The boy’s stride checked briefly.
“Trevor,” she said pleasantly, nodding. “Mr. Ward.”
“Ms. Callahan.”
Was she imagining the mocking emphasis on the Ms.? Molly’s eyes narrowed. She’d expect it from the son, but not the father. No wonder his kid was such a butt.
The heavily laden cart had taken on a life of its own and she couldn’t have paused even if she’d wanted to. “You need a hand?” said a reluctant voice behind her.
Father. Son hovered by the double doors, confusing them so that they slid open and closed, open and closed.
“Thank you, but no. I generally manage groceries on my own.”
A flash in his so-dark eyes told her he’d heard her antagonism. He nodded and turned away.
“Mr. Ward,” Molly called, ashamed of herself.
He paused and looked back, eyebrows up.
“Thank you. I mean it. It was kind of you to offer.”
She had absolutely no idea what he was thinking. He only bent his head again and joined his son. The two disappeared into the store. Molly realized she hadn’t seen them so much as glance at each other, never mind exchange a word.
She spotted him less than a week later behind the wheel of a moss-green cargo van that said Ward Electrical on the side. Molly had seen the vans before. In fact, hadn’t they done the electrical work on the new elementary school? He must own the company.
She had pulled into a parking spot on the main street of West Fork’s old-fashioned downtown. The Ward Electrical van had had to wait while she maneuvered. She turned her head as the van passed, and their eyes met. Inimical, she thought was the word. High school English teacher though she’d been, she had never until now put that particular word into real-world use. Mr. Ward did not care for her.
What ate at her was the knowledge that she deserved his dislike. He’d been a jerk, but she hadn’t behaved any better. In fact, she’d been a jerk first. She’d had a headache, Trevor had quite honestly scared her and because of Trevor she was losing all closeness with her daughter, her only family. She prided herself on being a professional, but she hadn’t been where either Ward was concerned.
Richard was in the bleachers on the evening in early October when the school held its first open house, mainly geared at freshman parents but open to all. Marta welcomed them, induced a few chuckles then introduced some of the staff, including Molly.
“Our vice principal, Molly Callahan,” she said, “spent her summer ensuring that students were placed in appropriate classes and that when they got there, each and every one would find a chair to sit in and a desk to write on. This busy lady is part of our curriculum committee, deals with behavioral issues, oversees building maintenance and support staff. You are much likelier to meet with Ms. Callahan this year than me, although—” she smiled broadly “—I sincerely hope it isn’t when your child gets in trouble.”
A laugh rippled through the assembled parents, all looking awkward crowded on the bleachers. Probably feeling a hint of déjà vu. Unfortunately, that was the moment when Richard Ward, seated halfway up on the end of the senior class bleacher, caught her eye. He was not laughing.
After the speeches, teachers settled at tables hurriedly placed around the gymnasium and out in the main corridor. Parents circulated to chat with their particular child’s teachers. Molly wandered around, greeting people she knew, pausing to talk longer with a few who had concerns. She kept seeing Richard, who was apparently determined to speak to every single one of Trevor’s teachers. Probably he wanted to put faces with the voices he’d already heard on the phone when they called to discuss his son’s shortcomings. Lucky man.
She slipped into the administrative offices to call Cait, who answered neither the home phone nor her mobile. Wonderful. Molly had a sudden image of all the unsupervised teenagers in town assembling at Terrace Park for some kind of bacchanalian party while their parents were all earnestly engaged in planning their futures. God.
A new headache nudged at her temple. She’d been getting a lot of them lately. Better drunken revelry, she decided, than Trevor and Caitlyn alone. She shook with sudden frustration and anger. What if they were in Cait’s bedroom right now? Listening to the phone ring? Laughing? She could hear Cait, in that new snotty voice, saying, “Ooh, Mommy’s checking up on me.”
Putting on her game face, Molly let herself out of the offices only to see Richard Ward walking toward her.
Voices spilled into the broad corridor from the gymnasium and open area outside it. In the other direction, headlights were coming on in the dark parking lot outside. But momentarily, the two of them were alone and she felt the oddest pang of…fear?
Surely not.
Molly stiffened. “Thank you for coming tonight, Mr. Ward. I hope you were able to meet with everyone you wanted to.”
“Yes, thank you.” He looked gorgeous in a charcoal suit, white shirt and even a tie rather than his green work uniform.
She hated the knowledge that she could totally understand how Caitlyn had fallen so hard for this man’s son. With hair long enough to be slightly unruly, mocking dark eyes and that lazy, long-legged stride, he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen.
He’s a parent, she told herself. An electrician, for Pete’s sake. A regular, garden-variety man. Maybe even married.
She didn’t remember noticing the name of a stepmother in Trevor’s records, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
That splashed cold water on her involuntary leap of attraction. It hadn’t occurred to her, for some reason, but of course he was. How many men his age who looked like that and made a good living hadn’t been snatched up long ago? None. Molly made a mental note to check Trevor’s records again. Only to satisfy her curiosity, of course. Yes, he’d come to school conferences alone, but his current wife wasn’t Trevor’s mother, obviously. A defiant seventeen-year-old son would be his responsibility, not hers.
“Good night, then.” She offered him another vague, pleasant smile and passed by him close enough to touch as she returned to the gym and he continued to the outer doors and parking lot. If he wished her a good-night, she didn’t hear it.
She had another hour to get through before she could go home and find out whether her daughter was Jekyll or Hyde tonight. With an odd ramble into frivolity, she thought, Maybe I should I make it Jacqueline or…hmm, Heidi?
* * *
“DAMN IT, ALEXA, ANSWER,” Richard growled, listening to the phone ring. He’d left half a dozen messages. He’d have flown to California to confront her if he’d been positive where she and Brianna were living. The house had belonged to Alexa’s husband, Davis, so of course she’d been the one to have to move out along with her children. A month ago, the two had been staying with friends. Brianna had texted that she and Mom had an apartment now, but Richard had yet to get an address.
“Richard.”
She’d picked up. About goddamn time.
“You’ve been dodging me,” he said.
“You know my life is a mess.” She had an irritatingly little girl voice that always caught him by surprise. Hard to imagine why he’d thought it was cute when they were in high school together. Now it only grated. “I don’t need more to deal with. Trev flipped out. It was too much for me. The two of you have always been tight. I thought he’d be happy to be living with you.”
“He’s damn near flunking out of school, he’s been in two ugly fights and is a hair away from getting expelled, and every word he deigns to speak to me drips with sarcasm and hostility. I can safely say that he isn’t happy.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“Lexa, what happened? This had to be almost an overnight thing. He’s not talking. You need to tell me.”
“I don’t know!” she cried. “Okay? Davis and I were having problems, and maybe I just didn’t notice something. All I know is that he suddenly hated me, Davis and everyone else.”
“Brianna?”
She let out a breath that might h
ave been a sob. “Maybe not her. I don’t know. I think he calls her sometimes.”
“She told me he does.”
“Did you ask her?”
“Not yet.” It seemed underhanded, using one kid to get a handle on the other. And he’d always found it harder to talk to Brianna.
“Well, try,” his ex snapped. “Trevor sure doesn’t talk to me. He doesn’t answer when I call and hasn’t called me once. He’s all yours, Richard. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”
It was all he could do not to say, Yeah, but I’d have liked to get him before you screwed with his head.
That wasn’t fair, anyway. As little as he liked Alexa, she’d done fine with the kids. Brianna seemed like a normal teenage girl—i.e., incomprehensible to him—but what was new about that? Trevor had thrived until whatever happened happened.
They talked for a couple more minutes. Alexa got sulkier and sulkier. He found himself responding in monosyllables. He finally asked if Brianna was there and his daughter came on.
“Hi, Daddy.”
Daddy. Call him a sucker, but that warmed him. Not so much when she was trying to persuade him to buy something for her, but when it popped out for no reason, yeah.
“Hey, honey. How are you? You settled into school?”
She’d had to change schools, too, which wasn’t fair, but her mother couldn’t afford an apartment in Beverly Hills where Davis lived. The guy was rich enough to have made it possible if he’d wanted, but why would he? The kids weren’t his. At least the break hadn’t happened mid-school year.
Brianna was fourteen, and a freshman in high school now. Only a year behind Trevor’s apparent girlfriend, Caitlyn Callahan. Had that occurred to Trev?
“It’s okay,” Bree said, tone telling him it really wasn’t. “At least I still talk to Lark.”
His daughter might be a near stranger to him, but Richard did know that Lark was her most recent BFF. Lark’s daddy was with one of the big Hollywood talent agencies. Brianna had been moving in slightly scary circles. He’d wondered without ever asking her if she told anyone that her father was an electrician.
“That’s good,” he said cautiously. “Gotten to know some new kids?”
“Oh, kinda. The classes are way behind the ones I was in last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He felt helpless, as he often did when talking to her. He couldn’t have offered her what Davis Noonan had. He’d had painfully mixed feelings about the advantages this man he’d never even met had given his children. His feelings about them losing those advantages were even murkier. “I’m betting you’ll rise to the top wherever you are,” he said in the hearty tone any self-respecting kid would see through.
“Oh, Dad.” Rolled eyes. He knew it. He’d been demoted to “Dad,” too.
“Trev is having a tough time,” he said abruptly.
“Yeah, he doesn’t say much.”
Unhelpful. “I was hoping he did to you.”
“Nuh-uh. I think he’s mad at Mom and you, too, but I don’t know why.” She paused. “Is that why you wanted to talk to me?”
“Partly,” he admitted, shamed. He tugged at his hair hard enough to hurt. “I always want to talk to you. You know that.”
“I kind of wish I’d come for the summer.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I wish you had, too, honey. I miss you. It’s been too long.”
Bree hadn’t spent this past summer with Richard, either. She’d seemed reluctant with her brother not coming, and Richard hadn’t pushed it. He was sorry now.
“Maybe I can come for Christmas,” she added. “Except then Mom would be alone, so maybe not. Plus I wouldn’t know anyone there.”
“You know me and your brother.”
She made a noncommittal noise. He tried to coax some more information from her about new friends, teachers, anything, but got nuggets like “not really” and “they’re fine.” Finally he gave up and they signed off.
In frustration he thought, This is as good as it’s going to get. I’ll watch her graduate from high school and probably college, help pay for a wedding, walk her down the aisle if stepfather number four or five doesn’t get the nod, and I’ll never really know her. My own daughter.
He’d actually had doubts about whether she really was, although he rarely let them surface. He hadn’t guessed when Bree was born that Alexa was sleeping around, but later… He’d wondered, that’s all. Unlike Trevor, she had her mother’s coloring and enough of her mother’s looks there was no being sure. It didn’t make any difference, though. He’d loved his little girl from the first time he held her, and never stopped. It didn’t really matter if biologically she was his or not. It was only that she was more like her mother. Girlie.
He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. Brooding was getting him nowhere.
What he had to ask himself was whether Alexa had lied to him just now. He had a hard time imagining that she really had no idea what had turned their all-star son into a wannabe juvenile delinquent.
And—hell—what about Brianna? Was she lying, too? Was there something none of them wanted him to know? He grunted with near humor. If I were trying to keep a secret, would I confide it to my powder keg of a son? My mall-mad daughter?
No, for God’s sake, that was idiocy. Sooner or later, Trevor would blow up and all would be revealed. Had to happen.
Whether Richard could fix what was wrong, though, that was another story.
Sitting there alone in the quiet house, he admitted to himself that he could use help. None of his friends who were married had teenagers, though; they hadn’t started families as young as he had. Counseling would be useless without Trevor’s cooperation. And Richard would be damned if he’d ask for help from Molly Callahan, who cared so much she had only suspended Trev instead of expelling him. Big of her.
As much as he disliked her, Richard wished he could keep himself from noticing her luscious body, glorious hair and exquisite skin. Or the fact that she didn’t wear a wedding ring.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t married, he reminded himself, and then thought, Poor schmuck. She probably gave him that chilly, commanding stare over the dinner table until he ate every last bite of his broccoli.
Richard shook his head hard. Quit thinking about her. Get your head where it needs to be: on your own kid.
Yeah, that might be more productive—if he had the slightest idea what Trev’s problem was.
* * *
TREVOR DIDN’T GET WHAT was going on with Cait. She was shy when he saw her at school the day after they got it on the first time. He almost kind of liked that. He liked knowing he was the only guy she’d ever had. She’d been major tight, and he’d gotten a real charge out of breaking in. Hah! Like he’d fiddled and fiddled with the dial on a safe, and there’d been that magic moment when the numbers tumbled into place and the lock clicked open. Man, it felt good. But he knew it hurt her. So he’d resolved the next time to make up for it.
But her shyness hung on. And even though he’d screwed her, like, five or six more times since then, he could tell she wasn’t enjoying it. She lay there under him stiff, and seemed relieved when it was over. She didn’t talk to him the same way anymore, either. He thought she was avoiding him.
It was almost mid-October now. Determined to make her tell him what was wrong, he lay in wait outside school at the end of the day. She came out the usual door with a cluster of her friends. Something happened on her face the minute she spotted him. She said something to the other girls, who all turned and looked at him, then Cait separated herself from them and came over to him.
“Were you waiting for me?”
“Yeah, I want to talk to you.”
“I have dance.”
“I know you do.” It had kind of pissed him off that she would never ditch one of her dance lessons for him. She had lessons three days a week, and often went to the studio in the evening or even on the weekends for more informal sessions. She’d told him that, if she was going t
o stay limber and be really good, she had to work out and dance every single day. He’d gone to watch a couple of times, and she was good, he had to admit. She looked amazing in her leotard, too. And there was the way she moved. It was so different from how other girls moved. Even the other girls at the dance school. Cait looked like the real thing. Maybe she was, or would be. He knew she’d been in the Pacific Northwest Ballet Nutcracker for a couple of years when she was younger.
“Can I walk you over there?” he asked.
“Um.” She shrugged. “Sure.” They crossed the parking lot and reached the sidewalk. She sneaked a look at him. “What do you want to talk about?”
“You’re being weird lately. Like you don’t like me anymore.”
She kept her head down and her mass of hair hid her face. “It’s not you.”
“Then what is it?”
“Me,” she said softly. “It’s me, okay?” Her voice rose there at the end.
He caught her arm and turned her to face him. Her eyes were darker than usual, almost purple like storm clouds could be. She was so beautiful, he wanted to kiss her, but when he started to bend toward her she took a step back.
“I need time. I’m a little freaked, okay?”
Shock slammed him, like a fist in his gut. “Freaked about what? Me?”
“I’ve never had a boyfriend before.”
He waited, but she’d clammed up.
“And now you don’t want one?”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a minute. Her hands gripped the cloth handle of her dance bag so tightly her knuckles shone white. “I do, but…”
“You don’t.”
“I do! I just wish…”
He knew what she wished, and it made him mad. “That we could hold hands? Maybe kiss each other but keep our tongues in our mouths? And our clothes on?”
“Maybe.” She swallowed, and now her eyes held appeal. “Sometimes.”
Angry and hurt and he didn’t know what else, Trevor backed up yet another step. “I thought you were grown-up. My mistake to hook up with a little girl.”
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