by Leslie Kelly
“How’s it goin’?” he asked Leo through the screen, already knowing the answer to that question.
“Fantastic. Wanna see a picture of the baby?”
“Isn’t she still cooking?”
“Yeah, but these sonograms, you just can’t believe the detail!”
Mike’s instant message notifier dinged. He clicked over and opened the fuzzy image his brother had just sent him, with the vague shape of a kidney bean in the middle. Leaning closer, he was able to distinguish head from feet, but not much more than that.
“Nice,” he murmured, looking into the camera again.
“I know, right? So how’s life treating you?”
He shrugged. “Same.”
“Ready to bail and come home yet?”
“I’m not a quitter.”
“Never believed you were. I meant, have you booked your trip home the day after your six months are up?”
Laughing, Mike shook his head. “Don’t think so. I intend to make this work. Chicago P.D.’s not an option anymore.”
Leo nodded, his good humor fading as he frowned in concern. “Are you okay? Everything healed up?”
Mike rubbed his fingers against the scar on his neck. It was still red, but the tenderness had faded...physically, at least. Emotionally, he wasn’t sure it ever would. “Yeah. I’m fine. I guess I just haven’t quite figured out what I wanna do when I grow up.”
“Well, there are a couple of people who might have some options for you to consider.”
His interest piqued, Mike raised a curious brow. “Who?”
“The twins.”
“Mark and Nick?” His cousins were a little older, so growing up, he, Leo and Rafe had looked up to all five of the boys on that branch of the Santori family tree.
“Yeah. They called Mama the other day and got your contact info. Sounds like they want to talk to you about some kind of business idea.”
Hmm. Interesting.
Mark was a cop, so Mike had crossed paths with him a lot at work, though they’d been at different precincts. Nick was in security, having gotten out of the Marines and become a bouncer at a strip club where his wife, Izzie, had headlined. Weird. But they made it work.
“I’m open to hearing their idea,” he admitted.
“We’d love to have you back in Chi-town, man. It’s gonna suck doing the daddy thing without Uncle Mikey around to lend a hand. Who’s gonna scare off all the boys who start coming around when my baby girl hits puberty?”
“I think you’re more than capable of that,” he said with a dry chuckle.
“I’m a lover, not a fighter. Madison says I’m going to be the first human-shape marshmallow when the kid gets big enough to start wrapping me around her little finger.”
Probably true. With his huge heart, Leo was the nicest of the brothers, so generous and easygoing. Rafe...well, he was a bit of a hard-ass and sure didn’t have Leo’s breezy outlook on life. After so many years in Afghanistan, that was probably understandable. Ellie, however, seemed to have softened him some.
Then there was him, Mike. The youngest, the cop, the one who had never seen an abused animal he didn’t want to take in, or met a bully he hadn’t ended up punching out.
That was probably why he’d joined the force to begin with.
It was also probably why he’d left.
There was only so much head-banging-against-the-wall he could reasonably do. He’d never been able to really make a difference, and nearly losing his life while failing at his job just didn’t mesh with his genetic code.
He and Leo BS’d a little while longer, then his parents came into the room and waved from the background. His mom raised her voice to shouting level, as if she feared she wasn’t being picked up by the microphone, and Mike pushed his seat away from the speakers just to get a little relief.
Damn, how he missed his family. All of them. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. He had thought when he’d left Chicago that going to a place where there were no other Santoris would be good for him, a welcome change. He’d wanted to figure things out in a place where he had to stand completely on his own and would be by himself to think.
He just hadn’t realized that he wasn’t cut out to be a loner until recently.
For some reason, that brought Lindsey to his mind. He wondered if she had figured that out about herself yet. And if she had possibly considered the fact that maybe the two of them, as the outsiders, the loners, might in fact be a perfect match. If only it weren’t for their jobs.
5
ALTHOUGH LINDSEY HAD never taught kids, she’d put in plenty of days as a teacher’s assistant throughout her academic career. That meant subbing for professors a lot of the time. Before starting this new job, she’d figured teaching college freshmen wouldn’t be that much different than teaching high school seniors. And really, it wasn’t.
These kindergartners, though? Oh, man. They were going to be the death of her.
“Miss Smiff, Maffew took all the gween cwayons so nobody else can color their twees.”
Blinking as she interpreted that rare dialect known as six-years-old-and-toothless, Lindsey sighed and swiped her hand through her hair. It was only first period, and she was a teacher, so a margarita was out of the question. But oh, could she use one.
After being on the job for only five days, she had already decided Callie should be canonized. Lindsey had no idea how her friend—or any of the teachers at the Wild Boar School—did it.
First off, she taught six classes a day and only had one brief planning period that wasn’t long enough to catch her breath, much less grade papers or prepare lessons. During the first period, this one, she taught all the K–3 kids. In the classroom, the kids were separated by grade into smaller work groups, and she spent the entire class period revolving between them, giving mini lectures to one while praying the others would stay on task with what she’d asked them to work on.
The kindergartners rarely did. And her classroom “assistant”—one of the moms—spent more time helping her own kid with his classwork than she did keeping things running smoothly when Lindsey’s back was turned.
After this period, she would move on to the fourth through sixth graders. Same setup. Then seventh and eighth. Ditto.
This afternoon, she’d get ninth grade biology, then tenth grade chemistry. Finally, at the very end of the day, advanced chemistry, which had eight students, all seniors, all vying to be valedictorian of their seventy-five-person graduating class.
Frankly, she’d rather have all seventy-five of those seniors in her physics class than try to have four eyes in her head to keep track of grades K-1-2-3.
“Miss Smiff, did you heaw me? Maffew’s not being vewy nice. Do you think it’s nice to keep all the gween cwayons?”
“No, it’s not very nice,” she admitted, turning away from the third graders. Again.
From the beginning, her strategy had been to connect all of her class lessons so that each group’s subject was somehow related to the others. Today, she’d been talking to the kids about plant life. Nothing along the lines of oxygenation and photosynthesis...strictly, why some trees have flowers and others don’t. But the blank expressions on the faces of the kindergartners this morning, and their fidgeting bodies, had made her give that up and go right to the old I’m-not-a-parent-and-have-no-idea-how-to-handle-little-kids standby: coloring. Specifically, coloring sheets printed with bushes, trees and flowers, most of which required green. It appeared Maffew hadn’t remembered that whole “sharing” thing.
“I’ll talk to him, Sarah.”
“I’m Emily.”
Oh. Right. She had only been on the job five days and hadn’t memorized all the kids’ names. That would have been impossible in so short a time, of course. But considering in this room alone there wer
e four Sarahs and five Emilys, one of those two was usually a good bet if she was at a loss. For the boys? Jason and Michael.
Mike.
Even during the day, there was one Mike who just wouldn’t get out of her head... The one who’d seen her sex-toy collection and then kissed her like he wanted to use every item in it with her. The encounter they’d shared—that embrace, that kiss—wouldn’t leave her mind. Nor would the memory of the expression on his face as he’d wondered what she did with those toys when she was alone.
She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him she wasn’t in the market for romance or relationships. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t imagine having fabulous sex with him.
It had gotten so bad that at night she’d been tempted to actually use one of those vibrators, to take the pressure off. She might have written about the Thinkgasm, might have interviewed women who could think themselves off, but she hadn’t mastered the art herself. Lying in bed fantasizing about that strong body of his, that great laugh, the amazing mouth and that hot, wonderful kiss, only made her more frustrated, and certainly didn’t do anything to relieve the tension.
She hadn’t ended up trying any of the toys, though. Despite what he’d assumed, she’d never used any of the things from that box.
She’d seen Mike around town this week, and had always stopped to say hello. He was usually putting out fires that seemed terribly important to the locals...like taking a report on somebody’s stolen trash can or coming to the school to do an anti-drinking talk with the older students. They hadn’t, however, been alone together since that unpleasant scene with his coworker Sunday morning.
She missed him. Crazy, since they’d only known each other a week, but it was true. Whenever she spotted him, her heart thumped and her pulse roared. She wanted nothing more than to find some excuse to be alone with him, even while her sensible side screamed at her not to be an idiot.
“Miss Smiff? Are you coming?”
Hearing the six-year-old’s impatience, she shook off the crazy thoughts and focused on her job. “Yes, I’m coming, Emily.”
Giving quick instructions to the third graders, she turned back to the little ones, sorted out the crayon catastrophe, and then moved through the rest of the class.
The remainder of the day was much the same. Just as she had on the previous four days, she found herself enjoying the older kids in her seventh period class. If she had an entire day of high school honors kids, she might actually choose to stick with this teaching gig for a while. It sure beat being ridiculed or made the butt of sexy jokes by the media. But the herding-cats feel of the younger groups was going to drive her nuts.
Fortunately, she’d become friendly with several of the other teachers, all of whom had been welcoming. They’d offered advice on everything from dealing with classroom misbehavior, to life on the island. Not at all to her surprise, two of them warned her about Officer Ollie Dickinson, who had a thing for pulling over single women.
At the end of the day, one of those teachers popped her head in. “You’ve survived another day!”
She smiled, remembering the pretty young woman’s name was Teresa and she taught elementary-age English. She and a few of the other teachers had taken Lindsey under their wing. “Five down.”
“Any hot plans for the weekend?”
“Did I miss a happening downtown club scene here?”
Teresa smirked. “Yeah, uh...no. You’ll have to take the ferry to the mainland for that.”
“Not a chance. I haven’t recovered from my trip over.” Even if it had allowed her to meet the amazingly sexy chief.
“Okay, well, have a great weekend!”
“Thanks,” she said, appreciating the brief check-in. It had been a nice thing to do.
For the most part, everybody on Wild Boar was just as friendly. Her landlady had made a point of stopping by with more cookies, the cashiers at the shops were always cheerful, the waitresses at the diner always laughed and chatted. It was all so very...nice.
She wished she could say she loved that, but she was too much of a big-city girl not to find it all just a little suspicious. Too much niceness made her teeth ache, and she really wished Callie were around to add a wee bit of snark to her day.
After school, wanting an injection of caffeine, she went to her favorite new haunt. The main street of the town, which bore the same name as the island, was about a mile long, and was lined mostly with walk-ups and small businesses. Mom-and-pop shops, a drugstore, a bakery, a hobby shop and a couple of restaurants operated year-round. She’d noticed signs on some of the craft and antiques businesses that said they would reopen in May, in time for tourist season.
The coffee shop, though, called The Daily Grind, was open all day, every day, and that’s where she headed. She pushed the door in, bringing a strong spring breeze with her, and the heads of everyone inside turned to watch her enter. From behind the counter, the owner, a happy-looking, middle-aged woman named Angie, smiled and called out a greeting. Nicely, of course. “Hi, Lindsey. Extra-large coffee with two creams and two sugars?”
She’d never lived in a place where the people not only knew their customers by their first names, but also remembered how they took their coffee. In Chicago, Lindsey had stopped at the same chain café near her apartment a couple of times a week for two years and had seldom seen the same barista twice.
“Sounds great.”
Angie got to work as Lindsey headed over. “How’s everything going over at the school?”
“Just fine.”
“What about Callie and the baby? Have you talked to her lately. Is he doing well?”
Nodding, Lindsey replied, “It sounds like baby William is doing much better. Callie has called me several times to give me lots of tips and advice about handling ‘her’ kids.”
“You tell her for me to stop worrying about anybody else’s little ones and just focus on her own precious angel.”
“I will,” Lindsey said, glad to hear the warmth and fondness in the older woman’s voice.
Whether Lindsey was comfortable with it or not, the niceness definitely benefited Callie. She hadn’t lived here long—two years, maybe—but the town had claimed Callie as one of their own after her marriage to Billy, a local boy. Everybody was concerned about her and the baby.
Lindsey hadn’t seen Billy since her arrival. He was either working or at the hospital, wanting to be there for his wife during these early, touch-and-go stages of their son’s life. But everywhere she went, people sang his praises, too, which made her feel more confident about her dearest friend’s life here.
“Here you go,” Angie said, pushing a white ceramic mug toward her. “T.G.I.C.”
“Huh?”
“Thank God It’s Caffeinated.”
She grinned, liking the woman, and replied, “You’ve got that right.”
Taking her coffee, she headed to an empty café table in the back. The shop had free wireless internet access, one of the few places on Wild Boar that did. Since she hadn’t had time to get anybody to come out to the cottage to wire her up, and the school’s wireless blocked a lot of sites to keep the kids off social media during the school day, she had to do her emailing and catching up on Facebook from here.
Opening her laptop, she booted it up, sipped the hot coffee and glanced around the shop. She recognized a few faces. There were two other teachers, at whom she smiled. A couple of strangers offered her cautious but friendly nods, obviously knowing who she was. A trio of her honors students sprawled in a circle of lounge chairs in the front window, chatting and using their laptops. They waved at her with enthusiasm.
“We’re doing our homework,” one of them, a pretty blond-haired girl, called from across the room.
“Sure you are,” she replied with a wry lift of a brow. “Just don’t rely on Twitter to help with next we
ek’s exam.”
The kids laughed good-naturedly, going back to their conversation, and Lindsey began to flip through her email. She immediately deleted the dozen interview requests that had come in since yesterday. Also deleted were the obligatory penis-enlarging, Russian bride and overseas finance minister scams.
That left her with two emails, one of which was from Callie. Attached to it was a picture of the baby, so tiny in his incubator. At least she could see him now, unlike when she’d gone to visit at the hospital ten days ago. His precious face had been covered with a mask, his body frail and weak-looking. He appeared much stronger now, bigger, too, and judging by the tone of her friend’s email, was growing beautifully. That made Lindsey’s whole Wild Boar ordeal worthwhile, in her opinion.
Surfing onto Facebook, she checked her private page, accessible only to real friends. She’d deleted her professional one when the comments had gotten absolutely unbearable.
Once she’d finished her online stuff, she slowly sipped her coffee, somehow loath to leave this little slice of society and return to her quiet, empty house. After living in Chicago for several years, she just wasn’t used to silence. She had never felt more alone than she had since this move, not having had one visitor since Mike left on Saturday.
By four, she realized she couldn’t take up a table while continuing to nurse one cup of coffee, so she began to pack up her stuff to leave. She unzipped her laptop case and slid her computer into it, paying no attention to the ringing of the bell over the coffee shop door.
At least, not at first.
Then she heard Angie greet the newcomer. And she could do nothing else but pay attention as the dark-haired, dark-eyed man in khaki walked in and headed to the counter.
“Howya doin’, Chief?” asked Angie.
It was the very person she’d been unable to stop thinking about. The very one she’d had those wild and wicked dreams about.
The very one she needed to avoid.
“Good, thanks.” Mike Santori offered the woman a slight smile and a nod, looking around and giving the same casual greeting to everyone else.