by Erin Wright
Brooksy hesitated, chewin’ her bottom lip which was a sure sign somethin’ was wrong, and then Juniper and Juan slid in next to them and they began chatting about who could make the best horsey neigh and Elijah fell silent, lettin’ Brooksy just be a kid for a minute.
It was weird enough that he worked at her school and ate lunch with her every day and walked her over to the school bus line every afternoon. He didn’t need to keep her from just being her while around her friends, too.
He hurriedly ate the last of his applesauce before they put their lunch trays away in the large gray tubs and Brooksy began tugging him to drag him outside. “I gotta go do somethin’,” she told her friends. “I’ll be right back.” The two kids shrugged and ran off towards the swing set while Brooksy dragged him towards the 5th grade building…and straight into Hannah’s classroom.
Shiiittttt. Of course.
His stomach clenched up again, just like it had while he’d been thinking about paying for his power bill and Christmas at the same time, but this time, he couldn’t just swallow the panic down because there was Hannah, at her desk, eatin’ a sandwich with one hand while grading papers with the other.
His eyes ate her up hungrily. She’d curled her hair and had put in her contacts that day, but as far as he could tell, she weren’t wearin’ a bit of makeup. She was damn pretty even without the makeup, and he wanted to run his fingers through her hair, just to see if he was remembering how soft it was, or if he was just makin’ it up. No woman’s hair was that soft.
The palms of his hands itched to touch it, just so he could settle the matter in his mind.
Hannah looked up absentmindedly from the papers when she heard them come in, and then shot to her feet, sending a frantic smile at him and Brooksy, plopping her half-eaten sandwich down on top of the pile of papers she’d been workin’ on. “Hi, Brooklyn,” she said, focusing those beautiful blue eyes on his daughter. “You brought your daddy in to talk to me?” He couldn’t help but notice she weren’t makin’ eye contact with him. Nope, Hannah was starin’ straight at his daughter and nowhere else.
Brooksy shook her head, her Pepto Bismol pink barrette sparklin’ in the light. “Nope. I wanna show him my drawer.” She tugged him over so that he was practically standing shoulder to shoulder with Hannah as Brooksy proudly pulled a drawer open in her teacher’s desk.
Why are we lookin’ into Hannah’s desk? My daughter shouldn’t just be goin’ ‘round and opening up drawers without no say-so from—
“She gots it all in here,” Brooksy said with a huge grin up at him. Confused as hell, he looked past his daughter’s delighted face and into the drawer itself. It were filled to the brim with every item a soul could need to get ready in the mornin’, and then some. Toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, face wipes, hairbrush, leave-in conditioner, even shampoo, and then a bunch of colorful hair ties and shit.
What the hell? Is Hannah running herself a beauty parlor outta her classroom? What is this?
As his mind spun, trying to figure out what in the good Lord his daughter was showin’ him, she kept talkin’. “Momma brings me to school early,” Brooksy explained, “and Miss Lambert takes me down to the bathroom and helps me wash my hair in the sink when it needs it, and then I brush my teeth and stuff.” She stopped for a moment and then added, “No one’s called me Stinky Brooksy in a long time, neither.”
Elijah scrambled to put the pieces together. Kids had been calling his daughter Stinky Brooksy?! Since when? And why wasn’t Sarah doing this stuff at home with Brooksy? He’d thought his daughter had been lookin’ a little on the crummy side there for a while, but then she started lookin’ good again, and he didn’t think no more about it.
That was Hannah’s doin’? He looked up at Hannah to find a funny look on her face, and he knew that she was worried about him takin’ it all wrong. And it was hard for him to see it ‘cause this was his daughter and his family weren’t no charity case, needin’ to be taken care of by someone else, no damn way.
But at the same time, she was doin’ somethin’ that really needed to be done since his ex wasn’t, and for that, he were eternally grateful.
Brooksy was staring up at him expectantly, waiting for him to say somethin’, so he pushed the words out. “And your momma brings you to school early for this?” That, more than anything else, surprised the hell outta him. Sarah weren’t what he’d call an early riser.
Hannah helping his daughter? She were the nicest woman he’d ever met, so that didn’t surprise him at all.
But Sarah never did nothin’ she didn’t hafta.
“Well, to study math.” Brooksy shot a grin up at him, waiting for him to catch up to what she was sayin’. “But my math is real good, so instead, we just clean me up.”
Of course. It all made sense, then.
Grades were tangible – somethin’ he could point to in court to prove Sarah weren’t doin’ a good job of raising Brooksy. His daughter’d always done well in school – thank God she got somethin’ good from her momma – so if her grades fell off a cliff, Sarah would know Eli could use that against her in the courtroom. If Hannah had told Sarah that Brooksy needed extra studyin’ time in the mornings, well, it was probably the only thing that could motivate Sarah to get her ass outta bed before noon – beatin’ Elijah in court.
“You…you been doin’ this for a while?” he asked, past the lump in his throat.
He weren’t sure if he were thrilled to have Hannah as his daughter’s teacher, or pissed as hell to have Sarah as his ex-wife.
Both, really.
“Just a couple of weeks,” Brooksy said. Hannah still ain’t said a word, and Elijah wondered what she was thinkin’. “I can’t tell Momma ‘cause she’d get real mad, but I thought it was okay to tell you ‘cause you won’t tell Momma. Right?”
“No, I won’t tell her,” he promised his suddenly anxious daughter. She settled right down and shot him a huge grin.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she said proudly. Just then, the lunch bell rang and almost instantly, the hallways filled with the buzzing sound of swarming children.
“I best get back to work.” He tugged the brim of his ball cap towards Hannah and then gave Brooksy a quick hug goodbye. “See you after school,” he promised his daughter, and quickly headed out of the brightly decorated classroom and down to his closet to get out the cleaning supplies for his afternoon jobs.
Maybe he’d do a deep cleanin’ of the boy’s bathroom and think about life for a while and what to do about certain teachers named Hannah.
He sure needed to come up with somethin’ because as it were, he just had no clue.
Chapter 23
Hannah
“Don’t forget to work on your autobiography this evening,” Hannah called out over the ringing of the final bell. “Your rough drafts are due tomorrow.”
The kids weren’t paying a bit of attention to her as they busily stuffed their backpacks and laughed and chatted, thrilled that school was finally over. For once, Hannah was grateful that they weren’t paying any attention to her.
She sank down in her wobbly chair behind her desk and stared blankly out into the emptying classroom, unsure of what to think or say or do. Brooklyn’s arrival at lunchtime, tugging the hand of her father along to show him “her drawer” had surprised the heck out of her, of course, and thinking back on what she’d taught after that, she had a hard time remembering any of it.
Had she even taught anything at all? She was sure she had, but it was all just a blur at the moment.
It really wasn’t fair that a man who didn’t seem to think she was worth even the slightest bit of effort to tell her what she’d done that was so darn awful, was also the same man who set her whole body on fire. She remembered back to Mr. Kiener, asking her out for coffee before school started. She could’ve had a hundred Mr. Kieners march into her classroom to talk to her, and it wouldn’t have affected her one teensy-weensy little bit.
But oh no, just one Mr. Elijah Morland,
and her body went simply nuts.
Gah. She groaned as she looked up at the clock, biting her lower lip. She had 40 minutes until Elijah would be in her classroom again, cleaning it like he did every afternoon.
What was she going to say? Finally confront him about what had been the world’s best date which had horribly ended in the world’s worst possible way? Talk to him about how when she’d called Sarah to discuss tutoring her daughter in math before school, Sarah’s words had been slurred to the point that Hannah wasn’t sure how much of the conversation the woman would remember afterwards? Tell him that he had the most darling daughter she’d ever had the good fortune to teach? Ask him what it was about her that was so repugnant that just the idea of talking to her sent him running in the other direction?
Well, she had – she looked up at the clock again – 37 minutes to figure it out.
It would help if she’d been able to tell if he was pissed or happy or angry or thrilled that she’s been helping clean Brooklyn up before school each day. As Brooklyn had been talking, his face…
Inscrutable.
Every time she thought she knew him, he’d change on her all over again. She considered herself to be a fairly intelligent person, but Elijah confounded her in ways that no textbook information could offer help on. On the one hand, she knew he had more pride than a whole group of lions, so seeing what someone outside of the family was doing for his daughter was probably a punch to the gut.
But on the other hand, he had one place where he was willing to sacrifice all pride – his daughter. No doubt becoming a janitor at her school wasn’t an easy decision to make, but he’d been willing to do it because of Brooklyn.
So, was he pissed or happy or angry or thrilled about her cleaning Brooklyn up every day?
She dropped her forehead onto her desk with a thunk, and then snuck a peek up at the clock on the wall. She had 29—
She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned her head slightly to see Elijah in the doorway.
She had exactly no minutes left to figure out what she was going to say.
If she were a swearing woman, she’d be letting a blue streak loose right about now. She unhappily settled on a plastered-on smile instead.
“Mr. Morland,” she said formally, rising to her feet as if she hadn’t just been slumped over with her head on the desk. Ignoring reality – it was one of her best talents. She forced herself to walk to the side of her desk and not use the large wooden surface as a barrier between them. If she were being truly brave, she’d stand in front of her desk or even – God forbid – walk over to him, but…
Apparently, her big girl panties were only partially on today – caught, perhaps, somewhere around her kneecaps.
Which might explain why she had such a hard time walking. It had to be that.
He pushed his cleaning cart inside of her classroom but then abandoned it – and any pretense of cleaning – by the open doorway.
“I’ve…I’ve been thinkin’ about it all afternoon,” he said as he came – ever so slowly – closer to her, shuffling his feet like an errant schoolboy as he went. “I don’t know how to feel ‘bout havin’ someone else takin’ care of my daughter like that, but since I only got her for two days every other weekend, I don’t know how to fix it myself, and…” He rubbed the back of his neck which was growing brighter red by the moment, as he stared down at the floor. “I shoulda noticed before now. She had all those new clothes that she was always showin’ off, and I guess I didn’t look no further than that.”
He was standing close enough to touch by now, and without thinking, Hannah did exactly that. She put her hand out and laid it on his arm to console him, except…
His mesmerizing gray-green eyes flicked up to hers, dark with lust.
No, no, that isn’t right.
She had to be reading him wrong, because it had only taken him one date to realize that she was the least sexy woman to ever walk the planet. How many other guys kissed a girl twice, and then pretended that they were escapees from a leprosy colony? As far as Hannah had been able to figure out over the past two months, she must be the least desirable woman Elijah had ever had the misfortune to kiss.
So why was he looking at her like he wanted to eat her up with a spoon?
And then, just like the night of botched trips to pizza parlors and burnt deer steaks and her blubbering up a storm on his shirt about her father, he was burying his hands in her hair and pulling her towards him and kissing her as if his very life depended on it.
Her knees were going weak and, like the heroines in the cheesy romance novels she used to sneak into her bedroom when she was a teenager, she felt herself clinging to him with all her might, telling herself to be practical and keep her feet underneath her, but deep down in her soul, she was wanting to just be swept away to a world where things weren’t complicated and dating him wasn’t forbidden and mothers actually loved their children and—
She stiffened a bit, just a half second before Elijah did. Her eyes flew open and she yanked away from him and spun towards the classroom door, smoothing her hands over the front of her slacks as her aide, Amelia, shot her a naughty grin.
“I’m just here to grab my purse,” Amelia said airily, sauntering over to her small desk shoved in the corner, covered with all of the projects Hannah kept her busy with. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
Hannah could see Elijah doing something out of the corner of her eye, but she was too embarrassed to look over to see exactly what it was that he was doing. As for her, her hands had moved from smoothing her slacks to smoothing her hair. The way Elijah had been cradling her head in his calloused hands, she probably looked like she’d been thoroughly kissed.
Which was exactly what had been happening, of course. Was it possible to die of mortification? She was pretty sure it was. She cursed the fair skin that came along with her red hair and blue eyes. She had roughly a 0.00% chance of hiding the blush stealing over her entire body in that moment.
She felt Elijah’s fingers on her chin, and she turned to look up at him. Instead of looking embarrassed as heck over getting caught necking like teenagers in the broom closet, he looked like the cat that caught the canary. “I better finish my rounds,” he said with a lustful grin, “but why don’t I come over to your place around five, and we can finish our…discussion then.”
She nodded weakly, and then sank into her chair as Elijah left the room, whistling innocently as he went, pulling on the brim of his ball cap as he passed Amelia. “Good afternoon,” he said to Hannah’s aide, as formally as if they were in a drawing room sipping tea, and then with a clatter of stuff, he was off to the next classroom to clean.
Amelia shot an amazed look over her shoulder at the empty doorway and then at Hannah.
“How long have you two been dating?!” she practically whisper-shouted as she dashed over to Hannah’s desk to stare down at her in disbelief. “And how could you hide that from me?!”
“I’m not sure we are dating,” Hannah said truthfully. “The last time he kissed me like that, he didn’t speak to me for two months.”
Two months and six days, to be precise, not that she’d been counting or anything.
“The last time?” Amelia asked, her jaw practically scraping on the ground. “Hannah Lambert, I didn’t know you had it in you!”
“What, to kiss a handsome guy?” Hannah retorted dryly. She knew she wasn’t the most experienced of women, but surely kissing seemed like something she’d do.
“Kiss the father of a student and a guy who also happens to be your coworker! Does the principal know about this?”
“Of course not!” Hannah said, horrified at the idea. “Dear Lord above, no. It only happened one other time and then…nothing. For months. So I didn’t think he liked me.”
“Oh, he likes you,” Amelia said, and started howling with laughter. “I promise you, he likes you!”
Hannah glared at her aide, who she’d always loved and adored up to that point. That f
eeling was quickly beginning to fade, though, with every howl of laughter.
Amelia caught the look in Hannah’s eye and held up her hands defensively. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh,” she said, completely unrepentant, the corners of her mouth struggling to stay in a level line. Hannah rolled her eyes at her aide’s transparent insincerity. “So, are you leaving?”
“Leaving?” Hannah asked, completely confused by the change in topic. “Oh, changing schools, you mean?”
It was something she’d thought about doing, although she hated to leave Cleveland Elementary. It was the only school she’d ever taught at, and she was comfortable here. The idea of meeting a whole new roster of adults made her break out into a cold sweat. But it would solve all of their problems, even if she wouldn’t be able to do it until the end of the school year. And then there was the fact that she’d be commuting to Franklin each day as a best-case scenario, if not Boise, and how would that affect her checking in on her dad and her horses, and—
“Going home,” Amelia said bluntly. Oh, right, of course. “Right now. And getting ready for Mr. Morland,” she waggled her eyebrows as she said his name, “to come over to…discuss things with you.”
The way she said it, Hannah knew Amelia didn’t think they’d be doing much talking at all, and the thing was, she wasn’t sure if she wanted Amelia to be wrong or not.
This was all easy enough for Amelia to suggest; it wasn’t her who’d look like an idiot if it all fell apart again. The logical side of her wanted to tell Amelia that of course she wasn’t going to go home to get ready to see Elijah. She was going to stay right there at her desk and get all of the things done that always needed to be done, and she wasn’t going to be tempted by his ever-changing eyes, or the way his front teeth overlapped just a smidge, or his sleek muscles that she wanted to—