by Julie Miller
“Yeah. He used a bunch of initials I didn’t understand. But it was cool when he talked about the motor and stuff.” Albert’s dark gaze suddenly shifted to her. “Angelo know you got a boyfriend, Ms. G?”
Why was everyone assuming that she and Harry were an item? Then she saw the way she had latched on to Harry, and the way he’d blocked her into a corner between the table and wall, defending her. Was there some unacknowledged longing she was projecting out into the universe that everyone but her could see?
“Who is Angelo?”
Albert dragged his focus back to Harry. “’Lo’s my brother. He’s playing tonight. He and Ms. G... He...” He glanced to her, looking for what? He knew exactly what kind of relationship she had with his brother. Was he hinting at something else? “Uh...”
“I’m helping Angelo with his scholarship applications. He’s one of my best students. I think Albert could be, too.”
Apparently satisfied with Albert’s family history, Harry gave a curt nod and switched topics. “Where I come from, a man doesn’t wear his cover inside. His hat,” he explained, when Albert frowned. “And he speaks to a woman with respect. I suggest you do the same.”
Albert shrugged. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, sir?”
Harry eyed the sideways hat until Albert pulled it off and stuffed the brim in the back pocket of his jeans. “Now we understand each other.”
Instead of acting chastised, Albert grinned. “Benny said you were a tough son-of-a...” He glanced at Daisy, watched Harry’s stance change, and thought better of finishing that phrase. “Benny respects you, sir.”
“It was mutual.”
Albert looked at Daisy and shrugged. “Sorry, Ms. G. Granny said I had to check in with you Monday before I go to work. Just don’t call her no more.”
“Anymore,” Daisy automatically corrected.
“Yeah. She’s scarier than both of you put together.” The whole confrontation forgotten, Albert whistled to a couple of friends and joined them in line at the concession stand.
Harry dropped his gaze where her hand still clung to his arm. “Afraid I was going to take him out?”
She released her grip. “Were you?”
“I know I’m not surrounded by insurgents.” His breathing seemed a little labored, though, when he faced her. “But you don’t let them get close like that unless you know them. I didn’t know that kid. The way he was coming at you...”
She wanted to ask about Corporal Garcia, find out if he’d lost his friend in an enemy attack. She desperately wanted to wind her arms around him and hold on until that tightly leashed tension quaking through his body eased.
But the buzzer sounded, marking the end of the first basketball game. Fans cheered. The band played again, loud even to her own ears. A swarm of students and families spilled through the archway, flooding the lobby between the JV and varsity games. Harry muttered the very curse he’d kept Albert from saying and grabbed his coat from beneath the table.
“Are you okay?” Daisy moved to keep his face in sight, worried he was having some kind of meltdown. “This is too much for you, isn’t it.”
“I need some fresh air.” He was struggling. His eyes were clear, but they locked on to hers while he zipped up, as if focusing on her, and not the people gathering in the space around them, centered him. Fine. She’d be still and let him focus. “I better call Hope and let her know where I am. She worries more than she needs to, and that’s not good for the baby. Besides, I’d like to familiarize myself with the layout of the school grounds. I want to know every way somebody could get in or out.”
Daisy understood his sister’s need to worry. She sensed it was taking every bit of strength he had not to explode. “Will you be coming back?”
“I’m your ride home, aren’t I? I just need to move. I’ll probably run a couple laps around the building.”
“Through the snow?”
“I like the cold.” His fingers were unsteady when he threaded them into the hair at her temple and smoothed the waves down behind her ear. He cupped the side of her neck and jaw, and the trembling stilled. Daisy turned into his touch. With his heat warming her skin, her concerns ebbed to a less frantic pitch, and she hoped he was taking at least the same from her. “When you’re ready to leave, go to the front door. I’ll watch for you. You don’t step foot outside until I’m here to walk you out, okay?”
“Okay.”
His fingertips tightened against her skin. “I mean it, Dais.”
She smiled. “Okay, sir.”
His eyes widened for a split second at her sass. And then he was leaning in, kissing her. The press of his lips was firm, their movement stilted, but urgent enough to demand her response. The tip of his tongue moistened the point of contact between them with a raspy caress, but retreated before she could catch it. Harry’s kiss was not quite chaste and over far too quick. Slightly breathless, she was still clinging to his bottom lip when he pulled away. His eyes had darkened like charcoal, and she wondered which of them was swaying on their feet.
Without a word, Harry released his grip and turned away. He darted through the crowd and disappeared out the double front doors into the night.
PDA might be frowned upon on school property, but Daisy wasn’t complaining. The warmth of that surprising kiss stayed with her the rest of the evening. And though she kept one eye on the door, even when she stood in the archway to watch the last few minutes of the second game, Harry never came back. She hoped he’d snuck in to get some hot coffee instead of waiting for her out in the cold for an hour. But she was half afraid that the run-in with Albert, the noise and energy of the crowd, or even the kiss itself had frightened him off.
She had no doubts that he was still out there, waiting to drive her home, making sure she was safe. But she was sad for him that it was so hard to relax and enjoy himself for very long. And she was antsy to get back to him to see if they could recreate a little of that one-on-one magic where they joked with each other, and touched and cared and kissed.
That was why Daisy had the money counted down and locked up inside the office before the final buzzer sounded. While the building cleared, she did a quick walk-through of the gymnasium bleachers with Eddie and Mary, picking up trash while the custodian swept the floor. She kept her distance from the heated conversation between Bernie and Stella Riley outside the boys’ locker room, quickly diverting her attention when both their gazes landed on her. “What did I do?” she whispered to Eddie before dumping the stack of paper cups she’d collected into the trash bag he carried.
“Who knows?” Eddie shrugged. “Sometimes I think that woman’s even jealous of me. And Bernie’s certainly not my type.”
Daisy wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. “That’s sad that she’s so insecure. I know Bernie’s got an ego the size of Arrowhead Stadium, but has he ever really cheated on her?”
Mary climbed down the bleachers to add her trash to the bag. “I heard that she’s the one who cheated on him, in college, before they got married.”
Daisy tuned out the bickering couple and headed toward the lobby. “Whatever their issues are, I wish they’d leave me out of it.”
The band parents who’d been working the concession stand for their booster club fundraiser had cleaned up their area and locked the serving window partition by the time she said goodbye to Eddie and Mary. Eddie made sure Harry was still there to drive her home before escorting Mary out to her car. Mr. Hague was doing a walk-around to make sure all the doors were locked. The players and the opposing team members would leave by the locker room entrance. Daisy was alone in the lobby when she realized the chairs and table from gate duty had been left out.
It wouldn’t take her five minutes to fold up the chairs and take them down to the basement storage room. The table would be a two-person project
to carry down the steps, but by the time she put away the folding chairs, either the custodian would be finished or Mr. Hague would be back, and they could help. Then she’d be done with her assignment and she could get to Harry and that private conversation and maybe even another kiss.
She stuck her keys into the pocket of her jeans, then pulled out her phone. She had a split-second idea to call Harry in to have him help her, but just as quickly she realized she didn’t have his number. Was it too late to call Hope and ask for it? That seemed silly when it’d be quicker to run outside and ask Harry herself. But he’d insisted that she not leave the building without him. He said he’d be watching the front doors. She could step outside and wave...
“Stop overthinking this, Daisy Lou.” She stuffed her phone into another pocket. “Just finish up and go.”
Tossing her coat over her bag, she picked up the chairs. Using one of her school keys, she unlocked the metal gate blocking off the stairs from the public and pushed it open. She carried the folding chairs down the concrete steps and descended half a century into the past. The long gray hallway was broken up by four heavy steel doors. Hung on runners like an old barn door, these doors simply unlatched and slid open. After the boiler room, the rest of the doors led to old classrooms from the original building before state regulations and a school improvement bond had required a new facility be built around the old one. With the original windows enclosed by new construction, the storage rooms doubled as tornado shelters now.
She pulled on the latch of the second metal door and shoved it off to the right, cringing at the grinding whine of metal on metal. The keyless latches were a throwback to the original building, too, before terrorists and school shootings made it vital that every school could be locked down to keep intruders out. After flipping on the light switch, she carried the chairs over to the closest of several racks lined up against the far wall. After setting the chairs into place, Daisy glanced around her. Metal racks with metal chairs. Gray concrete walls. In a basement. With no windows.
She shivered. This level was uninviting enough in the daytime. No natural light. No color. No warmth. At night, it felt even colder, despite the boiler room cranking out heat next door. If she ever had to teach a full day down here in this tomb, the powers that be would be carrying her out in a straitjacket. She was more than happy to pay a few extra cents on her taxes to have two whole floors of bright, well-lit rooms above her.
Metal grated against metal behind her. Daisy turned to see the last few inches of hallway disappear as the door slammed with an ominous clank. “Hey! I’m in here.”
She heard a second clank as she dashed across the room.
What was going on? Daisy pushed on the latch and stumbled into the door when nothing happened. “No,” she whispered, pumping the latch a half dozen times with the same result. Nothing was catching inside the locking mechanism to release the door. She pulled on the latch even though the metal clearly said Push. She tried sliding the door along its runner, in case the latch was the only problem. But the heavy steel wasn’t budging. “This isn’t funny,” she yelled, slapping the flat of her hand against the door.
She was locked in.
Had the custodian or Mr. Hague not seen the light and carelessly closed the door? Was this a practical joke? Not funny. She pounded on the door, pushed the broken latch. “Let me out of here!”
Daisy drifted back a step, feeling suddenly light-headed. Could someone have locked her in on purpose?
Then she heard noises that locked her breath up in her chest and turned her blood to ice.
Scratching against the metal. Something heavy being dragged across the floor. Someone breathing harder with the exertion. Whoever had locked her in was still there.
Her Secret Santa.
“Who are you?” she demanded. A pungent odor stung her nose. “Why are you doing this to me?”
She backed away even farther when the person on the other side refused to respond. Tamping down the fear that scattered her thoughts, she remembered her cell and pulled it from her pocket. “I’m calling the police,” she warned.
As soon as the screen lit up, she said a prayer of thanks for good cell service and punched in 9-1-1.
Everything went quiet on the other side of the door as the call connected. “That’s right. You be afraid this time.”
But her bravado was short-lived.
The silent person on the other side nudged a familiar piece of cardstock beneath the door at her feet. White, with a sparkly green Christmas tree, and three words staring up at her.
Ho. Ho. Ho.
The 9-1-1 dispatcher answered the call, but Daisy couldn’t speak.
The sick torment of another message wasn’t the only thing coming from beneath the door.
Daisy blinked away the tears burning her eyes.
Smoke.
Chapter Seven
Harry rubbed his gloved hands together, keeping them warm as the visiting team’s bus left the parking lot. He was more of a football guy than a basketball fan, but he knew enough about high-school sports to know the players and their coaches were generally the last people to leave the building. He bounced on the balls of his feet as two more cars followed the bus onto the main road. That left just his truck, a van and two other vehicles in the nearly empty parking lot.
“Come on, Daisy.”
The images of how some sicko wanted to hurt her made his skin crawl. The bad joke gifts, graphic pictures and Peeping Tom all said coward to him. Daisy’s stalker wasn’t brave enough to confront her face-to-face. But he sure seemed to be getting off on scaring her, on watching her from afar and savoring how his psychological terror campaign controlled her life. He didn’t understand enough about profiling to know whether her stalker had some skewed idea of love for her, or if this obsession was some kind of punishment.
But a coward like that could become unpredictable in a heartbeat if he thought his control over her was slipping—just like Daisy’s ex. She’d been brutally honest in one of her letters about the night her ex had come after her with a knife. She’d wanted Harry to know that she could deal with the things he’d shared with her, that she was a survivor and that she was stronger for it. But a woman like Daisy, with such zest for people and life, should never be punished or controlled like that. Acid churned in the pit of his stomach at the thought of someone hurting her like that again.
He’d never thought he’d be stepping up for guard duty for a chatty, compassionate free spirit. For months now, he’d focused solely on fixing himself—and that project wasn’t complete yet. Did he really think he had what it took to keep Daisy safe?
Like right now, Harry had a bad feeling about the number of vehicles left in the parking lot.
But then he was the one whose head wasn’t on straight. He had a bad feeling about almost everything these days, seeing an enemy where there was none. He knew the van belonged to the custodian on duty tonight because the guy had come out for a cigarette during the second game. The well-appointed Cadillac must belong to the principal. Harry had seen him at more than one door, locking up. The other car could be abandoned for all he knew. It had a yellow sticker on the windshield, so it belonged to someone who worked at or went to the school.
He stopped at the front of his truck again. Although he couldn’t see any movement through the bank of glass doors at the front of the building, the lights were still on inside the lobby and gymnasium, so chances were that Daisy was just fine.
He probably shouldn’t have left her alone for this long. But the crowd and cheers and drums had been too much for him. That kid, Albert, had been ticked off with Daisy. Wounded pride over some school problem. Harry’s instinct was to intervene—to keep the danger at bay before he had to become a part of it. But then Albert had mentioned Benny Garcia, and that had taken him right back to the middle of that last firefight, and he kne
w he was losing it.
Lt. Col. Biro was right. He wasn’t much use to anybody in this condition. A wounded warrior. Damaged goods. He had a Purple Heart and a Silver Star, but he couldn’t handle teenage smart-assery and a noisy basketball game.
If he was at Hope’s apartment with his duffel bag, he’d be pulling out one of Daisy’s letters right about now. He’d read her words and feel her caring. He’d cool his jets and come back to the normal land of the living. At least, as normal as he could get.
This time, instead of reading the words and letting his angel lift him out of his mental hellhole, Harry’s thoughts drifted back to myopic blue eyes and a beautiful smile. The real Daisy Gunderson was a far cry from the woman he’d imagined. But different meant just that—not any better or worse. And different hadn’t stopped him when the noise and the stress had gotten to be too much, and he’d anchored his senses on her luscious, irresistible mouth. He’d kissed her. Not a peck on the lips like the thank-you she’d given him at her house that afternoon. A real kiss. He hadn’t been sure he could still kiss a woman. But the need had been too powerful to resist.
He hoped his damaged nerves and scar tissue hadn’t completely grossed her out because Daisy had been wonderful. He’d felt her mouth soften under his. He’d tasted her. He’d felt her response through every surviving nerve ending and deeper inside in places that had nothing to do with nerves.
Selfishly saving himself by coming to Kansas City and meeting her in person had become doing a favor for a friend. And now looking out for Daisy was becoming something...selfish again. So much for putting his ideal Ms. G. up on a pedestal. For a few blissful seconds, he’d forgotten everything except his desire to kiss that beautiful mouth.
A smoother operator in a less public place would have deepened that kiss. A man who was a little less abominable and little more sure this unplanned attraction he felt was mutual would have pulled Daisy into his arms and pushed her up against that wall to feel every inch of those curves and grasping hands while he plundered her heavenly soft mouth. Those unexpectedly heated thoughts about all the ways he wanted to kiss Daisy had required a third hike through the snow to ease the ill-timed fantasies about the earthy, purple-haired temptress and the embarrassing hard-on they’d aroused.