by Arlene James
A man she admired had let her know that he found her attractive. She’d almost forgotten what that felt like, if she’d ever actually known, and she was grateful to have been reminded. Yet, as the shock wore off, she found herself fearing this excitement. Jack Tyler was as far above her as the moon. He was an educated man, a former pro football player. It was obvious just by looking at him that he was way out of her league, from the clothes that he wore, to the preppy cut of his hair. They were just too different. She mustn’t forget that. Whatever happened, she must not forget that.
Chapter Four
Jack adjusted himself more comfortably in the recliner, a rolled towel elevating his swollen knee, and settled back to enjoy a little daytime television. He had wrapped ice packs around his knee and swallowed the requisite number of analgesics and prescription anti-inflammatory drugs. But he knew from long experience that the most necessary element in reducing the swelling and accompanying pain was time. Thankfully it was summer, and he could afford to wait it out.
During the school year he would be reduced to hobbling around on crutches and sleeping with ice packs on sheets wet from the condensation, and recovery would take twice as long. But there would always be another episode unless or until he submitted to having the joint replaced. He knew the time was coming when he would have to do just that. He’d only resisted this long because he hadn’t felt he’d had the time to devote to surgery and recovery. He knew now how hollow that excuse was.
What, he couldn’t help wondering, if he were in Heller’s position? He didn’t even want to think about it. Thinking about it made him feel guilty somehow. It made him want to get up out of his chair and head over to her place, helping out any way he could. And that was the problem. He didn’t have any business making himself a regular player over there. If he just hadn’t kissed her, he might have been able to help out now and again without getting in too deep, but the damage had been done. He knew that if he went back to Heller’s now, it wouldn’t be because one of his students needed guidance. It would be personal, very personal, between him and Heller Moore.
And Heller Moore just wasn’t what he figured he ought to be looking for.
No matter how he looked at it, that woman and her family were trouble, big trouble. He’d have to be mad to take on a woman with her experience and background. Any man to come after Carmody Moore was going to have to pay a price for that bum’s maltreatment of the lady. How could she possibly help suspecting every innocent slip of the tongue, every sideways glance, every unforeseen delay? What woman so betrayed and so abused could trust a man again?
Then there was Carmody himself. So untrustworthy a man could not be expected to behave appropriately, which meant that any man involved with Heller Moore would have to accept Carmody as a constant irritant. He was father, after all, to her children, all three of them, and as such could be considered to exert some influence on them, however small. Not a promising prospect for a new man on the scene, no matter how much he might want to help. It was true that they needed help, but God knew it was more than one man could manage alone without devoting himself wholeheartedly to the task.
No, getting involved with Heller Moore was just not a wise move, however much he admired her spirit and dedication and despite the strong physical attraction. He had done what he considered his duty by Cody. Now it was time to pull back. If he’d had an ounce of sense, he wouldn’t have gone into the store that day, let alone offer her a ride, then check on her children and wind up baby-sitting. And that kiss.
He groaned aloud just at the memory of it. Nothing could have prepared him for what had happened the instant he’d touched his lips to hers. He wasn’t certain even now where it might have led if that little banshee hadn’t interrupted them. Good grief, to be saved from one’s self by a screaming two-year-old! No, he shouldn’t go back there. And since he’d always prided himself on being a reasonable, sensible man with a strong sense of duty and a genuine calling to his vocation, he wouldn’t. Except that he did.
He didn’t mean to. All the time the swelling was going down in his knee, he congratulated himself on making such a sensible decision. Yet he couldn’t help wondering how Heller was holding up. What was going on with her? Were the kids well? He even wanted to know if Betty’s friend had patched up her marriage, silly as that seemed. He sometimes found his attention wandering from the game shows, old movies and endless talk shows to some memory of something Heller had said or done or how she had looked at a particular moment, and his dreams were filled with replays of that kiss and imaginative scenarios of what might have happened if Davy hadn’t screamed bloody murder. Still, he told himself that he was going to stay away—right up to the moment he turned his sedan into the trailer park.
His timing was excellent. It happened to be Heller’s day off. Her old car was parked in the front yard. He could hear the baby screaming from the street, even over the chaotic din of a childish argument.
“I did not!”
“Did, too!”
“So what if I did? You’re a mean, stingy, old snot nose, and I hate you!”
“Do not! We’re not allowed to hate—”
“Do, too!”
“I’m telling! Mom?”
“Snitch! Tattletale! Rat fink!”
“Shut up!”
“Make me, snot-nose-rat-fink-yellow-belly!”
Jack recognized all too well the signs of an argument about to become a brawl. Without even thinking, he pounded up the steps, opened the door and strode in. Cody and a small, blond six-year-old virago were clawing and pummeling and rolling in a flurry of arms and legs on the edge of the couch, while Davy stood to one side screaming like he’d had his leg cut off without aid of anesthesia. Heller was coming at them from the end of the hallway, her face pale, eyes wide, but Jack got to them first. He got a handful of shirt on each one and pulled them apart, his deep voice booming, “Enough!”
Cody and the girl went instantly limp. Their mouths ajar, heads tilted back, they stared up at him like Aladdin seeing the genie for the first time. In that same instant Heller swooped down on Davy, scooped him up and stumbled with him across the room to collapse upon a dining chair, the toddler sniffing and huffing in her lap.
“That’s better,” Jack said to the two contestants, but his concern was already centered on Heller. He pushed Cody down on one end of the couch and lifted the girl, who was doubtlessly Cody’s younger sister, onto the opposite end. He shook a finger in their faces. “I’ll deal with you in a minute, and I don’t want to hear another sound out of either of you until then.”
Cody dropped his gaze shamefully, but his sister just leaned back and folded her arms, driving daggers into Jack with her mother’s blue eyes. Another hellion. He found himself liking her on the spot, though the emotion was anything but mutual. He turned his back on her baleful glare and walked over to the small dinette table where Heller rested her head in her hands, Davy glued to her midsection like paint on a wall. The table was littered with breakfast dishes. Jack pulled out the chair next to her and sat down.
“Heller?”
She lifted her head with great effort, and her mouth curled into that crooked, wry little smile of hers. He saw the pain in her eyes, recognized it instantly and guessed its source.
“Headache?”
She gritted her teeth and attempted a nod, but finding that simple gesture too painful, she swallowed and whispered, “Splitting.”
Davy sighed and rubbed his face against her breasts, drying his tears. Jack got up and went to the cabinet from which he had seen her remove the aspirin bottle. He heard a hiss of protest behind him and turned to find that Heller’s daughter had angled her body and was pressing a toe against her brother’s thigh. “That’s quite enough, young lady,” Jack admonished in his best principal’s voice. She jerked her foot back and glared murderously at him. Jack took down the aspirin bottle and a drinking glass, which he filled with water and carried to the table.
“Let’s get these down you,�
�� he said, “and then I’ll make some coffee. Caffeine might help.”
She gulped down the aspirin obediently, and he busied himself making coffee for the two of them. When it was brewing, he walked back into the living room and stared down at the two children pouting there. After a moment Cody opened his mouth to make his case.
“She drank my chocolate milk!”
“You got more than me, greedy guts!”
“I’m bigger!”
“So—”
Jack shut them up by bending and placing a big hand flat on each narrow chest. “I don’t care who did what,” he told them sternly. “Your mother has a headache, and all this arguing is making it worse.” Both shot guilty glances in her direction, but Jack didn’t cut them any slack. “The least you could do is take the argument outside, but I warn you—if it deteriorates into blows again, I’ll have to intervene again, and I won’t be happy about it. Am I making myself clear?”
Both nodded glumly. Jack straightened. “Fine. Now let this be the end of it.”
Cody nodded, but the only conciliatory gesture his sister was willing to make was simply to turn her head away from both him and Jack. At least she couldn’t kill him with her eyes that way, Jack told himself as he moved back to Heller’s side.
“Show me where it hurts.”
“What are you,” she croaked, “my guardian angel?”
“Could be.” He slid his hands into her hair, massaging her scalp with his fingertips. When he worked his way down to the nape of her neck, she put her head back and sighed. “That’s it.” He rotated his thumbs against the tendons, applying pressure to the blood vessels beneath the skin.
Heller dropped her head back into his hands and closed her eyes. “Ahhhh.”
“This is a tension headache,” he said evenly. “The blood vessels are distended. Cutting down the blood flow will lessen the throbbing.”
“Ummm,” she said. Davy stuck his fingers in his mouth and gazed up at him with big eyes, safe in his mother’s lap.
Jack kept up the pressure until the coffeepot stopped sputtering. Then he went to pour two cups and carry them over to the table. Meanwhile, the two on the couch had forgotten their quarrel and occupied themselves otherwise, Cody with a comic book he’d picked up off the floor. The girl was on her knees on the couch, staring out the window and making kissing sounds to a bird on the tree limb just outside. Davy got down off his mother’s lap and toddled over to lean against Cody, who eyed him suspiciously and demanded to know if he wanted to go potty. Jack realized then that the child was wearing training pants. An improvement, he decided, and proof that Heller wasn’t trying to keep him a baby.
He sat down next to Heller, but kept a wary eye out for trouble from the bubble gum section. “Feeling better?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it’s letting up. Thanks.”
“Just returning the favor,” he said, sipping his coffee.
She did likewise, then said, “How is your knee?”
“Fine. Fine as it’s ever going to be.”
She looked at him over her cup, her gaze level and open. It occurred to him that she hadn’t been the least bit surprised to find him in her living room again. “Can’t they do anything about it?” she asked.
He nodded. “They can replace it.”
“When you decide to let them,” she deduced correctly. “Why haven’t you?”
He shrugged. “Well, it’s not foolproof. I could wind up with one leg shorter than the other.”
“So you’d limp?”
He nodded.
“You limp, anyway,” she pointed out pragmatically. “The only difference would be that it wouldn’t hurt.”
He chuckled. “True, but it takes some recovery time—”
“Oh, and you’re so busy saving the world you just can’t spare a few days to fix your leg.”
He opened his mouth to refute that, then shut it again. What was the use? She would see through any excuse he made. Finally he said, only partly teasing, “It’s part of the tough guy persona.”
“Tough guy with a heart like melted butter. That stuff might work on the football field, Tyler, but I doubt it pertains to elementary education.”
“Hey,” he said, “those kids will eat you alive if you show them the slightest weakness.”
“Who said a soft heart was a weakness? I happen to respect a guy with genuine concern for the other fellow. And I’ll tell you something—they’re too few and far between.”
He couldn’t stop a grin from breaking out. “Is that so?”
“Take it from someone who knows.”
He had a snappy comeback perched on the tip of his tongue, but he’d been watching from the corner of his eye as Davy stooped and fished under the couch with one chubby hand, coming up with a fat dust bunny, which was naturally headed for his mouth. “Don’t eat that!” Jack barked instinctively.
Everybody in the room froze except Heller, who turned in her seat to see what was going on. Little Davy jerked to a halt, dust bunny poised above an opened mouth. A heartbeat later he wet his pants, pee streaming down his legs and spattering over the floor. He was screaming before it puddled at his feet, the pouf of dust crushed in grimy little fingers. Chaos erupted once more, with Cody and the girl both scolding loudly. Heller took one look at Jack’s face and put her head back and howled with laughter. He felt lower than a snake’s belly, scaring the kid like that, and it didn’t help that Heller was having a good laugh at his expense—again.
“Tyler,” she gasped between gales, “you’re great at most things, but potty training isn’t one of them!”
“I didn’t know he’d do that,” he grumbled. “He was going to eat dirt!”
She got up, still chortling. “Well, now he can make mud pies. I suppose it’s my fault because I haven’t checked to be sure Betty is doing the dusting, not that I have much chance to. Come on, screamer. Let’s get you changed.” She picked up Davy by the armpits and carried him down the hall.
Jack got up and grabbed a roll of paper towels from the top of the refrigerator. Ignoring the girl’s accusatory glare, he tore off towels and dropped them over the mess on the floor, prodding them with the toe of his shoe to make certain they soaked up everything. At least the kid hadn’t been standing on the braided rug. When he had the floor wiped up, he looked around for additional cleaning supplies, coming up with an appropriate liquid, but he had to go back to the kids for help after that.
“Where do you keep the mop?” he asked the pair of them.
The girl slid off the couch and pattered a wide path around the wet spot on the floor to the kitchen. She stuck her arm into the dark, narrow space between the refrigerator and the wall and came out first with a broom and then a mop. Next she opened the cabinet door under the sink and removed a pail, which she put in the sink. She plunked the mop head into the sink, hopped up onto the edge of the counter and turned on the water. Jack walked over to the sink and reached around her for the handle of the pail. She slung an elbow, making him back up, and hopped down again, turning on him with a purely venomous face.
“I’ll do it myself! You got no right to! It was your fault, anyhow!”
“All the more reason I should clean it up,” he said flatly. He stepped up to the sink, turned off the water, squeezed a small amount of detergent into the pail and carried the whole into the living room, fully aware of the baleful glare drilling into his back.
She followed him back into the living area, silent and reproachful while he wrung out the mop. When he lowered the mop head and began to swab, she lurched forward and grabbed hold of the handle. “I can do it!”
“Punk!” her brother scolded. “Behave.”
Jack waved him into silence and released the mop handle. “Fine,” he said, backing away. “Have it.”
She awkwardly pushed and pulled the mop around in front of the couch, then stopped to sling pale blond hair out of her face.
“Finished?” Jack inquired.
She nodded curtly.
He took the mop out of her hands, nudged her out of the way and swabbed beneath the couch, angling both the mop and his body to get back into the corners. The girl instantly reacted.
“Stop that! You got no right! What are you comin’ around here for, anyway? Nobody wants you to!”
“Punk, that’s enough!” Heller’s voice cracked like a whip, silencing the girl and bringing everything in the room to a halt.
Stopped in the act of sliding off the couch, Cody’s eyes were big with misery, moving Jack to lay his big hand comfortingly on the top of the boy’s head. Cody smiled up at him gratefully. Jack could hear “Punk” grinding her teeth.
Heller put her hands to her hips and looked down at her daughter. “You owe Mr. Tyler an apology. He was just trying to help.”
“But, Mom, it was his fault! He made Davy do it.”
“She’s right, Heller. I shouldn’t have shouted—”
To his surprise she pointed a finger in his face. “You keep quiet. This is my ill-mannered daughter here, and I will deal with her.”
He had to bite his lips to keep from grinning. “Yes, ma’am.”
She turned her attention back to Punk. “That chip on your shoulder is growing, young lady, and I’m sick of it. When you start abusing guests in our home, you’ve gone too far, and I won’t stand for it. Do you hear?”
To Jack’s consternation, the girl’s blue eyes, so like her mother’s, filled with tears. “He doesn’t belong here,” she said thickly.
“He’s a guest, Punk, and a welcome one. Now you mind your manners, or I’m taking a belt to your behind.”
Jack felt miserable. “Heller, could we talk this over, please?”
“Will you let me handle this?” she snapped, a hand going to her head, which he knew was bound to be pounding again.
Jack leaned on the mop and hung his head, wishing he’d kept his big mouth shut from the moment Davy had come up with that dust bunny. How much harm could a mouthful of dirt do a kid, anyway?