Dalton's Undoing

by RaeAnne Thayne

  "Not him. His stupid wife," Marcy exclaimed. "Candy went into labor three weeks early, can you believe it? How can she do this to us? Where are we supposed to come up with a caterer at the last minute?"

  Jenny gave a startled laugh, but Marcy went on before she could comment.

  "This is just like Candy," Marcy said darkly. "She always hated me. She hasn't changed a bit since she was head cheerleader at high school—she can't stand not being the center of attention."

  "I really doubt she planned going into labor just to inconvenience you and ruin our faculty party."

  "You don't know her like I do. I wouldn't put anything past her."

  Jenny didn't know her at all, she just knew Allen was a great caterer she'd already used twice since she came to Pine Gulch.

  "What are we going to do?" Marcy wailed. "Oh, this is a nightmare! Between yesterday's blizzard and now Candy's selfishness, this party is going to be a total bomb."

  "Calm down. We'll figure something out. I can't imagine Allen didn't have at least some of the prep work done for the party, since it's only in a few hours."

  Marcy drew a breath and Jenny could picture her moving into one of the calming yoga moves from the class she took from Marjorie Dalton that she practiced in times of stress. When she spoke, some of the hysteria seemed to be gone from her voice.

  "He tried to tell me everything that was ready for the party but I could hear Candy yelling at him to hurry up in the background and he was so flustered I couldn't make sense of half of it. He did tell me where the spare key is to his kitchen, though."

  Jenny rose and started pacing the room, lost in administrative problem-solver mode.

  "Okay. Here's what we're going to do. You've got the key and the menu we agreed on. You can run over to Allen's place right now and see if you can figure out how much prep he's finished and how much we still have left to do."

  "I can do that. It's only a few blocks away. Better yet, why don't you meet me there? We could do this faster with two of us."

  She turned around and saw Seth lounging against the pillows watching her with that light in his eyes again. She abruptly realized she'd left the sheets behind on the bed and was pacing the room dressed in nothing but her cell phone.

  She cleared her throat, knowing she would look more foolish if she scrambled back under the blanket, as she wanted to do. Instead she reached for the closest article of clothing—his shirt—and slipped into it.

  "Well, there's a bit of a hitch there. I was, um, stranded in Jackson last night by the storm."

  "You're in Jackson?" All the panic—and more—returned to Marcy's voice and she spoke the last word about three octaves higher and several decibels louder than the first two. "When I called your house and your dad said to call you on your cell, he didn't say anything about you being out of town!"

  "I'm out of town for now," Jenny said, hurrying to calm her. "But I'm sure the roads are clear now and I'll be heading back to Pine Gulch as soon as I can, I promise. I can be back in…"

  She gave Seth a questioning look and almost dropped the phone at the expression in his eyes, something murky and unreadable that sent her stomach twirling and had her pulling his shirt more tightly around her.

  Those gorgeous shoulders rippled as he shrugged and held up three fingers.

  "Three hours," she told Marcy. "Though I'll do everything I can to make it in two and a half."

  "That's still not enough time for us to get everything ready!"

  "It will all be okay, I promise. Try to call Allen at the hospital to figure out where things stand and see if he can walk us through whatever recipes are left."

  Marcy was only slightly mollified to have a plan of action. "Ten hours, Jen. That's all we've got."

  "I know. We'll figure it out, I promise."

  "We'd better. You know how important this is."

  She thought of her faculty and how hard she had worked to earn their trust and acceptance. A good school administrator could accomplish nothing without the support of her teachers and she still had a long way to go for that. She hoped this party might melt some of their reserve.

  "I know."

  "I hope so. This is my one big chance with Lance and I can't afford to blow it!"

  Okay, perhaps she and Marcy weren't quite on the same page here, she thought with a smile. She was desperate to build a team with her faculty while Marcy's motives had more to do with a certain physical education teacher she was interested in.

  "You know how long it took me to work up the nerve to ask him to be my date tonight," Marcy went on. "I wanted so much to impress him by throwing this really terrific party and now it's all going to be ruined because of stupid Candy Grumley."

  "We'll get through this, I swear. Lance won't know what hit him, okay? Just call me on my cell when you've had a chance to assess the situation in Allen's kitchen."

  "I don't want to call you when you're driving, especially in these conditions. I'm sure the roads will still be slick."

  She didn't want to tell Marcy not to worry about that since someone else would be at the wheel—especially when that someone was a presently naked and extremely gorgeous Seth Dalton.

  She felt herself blush. "Don't worry about that. Just call me."

  She wrapped up the call a few moments later and closed her phone to face Seth, who was still watching her with that lazy smile.

  She wanted desperately to climb back into that bed with him but she knew it was impossible.

  "I've got to get back. I'm…I'm sorry but it's an emergency."

  "Sounded urgent."

  "That faculty thing I was telling you about. We're having a holiday party tonight. Allen Grumley is catering it for us and his wife has apparently gone into labor three weeks later. Marcy thinks she did it on purpose."

  "Candy always was a prima donna."

  She picked up a pillow and smacked him with it. "Not you, too! For heaven's sake, can't a woman even go into labor without the world assigning ulterior motives?"

  He laughed and fended off her attack, then grabbed her and pulled her to him.

  She let out a sigh, regret a heavy ache inside her that she wouldn't share this magic with him again. "I'm sorry, but I really do have to get back to deal with the crisis."

  He arched an eyebrow. "In that case, maybe we'd better save time and share the shower."

  * * *

  Sharing a shower turned out not to be the world's most efficient idea after all.

  She hadn't really expected it to save any time, but she also hadn't been able to resist one more chance to kiss him and touch him. They made love with slow, almost unbearable tenderness, and she had to hope the shower spray hid her tears.

  At last they were on their way. Seth drove his pickup through the snow with his usual competence even under the snowy conditions and she was grateful for his presence.

  She spent most of the drive making lists and trying to figure out what they still needed to accomplish to pull off the party.

  An hour or so from Pine Gulch, Marcy called again. "Is this an okay time for you to talk on your cell? The roads aren't too slick?" she asked.

  "It's fine," Jenny assured her. "I'm not driving."

  In the pause that followed, she could almost hear the wheels in Marcy's head turn as she tried to figure out who Jenny might have gone to Jackson with, but to her relief, her assistant said nothing. She was grateful, since she didn't want to have to lie.

  "Okay, things aren't quite the disaster I feared," Marcy said. "The desserts and the appetizers are done and so is the salad. Allen only had about half of the au gratin potatoes ready. Knowing how fast those go around here, I was thinking of having some baked potatoes set out when they're gone."

  "Great idea."

  "Even I can handle baked potatoes. My mom has two ovens in her kitchen and I can set them on a timer to be finished just as the party's starting. And I can cook the ham at my place, too. He's got those all ready to go."

  "Wonderful. It sounds like
you've got everything under control."

  "Not everything. Here's the sticky part. Remember we were offering ham and Allen's famous coq au vin? He has all the stuff for the chicken but I've got no idea how to throw it together."

  Jenny's mind raced. Her skills in the kitchen were not the greatest, though she figured she could follow a recipe if they had one. Coq au vin sounded more than a little challenging. Just the name was enough to make her break out in hives. "Is there something else we could substitute?"

  "Any ideas?"

  She thought through her poultry repertoire, which was pretty limited to roast chicken and a moderately good recipe for grilled lemon-herb chicken breasts.

  "See if you can find a recipe somewhere in Allen's kitchen. I'll be there as soon as I can. Between the two of us, we can probably figure something out. Thanks so much for everything you've done so far. It's a lot of work and I owe you big-time."

  "I won't let you down, I promise."

  "Just make sure you leave enough time so you can get ready and put on all your sparkly stuff for Lance."

  "Are you kidding? I'm not going to all this work to impress him, just to show up in an apron and a pair of jeans!"

  Jenny laughed and hung up.

  "If we pull this off, it's going to be a miracle," she said after she'd folded her cell phone.

  "Anything I can do?" Seth asked. "I'm not a whiz in the kitchen, but I can take orders."

  The Pine Gulch gossip mill would just about start spinning off its axis if she showed up at Marcy's house with Seth Dalton in tow as a sous chef.

  She mustered a smile. "I think we'll be okay. But thanks."

  A muscle tightened in his jaw, but he said nothing for several more miles. Finally when they were nearing the outskirts of town—near where Cole had crashed the GTO—he spoke in a deceptively casual voice.

  "Why aren't you taking a date tonight?"

  The unexpected question had her pen scratching across the list she had been making.

  "How do you know I'm not?"

  It was a stupid thing to say, but her only excuse was that he'd flustered her. Something dark and formidable leaped into his gaze and she swallowed, struck once more by how easy it was to forget his easygoing nature covered a hard, dangerous man.

  "Are you?"

  "No," she admitted. "I didn't…it didn't seem appropriate."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. I guess because I'm the principal." And because the only man she wanted to take was the last one she ever could.

  He was silent for another block or so, then he cast her a long look across the cab of his truck. "Even if you had decided to ask a date, you would never in a million years have taken me, would you?"

  She did not want to have this conversation right now, so close to home and all the things she had to deal with there.

  "Seth…" she began, but had no idea where to go after that, so her voice trailed off.

  * * *

  In that single word, Seth heard the hesitation in her voice and knew his suspicion was true. Despite everything, despite these last few wonderful weeks and the incredible night they had just shared, she still was ashamed to be seen with him.

  Hurt and anger poured through him in equal measures and his hands tightened on the steering wheel. He wanted to lash out at her, to attack and wound until she bled as he did.

  Just then the truck slid on some slush and he had to concentrate to keep control in the slick driving conditions. By the time he did, the hurt had just about overwhelmed the anger.

  "I get the picture now," he said quietly. "A guy like me is fine for a little romp in the sack but when it comes to anything deeper, you're not interested."

  "That is not true."

  "Isn't it?"

  "You know things are complicated for me right now."

  "Your precious reputation. Right."

  She bristled at the scorn in his voice. "I have nothing else but my reputation right now, as far as my faculty is concerned. It would be different if I'd been here a year or two and had some kind of track record with them—if they knew me and my capabilities. But right now I'm a wild card and my every move is endlessly dissected and analyzed in the faculty lounge."

  "And of course we wouldn't want anybody to suspect you might have a pulse."

  "It's more than that! I can't afford for my judgment to be questioned on anything."

  "Being seen with me would certainly show lousy judgment on your part. I get it."

  It was only a party. Why was he making such a big deal about it? Intellectually, he knew his reaction was out of proportion to the situation. But he couldn't seem to hold back the tide of hurt washing over him.

  The whole thing had an oddly familiar feel to it. He tried to figure out why and was almost to her father's house when it hit him like a snowplow coming through the windshield.

  It felt familiar because he'd been down this road before. Many times before. He had spent the first twelve years of his life trying to win the approval and acceptance of someone determined to reject him at every turn.

  Hank Dalton had been a bastard who'd treated all three of his sons with varying degrees of cruelty.

  He had tried—and failed—to mold Wade into a carbon copy of himself. He had disregarded all of Jake's dreams of being a doctor and completely dismissed his middle son's intellect and quest for knowledge. As for Seth, he might as well not have existed for all the notice Hank paid his sickly youngest son.

  He remembered how he used to follow his father around, copying his every move—from his cocksure walk to the way he wore his hat to that hard-ass, screw-you stare his father had perfected.

  All for nothing. His father hadn't noticed a damn thing except the asthma Seth had no control over.

  His jaw tightened. He wasn't that weak, puny kid eager for any scrap a bastard like Hank Dalton might toss at him anymore. Long before the year he turned twelve, when Hank had died, he'd given up on his father ever seeing him as anything other than a worthless runt, always out of breath and clinging to his mother.

  He'd come a long way since those days, so far he thought he had put all that behind him. So why did Jennifer Boyer's blunt rejection seem so painfully familiar?

  He thought of the night they'd just shared, the heartbreaking intimacy of it and the connection he had never experienced with anyone else. He replayed again the pure, incomparable sweetness of holding her in his arms while she slept and he was astonished and terrified by the raw emotion welling up in his throat.

  He swallowed it down, forcing it back by concentrating on the road.

  "I see," he said when he trusted his voice again.

  She sent him a searching look and he gave a casual shrug, determined not to let her see how she had eviscerated him. "No big deal. I've got plenty of things I could do tonight."

  He must not have been completely successful at hiding his hurt because her eyes darkened.

  "I'm sorry, Seth. But please try to see this from my perspective."

  "Oh, I do," he assured her. "Nothing possibly could be worse than letting the faculty and staff at Pine Gulch Elementary see their new respectable principal hanging out with the town's biggest hellion. What a nightmare that would be for you."

  "You don't need to use sarcasm."

  "Yeah, I do." The tenuous rope he had on his emotions frayed abruptly. "Dammit, Jen. How can you even care what other people think, after what we've just shared?"

  "What did we share? I slept with you, but that certainly doesn't make me unique among the female population of Pine Gulch."

  Ah. Direct hit. He almost swayed from the force of it, but drew in a breath to steel himself against the pain. "It was more than that and you know it."

  Her hands clenched in her lap and she was trembling as though she was standing out in the snow with bare feet.

  "It was a mistake," she said quietly. "A lapse of judgment on my part brought on by the storm and the enforced intimacy of the situation. One that won't happen again. I can't see
you anymore, Seth."

  He should have expected it, but somehow he hadn't been prepared for the panic burning through him, raw and terrifying. He wanted to rage and yell and beg her not to cut him off from something that suddenly seemed as vital to him as breathing.

  There was nothing he could say, though, nothing he could do to fix this and he could only be grateful they had reached her father's house.

  He pulled into the driveway and sat there, his hands on the steering wheel.

  "That's probably for the best," he finally said, though everything in him howled in protest at the outright lie. "I won't be your guilty secret, Jen. Some kind of stud you turn to when you're bored or lonely. I care about you. Hell, I think I might even be in love with you."

  Her gaze flashed to his and he saw shock and disbelief there but he plowed forward.

  "I don't know. This is all new to me." His laugh was rough and scored his throat as though he'd swallowed a dozen razor blades. "Can you believe that? The hellion of Pine Gulch has never been in love before."

  He didn't give her a chance to respond. "But if that's what this is, I don't want it. At least not with you. I can't love a woman without the guts to take a chance on something that could be wonderful."

  "Or miserable," she whispered.

  "Or miserable," he agreed. "But we'll never know, will we? Because you've decided I'm not good enough for you."

  "That is not true!"

  "Isn't it?" He felt a hundred years old, suddenly. Old and tired and terribly, terribly sad.

  On bones that seemed to creak and groan, he climbed out and walked around to her side of the truck, opening the door pointedly. "Goodbye, Jen. You've got a whole list of things to do before your big party so I'm sure you'll forgive me if I don't come in."

  She didn't move for a long moment, the only color in her face the shiner Cherry had delivered. Finally she slid down, hesitated for just an instant—just long enough for him to pray she would fall into his arms, that she would kiss him and make all of this go away.

  But she didn't. She didn't even look at him again. She just seemed to square her shoulders, then she walked away.

  He waited just long enough for her to open the front door, then he climbed back into his truck and backed out of the driveway—heading toward the misery he knew was the rest of his life.