“Is that good or bad?”
It was a surprisingly insightful question and Landry did not have a ready answer. Finally she just shrugged. “I don’t suppose it really matters. The whole idea is to make sure that every kid can learn.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to get into that discussion.” He shook his head. “It’s like when everyone realized that my brother Jason had a bit of an attention issue and they were all trying to make it easier for him to succeed. I didn’t think it was fair. Why does he get special attention? You succeed when you’re good at something naturally or when you work hard to get that way. If you don’t or can’t then you need to find something else that you are good at.”
“Well, that is one way to distill it down to the nuts and bolts.” She shook her head and began to gather up her things.
It was time to leave. There was a public bus that left from the corner near the school at just after four forty-five in the afternoon. If she did not ride the school bus home she took that. In the afternoons it was difficult to ride the bus with the kids because she had a class during the final period of the day and that left her with tasks to complete before she could just walk out and leave. Fortunately she had some change in her budget for a bus ride.
“So what was Daphne talking about?” The nonchalant tone of Zane’s words did not match the underlying interest he obviously had in this topic. “You know, when she said that she wanted to make sure you knew she as there if you needed her. What was she talking about?”
“Oh nothing. Just...ah...” There was really no way to dismiss that statement. It was too pointed. “Daphne just wanted to make sure that I know that she’s got my back if I need someone to talk to. It’s just an open offer. That’s all.”
“Nope.” He shook his head, turned, and stared at her with his arms crossed. “Not buying it. Try again.”
There was really no way of circumventing or distracting him when he got like this. “Fine.” She glared at him. “The principal stuck his nose into my personal business and got the school counselor to ambush me. The two of them are convinced that I’m having some kind of emotional problems.”
“Because of your parents?” He was frowning. She could tell that Zane knew this didn’t all add up. “I’m not saying that it wasn’t tragic and probably a very lasting and horrifying experience to discover them yourself. But you’ve done a really fantastic job of working through that. You’re probably one of the strongest people I know when it comes to that stuff. I’m not saying you don’t need someone to talk to.” He grumbled a bit. “Did you know that it’s impossible to discuss this topic without making it seem like I’m poking at you. I’m not. Okay?”
“I know that.” Oh, this was not going to be a good thing. She folded her arms over her chest and sighed. “They’re probably more concerned about the time I spent in the hospital a few years ago.”
“Excuse me?” He looked confused. “I missed something. Were you sick?” There was a pause and she could actually see his brain spinning in tight fast circles. “Oh my God, did you get cancer or something? And I didn’t even know! I’m sorry, Landry!”
“Don’t be stupid.” She rolled her eyes. This was at least slightly less awkward because Landry felt like the real story was far less dramatic than something about cancer. “I had some young people hanging out in my backyard. Let’s say they were uninvited guests. When I confronted them, they took exception to being told to leave. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” he growled the words.
For a second Landry actually took a step backwards as she tried to reconcile the angry man in front of her with the good-natured boy she had known all her life. Zane King wasn’t the type of guy to get all upset over just anything. But right now he actually looked as though he were ready to go hunt down the perpetrators and string them up by their toenails.
He swallowed. She could see his throat bob as he did. Then he pursed his lips and seemed to be trying to get control. “What happened? What did they do?”
“They just roughed me up a bit.” It was easier to say that than to explain that they had broken her right leg in three places stomping on it. Then there had been the concussion and the severely damaged shoulders from being tied up with her hands behind her back and then beaten with some kind of metal rod that she still did not know the identity of. It had been horrible. In fact, it had been one of the most frightening experiences of Landry’s life. But it was over and done with and she had moved on.
“How do you just move on from that, Landry?” Zane whispered.
Wait. Had she said that stuff out loud? She coughed and frowned at him. “Move on? You just do. I’m sorry. Did I say something about moving on?”
“Yes.” He cocked his head and for just a moment the compassionate lines on his face made her feel so very vulnerable that she wanted to fling herself into his arms. “You told me that it was frightening, but that it was over and you had moved on.”
“Oh God. I said that stuff out loud?” she moaned and covered her face with her hands. Then she dropped her hands and glared at him. “It’s all your fault!”
“What?”
“You always make me do that!” Landry felt a desperate kind of embarrassment for just a moment. “I just talk and talk and tell you things that I should just keep quiet! It’s embarrassing. I shouldn’t be telling you anything. I should be saying that I’m fine and it’s fine and it’s over and done with. I shouldn’t even be mentioning anything about anything!”
“Landry, I want you to tell me stuff.”
“But it’s embarrassing,” she moaned. “You have no idea what it’s like to have everyone staring at you as though they think you’re made of glass and about to break at any second. They’re all waiting for you to freak out or break down. You have school counselors trying to get you to open up and confide as though they were really safe people to do that sort of thing with since they report to your boss!”
“It’s very unfair,” he agreed.
“Then everyone is staring at me because they all freaking know that I’m broke. It’s like public knowledge and I can’t really decide how they know. It’s like they think that I’m just waiting for the moment when I can lose my shit all over the school. Like I’m going to show up with a shotgun and blow everyone away, and it isn’t like that! Not at all.”
“Well, you aren’t that kind of person.” Zane made it sound so damned reasonable. Why couldn’t everyone else make it seem like that? Why did they all have to treat her like she was losing it? “You know, sometimes people are motivated by guilt and that’s it. They feel like they should have either been able to prevent it or help you or something. That’s how people react to that helpless sensation. It’s pretty counterproductive really.”
Landry stared at Zane. He was dressed in jeans and boots and a black T-shirt. His wavy hair was hanging around his ears and forehead as though he were still eighteen. He looked like a male model and yet he had a brain like a steel trap and could understand and predict human emotions and reactions better than anyone Landry had ever met.
She put her hands on her hips and stared at him. She didn’t care how obvious it was that she thought he was gorgeous and smart and amazingly wonderful. “How did you get so smart? Seriously? You barely showed up in school. I think it is probable that you barely show up at work. And yet you’re probably the most brilliant person I know.”
His expression soured. How odd. Usually he took stuff like that and made it seem as though it just rolled off his back. “Not everyone thinks that way. In fact, if you’d like, I will regale you with a story that should make you feel much better. And, of course, I have a proposition at the end of it too.”
“Okay.” For just a moment Landry was incredibly grateful to him for distracting her from her problems and pretty much everything else too. “Hit me. What could be so awful in your charmed life?”
“My mother has thrown me out of the house and forbidden me to go back to my office at King Security Solutions.” He m
anaged to say this with a totally straight face. She could not imagine how.
“You have to be joking!” She was already chuckling to herself, but he never laughed. He never even seemed to crack a smile. And he wasn’t that good of a kidder either. So for just one moment she paused and then she swallowed back the worry for him that had taken up residence in her gut. “What’s the proposition?”
“You need help with the bills. I need a place to live. I still have my salary whether or not I show up thanks to my father’s will. So I have money. I’ll pay you rent if you let me stay at your place. What do you think?”
Landry swallowed. She thought it was one of the worst ideas she had ever heard of. Ever. And yet there was no argument she could come up with against it. Not really. And that was scary. Very. Very. Scary.
Chapter Ten
Landry thought that he was lying and Zane couldn’t really blame her. Or maybe lying was the wrong word. Perhaps what she really thought was that he was exaggerating. Yes. Exaggerating. That was a good description for what he was seeing on her face.
“She kicked you out.” Landry’s flat tone of voice was almost suspicious. “How can she do that? Zane, you’re twenty-eight years old. How do you kick a twenty-eight year old out of a house that doesn’t even belong to you?”
“Hang on. How do you know that?” Zane had to rewind his thoughts a bit. What was she saying? “It’s my mother’s house.”
Landry rolled her eyes. “No, it isn’t. There is not one person in Dallas who believes that crap. Tisha Olivares-King has never owned anything in her life. And Big Mac King never owned anything. He put everything he had under that business because that’s what smart businessmen do.”
“Right.” Zane thought about the way that this information just rolled of Landry’s tongue. “You said not one person in Dallas. Are you talking about the high rollers? You know, the people in my mother’s social circle who always seem to know what’s going on with everyone else’s bank account?”
“Exactly.” She snorted and shook her head. “You know. The people like my grandmama.”
“Right.” He shook his head. This was a bit of a surprise. A negative one too. “I wonder if my mother realizes that all of Dallas already knows she’s depending on us for money?”
“That’s an interesting question. I sometimes wonder if people like my grandmama and your mother ever realize that their dirty laundry is hanging all over town. They just think people love them and adore them and never talk bad. It’s kind of pathetic if you think about it.”
He needed to pull the conversation back around to what mattered. Living arrangements. He needed a place to stay. She needed money. It seemed rather obvious. Perhaps he just had to convince her a bit. Then she would realize he wasn’t exaggerating.
“So?” Zane prompted. “Can I offer you a ride home? It’s the least I can do since you have to escort me out so that I don’t get tagged as a terrorist or something.”
“I suppose I would appreciate a ride.” She bit her lip as though she were actually thinking about refusing. “I should ride the bus though. That’s the way I usually get home.”
“You realize that you can always ride the bus, right?” He was being deliberately ridiculous. “You can save today’s bus fare for tomorrow. Consider it a savings on my dime.”
“Nice.” She finally shrugged and started packing what appeared to be a stack of school papers into her messenger bag. “Okay fine. I’ll save some bus fare and use up your gas money. Plenty of it since you drive that monster truck. I cannot imagine what sort of gas mileage it gets.”
“Oh.” He’d actually never considered that before. He just pulled up to the pump and filled up. “I sometimes notice that the gas prices have gone up,” Zane commented thoughtfully. “But usually only when the pump shuts off because you get to that threshold of like seventy-five bucks where the thing won’t fill anymore and you have to stop and then swipe your card and do two sales just to get the truck full.”
“Oh my God.” She paled at apparently the thought of such a thing. “You know you can borrow my car if you want to. It gets like thirty miles to the gallon.”
“No way!” Zane shuddered at the thought. “You must be joking! I don’t even think I could fit my shoulders through the driver’s door of that thing! I saw it sitting in your driveway.”
Two lines appeared between her eyebrows. “You did?”
Whoops! He had just given himself away. How did you just casually explain to someone that you’d been stalking them? Of course he would have to leave out the fact that he had been in her backyard while in the body of a wolf and that she had poked him and bruised his ribs with her stupid mop handle.
“You’ve been stalking me!”
Zane took stock of the fact that she did not seem pissed about this. In fact, he would have said she seemed flattered. “Maybe a little. But not really. I just drove by to make sure that you got home the other night after the rainy encounter on the street where you refused a ride.” Sort of.
She was already stalking out of her classroom. “Well, stalker boy, get moving before I do call the cops and tell them there’s a creeper in the middle school!”
Zane could not help but laugh as he followed Landry out of her classroom. She was walking with long ground-eating strides toward the front parking lot. He found it no effort to keep up. He just lengthened his strides and kept walking right next to her.
The quick pace meant that her light citrusy perfume fanned out behind her. It was incredibly attractive. In fact, he could not help but think that she was probably the most edible creature he’d ever met. If he had been the big bad wolf he would have been ready to blow her house down right away. Then he would have spent the entire night making her scream with pleasure instead of pain.
Okay, he needed to get a hold of his unruly thoughts. There was no doubt in his mind that she was probably not that interested in him or his randy thoughts right now. The poor woman was just trying to deal with the huge amount of crap that life seemed determined to throw at her. He didn’t need to make it worse by acting like a high school boy.
“This place doesn’t remind me of a school at all,” Zane observed as they passed what appeared to be a cafeteria. He stopped walking and spread his hands wide. “Look at it. The atrium feel. All that’s missing are the guard stations and guns.”
“What?” She gaped at him. “What are you talking about?”
“It looks like a prison!” Zane told her firmly. “There’s so much emphasis on safety that it’s almost like nobody can see past that to make it friendly and inviting anymore.”
She was laughing by the time she pushed open the doors that led to the parking lot in front of the school where he had left his truck. “You’re ridiculous! It’s safe. And what you would be bummed about is that there’s almost nowhere for you to slip off and cause trouble. Did you ever think that kids like you are one of the reasons that schools wound up like this? You were such a troublemaker I bet the entire state changed their rules just to make sure that kids like you couldn’t slip off and start fires in the library or copy their butts on the machine in the teacher’s lounge.”
“I never did that!” He tried to sound indignant, but the truth was that Zane had done so much ornery stuff in school that he didn’t even remember what he had and hadn’t done.
“Yeah. You did.” She waved her finger at him. Teacher style. “Don’t even try to deny it either. You totally did all of that and more! You were a menace.”
Zane pulled out his keys and unlocked the truck. “Okay. So maybe that’s partially true. But still. You can’t get after me about it. Not really.”
“Oh, I can get after you for whatever I want!” She bounded over to the passenger side of his vehicle and opened the door all by herself as though she were trying to make sure that he didn’t get a chance to do it for her. “I’m an independent woman and I’m a teacher! That means I get to look back at all of our childhood antics and say that it’s no wonder the teachers
were always calling your dad and telling him that you were in trouble again!”
Zane could not help but laugh. He loved to recall what it was like back when they were in school. He got into his truck and shook his head as he settled himself behind the driver’s wheel. “You were never in trouble. It was like it all just rolled off you and stuck to me.”
“Yeah. That’s what happened.” She shook her head as she pulled the seatbelt over her shoulder. “So my house is pretty easy to find from here.” She made a face at him and stuck out her tongue. “But since you’re such a creepy stalker you probably already knew that, right?”
“You know you did give me your address so I could pick you up for dinner. Maybe that’s the only time I saw your tiny car,” Zane reminded her.
“Uh huh. Except you just told me that you checked up on me the night before you were supposed to pick me up.” Her eyes were bright with good humor and Zane almost could not look away. She tossed her red ponytail over one shoulder. “So while I’m sure you aren’t a dangerous stalker type, you’re still a freaking stalker.”
“Fine. Whatever.” He sighed. And then he added the part he was hoping would prove to her that he really needed a place to stay. “I need to run by my mother’s place in University Park. Do you mind?”
“Why?”
“To get my stuff. She’s claiming she’s going to throw it outside on the curb.”
Landry’s expression left no doubt as to what she thought about that nonsense. “Sure. We can stop there real quick so you can see that your mother was just having another one of her infamous Tisha Olvares-King tantrums.”
“Fine.”
The two of them settled into a comfortable kind of silence in the truck. The radio was playing nineties music and they were both kind of humming along. It was companionable and nice. Zane did not typically find that he could be silent with most people. Somehow Landry was different. She was just comfortable to be around.
They left the neighborhood surrounding Washington Middle School behind and headed into the more expensive zip codes that increased in affluence until they finally reached the mansions and ridiculously expensive homes in trendy University Park. It didn’t take long for Zane to wind his way toward his mother’s most exclusive address. The King family home could never be considered anything but sprawling and enormous. But Zane probably would have added the word overdone to that. The house was just trying way too hard.
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 55