By then, it had started snowing again, and she and Dillon spent the rest of the afternoon inside. They unpacked the last few boxes, played a game of ‘White Hats’ and baked a batch of chocolate cookies while the repairman she’d called fixed the furnace. And even though they were busy pretty much all day long, Abby was hyperaware that the SUV with Sheriff on the side didn’t reappear in the driveway next door all day. It wasn’t there when she caved to Dillon’s constant begging and let him take a covered plate of the cookies to leave on Sloan’s front porch. It wasn’t there, even after she’d read a story to Dillon and tucked him into bed, and it wasn’t there when she hustled him out of the house the next morning for his first day at his new school. Their new school.
Mercifully, she didn’t have any extra time to think about the handsome deputy as Principal Gage gave her a tour of the school and she settled into the office that was now hers. She checked supplies, read through the files of the students who had continuing health-care needs and by lunchtime had seen a half-dozen children for everything from an earache to a girl having her first period. She was so busy, in fact, that she ate her peanut butter and jelly sandwich in her office and didn’t leave it at all until she went with the rest of the teachers and administration to attend the assembly being held in the gymnasium.
There, she stood in the back of the room while the students noisily claimed their patches of gym floor and sat down. They were arranged by classes with the youngest in front and the oldest in back, and Abby didn’t even realize how nervous she was for Dillon until she spotted him sitting cross-legged next to a little blond-haired girl who, judging by the way she was chattering away, didn’t seem too put off by Dillon’s apparent silence.
Then the genial principal moved to the front of the room, efficiently gathering the children’s attention while the teachers began moving to the back of the room where a few rows of folding chairs were set up.
“Come on.” Dee Crowder, one of the first teachers Abby had met that morning, nudged Abby along the row of seats. She taught third grade and was short like Abby with wildly curly blond hair and an infectious smile that reminded her of Delia’s. “There’s room for you to sit, too.”
So Abby scooted along the row of chairs to the end and dutifully sat down. “How often are there assemblies?”
Dee shrugged and pulled a tube of lip gloss from the pocket of her red sweater. “Couple times a month. They don’t always have all the grades at once, though. Today it’s just because of the presentation.”
Abby knew that safety and drug-abuse prevention were the topics this afternoon. While she certainly supported the cause, she hoped the assembly wouldn’t drag on too long. She still had a stack of student files to get through.
“I don’t know why I thought moving to one of the condos out near Shop-World would come with better pickings where men are concerned,” Dee whispered. She bumped her shoulder against Abby’s. “You buy the old Downing place that’s been empty for a year and basically hit the lottery.”
Abby dragged her thoughts from the unread files waiting for her to the teacher next to her. “Sorry?”
“I’m stuck in a lease, living between newlyweds on one side and a lady who has four cats on the other, and you move in next door to the hottest guy in town.”
She realized that Dee’s avid gaze was glued to the front of the gymnasium and followed it.
There stood Sloan, alongside Sheriff Scalise and two other officers.
And even though she was sitting in the back of a very crowded gymnasium, when his attention traveled across the audience, it seemed as if his gaze honed right in on her.
She moistened her lips and shifted in her seat.
The sheriff had taken over the microphone at the podium after the principal finished his spiel about home emergency plans, but she barely heard a word of what he said.
Sloan looked as magnificent in his uniform now as he had the morning before.
Dee leaned close again, her whisper barely audible. “You might know he’d be good-looking. He’s not a Clay, but his sister married one, and there’s not a dud in the bunch.”
Abby had grown up in Braden, but anyone who lived in the state had heard of the Clay family. There was the cattle ranch they owned, the Double-C, which was one of the largest in the state. There was Cee-Vid, the company that put out games like ‘White Hats.’ It, too, was run by one of the Clays and was located right there in Weaver. There was also the hospital—the only one in the region. From the stories her grandparents had told, building it had come about mostly because of the Clays’ efforts.
“Even Sheriff Scalise fits the mold,” Dee was saying. “He married Sarah Clay.”
Abby had met Sarah that morning. She was the other third-grade teacher. And Dee had a point. Sheriff Scalise definitely qualified as tall, dark and handsome. But there was nothing about the married father of three that made Abby’s mouth run dry.
Unlike his newest deputy.
Sloan and one of the other deputies—a slender woman with dark blond hair—had begun moving along the rows of students and were handing out stacks of flyers.
“Half of those flyers are going to end up as paper airplanes,” Dee whispered. “Mark my words.”
“What are they about?”
As the deputies went row to row, the noise level in the cavernous room was rising, and Dee didn’t bother to keep her voice down. “They have a drawing contest every year for their drug-abuse resistance program. The winners from each grade get to do a ride-along in a car with an on-duty officer—all geared appropriately toward their level, of course—and then from those drawings, they’ll choose a final winner. The drawings will be used on all the flyers and brochures about the program for the next year.” She suddenly popped out of her seat. “Calvin Pierce.” Her voice, surprisingly loud for someone so small, rang out across the room. “That shoe belongs on your foot, not on your neighbor’s head.”
Abby saw a towheaded little boy near Dillon sink guiltily onto his bottom and shove his foot back into his shoe.
Dee sighed and sat back down herself. “It’s a popular program with the kids,” she went on as if there’d been no interruption whatsoever. “And anything that keeps the message going about saying no is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. It was Joe’s—Principal Gage’s—idea. They are trying to come up with something similar that would be just as popular at the junior-high and high-school levels. But they’re a tougher audience.” She sighed a little then crossed her legs and looked at Abby. “Don’t you think he’s hot? You know,” she prompted when Abby hesitated. “Your neighbor.”
For a moment, Abby had thought the other woman meant Principal Gage. “I don’t know Deputy McCray all that well.” She just knew what his lips tasted like. How he smelled. How his smile was too long in coming...
“That’s not what I hear.”
Abby started. “Hear from whom?”
“You’re from Braden, right?” Dee barely waited for Abby to nod. “Then you know how word gets around.”
“Not always an accurate word, though.” She felt flustered right down to her bones, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that Sloan had reached the back of the room where they were sitting.
“Ladies.” He handed Abby, who was at the end of the row, the rest of the flyers he’d been holding, and his fingers brushed against hers.
“Deputy McCray.” Dee smiled brilliantly and took the stack, save one sheet, out of Abby’s nerveless grasp. She kept a few for herself before passing them along to the teacher beside her. “It’s so nice to see you taking part today.”
Sloan barely glanced at the curly-haired teacher as he gave a noncommittal smile. “Part of the job.”
He did, however, do more than glance at Abby, and she could have melted into her metal folding seat when his smile seemed to warm for her alone. “Thanks for the cookies,” he told her. “You make them yourself?”
Much too aware of Dee’s attention, Abby lifted her shoulders. “Dillon thought
you needed some.” It was only half the truth.
Her little brother had thought Sloan needed some since they’d used his store-bought cookies for both the snowman’s eyes and Dillon’s stomach. But while she’d mixed up the chocolaty dough, Abby hadn’t been able to forget that her grandmother always claimed she’d caught Abby’s grandfather with that very same recipe. Since they’d married only a month after a young Minerva had offered an equally young Thomas one of her cookies at a church bake sale, and had stayed married for the rest of their lives, Abby figured the story had some merit.
“Then I’ll have to thank Dillon, too.” He began making his way back up to the front of the room where the principal was making an effort to quiet the crowd.
Dee bumped her shoulder again. “Make cookies for everyone you barely know? Your other neighbors, too?”
The woman was grinning with such good cheer that Abby couldn’t help but like her. “My other neighbor has been out of town,” she said blithely. “But, yes, I’ll have a plate for him.” She’d have to make another batch, but that was moot.
Dee laughed soundlessly and turned her attention back to the principal.
Soon after, the gymnasium was once again a madhouse as the students were dismissed back to their classrooms. Abby slowly folded her chair and stacked it against the rest. She knew she was lingering, watching Sloan as he stood at the front of the room talking with the principal and the sheriff.
But he didn’t look her way again, and rather than being the last person to leave, she made her way back to her office and the files awaiting her. She didn’t have a chance to finish studying them, though, because a boy came in with a bloody nose, and then she needed to see several students at the junior high next door to administer their regular medications.
When she collected Dillon at the end of the day, he had a stack of work sheets clutched in his hand that he was supposed to finish at home, and she had a stack of district policies to read. “We both have homework,” she told him as they set off for the short walk home. “What do you have to work on there?”
He pushed the papers into his backpack then hitched it over his shoulders. “Spelling. And we gotta turn in a report about our ’mergency plan at home.”
Two things he would fly through, she knew. Dillon was all about what to do in an emergency. She’d already shown him how to open all the windows in the house in case there was a fire and they couldn’t get out the front door. “What about the drawing contest the sheriff talked about? Do you want to enter?”
He ducked his chin. He took her hand as they crossed the street that had gone quiet again after the last of the students had departed. “Dunno.”
Surprised, she looked down at him. “You love to draw. Why not?”
“Calvin says only weenies enter the contest.”
Abby squelched the first response that came to her mind where Calvin was concerned. “Who is Calvin?”
“Calvin Pierce,” he muttered, his chin even deeper in his coat.
The same towheaded boy that Dee had called out during the assembly. “Calvin is in your class?” The growing school had two classes each for most grades.
Dillon nodded. They followed the sidewalk around the corner onto their street. “I gotta sit at the same table as him.” He sounded morose. “In the front row.”
“Well, maybe you won’t be in the front row all the time,” she said encouragingly. “And you shouldn’t listen to nonsense from any of the other kids about entering a contest that I know you must be interested in. Don’t you want a chance to see what it’s like to be a deputy like Deputy McCray? You would get to tour the sheriff’s office and ride in one of their official vehicles.”
“I prob’ly wouldn’t win anyway.” He tugged his mitten-covered hand free of hers and hitched up the straps of his backpack again.
Abby hid a sigh. “You don’t know that unless you try.” She decided to drop the matter for now. “How did you like your teacher?”
“Ms. Normington’s okay. She’s got a goldfish on her desk.”
“And the other kids in your class? Besides Calvin?”
“They’re okay.”
She chewed the inside of her lip and watched him as they reached the edge of their yard. “Who was the girl you were sitting next to during the assembly?”
“Chloe.”
“She looked pretty friendly.” Talkative, at any rate, from what Abby had observed.
“She’s at my table, too.” He suddenly looked up at her. “Is Deputy McCray gonna be your boyfriend?”
She stopped in her tracks. A squiggle of something worked around inside her chest, messing with her breathing. “Of course not!”
He peered at her. “Wouldn’t he be a good one?”
Thoughts of just how good Sloan might be in all sorts of roles swirled inside her head, nearly making her choke. “I have no idea,” she managed to say with a reasonable amount of calm, all things considered. “Deputy McCray is a nice man who lives next door to us. That’s all.” She moistened her lips. “Why would you even ask that question?”
But he seemed to have lost interest in the subject just as quickly as he’d brought it up. He hitched his backpack up again and set off across the snow, stopping only long enough to reposition the snowman’s sagging carrot nose. “Can we have skeddi for supper?”
“Sure,” she said faintly and wished her own thoughts could be so easily switched.
What would Sloan be like as a boyfriend?
The term was almost laughable, because there was nothing boyish about him.
He was a man. All man.
And while she had no personal experience being with a man, her imagination where Sloan was concerned worked just fine.
Too fine.
Warmth flowed through her, making her feel a little weak.
She swallowed, glancing over at the two-storied house next door as she unlocked her front door and waited for Dillon to go inside. But when she saw the familiar SUV turning onto their street at the end of the block, she jumped as if she’d been caught doing something wicked and rushed inside after her little brother, closing the door harder than necessary.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not a thing. The wind caught the door.” She blamed the heat in her cheeks on the lie. “Why don’t you sit at the counter to do your work sheets? I’ll get you some milk and a cookie to hold you over until spaghetti. Okay?”
He nodded as he started unearthing himself from his coat. She left him to it and hurried into her bedroom, where she dumped her briefcase on her dresser and ignored her flushed reflection in the mirror as she pulled off her own coat and gloves. Then she exchanged her navy suit for jeans and a sweatshirt from nursing college and yanked her hair up into a clip on top of her head. The person looking back at her in the mirror now was the one she felt more familiar with than the RN who wore a suit and carried her grandfather’s ancient leather briefcase.
She headed back out to the kitchen. Dillon was sitting at the breakfast counter, hunched over a work sheet with his pencil clenched in his fist. The tip of his tongue was caught in the corner of his mouth.
She smiled, resisted the urge to smack a kiss on his head and poured him the promised glass of milk. She set two of the chocolate cookies they’d baked together on a napkin beside his milk and began pulling together the makings for spaghetti sauce. When the doorbell rang a few minutes later, she didn’t even have a chance to set down her knife before Dillon hopped off his perch. “I’ll get it!”
It was so out of character for her usually shy brother that she hated to caution him, but she still followed him. And then she went dry-mouthed all over again after Dillon pulled open the door to reveal Sloan standing there on the step.
When his eyes met hers, her stomach swooped and her riotous imagination went completely berserk. She was glad for Dillon’s presence, because she could only imagine what the good townspeople of Weaver would have to say if the new school nurse tried to jump their deputy sheriff’s bones right there
on the front porch.
“We’re having skeddi,” her little brother announced, grabbing Sloan’s hand and pulling him right inside. “You want to have some, too?” He shut the door hard, as if he could keep Sloan from leaving by that act alone.
Abby opened her mouth. Closed it again.
She knew she was blushing and there wasn’t a darn thing she could do about it.
Sloan was still eyeing her, his expression amused—hopefully because of Dillon’s enthusiasm and not because he could read her X-rated thoughts. He was holding the empty cookie plate. “He say that to every guy who comes to your door with plate in hand?”
She managed a smile. Very few guys had ever come to her door once they knew about Dillon. And none at all with an empty cookie plate from her. But she had no intention of telling him that or about anything else that was currently in her head. “You’re welcome to join us for dinner. Spaghetti with marinara,” she translated and gestured vaguely toward the kitchen. Her hand was shaking. “Although it’s going to be a while.”
“Abby makes her own skeddi sauce,” Dillon said, sounding boastful. “She doesn’t pour it out of a jar.”
She’d never thought she’d be the center of a public-relations spin, much less one offered by a seven-year-old boy. “Your homework isn’t going to get done by itself.” She nudged him toward the breakfast counter.
“They give homework to second-graders?”
She looked back at Sloan and, with nothing to occupy her nervous hands, tucked her fingers in the back pockets of her jeans. “He had homework even in kindergarten.”
“Only things I remember from kindergarten are graham crackers and nap time. Didn’t matter which school, they were all the same.” He touched her shoulder as he stepped around her to head into the kitchen with the empty plate.
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