Ignite The Spark Between Us: Searing Saviors #4

by Parker, Weston

  Rinehart grinned. “Good man. Now, get the hell out of here. I’m sure you have better things to do than stand around here talking to a stubborn old man.”

  I cracked a smile of my own and turned to my truck. “You said it, not me.”

  Olivette was waiting for me on the front step when I pulled into the driveway. She was dressed for school with her backpack on and her curly blonde hair parted into two pigtails that were tied off with little pink ribbons.

  My grandmother had really gone for it this morning.

  She was wearing pink pants and a shirt with a unicorn on it. The horn on the unicorn glittered in the sun as she rushed to meet me in front of the truck. My grandmother emerged from the house and smiled as I swept Olivette up in my arms.

  “You’re getting heavy!”

  “It’s my bag.” Olivette giggled.

  “Are you sure?” I bounced her dramatically.

  She let out delighted squeals and giggles. “I’m sure, Daddy. I’m sure!”

  After I set her down, I dropped to a knee. “How do you feel about going for breakfast with me this morning before school?”

  Her eyes turned into two giant brown orbs. “Really?”

  “She’ll be late,” my grandmother scolded, coming out to meet us on the drive.

  “So what?” I asked, getting to my feet. “Fifteen minutes never hurt anyone. Besides, I miss her, and I want to buy her breakfast.”

  “She already ate,” my grandmother said flatly.

  “I could eat more,” Olivette piped up, looking back and forth between me and Nana, her eyes still wide and alight with excitement.

  I slid my hands into the pockets of my black pants. “See? She’s still hungry. Where do you want to go, kiddo? The pancake house?”

  Olivette hopped up and down. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  I flashed a grin at my grandmother. “I guess that settles it then.”

  She rolled her eyes and swatted at me. “You’re supposed to be teaching her to be responsible. Going to school is responsible.”

  “Yes, and she will go to school. But first, there will be pancakes. And chocolate milk. And lots of whipped cream.”

  My grandmother shook her head. “Her poor teacher. You’re going to send her to class with a sugar high.”

  I shrugged. Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe it would encourage Olivette to socialize. Crazier things had happened.

  I loaded Olivette into the backseat of my truck and clipped her into her car seat. We said goodbye to my grandmother, who clicked her tongue in my ear when I gave her a hug, and then we pulled out of the drive, and I struck a course to the pancake house.

  When we arrived, we were seated at a table near the window, and the server brought me a cup of coffee and Olivette a glass of chocolate milk with ice in it. This was our usual go-to spot when we wanted to go out for breakfast, and most of the servers knew our orders by heart. The new ones who did not learned quickly because my daughter charmed their pants off.

  While we dug into our pancakes, which were piled high with fruit, whipped cream, and maple syrup, I picked Olivette’s brain.

  “Do you like school so far?”

  Olivette’s cheeks were puffed up like a chipmunk. She chewed diligently, swallowed, and took a sip of her chocolate milk. It left a wet brown stain on her upper lip that she wiped away with the sleeve of her shirt.

  My grandmother would have scolded her.

  I internalized my laughter.

  “I like it,” she said.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “You like it?”

  Olivette nodded. “I like Ms. Branson. She’s really nice.”

  “I like her too.”

  “Sometimes, I miss her on the weekends.”

  That surprised me, but it also made me feel good. It meant my daughter was finally coming around to someone who wasn’t me or my grandmother. And I was happy that someone was Allie. A kind, gentle, strong, intelligent woman. She was a good role model for my daughter to look up to. Truth be told, I couldn’t have asked for someone better.

  “Are you looking forward to going to school today?”

  Olivette shrugged. “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  “What’s your favorite part?”

  She smiled. “Coloring.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?” I mused.

  Olivette giggled.

  “Finish your pancakes. We’d better get a move on. I don’t want Ms. Branson to think I’m a bad father.”

  “She won’t. She knows you’re the best, Daddy. Everyone knows you’re the best.”

  “Thanks, kiddo. I think you’re the best, too.”

  “I know,” Olivette said.

  “Adorable little thing.”

  After breakfast, Olivette and I hurried out of the restaurant and made for Searing Elementary. She was a little more than fifteen minutes late—half an hour to be exact—and we jogged down the hall together to come to a skidding stop outside Ms. Branson’s classroom.

  Olivette backed away from the door. “I don’t want to go in.”

  “It’s okay, kiddo. I’ll knock and talk to Ms. Branson. She can come out and get you, okay?”

  Olivette pursed her lips but nodded.

  I lifted a fist and knocked on the door. Less than twenty seconds later, Allie’s pretty face filled the small window just below my eye level. She smiled, opened the door, and put her hand on her hip. “Well, well, well. Look who decided to show up.”

  I gave her my best apologetic smile. “Sorry. Olivette and I haven’t spent much time together this last week, so I was selfish and stole the morning to take her to breakfast.”

  Allie’s eyes flicked back and forth between mine. “Don’t be sorry. That’s a nice thing for you two to do together. Olivette is a very lucky girl.” Allie turned her attention to my daughter and held out her hand. “Welcome to class, Olivette. Come on. I’ll take you to your desk. You’re just in time. I was about to show the class our paint-by-number mural. I think you’ll love it.”

  Olivette waved at me as she followed Allie into the classroom, and I waved back, feeling less heartbroken today than I had on the first day of school.

  At least it was getting easier.

  A little.

  14

  Allie

  “The lunch bell is about to ring, everyone. Let’s grab our lunch bags from our cubbies and find our seats.”

  The children sprang up from where they were playing in various places in my classroom and made a beeline to their cubbies. They tore into the backpacks, now familiar with our normal routines, brought out their lunch bags, and took them back to their desks where they took their seats and began digging in.

  I always let the kids get their food fifteen minutes before the bell rang so that they could spend the entire half-hour lunch break playing outside. When the weather was nice like this, it made sense to take full advantage of as much outdoor time as possible, and they all loved it. Not only was it a benefit for them, but it was good for me, too. It gave me a whole half hour to get the room tidy again and have some time to myself to regroup.

  I walked up and down the aisles of chairs and made sure everyone had satisfactory lunches. There was a reason I had a fridge in my classroom and kept it stocked with good, healthy snacks. Last year, two of my students had been sent to school without a lunch at all, so I took it upon myself to make sure they were properly fed.

  A hungry child was simply not acceptable. I understood that not all parents had the means to feed their children, and it broke my heart. I made sure they never felt less than because they needed extra help, and I also made sure they had food they enjoyed. That, in itself, had been a battle.

  This year was different. Everyone had a nicely packed lunch. Some kids, like Brady, had a lunch I could have sworn was packed by a professional cook. Maybe the Tullys had a homemaker who tended to things like that because I couldn’t see Mrs. Tully preparing a lunch lik
e his.

  “Wow, that looks good, Brady,” I said as I walked past. I made sure to talk to the other kids while they ate, too. This was part of our lunch routine now. I’d make small talk with each and every one of them and get a sense of their mood. It helped me determine how I should proceed with the rest of my day. If I had some moody kids on my hands, I’d keep the load light. If they were energetic and happy, we would do something a little more ambitious—like doing some reading or math.

  At the end of the fifteen minutes when the bell went off, I’d concluded that today would be a math day.

  The kids bolted out of the room and joined the other children racing down the hallways to get outside. Their laughter bounced off the walls as I grabbed a sanitary wipe from my desk and set to wiping all their little tables down for their return. Four-year-olds and dip were a bad combination.

  I was wiping up a spill on the floor when there was a knock on the doorframe of my classroom.

  “Come in,” I said, straightening up. I turned to find Candice standing in the doorway. I grinned. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

  She held up a brown paper bag. “I thought I’d come for a visit and bring you lunch.”

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “You bet your ass it is. Two bacon cheeseburgers and onion rings.”

  “Candice, don’t swear. There are kids behind you.”

  She slipped into my class and closed the door behind her. I could have sworn her eye twitched as she resisted rolling them up to the ceiling. “Kids, shmids. It’s not like they aren’t hearing those words at home. Be real.”

  “At home. But not in my classroom.”

  “Fine,” she said airily. “Do you want your burger or not, little miss prude?”

  “I’m not a prude,” I said defensively.

  “Oh no?”

  “No.” I scowled as I sat down at my desk. Candice pulled a chair over to sit across from me and began unpacking the bag of food. The sweet smell of fried onions filled the room, and my stomach growled. “Oh God. That smells so good.”

  Once she’d passed out all our food, we both unwrapped our burgers and chomped down. I savored every bite.

  “So,” Candice said after licking mayo off her thumb, “speaking of prude—”

  “Candice.”

  “Have you talked to your hunky firefighter lately?”

  I eyed her as I sipped my water. “First off, he’s not mine. And secondly, yes, I talk to him frequently because he comes here all the time to pick up and drop off his kid.”

  “You know what I mean.” Candice leaned in and narrowed her eyes conspiratorially. “Have you had any flirty confrontations with him?”

  “No. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Of course, it’s my business. I’m your best friend. And let’s be real. If he hasn’t made a move on you, there’s something wrong with him. So maybe my advice to stay away from him was solid from the start.”

  I sighed. Candice had a tendency to obsess over my love life. Not that I could really call it a love life. She liked to pick it apart, to fantasize with me about attractive men I ran into at the supermarket. Or at the coffee shop. I had a strong feeling she worried over me being alone all the time.

  “I think he’s preoccupied. His hands are full. He’s a single dad, and he has a demanding job.”

  “Sounds like a lot of excuses if you ask me.”

  “Well, good thing I’m not asking you, isn’t it?”

  Candice snorted. “Sassy lady.”

  “Do you always have to label me based on my reaction to your provoking?”

  Candice gave me a smug look and shrugged. “It’s amusing. You rise to the bait every time.”

  “Maybe I keep hoping you’ll stop baiting me.”

  Candice scrunched up her wrappers and tossed them in the brown bag. “I’m sorry. I’m doing it out of love.”

  “Okay.”

  “Babe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I was just pulling your leg. I just get ahead of myself sometimes and forget that my humor can be a bit… abrasive.”

  “It’s okay. I forgive you. Only because you brought the burger and onion rings.”

  Candice beamed at me. “Good. I’ll take it.”

  We spent the rest of our lunch talking about the school and the children and Candice’s boutique. She told me all about the new girl she hired, a young woman fresh out of high school who was taking a year off to put some money in her bank before she applied to go to fashion school. According to Candice, she was a promising new employee with a good attitude and even better initiative.

  “She went through and changed some of the store displays while I was in the backroom, writing up the new schedule,” Candice said. “I’ve never had an employee do that before without me telling them.”

  “Well, that’s good. Maybe she’s someone you can share a bit of responsibility with. Someone to help lighten the load for you.”

  “I haven’t given it much thought. But yeah. Maybe.”

  I glanced at the clock. “I hate to kick you out, but the kids are going to be back inside any minute.”

  “Say no more.” Candice sprang to her feet like someone had lit a flame under her ass. She gathered the garbage and dropped it in the wastebasket beside my desk. “I have no interest in hanging out with a bunch of toddlers.”

  “They’re not toddlers. They’re in kindergarten.”

  “Makes no difference to me. If they don’t have all their adult teeth yet and they haven’t cleared four feet tall, I’m not interested.”

  I laughed. “All right, all right. Out you go. I’ll call you later. We’ll make plans for a wine and cheese night soon. Maybe we can watch a cheesy movie.”

  “Just tell me the time and place. I’ll be there.”

  Candice slipped out of my class, and I hollered thank you down the hallway at her back. She waved over her shoulder just as the bell rang, and I could have sworn she jogged a couple of steps to make it around the corner and out the front doors before the school was flooded once more with children.

  I spent the rest of my day working through small math questions with my class. Some of the kids responded really well to the math. Others scrunched up their faces and put their heads down. Some might have even fallen asleep. I wouldn’t have put it past them.

  Most surprisingly, Brady really seemed to enjoy the math. He was engaged, eager, and pretty clever when it came to finding the answer. He participated and wasn’t afraid to ask or answer questions, and I made sure to pull him aside toward the end of the day to tell him how good of a job he was doing.

  “I’m really proud of you, Brady,” I said as he stood beside my desk, smiling at me. “You worked really hard today. Did you like math?”

  Brady nodded.

  “Well, we’ll make sure you get plenty more chances to solve math problems this year. Does that sound good?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Ms. Branson.”

  I gave him a big smile. “You’re so welcome.”

  Brady went back to his cubby, where I had all the kids packing their things to head home for the day. When their parents arrived, I tried to make sure they didn’t have to wait for their kids to get their stuff together. Being a parent was hard, and being able to save them any time in their day was a good opportunity for me to get in their good books.

  As I watched Brady pack his bag, something else caught my eye.

  Olivette was talking to another little girl in the cubby beside hers. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but both of them were smiling, and the other little girl, Sarah, opened her bag and pulled out her lunch box, showing Olivette the princess picture on the lid. It shimmered with glitter, just like Olivette’s unicorn shirt.

  When the bell rang, the kids sat and waited for their parents to pick them up. The younger classes, just the preschoolers and kindergarteners, were not allowed to wait in the hallways for their parents.

  I watched them leave one by one and waved goodbye,
telling them I would see them tomorrow morning.

  Mav arrived second to last. He went straight to Olivette, who greeted him with a big hug, and then he looked around the room until his gaze landed on me.

  I waved.

  Mav walked toward me. Heat rose in my cheeks, and I tried to forget everything Candice had said to me just a couple hours earlier. This was a professional relationship. Nothing more. I didn’t need to get all flustered every time he entered the general vicinity.

  “Hey,” Mav said as Olivette went to pull her bag down from its hook in her cubby. “How did today go?”

  I clasped my hands in front of myself. “Great. I think Olivette might be on her way to making her first friend.”

  Mav’s dark blue eyes widened a smidge. “Seriously?”

  His surprise made me smile. “Seriously. Another little girl named Sarah. I caught them talking at the end of class, and it seemed like there might have been a little connection there.”

  Mav put a hand on his chest. I don’t think he even noticed the breath of relief he blew out. “Wow. Finally. That’s great news.”

  “She’s doing great, Mav. Honestly. I don’t think you have anything to worry about with her. Her confidence is growing. I think she’ll be participating in group activities before you know it, without having to be pushed toward them.”

  Mav watched Olivette over his shoulder as she struggled to zip up her backpack. Then something changed in him. His jaw hardened, and he turned back toward me. “Is it completely out of bounds for me to ask you to dinner?”

  My brain came to a stuttering halt. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “Dinner. Is that allowed between a teacher and a parent?”

  “Um. I don’t—”

  “Because I’d really like to take you to dinner this weekend. Saturday. Seven o’clock.”

  His assertiveness rocked me.

  My brain willed me to say no. But my heart and my body yearned for me to say yes. He’d been on my mind since the first moment I saw him, and I couldn’t deny that I got butterflies in my stomach before and after school just at the thought of seeing him.