No Exchanges, No Returns

by Laurie Kellogg

  “Rocket Manion,” Margie whispered.

  “So you’ve heard of him?”

  One would have to be Amish not to have heard of Jake. Until ten years ago, his face covered every major sports magazine and appeared regularly on the boob-tube. He’d played in the NFL for eight seasons and taken his team to three Super Bowls, two of which they won, before a couple of three-hundred pound behemoths broke his back.

  It was only natural Emma hadn’t recalled his first name. Ever since Jake had streaked sixty-yards for his first NFL touchdown, he’d been Rocket to the media and all his fans.

  “You’ve been in his class for three weeks now. Why on earth didn’t you mention your teacher is a sports legend?”

  “Why would I?” Emma looked at her as if she suspected Margie had taken some mind-altering drug. “You hate football. Anyway, he’s really nice. I’m definitely registering for his Marriage and Family class for the spring semester. With any luck, he’ll tell me some more stuff about Alex.”

  Wonderful. Margie knew Jake had a son, but she hadn’t realized the boy was so close to Emma’s age.

  “How old is Alex?”

  “He’s a senior, too. Mr. Manion told me he was born the night he played his first Super Bowl. So I guess he’ll be eighteen in January.”

  Around the same time their baby would’ve been due. Apparently, Jake must have had a grand time the previous spring, buzzing from flower to flower— pollinating.

  Emma leaned on the counter and began sketching in her art pad. “Anyway, it’s not as if Alex would ever notice a nobody like me. He’s the first-string quarterback and is so gorgeous he can have any girl he wants.”

  If the kid looked anything like his father, Margie didn’t doubt his popularity. For the first time in her life, she was grateful the Lord had given her daughter such a shy, quiet personality. If the boy was as sought-after as Emma suggested, it would take a girl a lot more vivacious and outgoing than her to set off Alex Manion’s radar.

  But what if, God forbid, he did notice her?

  She could always pack her daughter off to an all-girl boarding school for the rest of the year.

  Except that was exactly what her controlling mother would’ve done. Katherine Hunter had kept such a tight rein on Margie she never even had a date before she married Dan. Or since he died, for that matter.

  The only time Katherine permitted Margie out of her sight had been the single weekend Margie visited her cousin at college to tour the campus of one of the few schools her mother was willing to chip in on the tuition. A last-minute change in her work schedule was the only reason Katherine had allowed Margie to attend her preadmission interview without a chaperone.

  Margie absolutely refused to follow in her mother’s footsteps, controlling every moment of her daughter’s existence. She didn’t want Emma blaming her for ruining her life the same way Margie’s overbearing mother had destroyed hers.

  Or for her daughter to leave home and never return.

  All she could do was pray Alex would never ask Emma out. Of course, if the boy’s attention span was anything like his old man’s, even if Alex developed an interest in Emma, it would only last four days.

  Margie slid off her stool and placed the greasy cookie sheets in the sink. It was simply too weird that she and Jake had ended up teaching in the same school distr—

  She slapped her hand over her mouth. Wait a minute. Her pain-in-the-A-double-S cousin had orchestrated this last May at the same time she’d talked Margie into blonde highlights and using a little of Dan’s insurance money to have LASIK surgery.

  Barbara had been the one who’d given Margie the Bucks County classified clipping for her job as a reading specialist.

  What had her cousin hoped meddling would accomplish? Did she think she could atone for landing Margie in Jake’s bed by throwing them together a second time?

  With the way Barbara had nagged her to apply for the job and move to Pennsylvania last spring, Margie should’ve known her cousin was up to something. Except, after Dan died, she’d been in such an emotional daze she’d been lucky to put her shoes on the correct feet.

  She just thanked God Jake and she taught at two different schools on opposite sides of the township. Since the district was so spread out, with any luck, she could finish the year without running into him. In May, she’d look for a new position west of the Mississippi.

  Or better yet, west of the Rockies.

  “So, as I was saying earlier,”— Emma’s voice yanked Margie out of her reverie—” Mr. Manion gave me a quiz to bring home for you.”

  A test for her? That was just peachy.

  Jake had been halfway to getting his masters in psych. How the heck had he ended up teaching— in the Family and Consumer Science department, no less? He should be coaching a pro team or exploiting his jaw-dropping good looks as a television football commentator.

  “He wants the parents to complete as much as they can without looking anything up. The point is to give you an overview of what we’ll be learning this year. He’s gonna go over the answers with you all tomorrow.”

  Margie snapped her gaze to Emma, creasing her forehead. “Tomorrow?”

  “Uhh— yeahhh. Remember? Back-to-school night?”

  The cookie dough she’d eaten settled like a lump of clay in her gut. On the bright side, at least she wouldn’t have to fake an upset stomach to get out of attending that little soiree.

  Chapter 1

  June— eight and a half months later....

  “What do you mean you got Emma pregnant?” Jake Manion stared across the diner’s booth into a pair of silver eyes identical to his. He flinched at the clatter of dirty dishes the busboy dropped behind him.

  “Exactly what didn’t you get about that, Dad?” Alex shrugged his broad quarterback shoulders. “I’m gonna be a father.”

  The previously appetizing aroma of coffee and fried onions turned Jake’s stomach. A father? His son wasn’t done being a kid yet. He gazed out the window in a futile attempt to draw some serenity from the green rolling hills. “How the hell did this happen?”

  “You’re the Human Development teacher.” Alex snorted. “You tell me.”

  “Very funny. This isn’t a laughing matter.” It was his worst nightmare.

  “Who’s laughing? How’d you like me to answer these stupid questions?”

  Jake’s eye twitched as he struggled to maintain his composure. “Okay, smart guy, you managed to score nearly two thousand on your SATs, and you have a three-point-nine GPA. So tell me this— has anything I’ve preached to you over the last eighteen years penetrated that high-performance brain of yours?”

  “My brain wasn’t exactly on duty at the time.”

  “That’s right, I forgot it’s June first. It must’ve gone south for a vacation in your Levi’s. You’re graduating in twelve days. Do you realize what you’ve done to your life? And Em’s?”

  The dark shadows under Alex’s eyes said he was well aware of what a baby would mean to their future. Jake knew firsthand how scared the kid must be.

  “I suppose this is why you look as if you haven’t slept in a week and why your calculus teacher told me you’ve been nodding off in class?”

  A guilty look flickered in Alex’s gaze as he turned his face away. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  And here Jake had been attributing his kid’s distraction in school to a severe case of senioritis.

  Alex leaned back in the booth, stretching his favorite Penn State T-shirt across his muscular chest. The kid only had nine of them. To look at him, no one would believe he’d weighed less than four pounds at birth. Jake swallowed hard. And now his son was about to become a father.

  Damn, he felt ancient.

  “You know, Dad, it’s easy for you to lecture me and your classes about abstinence when the only breasts you’ve touched in years were from KFC. I’m not a monk like you. I can’t kiss Emma and not get turned on.”

  Jake understood precisely how tough it was. His son could b
e his clone except for Alex’s lighter hair. Having a sweet young woman’s body pressed against him had brought Jake more heartache than he wanted to remember. “Believe me, Alex, I understand how hard it can get.”

  His son clapped his hand over his mouth and groaned. “That was bad.”

  Jake closed his eyes. “You’re right. It was.”

  Alex stacked a pile of sugar packets, making a pyramid. “Anyway, if you really know how hard it gets, you wouldn’t spend every Saturday night grading papers and workin’ on your dissertation.”

  His kid’s jaw would hit the floor if Jake told him about his afternoon quickies with one of the school’s guidance counselors. Alex had no concept of the intense sense of déjà vu their exchange gave Jake. It was like watching an instant replay of his own life. Except he’d taken the flip side of the conversation nineteen years ago. His urge to throttle his son made his father’s response back then seem quite calm and reasonable. Jake definitely owed his dad an apology.

  “My Saturday night dates with a red marking pen are not the issue here.” He tunneled his fingers through his hair. “When I gave you those condoms to share with the team, I meant for you to keep a few for your own use should the need arise.”

  “Oh, it rose all right.” His son smirked as he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling fan turning overhead. Its gentle breeze wasn’t enough to cool the heat creeping up Jake’s neck.

  His hand flexed under the table. This was exactly the kind of teenage bravado that drove normally rational parents into smacking their kids’ smug faces right into the next zip code.

  He’d read all the books on dealing with teens. In fact, he was even working on his doctoral dissertation on that subject. But knowing intellectually his kid’s stand-up comedy routine was simply a way to hide his anxiety did nothing to keep that superior you-don’t-know-squat attitude from undermining Jake’s reason.

  If anyone shouldered the blame for his son getting involved with Emma, he should. When she’d tiptoed into his classroom in September, he’d felt an instant affinity to the shy, timid girl. Her smile and petite figure reminded him so much of the woman he’d spent nearly two decades trying to forget— and forgive.

  He knew how difficult it was for teens to move, especially their senior year. Consequently, he’d bribed his son with a huge stack of pancakes and asked him to casually drop by Jake’s class, invite the lonely girl to lunch, and introduce her to his friends. Alex must have decided Emma didn’t eat puppy chow for breakfast as he’d feared after Jake told him she was smart and funny but just a little shy.

  “Look, I’m sorry.” Alex turned his palms up in a helpless gesture. “I used protection— every time. Aren’t you the one who lectures all the kids that condoms are only eighty-eight percent effective in practical use?”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear something sunk in. Too bad you didn’t remember my advice about using something else with them.”

  Alex crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you treat the kids at school like this when they tell you they’ve screwed up?”

  “Those kids aren’t my son, damn it! They also aren’t fouling up a full ride to Penn State. My research is all about kids like you. Were you so intimidated by your success that you had to deliberately louse up your life?”

  His son glanced at all the heads turning toward them. “Shhh! Does the whole freakin’ world have to know my business?”

  Jake braced his forearms on the table and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “If you didn’t want people to overhear us, why’d you bring me to a public place to deliver this happy news?”

  “Emma’s meeting us with her mother in a few minutes.”

  “Great. This just gets better and better.” Jake rubbed the back of his neck to ease his tension. So he was finally going to meet the elusive Widow Bradford. He could think of a lot more pleasant ways to get acquainted.

  The few times he’d telephoned her house looking for his son, who routinely forgot to charge his cell phone, Mrs. Bradford’s sultry voice had intrigued Jake in a way no woman’s had in years. So much so, he’d suggested having coffee together the first time he’d spoken to her.

  Unfortunately, the woman was still mourning her husband and had shut him down before he’d ever finished spitting out his clumsy invitation. On every occasion he’d talked to her, he’d hung up the phone swamped by profound disappointment and the strange feeling that, for some reason, she just didn’t like him. In fact, if they didn’t work in two different schools, he’d wonder if the woman might actually be avoiding him.

  But whether she’d purposely stayed out of his way or not, this was hardly the ideal situation to rectify any bad impressions he might have made on the phone.

  He arched one eyebrow at his son. “Should I assume Emma is having this same conversation with Mrs. Bradford as we speak?”

  “No. She wants you to help us tell her mom.” Alex scowled at Jake. “I don’t know why, but for some reason, my girlfriend thinks you’re patient and understanding.”

  Okay, so he deserved that. Some psychologist he was— losing his cool without listening first. When it came to crisis management in his own family, his ex-wife Roxanne could attest that he sucked at remaining dispassionate and open-minded. But seeing his sins revisited in his son’s life sent every parental instinct bubbling to the surface.

  Dwelling on the kids’ mistake wouldn’t change their future. But how he handled it now could make all the difference.

  Jake drew in a cleansing breath. “Look, I’m sorry I yelled. Let’s start over— sane and sensible this time. Are you saying Emma hasn’t told her mom yet?”

  “No. She’s afraid her mother’s gonna have a meltdown. Mrs. Bradford only delivered the abstinence part of Teens and Sex 101 to Em.”

  In that case, Alex could consider his name crossed off the woman’s Christmas list. Jake knew this for a certainty because he’d had personal experience telling a girl’s mother he’d impregnated her daughter.

  He’d never told Alex how preventing teen pregnancies had become such a crusade for him. He’d attained dual-certification to teach family and consumer science classes in addition to psychology, hoping to spare his son and other kids this misfortune.

  After hanging up his cleats, he’d received dozens of job offers for assistant coach positions in the pros and as a sportscaster for numerous cable networks. He’d socked enough away during his football career to be more than just comfortable, so he’d chosen to teach, hoping to save his marriage and the futures of impressionable teens.

  Jake nodded a greeting to their waitress, Brandy Harris, as she rushed up wearing a mini skirt and a blouse that left nothing to a man’s imagination, drenched in enough perfume to obliterate the mouthwatering aromas wafting from the nearby tables. She was one of Jake’s students— not that a stranger would ever guess. She had the body of a porn-queen and dressed more like a streetwalker than a high school cheerleader. Not surprising after being raised by a single a mom who worked as an exotic dancer to support her family.

  Brandy had been shaking her pom-poms at his son for the last four years. So in reality, things could be worse. Alex could’ve knocked up the class tramp instead of shy, sweet Emma.

  The fatherless Pamela Anderson wannabe flashed her dazzling smile at Jake’s son and purred, “Hi, Alex,” before turning to Jake, her pen poised to jot down their order. “Hey, Coach, what can I get for you?”

  “Sorry, Brandy, we need a few minutes. We’re expecting two more.”

  “Sure. Take your time.” She sashayed away from the table and tossed Alex an enticing smile over her shoulder, leaving a cloud of her scent hovering around them. Alex ignored her, but as soon as she turned her blonde head, he joined every other heterosexual male under forty watching her wiggle her shapely ass back to the kitchen.

  Jake snorted inwardly. There wasn’t enough money in the world to tempt him to go back to being eighteen and having his hormones raging twenty-four/seven. One of the few benefits of growing older was his
forty-two-year-old mind no longer lived in his shorts.

  His kid just couldn’t see that the Almighty had dealt him a royal flush. Besides being brilliant and having the entire female population of the high school panting over him, Alex’s grades and athletic ability had given him his choice of any university.

  Jake had teetered on a tightrope for years, both as a father and coach, trying to give his son just enough praise to encourage him without destroying Alex’s greatest strength— his humility. Unfortunately, now the kid believed he was the most highly recruited senior in the country simply because he was Rocket Manion’s progeny.

  Not only did his son have more natural talent than Jake ever thought of having on the football field, evidently, Alex was just as gifted as his old man at finding ways to screw up his life.

  ~*~

  The breaks squealed as Margie swung her light blue Camry into the nearest parking space in front of her condo. Emma would be furious with her for getting home so late.

  Regrettably, it couldn’t be helped. Discussing Simon’s reading problems with his mother ranked a lot higher on Margie’s to-do list than being introduced to Alex’s father. In fact, the only thing she dreaded more than seeing Jake again was getting reacquainted with him.

  She just wished Mrs. Newberry had made an appointment instead of cornering her in the supermarket. Margie really needed to be more assertive when parents waylaid her.

  Using her shoulder as a battering ram, she opened the stubborn front door and dumped her leather satchel on the entryway table before continuing into the kitchen with her groceries. “Emma,” she called down the hall, “I’m sorry I’m late, Sweetie. Come on, let’s go.”

  As she plopped the shopping bag on the center work island, she frowned at the absence of the stereo’s blare. Was her daughter even home?

  Emma had been nagging Margie for three days about finally meeting Jake. Since her daughter began dating Alex, Emma had spent even more time around his father and raved about Jake incessantly as if he were Albert Einstein, Jesse Owens, and Sigmund Freud rolled up in one. Margie knew differently.