by Beth Andrews
“Is this the part where you strangle me and toss my lifeless body from the window?” Harper asked, seeing as how Eddie still looked capable of murder. “Because if so, I should warn you that I’m heavier than I look, so tossing might take some real effort.”
He flicked his hooded gaze down her body, then jerked his head up. Must not have liked what he saw. And why that bugged her, she had no idea.
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t sure which shocked her more—that he’d actually apologized, or that he was blushing.
It should have made him look ridiculous, the color washing up his neck and cheeks. It didn’t. He looked approachable and real and not quite as gloomy. And behind his embarrassment, she saw the shyness that’d been a part of him even when they’d been kids.
“You’re sorry I’m heavier than I look? Or that you’re not strong enough for that tossing?”
“I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions,” he said, with no hint of defensiveness or evasion. “And that I jumped down your throat.”
His sincerity took her aback, but it was her own sudden softening toward him that caused a weird sense of unease to slide along her skin. As if she were standing on a ledge and needed to be extra careful of each step she took, each move she made.
She should let him squirm. Should, at the very least, let him sweat it out, see how far he’d go to gain her forgiveness, her understanding.
But she’d never been much into making anyone beg. Even when such a prime opportunity stared her in the face.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We all make mistakes.”
“Okay?” he repeated as if trying to decipher her true motives. “That’s it?”
“I was going to make you write, I will not jump to conclusions on the board one hundred times but I only have so much chalk, and once it’s gone I pick up the tab for more, so why don’t we skip it?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. Took them out again, his gaze steady on hers. It set her on edge, the way he looked at her. Which was crazy. She was a grown woman. Had been married, had a daughter. She didn’t get all jittery because a good-looking guy stared at her.
God, maybe Sadie was right. Maybe she really did need to get out more.
She picked up a pencil from her desk to have something to do with her hands. “Was there anything else you wished to discuss?”
“I’ll talk to Max about his behavior today. He’ll have a punishment at home, too.”
Some parents went ballistic when their little darlings got punished in school. They took their children’s side, blamed the teacher and generally acted worse than whatever their kid had done. Eddie obviously wasn’t one of those. She respected that.
“That’s up to you, of course.” She debated whether to say more but really, when had she ever kept her opinion to herself? “Though—while I’m not condoning his actions in the least—I do think he regrets what he did. He’s a good boy. But I can’t let bad behavior go, even if that behavior is unusual.”
“That makes sense.”
“I’m so glad you think so.”
He nodded as if she actually needed his permission or his agreement as to how to run her classroom. “You need someone to come in?”
“I hate to repeat myself but... Excuse me?”
“That woman with the baby said she can’t help out for a few weeks.”
“That’s right. She’s the room mother.”
“Which means...?”
“It means many things.”
“Why don’t you give me the basics?”
“She posts events and information to the classroom’s website, attends all the PTO meetings, organizes class parties and enrichment activities, collects donations from parents for supplies such as tissues, stickers—”
“And she comes in the room? Helps out here?”
“A few times a week, usually on Mondays and Fridays.”
He shifted, tapped his fingers on her desk absently, reminding her of his son. “What does she do?”
“Reads to the kids while I grade papers. Helps get snacks. Supervises when they go to the library—”
“I’ll do it.”
Harper blinked. “You’ll do what?”
“I’ll come in two afternoons a week,” he said, all scowly and defensive, as if she was the one who wasn’t making any sense. “Help out with the kids.”
“I’m sorry. Shock short-circuited my brain and I must have slipped into a coma for a few moments. I could’ve sworn you offered to volunteer in the classroom.”
His mouth thinned. “I did.”
“Why? I mean, you’re not exactly what I’d call sociable....No offense,” she added halfheartedly. Hey, if he took offense it was no skin off her nose. “If you want to observe my teaching methods, all you have to do is ask. You’re welcome to sit in on my class anytime you’d like.”
“I’m not trying to spy on you. I just thought you could use some help.”
“Oh, well...okay then,” she said slowly. “That’d be...” Weird. Possibly super uncomfortable. Not to mention having him in her room promised to be nothing but a huge distraction—to her class and her. Too bad she couldn’t think of any reasonable excuse to turn him down. “That’d be great. And you’d only have to come in for a few weeks.” An assurance for herself as well as him. “I’ll...uh...send the paperwork home with Max.”
“Paperwork?”
“Forms and regulations. There’ll be a background check, too. Have you volunteered at the school before?”
“I chaperoned a couple of field trips last year.”
“That’ll make the process easier. The checks should still be in place. If they are, you can start whenever you want.”
“I’ll be here Friday.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said, trying to sound as if she meant it. Hard to be enthusiastic and encouraging when all she could think was, what had she gotten herself into?
5
WHAT THE HELL was he doing here?
Tugging the brim of his baseball cap down, Eddie slouched against the windowsill. As soon as he stepped into Max’s classroom ten minutes ago, he’d known volunteering to be the room dad...parent...whatever...was a mistake. He should have told Harper he’d changed his mind when she’d called him last night and told him his background checks were still good and he could come in today at two-thirty.
Yeah, he’d chaperoned field trips before, but this was different than walking with a small group of kids, getting them from point A of the zoo to point B, or doing a head count on that visit to the dairy farm to make sure no one had been left in the barn.
He didn’t know anything about being a teacher’s assistant. Had a hard enough time helping Max with his homework. What good would he be to these kids?
But he couldn’t back out now. Not when he was already here. Not when Max had been so excited that Eddie was going to help out in his class.
Not after telling Harper he’d do it.
He’d already made an ass of himself in front of her. No sense making a habit of it.
He crossed his arms. Uncrossed them. At the front of the room, Harper wrote a sentence on the board as part of a grammar lesson. Must be casual Friday at the school because she had on a loose white Shady Grove Elementary polo shirt, a pair of shapeless khaki pants and sneakers.
He wished she had on that sweater from the other day instead.
But he liked her hair, how the sides were held away from her face by a clip at the back of her head, the soft sweep of her bangs. The ends grazed her shoulders, curling up slightly as if beckoning him to touch the strands.
His fingers twitched and he deliberately looked away. Kept his gaze somewhere over her shoulder as he tried to pay attention to what she said, in case she expected him to help the kids with their worksheets—dear Christ, he hoped she didn’t expect him to help the kids with their worksheets. The differences between a sentence’s subject and predicate held little interest.
To Max eith
er. While the other kids kept their eyes on Harper and the examples she wrote on the chalkboard, raised their hands to answer questions and sat still, Max waved his pencil as if fighting off a horde of Stormtroopers.
Eddie gripped the edge of the windowsill, ground his back teeth together so he wouldn’t tell his kid to stop playing Star Wars and pay attention.
“Max,” Harper called as she wrote another sentence on the board.
Teachers, like mothers, had eyes in the back of their heads. Not that Max seemed concerned. He kept waving his pencil around, jabbing it into the air— or the stomach of an imaginary foe.
Eddie straightened, tension tightening his shoulders, the back of his neck. He remembered all too well the humiliation of being called out for his behavior in front of his classmates. He never wanted Max to feel that way.
“Max,” Harper repeated in the same mild tone and Max jerked guiltily.
“Listening,” he said, turning the pencil to hold it the correct way.
She smiled at him. “Excellent. I’m going to call on you to answer a question after this example.”
Max nodded and sat on the edge of his seat, eyes forward, his heels tap, tap, tapping the floor.
Eddie peeled his fingers open. That was it? Harper wasn’t going to sarcastically tell Max to get his head out of the clouds? Wasn’t going to give him a harsh reprimand or send him out of the room?
Like Eddie’s fourth grade teacher had done to him.
“Now, Max, let’s try with this sentence. ‘The man,’” Harper read, pointing at each word she’d written, “‘ate lunch.’ As we now know, every sentence has a subject, which is...?” She gestured to everyone.
“Who or what,” the majority of the kids responded.
“Exactly. And a predicate...”
A fewer number of kids replied this time. “What the subject does.”
“Right.” Harper set her chalk on the board ledge. “Okay, Max, what is the subject of the sentence ‘The man ate lunch’?” Max hesitated but Harper just reread the sentence and said, “Remember, subjects are who or what the sentence is about. Could be the house or the car or the awesome teacher...”
Max perked up. “The man?”
“Correct. And the predicate? Or what the subject, in this case the man, does? It could be plays ball or ran away....”
Silence. Eddie squirmed, wanted to blurt out the answer himself, but Harper waited. And waited.
“Ate lunch,” Max finally said, leaping to his feet.
“Ding, ding.” Harper rang an imaginary bell. “Winner, winner...”
“Chicken dinner,” the class shouted.
She walked to a large dry-erase board and crossed Reading Lesson off the day’s schedule. “Good job, you guys. Let’s take a five-minute break to get your desks cleaned off then we’ll take our spelling test. That’s five minutes to put your workbooks away and get out a fresh sheet of paper. You may talk quietly amongst yourselves during that time.”
Harper erased the board and the noise in the room gradually grew as the students yakked to each other, a few—like Max—getting out of their seats to bounce around the room. And all of them, whether they were talking, sitting or standing, stared at Eddie as if he had two heads and was breathing fire.
He shifted his weight from his right foot to his left. Shit. They probably thought he was nervous. He had to be careful. He couldn’t show any weakness. They somehow sensed a man’s fear. If they knew he was wondering what he was doing there, what the hell he’d gotten himself into, they’d move in for the kill.
“You okay?” Harper asked as she joined him. At his terse nod, she raised her eyebrows. “You sure? Because you look really freaked out.”
He frowned at her but the concern in her eyes remained.
“It’s okay,” she said in the same tone most people used to soothe a frightened puppy. “Some people aren’t comfortable around a lot of kids. Though, those people don’t usually volunteer to help in the classroom.”
He’d volunteered so he could see firsthand how Max acted in school and be able to nip any more bad behavior in the bud.
And, yeah, because he’d felt like an idiot laying into Harper for taking away Max’s recess.
“I’m not uncomfortable around kids,” he told her.
He’d just never liked being the center of attention. Some things a man didn’t outgrow no matter how much he wanted to.
Harper must have thought he had some deep-seated fear about being surrounded by anyone under four feet tall because she leaned close to him.
“You’ll do fine,” she whispered.
He froze, kept his gaze straight ahead. Max was right. She smelled good.
Damn good. Not flowery exactly, but light and fresh.
It took all he had not to turn and simply breathe her in, inhale that sweetness until it filled his lungs to bursting.
“They’re mostly harmless,” she continued, her tone teasing. He wanted to share in her humor but he couldn’t. She stood too close to him, so close her hip brushed his outer thigh. “I promise.”
As if to seal that vow, she touched him, the barest brush of her fingers against his forearm. The contact was slight, friendly. But it jolted through him like a shock wave only to settle, warm and humming, in his veins.
Leaving him confused and restless.
While she smiled at her class as if nothing had happened. She clapped twice. “Hocus pocus.”
“Everybody focus,” the kids said in unison.
“Thank you,” Harper said. “Now, since Mrs. Rupert had her baby—”
“She had my sister,” a little girl with a cartoon cat on her shirt said as she danced around her chair. “Her name is Dawn and her poop is green.”
There was a chorus of gross and ews and the talking started up again, this time louder and wilder than before.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Harper said, not raising her voice in the slightest. “Settle down.”
The din climbed a few decibels.
Hard to compete with green poop.
Harper held her hand in the air, all five fingers splayed. The movement accentuated the fullness of her breasts, pulled her shirt up, the hem rising a few inches. She folded her thumb in, then each finger one by one. By the time she made a full fist, the kids were all in their seats, their mouths shut.
“Hands free,” Harper said, holding both hands in the air and wiggling her fingers. “Eyes on me.”
The kids repeated the action.
“As I was saying, Mrs. Rupert won’t be able to come in for a few weeks. Luckily, Max’s father has agreed to help us out until she returns. Everyone, say hello to Mr. Montesano.”
The kids did so in varying degrees of pitch, tone and volume. He inclined his head, coughed softly to clear the tickle from his throat. “Hey.”
“How about you read to the kids after they’ve finished their spelling?” she asked him. “That’ll give me time to correct their tests.”
Read to a bunch of kids he didn’t know? With Harper in the room listening?
Yeah, he read to Max every night—like all the parenting and educational experts said you should—but he’d never be what anyone would consider a fluid reader. Or a fast one.
“Sure,” he said with as little enthusiasm as you could use and still be a living, breathing human.
“I got some new books at the library. You can choose a couple of them.” He followed her to her desk, saw the stack of books. Picture books.
Thank you, Jesus.
Eddie leaned against the corner of the desk while Harper picked up the list of spelling words. She recited them clearly and slowly as she walked around the room, used them in a sentence and then repeated the word. The kids were bent over their work, their pencils scratching.
“Please double-check to make sure your names are at the top of your papers,” Harper said after she’d read the last word. “Mr. Montesano is going to read to you during circle time.”
Harper began collecting tests while t
he kids gathered in the corner by the rocking chair. Max came up to Eddie. “Can I sit with you when you read?”
“Sure, bud. Why don’t you pick out which stories you think your friends would like to hear?”
Max searched through the stack of books. Eddie straightened and, as casually as possible, stepped toward Max’s desk. Glanced down at the tests on the three desks surrounding Max’s. Names printed on top, lines numbered, each word written neatly and, for the most part, correctly. He glanced back, saw Max was still sorting through the books. Turning to block his son’s view, he used a finger to slide Max’s test toward him. Eddie reared back as if the paper had bit him.
Max got two words right. Two out of the ten.
What happened? They’d gone over the words twice each night this week. He’d had Max write them down instead of spelling them aloud. They’d practiced and practiced and practiced some more.
It hadn’t done any good. Eddie wanted to crumple the test, toss it into the garbage. He wanted to erase every line and put in the right answers.
He wanted to save Max from going through what he’d gone through. The worries. The doubts. The feeling of failure and not being good enough.
Never being good enough.
Nausea rose in Eddie’s throat. It was his fault. He had to fix it. But he couldn’t do it on his own. He had to ask for help.
* * *
“WHO COULD THAT BE?” Harper asked Cassidy when someone knocked on their door Friday night.
Sitting on the other side of the table, Cassidy, her blue eyes wide, her mouth smeared with pizza sauce, grinned. “Papa?” she asked excitedly, squirming in her booster seat.
“I don’t think so.”
“Papa!” Cassidy called. “Papapapapapa!”
Harper winced. Her baby had a set of lungs, God bless her.
“Okay, okay.” Harper stood and unstrapped Cass, setting her on the floor. “Let’s go see who it is before you have the neighbors calling the police to see if there’s a hostage situation over here.”
Cassidy raced toward the living room. By the time Harper caught up to her, she was pounding on the inside of the front door. “Papa? Papa, you there? Open up.”