” Rachel’s reply was tart.

Johnny looked surprised, then slowly grinned. “I guess I am. Would you get on, Rachel, please? Think what you’ll
do for my public image when you turn up again in one piece.”

“I am not going anywhere on that motorcycle. Even if I wanted to, and even if I were dressed for it, I could not possibly climb on behind you right here at school and zoom off in front of my students. The board would never get over it—to say nothing of Mr. James.”

“Is he still principal?”

“Yes.”

“Figures. Only the good die young. Rachel …”

Rachel sighed. “Okay. I accept that we need to talk. But I am not getting on that motorcycle. My car is over there. I go in my car, or I don’t go at all.”

Johnny looked down at her, shrugged, and pulled his helmet off. “Wheels is wheels,” he said.

That wrung a wry smile out of Rachel. “For one of my best-ever students, you have dreadful grammar.”

“Grammar was never my strong suit, remember? I was better at—other things.”

Rachel felt a blush creep over her face at the innuendo her incorrigible mind read into that. Fortunately, he was already turning away to unfasten her belongings from the back of the motorcycle, so he did not witness her discomfiture.

“Do you still write poetry?” he asked over his shoulder, his hands busy with the bungee cords.