The remark was said with such cold finality, Liz felt as though he’d slapped her. Over the last couple of days, she’d tried very hard to keep herself from thinking of Todd Lewis as anything more than a parent of a troubled student, but the memory of his touch had lingered. Her imagination had taken the tenderness of his comfort, the fire of his caress and soared on a less restrained journey. The man might not have much respect for her opinions, but he had desired her in a way that had stirred old, forgotten longings. For a few minutes in her classroom, she’d been reminded of what it felt like to be stirred by a woman’s passions, to feel the sharp tug of yearning for a man’s embrace.
Now, with those four abrupt, chilly words—don’t count on it—he’d relegated her to an annoyance, someone he had to placate but not trust. Well, he could just take his moody, overbearing attitude and stuff it, she thought furiously. She glared at him.
He caught her expression and sighed. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m on edge. You know how I feel about all of this. If it weren’t for Kevin and what you said about his failing, I wouldn’t be here.”
She tried to understand his misgivings, but it was as if there were some vital piece of information missing. She settled for simply acknowledging them. “I know that. Maybe you should stop thinking of this as some sort of an ordeal and consider it a chance to widen your horizons, try new things.”
He chuckled. “Throwing my words back in my face, aren’t you?”
“The occasion seemed to call for it.”
“Okay, let’s go. I’ll behave. I will even try not to treat this friend of yours like she’s some sort of dragon.”
Liz smiled knowingly. “Oh, but Ann is a dragon, the genuine fire-breathing variety, especially when it comes to kids in trouble. Don’t get any ideas about conning her with your charm.”
“I never even considered it.”
Her eyebrows rose skeptically. “In a pig’s eye.”
“Hi, Liz!” The shouted greeting came from somewhere behind a pile of yellow rain slickers. A blond—no more than twenty or twenty-one, Todd guessed—poked her pixie face above the pile and waved. “Annie called. She’s running late, as usual. Tommy or one of the kids took exception to having oatmeal for breakfast and threw it across the kitchen. She’s overseeing the cleanup.”
“Has Alexis given birth yet?” Liz called back.
“Nope. Poor thing. She’s down at the end. Go on out and scratch her belly. There’s a bucket of fish on the dock. You can give her a few if she behaves.”
“How will I know if she’s behaving?”
“You’ll still be dry.”
As they wandered toward the docks behind Dolphin Reach, Todd studied her with a bemused expression. “Are we actually going to visit a pregnant dolphin?”
She grinned at him, her eyes sparkling with sheer delight. He couldn’t recall ever having seen quite that look on her face before. He wished he and not some temperamental dolphin had been the one to put it there.
“Why not?” she teased, racing on ahead. The subtle sway of her hips was enough to make him forget what he’d asked. Who cared about a dolphin—pregnant or not—when a woman clad in a pair of sexy white shorts and a surprisingly provocative T-shirt was within view. He’d be willing to bet she’d thought the walking shorts sedate, the T-shirt unrevealing. They weren’t, he thought with a wild skittering of his pulse as she leapt down onto the dock.
“Hurry,” she was urging, just as Todd was wondering if he shouldn’t dive straight into the icy waters and cool off. His libido was becoming as overactive as Hank’s.
Dazed, he simply followed her, only partially aware of the dolphins who swam close, then stood on tail fins as if to bob a friendly greeting. When he caught up with Liz, she was kneeling on the end of the dock crooning to a huge dolphin. The seeming absurdity of her actions was lost on him. All he could think about was the way her attractive little butt was poking into the air. That rear would just about fit into the palms of his hands.
“Come meet Alexis,” she said, as if introducing people and dolphins were an everyday occurrence. “Alexis likes company. Ann says she’s been upset because she can’t do as much with the kids these days. She’s impatient for the baby to be born so she can get back to serious playing.”
He knelt down beside her on the dock. “There’s a contradiction in there, but I don’t dare try to challenge it.” He smiled at her. “I see that you and Alexis are old friends.”
The dolphin seemed to beam in agreement, then slid into the water and swam away. A moment later, she leapt into the air with an odd sort of lumbering majesty, before diving back with hardly a splash. Back at the dock, she waited for Liz’s applause and her reward.
“That was wonderful, Alexis, but don’t you go getting overly excited,” Liz chided as she dropped a handful of fish to the eager dolphin’s mouth. She leaned down and rubbed the slick snout, then turned to Todd with a delighted grin. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“As dolphins go, I would have to say she is particularly impressive,” he said dryly.
Liz turned back to the attentive Alexis. “Did you hear that, Alexis? He thinks you’re impressive. That’s quite a compliment from a man of his no doubt discerning taste when it comes to women.”
“Sweetheart, when it comes to women, I prefer them a little sleeker than Alexis here, preferably with two legs. And,” he added as an afterthought, “I definitely do not want them pregnant.”
“Sssh. You’ll hurt her feelings.”
“Do you always get like this around the dolphins?” he inquired curiously.
“Like what?”
“Let’s just say you seem to have lost all your inhibitions.”
She gave him a pert smile. “Not all of them.”
“Too bad.”
“Don’t let her kid you,” a voice said from behind them. “Underneath that stern, classroom manner of hers lies the heart of a pushover.”
Liz blushed to the roots of her red hair. Interesting, Todd thought, as he stood up to meet the woman who’d just joined them. Tall and raw-boned, she had short, dark hair and bright blue eyes that sparkled with intelligence. Her features were irregular but interesting. It was the warmth and humor in her expression that made her beautiful. She radiated an inner joy that was both contagious and reassuring.
“You must be Todd,” she said, taking his outstretched hand in a firm, no-nonsense grip. “I’m Ann Davies. I’m so glad you and Liz were able to drive down this morning.”
“So am I,” he said and found, amazingly enough, that he meant it.
“Sorry I’m late, but the kids…” She shrugged. “I’m sure you know how that goes.”
“Of course. We haven’t been here long.”
“No. We stopped for breakfast in Key Largo,” Liz said and the two women exchanged a conspiratorial look.
“Am I missing something here?”
“Not really,” Liz said. “Ann had warned me that she’d lost a lot of prospective clients in Key Largo.”
He grinned. “I see. No wonder you were able to read my mind. You’d been coached.”
“By an expert,” Liz agreed. “Why don’t the two of you go get acquainted and talk about Kevin? I’ll stay here with Alexis.”
Suddenly an old familiar feeling of dread engulfed Todd. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
Ann shook her head and linked her arm through his. “I think it’ll be better if you and I talk first. Liz can join us later.”
Without waiting for him to agree, she turned on her heel and strode off toward the main building. Inside, she waved him to a comfortable sofa, then gestured with a pot of coffee. When he nodded, she poured two cups, then handed him one of them.
“So, Todd. You don’t mind if I call you Todd, do you?”
He chuckled. “No. I only wish Liz would do it as easily.”
“She has a very strong sense of what’s right and wrong in professional conduct.”
“I’ve noticed.�
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She glanced at him sharply. “You object?”
“Not the way you mean. It’s just…inconvenient at times.”
Ann’s quick bark of laughter echoed off the walls. “I’m sure you find that part of the challenge.”
He felt his face flame. “Maybe I do.”
She looked him over assessingly. “I wish you luck,” she said quietly, but with apparently heartfelt sincerity. Todd felt as if he’d passed an important test without really understanding why it mattered.
“Now, then,” she went on briskly, “tell me about Kevin.”
His defenses slammed back into place. Filled with reluctance, he began to describe his son. Ann listened and absorbed without comment. It was a seductive technique. Before he knew what was happening and very much to his surprise, he found himself talking about Sarah, as well.
“Kevin was only four when she left. For a long time I was terrified I’d never be able to make it up to him.”
“Why did you feel the need to try? Had you caused her to walk out?”
“No. Not directly, though I’m sure there were things I could have done to make things better. But what Sarah really wanted was freedom and excitement. She hadn’t expected the ordinariness of marriage. She didn’t want to be tied down to running a house and taking care of a kid. Sometimes I’d get home at night and find her practically hysterical.”
“Did she tell you why?”
“She said she couldn’t cope—not with the marriage, not with Kevin.”
“So he was a problem, even then?”
“I didn’t think so,” he said defensively.
“But Sarah did.”
“Yes.”
She paused long enough to make a few notes on the legal pad in her lap, then met his eyes with a direct, unflinching gaze. Todd realized then that in just the short time they’d been together he had come to trust her.
“I want to meet Kevin,” she said. “Can you bring him down, say, the same time next weekend?”
“You’re going to test him?”
“There are a few standard tests I can do to see how he processes information. Mainly I want to talk to him, find out what’s been happening with him in school as he sees it. Often that tells me as much or more than the tests do.”
“And then?”
She smiled at him. “Why don’t we just take this one step at a time? Let’s see what I learn next week and make a decision then.”
Todd nodded.
She stood then and went to her desk. When she joined him again, she had several forms in her hand and Todd felt his insides twist.
“If you’ll just fill these out,” she said, handing them to him along with a pen.
He bent his head over the papers and read them slowly and carefully. He painstakingly went over the fine print. Finally, when he was finished, he nervously filled in the requested information and signed them with his usual bold and virtually illegible scrawl.
As he handed them back to Ann, he caught the speculative look in her clear blue eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she said softly.
Todd stiffened at once. “Tell you what?”
“Why didn’t you mention that you’re dyslexic, as well?”
Chapter 6
Shocked, Todd simply stared at Ann Davies.
“Why would you say that?”
She smiled compassionately. “I am right, aren’t I? You do have dyslexia?”
Feeling utterly defeated, Todd sighed and sank back on the sofa. “How did you know?” he asked.
“I saw how you struggled with the form. Added to your defensiveness about Kevin’s situation, it made sense. Did you have treatment when you were a child?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Oh, there was endless testing, but once my parents realized I wasn’t the perfect son they’d anticipated they pretty much gave up on me. I struggled along and did the best I could.”
“But you hated school,” she guessed.
“I couldn’t wait to get out. I stuck it out through high school, even though I was twenty when I graduated.”
“If it was so terrible, why did you stay?”
“Because I figured I’d have to have that damned, meaningless diploma to get anywhere.”
“Graduating from high school is hardly meaningless, especially under the circumstances. It was a tremendous accomplishment. You should have felt very proud.”
“It is hardly an accomplishment if you still can’t read worth a damn and only earned the diploma by outlasting the system.”
“Liz doesn’t know, though, does she?”
He shook his head. “No, and I don’t want her to.”
“Why on earth not? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. No one knows exactly what causes dyslexia, but it is not indicative of either intelligence or character.”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. It was the one thing he’d worked like hell to prove, especially to himself. “I’ve carved out a niche in the world, proved to all those educational hotshots that I’m not the stupid kid they thought I was. That doesn’t mean it’s not a terrible drawback. I sure don’t want it to become common knowledge that I can’t even read half the contracts I sign.”
“Telling Liz is hardly the same as having it become common knowledge. She’d understand.”
“And I would feel like less than a man.”
Ann waved that aside with a derisive snort. “That’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve heard you say all afternoon.”
His chin set stubbornly. “If you tell Liz, our deal’s off.”
She shook her head, her smile a little sad. “I don’t think so. You’d never deprive your son of the opportunity to get a good education just because of your own ridiculous macho pride.”
“Are you willing to test me?”
“No,” she said easily, “but not because you’re threatening me, Todd Lewis. I’ll keep it between the two of us, because I think you’re the one who ought to tell her. I hope you’ll do it soon. Liz has had to deal with enough secrets in her lifetime.”
Ann’s words lingered long after he and Liz were back on the road. He wondered what she’d meant by the secrets that had affected Liz’s past. Keeping his own counsel about his dyslexia seemed like such a little thing. It only mattered to him. Surely his reticence on this one thing wasn’t something that would ultimately come between them.
If Liz noticed how distracted he was, she kept silent, apparently attributing it to a natural reaction to the meeting with the psychologist. He blessed her for her intuitive understanding and kept his eyes trained on the road, until he spotted the place they’d decided to stop to pick up lobsters to take home for dinner.
He wheeled into the sloped gravel driveway and slammed on the brakes. For the first time since it was the macho thing to do in high school, he felt like getting rip-roaring drunk so that he could forget all about secrets and the past.
When Todd pulled into the jammed parking lot beside the ramshackle fish house, his jaw was still set at a mulish angle. Liz had been biting her tongue all the way up the road to keep from asking him what had gone on in his meeting with Ann. It was enough that the two of them seemed to have gotten along. Even more important, Todd had agreed to come back with Kevin the following week. With their business taken care of, they were free to…to do what? The possibilities made her as skittish as a teen on her first date.
Warning herself not to start thinking like an adolescent ninny, she followed Todd across the parking lot, her steps slowing as they neared the building. Though the screened-in porch sagged and the handwritten menus were grease-stained, Liz knew the appearance of the weathered wood structure was deceptive. On weekends the place was crowded with Miamians and tourists looking for an inexpensive, informal place to sit by the ocean, sip a few beers, listen to a little music and eat some of the best seafood in the Keys. Though it was only four in the afternoon, the heavy throb of a live band filled the air. It was a sultry, provocative atmosphere.
“Let’s get a beer before
we pick up the lobsters,” Todd suggested as he held her door open for her.
“We really should be getting back to Miami,” Liz protested, giving in to her jittery nerves. “You know how this road is on Saturday nights. We’ll be caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic if we wait much longer.”
He shrugged off her concern with a wave toward the narrow highway. “The traffic is already bumper-to-bumper. How much worse can it get? Come, on. Just one beer. Besides, I like the group that’s playing this afternoon.”
“We could probably still hear them halfway home,” she muttered, giving up. It was clear they wouldn’t head north until Todd was ready to go. She was surprised he’d even bothered to ask her wishes, when he had no intention of complying with them.
“Smile,” he leaned down and whispered in her ear. “This will only hurt for a little while.”
She scowled at his back as he led the way through the restaurant to the porch in back. He found a table in a corner far away from the band, signaled a passing waitress for two beers, then sat down across from her.
“Great, isn’t it?”
“Terrific.” She caught the sarcasm in her tone and flinched. To be perfectly truthful, it was lovely. Sunlight set off diamond sparklers on the ocean’s smooth surface. A soft, languid breeze barely stirred the air, which was fragrant with the tang of salt and the coconut scent of suntan lotion. The noise was a happy blend of laughter and music, albeit a little loud for her taste. Guiltily, she glanced across at Todd and caught the frown on his brow as he watched her.
“Sorry,” she said, knowing how absurd it was to be this nervous in the presence of a man who’d proved his kindness. He was hardly likely to seduce her in the middle of the restaurant, even if half the couples on the dance floor did seem to be engaged in some sensually explicit movements that barely qualified as dancing. Just watching them made her blood heat up and her glance skitter nervously away from Todd’s. Ridiculous, she told herself sternly. How often did she get to the Keys? Not nearly often enough. She might as well enjoy it, now that she was already here.
“I didn’t mean to snap,” she apologized. “I like it here.” Even as she said the words, she felt herself begin to relax. She smiled. “Really.”
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