“Why do you need to see the Thomas boys?” the principal cut in.
“For a special project concerning their father.”
Something on Addison’s face must have given a clue about her intentions, because the principal grinned. “Mary, please send a runner for Jason and Carson Thomas.”
The secretary shook her head, no doubt wondering if the earth had run off its axis.
“We didn’t do nothing,” Jason declared when they arrived a few minutes later.
“It’s anything,” Addison said. “We didn’t do anything.”
They froze and then turned as one. Joy spread across their faces. “Addison!”
She sank to her knees as they rushed forward. The dual scents of sunshine and earth filled her heart, and she rained kisses over their sweet faces until they giggled and squirmed away.
“Are you on hitus?” Jason asked.
“Hiatus. And no. I’m restructuring my contract.”
Carson’s nose wrinkled. “Huh?”
“It means I’m going to be in your lives forever.”
“You’re gonna live here?” came the twin response.
“Well, I’d like to marry your daddy and live with you guys. Do you think he would mind?”
They grinned.
“Daddy’s been crabby,” Jason said. “Yesterday he yelled just ‘cause we left the hose running.”
“And sad,” his brother added. “He goes around like this,” he said, making a mopey face.
“Okay, then I need your help.”
Their heads bobbed. “We can help.”
Addison glanced at the principal, ready to beg. Tears coursed down the woman’s cheeks, and she wiped them away, barely managing to get out a watery “Go.”
The boys spent the entire ride to the high school filling her in on every minute detail of what they’d been up to since Addison had left. Together, they hurried inside to the main office. The secretary who’d enrolled Aaron was typing away on a computer.
“Excuse me,” Addison called out.
“Be right with you,” the woman said without looking up from the screen.
“I wondered if I could speak to the principal.”
At the sound of Addison’s voice, the secretary whipped around. For a moment she didn’t move. “Ms. Covington!”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” Then she noticed the twins. “And with the boys?”
“I need to speak with Ethan,” Addison said. “It’s important.”
A smile spread across the woman’s lips as she rose from the chair. She took a step toward Ethan’s office, then after one more glance, broke into a run. A moment later, a door crashed against the wall, and Ethan rushed out, a frantic look on his face.
He spotted the boys first and ran to them. “What are you doing here? Are you hurt?”
“Nope,” they chorused.
“How did you get here?”
Addison stepped forward. “They came with me.”
Ethan’s head swiveled around. He froze. Blinked twice.
Addison drank in the sight of his handsome face. Gloried in the fact that she was looking into the primeval forest behind his eyes once again. Like the first day she’d spotted him across the gas pump, she felt a zap careen through her body.
“I finally figured out the best thing for everyone,” Addison said.
He took a step closer. “You did?”
“Yeah, and what I realized is that the best thing for me, for all of us, I hope, is being with you and the boys.”
Another step. “Why?”
“Because I love you.”
Ethan stopped in his tracks. His eyes closed for a moment, and when they opened, the green was blazing in their depths. “Say that again.”
“I love you.” There was no fear in the words. Only a deep certainty Ethan Thomas was meant for her. There was a strength that came from knowing she could lean on him and trust he would never let her fall. “And I love your sons.”
Ethan covered the distance in two strides and whipped her up into his arms. Addison clung to him, reveling in the feel of his strong body against hers. The body she seemed to know as well as her own. The heartbeat she recognized in the depths of her being.
“One more time,” he whispered against her lips.
Addison laughed. “I love you.”
“You see?” he said, a beautiful, sweet smile spread across his face. “It’s not so hard to say.”
“It’s pretty easy once you start.”
He swooped in for a kiss. “I was going crazy. Nothing felt right after you left.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t understand. I started looking at schools in L.A.”
“You did what?”
He framed Addison’s face with gentle hands. “Your career is part of who you are. I can’t ask you to give up something so important to you. So, if you need to be in California, we’ll go there.”
A roomful of roses could not have been more romantic. Addison placed two fingers against his lips. “That is the most beautiful thing you could ever say, but I’m not uprooting your family.”
“Addison, it’s all right. I can’t let you quit. You’d be miserable.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m not giving up my career. I’m simply restructuring.”
The twins squeezed in between them. “What’s that word mean?” Jason asked.
“It means I spoke to my agent, and I’m taking my career in a different direction” Addison said. “Movies that film in the summer. Plus, Meredith Vining is planning to open an arts center, so I’ll be teaching drama classes and whatever else she’ll let me.”
“Can you dictate where and when you work?” Ethan asked.
“If a producer wants me badly enough, yes. Besides, I’m a hero now.”
He dropped another kiss on her lips. “Yes, you are. You’re my hero. You saved my life.”
“I think we saved each other,” Addison said. “So, I have one more question.”
“What?”
“Do you think you could use a substitute teacher?”
He lifted Addison off her feet, looking at her like she was his own personal miracle. Addison knew he was hers.
“No, but I could use a permanent wife.”
THE END
Keep reading for a sneak peek of Imagine That, Kristin’s next book in the Covington Falls series.
You caught a brief glimpse of Nate Cooper in the bachelor auction. Now, he gets his own shot at love when Emily Sinclair, a best-selling children’s book author trying to rekindle her dormant imagination, arrives in Covington Falls.
Imagine That
Chapter One
A stomach-churning thunk. A disaster-laden chug. A scary, threatening gurgle.
Emily Sinclair’s hands clutched the steering wheel as she guided her how-could-you-give-out-on-me-now convertible to the side of the road. With a last ominous blunk and splutter, the car gave up the ghost.
She switched off the engine, waited a few seconds, and then turned the key again. Nothing.
Not surprising. As if anything glug-glugging like an octogenarian trying to cough up a lung was going to restart with so little effort.
A cranky yowl went up from the passenger seat. Emily glanced over at the pet carrier and sent the fat Persian inside a confident smile. “Don’t worry, Wordsworth. This is why modern man invented cell phones.”
She fished her phone out of her purse. A blank screen stared back at her. Pressing more buttons did nothing.
Dead.
Dead as her car.
With a sound of disgust, Emily tossed the useless phone aside and stared out the windshield at the deserted country road in front of her. The very deserted country road that stretched around a sparkling blue lake and disappeared into the back of beyond. The kind of road featured in all the best horror stories. Emily’s mind conjured up every one, along with the opening line in the newspaper article.
Once-famous children�
��s author found mangled to death. Quest to locate her lost imagination and revive faded career ends in disaster… as her mother predicted.
Muttering an oath, Emily climbed out of the car and slammed the door as hard as she could. What a fix. And ironic. There were rules about writing. Not grammar rules, like where to put commas or when to use a semicolon. No, the unofficial rules for fiction writing. Chief among them is that an author should never start a novel with the character driving or thinking. No, readers wanted action right off the top, and you could never have the car break down.
In college, Emily had written a short story where the heroine’s car stalled in a typical these-people-will-murder-you-in-your-sleep town. Emily’s professor had written cliché in bold, red pen across the page. Not satisfied, she’d added boring cliché, underlining the boring with three thick red lines. The critique had stung. The fact that it had come courtesy of Professor Vanessa Sinclair, Emily’s mother, had been like ripping off an old bandage.
Emily was breaking all three cardinal rules of writing at once. Though technically the driving rule didn’t apply. Same for the sitting rule. She was thinking, though. Thinking her entire life had become a cliché, so what did it matter if she broke her mother’s precious writing rules? She was a one-hit writing wonder. A flash in the pan. A big-haired eighties’ rock band that had scored one giant hit and then disappeared into the oblivion of those nostalgic ‘Where are they now?’ music specials.
Emily sighed. If one had to break down somewhere, one could do worse than… what had the sign said back there? Covington something. Covington something, Georgia. Muted afternoon sun shimmered off the surface of the lake. She lifted a hand to ward off the eye-watering glare and focused on the water. In her previous life, the golden flecks of sunlight reflecting off its surface would have transformed into a million different kinds of fantastical creatures. Or maybe something nightmarish would charge out of that bank of oak trees across the lake.
Unfortunately, Emily was stuck in her real life, and her imagination was on the fritz.
Well, at least she wouldn’t die of water deprivation while she waited to be rescued.
Speaking of rescue.
A car had appeared, winding around the curve of the lake. A big ole’ country truck calling to mind hoedowns and hay rides. A big ole’ rusty truck, Emily realized as it drew closer. Burnt red growth spread out across the hood like a marauding band of Vikings overtaking a defenseless village. She imagined rust was the only thing holding the vehicle together.
The truck slowed and Emily tensed, torn between elation at being found and wariness regarding exactly who might be behind the wheel of the ancient rattletrap. The glare off the windshield made it impossible to see inside the cab, however.
The tires veered off to the side of the road and stopped, sending up a cloud of dust. Emily waved her hand, choking on the airborne dirt. Her mouth felt dry as if she had licked the ground. The door opened. Work boots emerged. Brown and roughed-up and covered in… paint. A man stepped out, and Emily steadied her hands against the car to keep from falling over.
Mr. Darcy. No, Heathcliff. Only instead of a cravat and breeches, he was dressed in faded jeans and a black T-shirt, which seemed molded to an impressive chest. Heath stretched up a good six plus feet, towering over her puny five-foot-two frame. A lock of dark chocolate-brown hair brushed over his forehead. Their eyes met. Since she was already thinking in clichés, Emily’s mind offered up a million of them to describe his eyes. She could start with gray, but no way did such a mundane word do them justice. Slate, storm clouds, a roiling sea, glazed pewter. Devastating, and framed by thick sooty lashes no man had a right to possess.
He stopped a few feet away, and Emily had the fanciful notion he was trying not to frighten her. Like she was a skittish colt about to bolt.
“Hi,” he said. “Car trouble?”
His voice was like his eyes. Smooth and deep, like honey in a cup of hot tea.
Emily nodded. How could she speak when every male literary fantasy she’d ever dreamed about had emerged from a rusted-out pickup?
“You okay?” he asked. “You didn’t have an accident? Knock your head on anything?”
“No. Just a car that decided to die,” Emily said, finally finding her voice. “Along with my cell. Although that’s my fault since I didn’t charge it last night, even though my mother is always nagging me not to forget since I’ve taken it into my head to wander the globe on an aimless search for purpose and meaning. Her description anyway, but if you’d lost your imagination wouldn’t you go to the ends of the earth to find it again? She doesn’t understand, though. Although maybe she’s right. I mean, here I am stuck in Covington something, Georgia, with a dead car, a dead cell, and a dead imagination. Although if I had an imagination I know I could come up with something fantastic about your truck.”
Emily slapped a hand over her mouth, horrified by the verbal diarrhea she’d just unleashed on her hapless rescuer.
The stranger stared at her for a moment, and then did the most unexpected thing. He grinned. “What was that?”
Her butt thumped against the hood of the car as her legs gave out. Oh, Heath had a smile on him that could tempt any fair maiden to let down her hair. Or anything else he wanted.
“That was me losing my mind,” Emily muttered. “Car fumes, maybe. Or all the fresh air around here.”
He hooked his thumbs in the belt loop of his jeans. “So, your car broke down and you need a lift?”
Oh, sexy. Emily had seen the pose from other men before, but somehow Heath reinvented the move.
“If you have a cell phone handy and maybe a number of a towing service, I could call someone,” she said.
Emily’s brain might not be functioning on a normal level, but she was astute enough to know it was a bad idea to get into a car with a strange man. Even Heathcliff.
“Actually, my cell died this afternoon, too.”
Shoot, she thought, catching her bottom lip with her teeth. “Maybe when you get to wherever you’re going, you could send a tow truck out here? No offense. I’m sure you’re nice and all, but Ted Bundy acted nice at first, too.”
A furrow formed between his eyes, and his shoulders stiffened. “I would never hurt a woman. I would never hurt you.”
Emily stared at him. It had been a long time since she’d trusted a man. She pushed to her feet and stepped closer. The stranger didn’t move but kept his arms resting at his sides.
Then a dog barked. Emily swiveled toward the back of the truck. A black lab hung its head over the side. The dog barked again, and its tail swished back and forth in a boy-am-I-glad-to-meet-you greeting.
“Meet Blackie,” Heath said.
She chuckled. “Original.”
“My kid brother named him.”
Emily figured it was a pretty safe bet Ted Bundy wouldn’t have a tail-wagging dog with him. She walked over to the truck, patted the dog’s head, and was rewarded with a wet doggy kiss.
“Blackie, it’s not nice to slobber all over people we don’t know,” Heath chided.
Emily massaged the dog’s floppy ears, and the canine quivered in ecstasy. “He’s all right. It’s kind of nice knowing someone enjoys me touching them so much… Oh!” She clapped a hand over her mouth again as heat rushed up her cheeks.
She had to stop running off at the mouth. What was wrong with her?
“That totally came out wrong.”
The expected suggestive rejoinder never emerged. Instead, he coughed into his hand. To hide a laugh, no doubt.
Emily studied him a moment more. If her rescuer passed on the opportunity to slam-dunk the set up she’d given him, he must be a true gentleman. “Okay, I’d appreciate a lift anywhere I can find a phone.”
“I can drop you off in town.”
“Hold on one second,” she said, with a decisive nod.
She spun around and hurried back to the car. A quick press of a button, and the convertible top slid back into place. She picked up the
cat carrier, purse, and her keys. Two blip-blips and the car was as secure as it was going to be.
Her rescuer eyed the crate. “What’s in there?”
“Wordsworth,” she said, holding up the carrier.
Heath leaned down to look inside, and a white paw zipped through the grate, accompanied by a hiss. He jerked back, narrowly missing a swipe across the nose.
“Word, don’t be rude,” Emily said, tapping the crate door. “This nice man is going to ensure you get dinner tonight.” She gave her rescuer a strained smile. “Sorry. He gets cranky in the car.”
“Maybe if his face wasn’t all mashed in he’d have a better attitude.”
“He’s a Persian.”
Acting Up Page 36