Unlike her cheery surroundings, she was quite grim-looking, with her thin lips that tugged severely downward at the corners, drab clothing and heavy peppering of gray that dulled her dark hair. “Call me Mary-Margaret,” she commanded brusquely and strode out into the reception area. Stopping in front of her, the director thrust out a hand. “You must be Harper.”
“I am.” She shook the proffered hand and smiled appreciatively at Mary-Margaret’s firm, no nonsense grip. “Thank you for carving some time out of your schedule to see me. I’m sure you must be busy.”
“Thank you for asking about volunteering at the Village,” the other woman said, smooth and somehow easy despite that grim mouth. She stepped back, waving Harper into an office cluttered with paperwork and an accumulation of boys’ personal effects. She swept a baseball mitt, a school-type backpack and one large running shoe off the chair facing her desk, tossed them into an oversize box next to it and waved her hand at the cleared chair. “Have a seat.”
Harper sat, crossed her legs and regarded the director across the desk. “I wasn’t sure if you accepted the help of unlicensed volunteers. I imagine the boys you help here come with a wide range of problems, some or many of which I’m sure I have no experience with. But I like kids and I know Deputy Bradshaw gives a lot of time to the organization. So I thought you might find something for me to do.”
Mary-Margaret’s lipstick-free lips turned up in a fond smile that turned her naturally dour appearance unexpectedly sweet. “Max is great with the boys. He had a rough childhood himself, so he gets them.” Her smile turned dry. “Believe me, they know and respond to that.”
Max’d had a rough childhood? Harper would have loved to follow up that tidbit, to dig for more information and get the details. Instead, she stored away the stingy teaser to mull over later, for the director was still talking.
“What most of these boys need more than anything,” Mary-Margaret said, “is simple old-fashioned, one-on-one positive attention. Max offers that in spades.”
Harper nodded. “Yes, that was very apparent at the pancake breakfast. He’s got the touch.”
Mary-Margaret studied Harper with a cool, calm thoroughness. “You, for the moment, are an unknown quantity. I’d have to see you with the boys in a supervised environment before I could turn you loose with them. But I like that you volunteered at the breakfast, and Max did say you demonstrated an amazingly effective deflection of one of our boy’s inappropriate remarks without even opening your mouth.”
The older woman grinned suddenly, once again softening her stern features, and Harper began to believe that this was the real Mary-Margaret, and the older woman’s naturally downturned lips likely just a product of the musculature surrounding them.
“He also told me about your ideas for improving our fund-raising,” the director continued, “and I’d love to talk to you about that in more depth. Working on that here with me might be just the place for you.”
Harper knew she shouldn’t feel disappointed. Working with Mary-Margaret was a logical use of her abilities and would suit her purposes just fine, since it would keep her close to ground zero at the heart of this charity. And if she had kind of hoped to work with the boys one on one?
Well, perhaps it wasn’t a great idea, anyhow. She’d already received two separate come-ons, because these were hormonal teen boys. That wasn’t exactly the usual demographic she worked with.
“On the other hand,” Mary-Margaret said, “Max mentioned you might be able to offer some of The Brothers Inn resources for the boys?”
“Yes, I talked to Jenny Salazar, and we brainstormed a few things that might work for the boys without disrupting the inn’s paying guests.”
“It would sure be nice if they could get some time around the water,” Mary-Margaret said wistfully. “Other than taking them down to the public beach at the state park occasionally, that’s one experience we can’t offer them—even though our liability insurance covers off-campus excursions.”
Harper uncrossed her legs and sat a bit straighter in her seat. “If we can coordinate their schedule with the inn’s least busy hours, we can offer some tubing behind a boat, kayaking and a tide pool exploration. I can make the latter two both fun and educational. The tubing, I’m afraid, is just...tubing.”
The director laughed.
“We’re considering letting the boys swim from the dock as well, but that would depend on your assessment of their behavior, since the swimming area is a lot more difficult to segregate from the guests. And I do understand your concern over my ability to handle them. Ordinarily, I’d tell you I can, since as a general rule I’m quite good with people. But I appreciate that these aren’t run-of-the-mill kids. I tend not to jump into situations I can’t control—and without some idea of the depth of these boys’ problems I have no way of judging if my abilities are up to the challenge.”
The other woman leaned forward. “I like you. You’re not one of those starry-eyed do-gooders—you’ve clearly given this a great deal of thought. So let’s do this. Let’s introduce you to the boys in a couple of controlled situations where I or one of the counselors can assess your abilities. If those go well, we’ll turn you loose with a hand-picked group of boys. The truth is, for the sort of treats you and the inn are offering, we tend to reward the kids who’ve made appreciable inroads on their issues anyhow. Regardless, we never just send them off with nonprofessionals. If they go off site, we’ll send along someone from here to lend expertise, muscle and additional support.”
Harper nodded, pleased with the proposal. “That sounds perfect. I wish I could promise you consistent hours, but mine change almost daily depending on the inn’s occupancy and who’s signed up for what activities. But I could likely give you twenty-four hours’ notice.”
“Would you be willing to take a child-safety class?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then your schedule will work just fine. It’s pretty much the same thing Max does. Well, he generally knows his schedule a week in advance, but things still regularly come up to throw spanners in the works.” Mary-Margaret rose to her feet. “Can you spare an hour right now?”
“Sure.” Harper rose, as well.
“Excellent. Let’s check out the game room. We’ll see how you do with the boys.”
* * *
A FEW DAYS later, Max walked into Mary-Margaret’s office. “Hey,” he said when the older woman looked up from the work she was poring over on her computer screen. He bent to pick up the Lost and Found box from the floor next to her desk and started tossing the odds and ends littering the seat of the visitor chair into it. He usually eased into his volunteer time here by tracking down who belonged to what misplaced item.
“Hey, yourself.” Mary-Margaret, who always looked pleased to see him, stared at him with even more delight than usual. “I don’t remember seeing your name on the schedule for today. But, Lordy, am I ever glad to see you!”
“Yeah, I was supposed to work today.” He rubbed his aching head. “You hear about the accident up on the highway last night?”
“Oh, hell.” Her expression turned serious. “I did. One teen killed and three more in the hospital? From Chico, right? You caught that?”
“Yeah. I was first responder and was on it until three this morning.” And watching those kids being scraped up had pushed far too many of his buttons, had edged him too damn close to that old snake pit of emotions he’d worked so hard to leave behind on the war-torn roads and urban landscapes of the Middle East. “Damn kids must have downed two and a half cases of beer between ’em. The driver tried to take that curve by the Olmstead place at close to eighty miles an hour, and his car took down two trees when it went off the bank.” He shook the raw meat visions of the dead boy out of his head. “Sheriff Neward sent me home, but—” He clenched his jaw, unwilling to admit, I’m not ready to be alone.
“I’m sorry that you had to deal with that—I can only imagine how awful it must have been. But your availability tur
ns out to be a godsend for us. Jim either ate something that didn’t agree with him or caught himself a case of the flu. Either way, he was supposed to take a group over to the inn to go tubing with Harper. The boys are all pumped about it, and I’ve been dreading having to tell them we have to cancel. Still.” She looked at him with concern. “Are you up for it?”
His headache receded a bit. Well, let me see. Which would he prefer, having the images of mangled teenagers running through his head or the opportunity to see Harper in a bathing suit again? But he merely said, “Sure,” and returned the Lost and Found box to the floor. “I’ll have to make a quick stop at my place to grab my board shorts. I’ve never tubed, myself, so I have no idea if I’ll be needed in the water.”
“Take the van. You’ve got Malcolm, Brandon, Jeremy and Owen.”
He nodded his approval. “Good choices for her maiden voyage.”
“Yeah. They’re not all the way there yet, but of the current crop they’ve come the farthest.”
Twenty minutes later, Max pulled the van into the lot behind The Brothers Inn. He turned off the ignition and twisted around to look at his passengers. “This is the first time we’ve been given an opportunity to use the inn’s resources,” he said, giving the teens his best listen-up look. “Keep that in mind, because if you screw the pooch, there won’t be a second time.”
They gave him solemn nods, then poured out of the van with let-out-of-school whoops and raced for the beach. Max snorted, but couldn’t help but grin as he picked up his pace behind them.
The Olympics were out in their full glory, rising layer upon green layer of mountains out of the canal until their tallest rugged peaks, etched white with the last remaining snow, scraped the cerulean sky. A lone lenticular cloud floated its cap above the double peaks of The Brothers.
They found Harper on the dock, stooped next to a sleek little runabout. Checking her out, he blinked. Well, hell, no bathing suit.
Okay, thinking about it from a purely practical standpoint, he had to agree that Harper in that sexy black-and-white suit he’d seen her wear The Day of the Hot Tub, as he’d privately dubbed it, probably wasn’t the best scenario around a bunch of teenage boys who had sex on the brain 24/7. The turquoise-and-black neoprene wet suit she had on was sexy enough, and that covered her from her neck to just above her elbows and knees. It also hugged her body like spray paint and showcased her toned arms and legs. And, Sweet Mother Mary, that high, round ass.
He blew out a breath, shook out his hands, then got his head back in the game. “Hey,” he said, walking up to her. “Isn’t that Austin’s boat?”
“Well, hello, there. I was surprised when Mary-Margaret said you were coming And, yes. Austin donated it to the cause...with a stern caveat that only you drive it.” She grinned up at him. “I don’t know whether to be offended or not.”
“Have you ever driven a boat?”
“A couple of times, although I will admit to being more at home in kayaks and the like.”
“There you go.”
“I could so drive it!” Owen, the smallest of the four boys, stepped between them, his narrow chest puffed out.
“No, Sport,” Max said easily. “You can’t. If the owner stipulates only me in order for us to use the boat, then only me it’s going to be.”
“Besides.” Harper smiled at the teen. “You get to do something way cooler. You get to ride the Gladiator Rage.”
“What’s that?” Owen demanded, but his gaze had already followed the sweep of her hand and he stilled. “Oh, man!”
The rest of the boys looked where he was staring, and suddenly there was a stampede to the huge blue, gold and black towable U-tube that stretched across the end of the dock. They whooped and clustered around it, checking it out.
“Holy shit.” Jeremy, who tied Malcolm as the largest of the teens, nodded at the four red sets of handles across the top of it. “This thing’ll take all of us at once? That’s monster epic!”
“I call the outside,” Malcolm said. “That’s the position that makes you bounce the highest.”
“I call the other one,” claimed Brandon.
“Aw, man!” Jeremy groused.
Max noticed that Owen didn’t say anything.
So, apparently, did Harper. “You all do know how to swim, right?” she asked.
Jeremy, Brandon and Malcolm all agreed they did with varying degrees of scorn. Owen looked at the dock.
Max slid his arm around the smaller boy’s shoulders. “Buddy?”
Owen looked up at him. “I can swim a little,” he said. “But I’m not whatcha might call a strong swimmer.”
“Everyone’s going to wear a life vest,” Harper assured him. “That keeps you buoyant even if you do go in the water.”
“Hey, I’m a great swimmer,” Brandon protested. “I was on swim team for four years. I don’t need no stinkin’ life vest.”
“And yet you get to wear one, anyhow,” Harper said with an easy smile. “The inn has rules, and this one goes, no vest, no ride.” She turned back to Owen. “So, as I said, you’ll have a vest to keep you safe. But is this something you want to do? Because, if it makes you uncomfortable, you can always ride in the boat with us.”
“It’s not quite as bouncy in the middle,” Malcolm said. “And whoever’s next to you can try to lean in on the jumps to keep you in place.” The other boys nodded their agreement, whether out of solidarity or a fear that Owen’s reluctance might somehow tank their afternoon, Max couldn’t say.
But Owen nodded. “That’d prob’ly work.”
“Then, put these on,” Harper said, handing out the life vests. Once the boys each had one, she tossed a larger model to Max, then pulled on her own. She looked at the three bigger boys. “Start out with Malcolm and Brandon on either end, then take turns switching off with Jeremy, so everyone who wants a shot at that position gets one. Can you live with those terms?”
“You bet!”
“Yes!”
“Hell, yeah!”
“All right then.” She grinned at them. “Let’s have some fun.”
Max handed her into the boat, then found himself rubbing his hand against his board shorts in an attempt to eradicate the feel of her smooth skin from his fingertips. He turned back to supervise the teens as they put the tube in the water. Even as he got the kids situated on the tube, he eyed her covertly, using an inspection of the tow rope she was feeding out as his excuse.
“Let me know when the rope is taut,” he said to her as he slowly maneuvered the boat away from the dock a moment later, then added, “That was smooth.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “What was?”
“The way you handled Brandon not wanting to wear a vest.”
“Hey, rules are rules.” She grinned at him. “Until you mean to break them, anyway.” She turned back to gauge the rope. “It’s tight.”
Max half lifted out of the driver’s seat. “You guys ready?” he called.
The boys yelled an affirmative. And he thrust the throttle forward, surging away from the dock.
They spent the next hour speeding up and down the canal, towing the Gladiator behind them. When it whipped out over the wake, the bounce lifted the teens, who were connected only by their grips on the red handles, up off the tube before dropping them back down again to bounce at whatever angle the Gladiator left them.
It turned out there was no way to lean in on Owen and keep him from raising off the tube. In fact, as the lightest of the boys, he bounced the highest. But by the end of the first run it was clear he was loving it, even going so far as to insist on taking a turn on the outside.
Max found himself smiling almost nonstop. Seagulls swooped and cried overhead, the sun beat down on his shoulders and the sound of unbridled laughter from boys who didn’t always have a lot to laugh about filled the air.
Then there was Harper. Acting as their spotter, she mostly kept her eyes on the boys to ensure that if anyone lost their grip and bounced off the tube they
could promptly circle around to pick him up. That meant when he glanced around his view was of her long back, longer legs and that wanna-fill-my-hands-with-it ass.
There was a sight he had no complaints with.
To his surprise, however, even better than the visual feast of Harper’s body were the moments when one of the boys laughed with pure joy and the two of them glanced over their shoulders at each other to grin in mutual appreciation.
The smartest thing he’d done today was go to the Village. Because a day on the water, a hot woman who shared his pleasure in providing a fun day in the sun to boys who didn’t get an abundance of them?
Well, that beat the hell out of skulking around his house, trying not to brood about an accident whose outcome he’d had no way of changing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MAX JINGLED THE change in his pocket as he waited in line at the Stop and Go outside of town. Friday night was finally here, he had just gassed up his rig, and if Conner, the cashier, and Woody Boyd, who was paying for his half rack of Heineken, ever quit their damn jawing, he’d be on his way to Silverdale for that night on the town he’d been thinking about for dog years.
Even better, if things went the way he hoped—and Chatty and Chattier put a cork in it—by the end of the night he might well have reason to use the box of condoms he was waiting to purchase.
It had been too damn long since the last time that occasion had presented itself.
Shifting sideways to let Woody by a moment later, he finally stepped up to take his place at the register. Vaguely, he heard the tinny sound of the little bell over the door. He paid it only scant attention until he heard, “Hey, look, there’s Uncle Max!”
Then he turned to see Austin barreling through the door with Jake ambling in his wake. He watched his nephew head his way, the kid’s mouth stretched in a big, toothy grin—then turned back long enough to slide a twenty across the counter to Conner Priest.
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