Cadence patted her arm. “That’s perfect training for working with Mrs. Mack. This is my third year teaching here. The trick to getting along with the Mack Attack is to stay out of her way, smile politely at anything she says, and don’t look her directly in the eye if you can help it. Think of her as the teacher version of Mariah Carey.”
“The Mack Attack?”
A sly smile pulled at the corner of Cadence’s mouth. “That’s just what I call her when no one is around. But be careful. She watches everybody, and she reports to Principal Ramos.”
Abby nodded. She needed to do everything right. She’d never lost a job.
That was her father.
That was Tyler.
Not her.
Abigail Rose Quinn, you can do this.
Abby took a breath and repeated the mantra in her mind once more.
She glanced out the window. Her classroom looked out onto the playground. It was a bright, sunny day, and many of the children had shed their jackets, the coats spread out all over the blacktop in a rainbow of colors. “I can’t get over how warm it is,” she said, needing to change the subject.
Cadence swallowed a bite of her sandwich. “Yeah, but be careful. The weather can turn on a dime in Colorado. They’re calling for snow tonight and all through tomorrow.”
“You’re kidding,” Abby replied as a little boy on the playground jumped off a swing, ran up, and knocked on her classroom window.
Cadence lit up. “That’s my son, Bodhi. He’s in kindergarten.”
Abby waved to the little boy with golden blond hair that matched his mother’s. “He’s adorable. That’s wonderful that you can have him here at Whitmore.”
Cadence blew her son a kiss. “That’s something I really love about this place. Despite the wrath of Mrs. Mack, a quarter of the kids attending Whitmore are here on scholarship like my little Bodhi.”
“That’s wonderful,” Abby said as the little boy blew his mother a kiss then ran off to play.
Cadence nodded. “The Bergen Family donates money and has organized a volunteer partnership with Whitmore. The volunteers are scheduled to start tomorrow.”
“Wait a second.” Abby flipped through the mass of papers the principal had given her to read. “I think someone named Harriet Bergen is going to be the community member volunteering in my classroom.” She pulled out a piece of paper with the Bergen Family Foundation logo on the top of the page.
“You lucked out, Abby! I was paired up with her last year. She’s great with the kids and super easy to work with. You’d never know she owns a mountain.”
Abby’s jaw dropped. “Owns a mountain?”
Cadence drummed her fingers on the table. “Gosh, maybe two or more. They’re a big Denver family. They own the whole Bergen Mountain Sports Empire. Do you ski?”
Abby reared back. “Like on snow?”
Cadence chuckled through another bite of her sandwich. “I’ll take that as a no.”
“I grew up mostly in Florida. Not a lot of snow days there.”
Cadence narrowed her gaze. “What brought you to Colorado? Did you move out here alone or with a boyfriend?”
Abby shifted in her seat. “I needed a change of scenery.”
“So, a break-up,” Cadence said, dusting her sandwich crumbs off the table and into her palm.
Abby looked away. “Yeah, something like that.”
She liked Cadence, but she wasn’t ready to unleash the whole Tyler debacle on her. Luckily, the bell chimed, signaling the end of recess, and the end to any personal questions.
Cadence gave her a kind grin. “Saved by the bell.”
Abby slid her half-eaten yogurt into her lunch sack. “Do the kids come in on their own or do we go collect them?”
“We go get them. Come on! I’ll show you. We better get a move on before the Mack Attack beats us there. Oh, and I wanted to give you a heads up on your student, Porter.”
Abby followed Cadence into the hallway. “He was an angel this morning.”
“He loves fire trucks and anything related to fighting fires.”
Abby nodded. “He showed me his collection of firetruck drawings.”
“Well, little Porter sometimes pulls the fire alarm to get them to respond.”
“Are you serious?” Abby gasped.
“Yep, just keep an eye out.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” she said, following Cadence outside.
Abby headed toward her first graders lined up next to a cone with Room 104 painted in fancy lettering.
She smiled at the children. “How was lunch, my new friends? If it was delicious, please touch your nose.”
Nearly all the children, red-cheeked from running and playing, complied. While most of her students had welcomed her with open arms, a few still seemed a bit wary. She glanced toward the end of the line where a little girl with blond pigtails played with the hem of her plaid jumper.
“Caroline, would you like to be the line leader?”
The little girl released the edge of her uniform and nodded meekly. Caroline came forward, and Abby was just about to tell the girl to head inside but paused when she saw Cadence shake her head and the woman’s gaze shift to Mrs. Mackendorfer’s class.
Ah! The Mack Attack brings her students in first! Makes sense for the teacher version of Mariah Carey. Abby mouthed “Thank you,” to Cadence then took a slow breath. She’d get the hang of this.
They waited for all the classes to enter the building after the lunchtime recess—she wasn’t about to take any chances—then Abby and Caroline led the group back inside. The click of their footsteps, and the soft murmurs of children giggling, eased her first-day jitters until she heard adult voices coming from her classroom, and her pulse sped up.
She stopped her class in the hall and tried to listen in on the conversation. Two voices. A man and a woman. The woman was Principal Ramos, but she couldn’t place the man. Probably another parent. She smiled at the children. “All right boys and girls, after you hang your coat on your hook, please go to your desk and work with a partner on the math problem I have written on the board.”
It was go-time. Surely, the parent parade would end in a day or two. She smoothed her skirt and tucked an errant chestnut lock behind her ear then entered the classroom.
“Ah!” Principal Ramos said. “Here’s the teacher now. Abigail Quinn, this is Brennen Bergen, your Whitmore Community Partnership Volunteer.”
Abby parted her lips to speak but was struck silent when she glanced from Principal Ramos and saw…
Elevator Jerk.
She pasted on a plastic smile to hide her shock.
What was he doing here? And why was he in her classroom?
Agitation edged out her surprise, and she clasped her hands. She wasn’t a violent person, but she wanted to smack the guy. Had he not been obsessed with his phone and held the elevator like a gentleman, she would have been five minutes early to work, and she would have impressed her new principal. But, no! Thanks to whoever the heck this Brennen Bergen was, she’d barely made it to the meeting at all.
She schooled her features. It was time to act like a professional. Her elevator jerk or not, she couldn’t be rude—especially in front of her principal. She turned to the man. In her mad dash to get to school this morning, she hadn’t assessed his appearance. But when she looked at him now, the breath caught in her throat. He may be her elevator jerk but, holy smokes, was he cute.
No, cute wasn’t the right word.
He was…edible. She glanced away and swallowed hard. Was she salivating? Never in her life had she had this kind of reaction to a man. And that’s what he was. All man. He was at least a foot taller than she was with broad shoulders and a chest that strained the fabric of his sweater. Dark hair. Blue eyes. And just the right amount of stubble to look rugged rather than ragged. She met his gaze and reached out to shake his hand.
“I’m Abby Quinn,” she said with slightly too much enthusiasm.
His hand engulfed
hers, sending a tingle from the tips of her fingers down the length of her spine. She felt her cheeks heat. Was she blushing? She could not blush. She released her grip and again, clasped her hands. Except, this time, there was a lot more clamping than clasping going on.
He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Yeah, Principal Ramos just told me your name.”
“Of course, she did.” Abby turned up the wattage on her plastic smile and nodded to the principal. She knew she was close to looking deranged but couldn’t do a single thing about it. Elle had once told her that her nervous grin balanced somewhere between Stepford wife and loony bin central, leaning closer to the loony bin central side of things.
She checked the children, all working quietly—thank the teaching gods—and steadied herself. “I didn’t think the volunteers were coming until tomorrow.”
The principal narrowed her gaze.
Not a good sign.
“Mr. Bergen is a day early, but we’re always eager to have our most distinguished community members volunteer in the classroom at Whitmore Country Day.”
Mr. Bergen released an audible breath. He hadn’t even been here five minutes, and he looked ready to bolt.
Principal Ramos beamed at the man. “I was just telling Mr. Bergen how much we’ve enjoyed having his grandmother volunteer at the school over the years.”
Brennen Bergen nodded then glanced at the clock—again.
“And, I’m not sure if you know this, Mr. Bergen,” Principal Ramos continued, oblivious to the man’s rude behavior. “But my first year here as principal was the year your mother started the Whitmore Community Partnership. Such a vibrant, wonderful woman. And such a loss. I was sorry to hear about your parents’ passing.”
The man’s cool demeanor cracked just a sliver, and his cheeks grew the slightest bit pink. “I appreciate your kind words,” he said about as unappreciatively as one could.
The principal clapped her hands, clearly pleased to have this sullen giant in her school. “I’ll leave you to it! Miss Quinn, you should have the materials outlining the volunteer schedule.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve got everything,” she said, making a mental note to go over the more than two-inch thick stack of papers after school.
Principal Ramos left the classroom, looking almost giddy. Abby glanced at Brennen Bergen who was checking the clock for the third time.
“It moves faster when you don’t look at it,” she said before she could stop herself.
“What?” he asked.
“Um…the clock—but never mind.”
He stared at her blankly.
She tried again. “I think we’re neighbors.”
This got the sullen giant’s attention. He raised one eyebrow. “You live in The Dalton?”
“Yes.”
“You can actually afford it on a teacher’s salary?”
Everything attractive about this man disappeared—okay—not everything but ninety-nine percent of it. She lifted her chin. “I saw you on the elevator this morning. I asked you to hold the door, but I don’t think you heard me.”
Again, he gave her that blank, condescending stare.
For better or for worse, she was stuck with this elevator jerk. Her gut twisted. She had to make this work. Her job here could depend on it. Principal Ramos fawned all over this guy. One word from him could ruin everything.
He checked the clock for the fourth time. “Do you want me to do something?”
Abby glanced at the children. Most had finished the math problem and were just on the cusp of starting to get unruly, the hum of whispers and giggles growing louder. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught Porter walking the perimeter of the room, gaze trained on the fire alarm pull switch.
Oh no!
She pointed to the kidney-shaped table in the back corner of the room. “Some packets need to be stapled together on the little table in the corner. It would be great if you could do that for me.”
Without waiting for him to reply, she maneuvered her body through the maze of desks and made it to the switch before Porter. “Okay, everyone.” She eyed the boy. “Come sit down on the carpet, and we’ll start math.”
Porter’s shoulders slumped in defeat, and he joined the children on the carpet.
That was close!
She settled herself on a small chair at the front of the room. “Boys and girls, we have a special visitor. The man at the reading table is Mr. Bergen. He’s going to be helping out in the classroom.”
Austin, a sweet six-year-old with auburn hair, raised his hand. “I was just at Bergen Mountain last week!”
“Me too!” came a chorus of voices.
“And I got new bindings on my skis at the Bergen Mountain Sports Shop.”
Abby smiled at the excited children. She didn’t know what bindings on skis were, but the kids seemed to recognize the Bergen family name. She glanced up, ready to invite him to say hello to the class and found him on his—you guessed it—phone.
“Mr.—”
He put up a finger, silencing her.
What a total jerk!
She brought her attention back to the children and gestured to the whiteboard. “All right, boys and girls, let’s go over that math problem together,” she said, starting the lesson and wishing an asteroid would crash through the building and land smack-dab on top of Brennen Bergen.
Abby worked her way around the classroom. Forty-five minutes had ticked by in the blink of an eye. She’d finished teaching the math lesson on place value and was going student to student, checking their work as the children made groups of ten with small math cubes.
She glanced up at the clock. Two minutes until they needed to start science. A wave of exhaustion passed over her. The mad dash this morning, the barrage of parents peppering her with questions, the hawkish eye of Principal Ramos, and Mrs. Mackendorfer’s blunt warning had left her running on empty. She rubbed at a kink in her neck and looked over at the reading table and her blood boiled, frustration overtaking exhaustion.
Sitting atop the table, unstapled, were the packets she needed to distribute to the children for the science lesson. And sitting in a chair at least three times too small was the sullen giant glued to his phone.
He’d had the better part of an hour to staple twenty packets and hadn’t lifted a finger.
She walked over to the table and crossed her arms. It was one thing for him to be rude to her. It was an entirely different ballgame when he impacted her teaching.
“Excuse me, Mr. Bergen? Can you put down your phone for thirty seconds?”
He met her gaze and slid his cell phone into his pocket. “Happy?”
“I’d be happy if you’d stapled those science packets for me. I need them for the lesson I’m about to teach.”
There! Take that, Elevator Jerk!
He rose to his feet and looked her up and down. “Abby, right?”
She nodded.
“Have we slept together, and I forgot to call? Because I’m getting a real bitch vibe from you right now.”
A collective gasp sucked all the air out of the room.
Elevator Jerk just dropped the B-word in an elementary school classroom.
Her elementary school classroom.
Well, maybe not hers yet, but she wanted it to be.
She turned to the children, their eyes wide and their mouths hanging open. “I think you meant witch vibe with a W because I was a witch for Halloween this year.” She cackled like a crazy person attempting to impersonate a witch.
Nobody moved, all eyes locked on her. She shook her head and collected herself. “Boys and girls, please choose any book you’d like from the book basket and start reading. I’m going to show Mr. Bergen the closet where we keep all our supplies.”
The children began reading, and she turned to the B-dropper. “Come with me.”
He shrugged.
Could this guy be any worse?
She led him to the closet at the back of the room and opened the door. “After
you,” she said, gesturing into the tight space.
Another shrug and he stepped inside.
Abby pulled the cord to the single lightbulb illuminating the closet and closed the door.
The sullen giant plucked a glue stick off the shelf. “So, this is where you keep the glue? Great. Good to know.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. She’d had enough. She plucked the tiny glue stick from his large hand and jabbed it into his chest. “One, two, three! Eyes on me!” she said in the meanest voice she’d ever used to recite that teacher phrase.
The man cocked his head to the side and met her gaze.
She held the glue stick in place. “I don’t care who you are. You could be the King of Colorado.”
His lips quirked into a smirk. “Nope, that doesn’t exist.”
Anger surged through her. “You could be the Duke of Denver.”
“Still a no.”
She jabbed the glue stick a fraction harder. “Maybe you can understand this? In my classroom, I am the CEO. I am the B, O, double S, boss. And what I say goes.”
His eyes went wide, and he stared at her. It wasn’t the aloof stare he’d given her earlier. No, this look brimmed with astonishment. She could feel the heat of him. Sense every muscle in his body tensing like a predator deciding if he wanted to pounce. Inches apart, he held her gaze. The tiny glue stick, the only thing separating them. Her body zinged, and she wasn’t sure if it was from laying down the law or that if she pushed up onto her toes and he bent down, their lips would be mere millimeters apart. His chest moved up and down in tight punctuated breaths as electricity crackled between them.
What was happening?
She shook her head, a minute movement, but it cleared the haze in her mind. She took a step back and placed the glue stick on the shelf then softened her expression and reverted back to her teacher brain. “I know you have a good heart, Brennen Bergen; and I know you have it in you to do your best work in first grade.”
The man’s gaze, once full of wonder changed to one of confusion.
She stared at the lightbulb. “Sorry! Whenever I need to speak sternly to a student, I always like to end on a positive note.”
Man Fast: Bergen Brothers: Book One Page 4