A Younger Man

by Linda Turner

  “I’m fine,” she assured them huskily, forcing a smile. “I think I just got a little too hot jumping around. It’s warm today, isn’t it? I should have worn something cooler.”

  She was wearing a thin, short-sleeved cotton blouse that should have been more than cool enough for the middle of September, but the boys were too young to notice that. Then the Eagle band broke into the school fight song, distracting them, and there were, thankfully no more questions about her “fever.” Standing beside them, her gaze directed unseeingly at the field, Natalie could think of nothing but Max…and the kiss.

  Caught up in her thoughts, she didn’t notice that he’d returned until he suddenly joined her. Carrying a cardboard tray full of food, he grinned down at her. “What’d I miss?”

  A dozen answers sprang to mind…the crazy need he stirred in her, the rush of her blood, the pounding of her heart every time he smiled at her. The last thing Max needed when it came to women, however, was encouragement. He was far too sure of himself as it was. “Just the kickoff,” she said lightly. “Here, let me help you with that.” She took the drink he’d bought for her, then handed the boys their food. “What do you say?” she asked them.

  “Thank you, Professor Sullivan,” they said in unison, flashing their twin dimples at him.

  “Can you make another bet with Mommy so we can get some nachos later?” Tommy added. “We really like nachos.”

  “Tommy Bailey!” Natalie gasped, shocked. “You know better than that! Apologize right now!”

  Chuckling, Max only reached over and ruffled Tommy’s red head. “You got it, sport. But how do you know your mom’s going to win the next bet?”

  “Because Mom’s really smart,” he said simply, proudly. “She always wins when we bet.”

  “So you’re a gambling woman,” Max teased, interest sparking in his eyes. “I would have never guessed.”

  “We only bet on little things—like who can run the fastest or jump the highest,” she said ruefully. “If these monkeys keep growing the way they are, it won’t be long before they leave me standing in their dust.”

  Max could just see her running with her boys, encouraging them, daring them to be the best they could be. She was a good mother—and her sons clearly adored her. So where was her ex? he wondered. She’d said he’d taken a hike, but to where? Had the divorce been amicable or hostile? Did she still love him? If she did, then she wasn’t as smart as he thought she was. The man had to be a fool. He’d walked away from a fascinating woman, and Max didn’t have a clue how he’d done it. Because he wasn’t even involved with her, and he was finding it harder and harder to keep his distance.

  Down on the field, the opposing team marched steadily down the field. Normally Max would have been grumbling with the rest of the fans, but to his consternation, he discovered that he didn’t care what the other team did. He just wanted the Eagles to make another touchdown so he could kiss Natalie again when the boys weren’t looking.

  You’ve got it bad, man, a voice in his head warned. What happened to all that talk about not getting involved with one of your students? What was that? Just lip service because you hadn’t met anyone you were interested in?

  Scowling, he swore under his breath. No, it wasn’t just lip service. Natalie was different, dammit. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of her as one of his students. She was older than he was, for heaven’s sake—with kids! He’d never been involved with a woman with children—he’d never thought he’d wanted to. Not that he was involved with her, he quickly assured himself. He just liked her…a lot. There, he’d admitted it. Now he had to decide what he was going to do about it.

  The final score was seven to three, with the home team winning their second straight game of the season. Less than pleased with the single touchdown the Eagles had scored, Max should have told Natalie he’d see her on Tuesday. Putting some distance between them would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, he heard himself suggesting, “Why don’t we all go someplace for something to eat? You’ve got to be hungry,” he told Natalie. “All you had earlier was a soda. And the boys just had a snack. What about pizza? We could go to Airport Pizza. The boys would love it.”

  He was right—the boys would love it. Airport Pizza had a real single-engine airplane hanging from the ceiling of a small hangar that its innovative owner had converted into a pizza parlor, and the food was supposed to be fantastic. But she and the boys wouldn’t be trying it today. “I’m sorry,” she said with a regretful smile. “I wish we could, but I have to work.”

  “Mom!”

  At the boys’ cry of objection, Max had to grin. “C’mon, guys, give your mom a break. She can’t help it if she has to work. We’ll go another time.”

  They weren’t pleased, but the boys weren’t whiners. “How about tomorrow?” Harry said brightly.

  Max laughed and ruffled his hair. “Nice try, sport. We’ll do it when you least expect it.” Arching a challenging brow at Natalie, he grinned. “Right?”

  Caught in the trap of his eyes, she had no choice but to gracefully give in. “Of course. It’ll be fun.”

  “Where are you parked?”

  “Over there,” she said, pointing to the west end of the stadium. “How about you?”

  He grinned wryly, nodding in the opposite direction. “East.”

  She should have been relieved. There wouldn’t be any offer to walk her to her car, no drawn-out goodbye. She and the boys would go their way, and he would go his. And that was the way it should be. They hadn’t gone to the game together—they’d just met by chance. So why did she feel as if she was walking away from a date? This couldn’t be because of that silly kiss. There’d been nothing romantic about it—it was just a silly tradition. He’d probably already forgotten it. She had, she told herself.

  Liar!

  Heat climbing in her cheeks, she ignored the irritating little voice in her head and forced a smile that didn’t come nearly as easy as she would have liked. “Well, I guess this is goodbye, then. Thanks for everything. The boys had a blast.”

  “I hope you did, too.”

  “It was fun,” she said honestly. She didn’t want to end the day, didn’t want to walk away. But she still had to find her car and deal with the traffic, then leave the boys at Susan’s before she went to work. Regret tugging at her smile, she said, “I guess I’ll see you in class on Tuesday.”

  Reluctantly she headed toward her car with the boys in tow. Her heart skipping every other beat, she didn’t glance over her shoulder to see if Max was still standing where she’d left him. She didn’t have to. She could feel the warmth of his gaze with every step she took.

  Chapter 4

  After she dropped the boys off at Susan’s, Natalie arrived at work to find the restaurant packed with the after-game crowd. They were hungry and excited and boisterous, and because one of her co-workers didn’t show up for work, she and the rest of the waitresses had to pick up the slack. For the next three hours, she rushed from one table to the next and never knew where the time went.

  The craziness didn’t end, however, with her shift. She had to pick up the boys, read them a story before putting them to bed, then start a load of laundry and her homework. By the time she went to bed, she was exhausted. The second she closed her eyes, however, the memory of Max’s brief kiss at the football game teased her, taunting her with wistful feelings of what-if.

  He was a man she could dream of, there was no doubt about it, and she readily admitted she was concerned. But over the course of the next few weeks, she didn’t, thankfully, have time to fantasize about him often. There never seemed to be enough time in the day to get everything done. Tuesdays and Thursdays she was busy with her classes, and the rest of the week was occupied with work at the restaurant. And every evening when she and the boys finally got home, the routine was the same: she helped the kids with their schoolwork while she cooked dinner and started a load of clothes. There were baths to be taken, clean clothes to be folded and put away, dish
es to be washed. Invariably, it was ten o’clock or later by the time she started her own homework. Most nights she fell asleep over her books.

  She wasn’t even halfway through the semester, and she was already exhausted. That should have worried her, but she took great pride in the fact that she was still, somehow, able to keep up with her classes. Her professors didn’t make it easy for her. Especially Max. Aside from the term paper he’d assigned the first day of class, he required his students to read two chapters for every class. And they were long chapters.

  How she kept up with everything, she didn’t know. Still, she dreaded the first test in Max’s class. He was tough, and she didn’t doubt that his test would be equally tough—which was why she was a basket case the night before his test. She bought a pizza for supper, rented a Disney movie for the boys and settled down to study for the rest of the evening.

  It should have been easy. She had everything around her she needed, the boys were enjoying the movie, and she was soon lost in her studies…until Harry suddenly made a quick trip to the bathroom. “Mom! I think you’d better come here.”

  Not taking her eyes from the notes she was studying, she said absently, “What is it, sweetie? I’m trying to study. If you need toilet paper, it’s in the cabinet—”

  “I don’t think that’s going to help,” he said ruefully. “There’s water all over the floor.”

  Trying to memorize the pertinent details about a dig in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, she was only half listening. Then his words registered. “What?”

  Alarmed, she jumped up and hurried down the hall to the bathroom, gasping in horror when she saw that a pipe under the sink had burst and there was water everywhere. “Oh, my God! Boys, quick! Get some dirty towels from the laundry room. I’ve got to turn this water off!”

  Lightning quick, the boys ran to the laundry room off the kitchen and returned seconds later with four big bath towels. Struggling to turn off the water valve under the sink, Natalie was already soaked. “This valve’s stuck,” she panted, trying to get some leverage on the slippery floor. “Damn, I can’t budge it!”

  “Uh-oh,” Tommy said, wide-eyed. “You said the D word.”

  “We’ve got to call Grandma and tell her,” Harry added. “You told us we could report you to grandma whenever you say a bad word.”

  Her wet clothes clinging to her and water still gushing from the pipe, Natalie had to laugh. “I think even Grandma would expect me to cuss tonight, but you’re right. I did tell you you could call her. It’ll have to be later, though. We’ve got to get this water turned off and get to Home Depot before it closes.”

  Thrilled by the unexpected excursion, the boys quickly changed out of their pajamas while she hurried outside to turn off the water at the shut-off valve by the front sidewalk. Thankfully it wasn’t frozen open, and within seconds all water to the house was completely turned off.

  She should have been relieved—the crisis was, for the moment, anyway, under control. But she found little satisfaction in that when she hurried back inside and her eyes fell on her abandoned books at the kitchen table. So much for studying, she thought grimly. Resigned, she quickly changed into dry clothes and grabbed her purse. “C’mon, boys. Home Depot’s waiting.”

  It never entered her head to call a plumber. She just didn’t have the money for plumbers or electricians or a handyman. She’d installed her first faucet a week after Derek walked out on her, and she’d been doing small repairs around the house ever since. Normally she enjoyed it. That wasn’t going to be the case tonight. Feeling time—and her chance to study—inexorably slipping away from her, she quickly found what she needed at the hardware store, then hurried home.

  The boys wanted to stay up and help her, but it was already well past their bedtime, so they gave her little argument as she bundled them into bed. Still, it was nearly ten o’clock before she could start working on the bathroom, and another hour before she finished. By the time she finally returned to her studying, it was after eleven and she was exhausted. Resigned, she once again turned her attention to her notes on the dig in the Valley of the Kings.

  She never knew when she fell asleep. The next morning she woke to find herself slumped over her books. Horrified, she jerked up, pushing her hair out of her face as she tried to focus on the clock on the wall across the kitchen from her. Seven? “Oh, God!” She had to get the boys up, get them to school, get herself to Max’s class for the test.

  She paled at the thought. How late had she studied? Two? Three? She’d been so tired, and after a while, everything had all run together. She didn’t even know if she had gone over all her notes—and there was no time now. Sick at the thought of failing her first test, she pushed back from the table and hurried down the hall to wake the boys.

  Forty-five minutes later, she rushed into Max’s classroom, panic tightening her throat. The rest of the class was already there, and she only had time to sink into an empty desk at the back of the room before Max began to hand out the test. Any hope she’d had of flipping through her notes before class started died a quick death. Ready or not, she’d run out of time.

  She told herself she could still pass the test. She had studied, and even though it had been eighteen years since she’d taken a test—and that was in high school!—she wasn’t a dummy. She could do this.

  Then she read the first question…and her mind went blank.

  Seated at his desk, observing the class, Max frowned as his eyes lingered on Natalie. Since he’d kissed her at the football game, he’d tried not to let his gaze wander her way too much in class, so that the rest of the students wouldn’t notice his growing fascination with her. With every passing day, however, that became increasingly difficult. She was just so damn pretty, and trying to figure out what was going on in her head was always a challenge. She usually showed up for class with a spark of interest in her eyes and a smile on her face that he found impossible to resist. But the minute she stepped into the classroom, he’d seen that there was no spark in her eyes, no smile on her lips. He’d taken one look at her and he’d known something was very, very wrong.

  She was pale, without an ounce of color in her face, and sat as still as stone, just staring at the test. She was obviously reading the questions, but she looked stricken.

  What was going on? he wondered, concerned. If he didn’t know better, he would swear she hadn’t studied, which was ridiculous. Out of all his students in all his classes, she was the one he could always count on to be the most prepared for class. It had to be something else. Maybe one of the boys was sick.

  Frowning at the thought, he almost asked her to step out into the hall for a moment so he could ask her what was going on, but he knew that was impossible. She would not appreciate being singled out. And whatever problem she was having, she hadn’t come to him about it. Until she did, he had to treat her like any other student and let her take the test.

  Watching the expressions on her face as she struggled to get through the test, however, was one of the most difficult things he’d ever witnessed. Why didn’t she talk to him? Didn’t she know she could come to him with whatever problem she was having? Even if he hadn’t kissed her, even if there hadn’t been an ounce of attraction between them, she could have come to him. All of his students knew that. So why hadn’t she?

  The hands of the clock on the back wall of the classroom dragged, but time didn’t move as slowly for the rest of his students. One by one they finished the test, turned it in and made a hasty exit. With fifteen minutes left in the class, he and Natalie were the only ones left in the room. In the absolute silence that surrounded them, she never looked up, and Max had never been so frustrated in his life. Talk to me! The words echoed in his head, but he didn’t say them. As her teacher, he couldn’t.

  When the bell finally rang, signaling the end of class, he sighed in relief. Finally! Now she would tell him what the hell was wrong.

  But when she walked to the front of the room with quiet dignity to turn her te
st paper in, she didn’t say a word. She just laid her paper with those of the other students and turned to leave.

  “Natalie?”

  “I have to go,” she said huskily, and hurried out.

  Swearing, Max picked up her test, hoping it would give him some answers to what was going on. But he took one look at it and was more confused than ever. She’d only answered a handful of the questions! Why? Natalie was a sharp, conscientious student. He’d never gotten the impression that she didn’t understand the material. And she was so excited about finally going to college—there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she’d studied. Obviously, something else had to be going on. But what, dammit?

  He wanted to go after her, to demand some answers, but there wasn’t time. He had another class, and she was obviously in no mood to talk to him right now, anyway. Later, he promised himself. He would get answers, but he would have to wait until later.

  But putting those questions—and Natalie—out of his head wasn’t nearly as easy as he would have liked. After he handed out the test to his next class and began grading the previous class’s papers, he found himself reaching for Natalie’s test again. It took him all of ten seconds to grade it. Forty-two, he thought in frustration. How could such an intelligent woman make a forty-two? His jaw clenching back an oath, he wrote her grade in red at the top of her paper, then added a short note, recommending she schedule a conference with him. For now that was all he could do. Turning her paper facedown on the desk, he went on to the next test.

  Later, Natalie didn’t know how she got through the rest of her classes that day without falling completely apart. She’d waited forever—eighteen years!—to go to college, and what had she done? Flunked her very first test. Oh, she didn’t know the exact grade she made, but she didn’t need the number to know that she’d failed miserably. How could she not? She’d answered…what? Four…five questions? She winced, just thinking about it. Once he saw her test paper, Max would think she was a complete moron, and she couldn’t blame him. She couldn’t have done any worse if she hadn’t studied at all.