Romancing The Teacher

And then that engaging grin of his took over, turning everything in its path to jelly. Or worse.

He glanced over her head through the window and his expression changed. It made her think of a prisoner who had just seen his parole papers placed on the warden’s desk. “Looks like my ride’s here.”

“Your ride?” she echoed, turning around to see for herself. She saw a light-blue Corvette pull up right before the front steps.

He nodded, rolling down his sleeves and buttoning them at his wrist.

“The state of California doesn’t want me driving around right now. Something about people not being safe on the streets. See you, Kitty. We’ll talk more next time.” And then he winked at her just before he left the premises.

She tried not to notice that something in her stomach fluttered in response.

Chapter Four

“I know, I know,” Lisa called out even before she made it across the threshold, her key still in the lock. Removing the key and closing the door behind her, she dropped her purse beneath the coatrack and kicked off her shoes, an indication that she was officially home. “I’m late. Sorry.”

The words were addressed to her mother who she knew would be somewhere within the vicinity of the front door. Widowed, Susan Kittridge had moved in with her just after a bullet to the hip had terminated her career with the Bedford police force. Unable to remain on the sidelines, her mother had gotten a job with a nationwide security firm, taking the evening shift so that there would always be someone home for Casey.

Lisa flashed her mother an apologetic look. She knew that the woman was due at work soon.

Without missing a beat, Susan crossed to the entrance and picked up both the purse and the shoes. Depositing them in the hall closet, her mother feigned innocence.

“I didn’t say anything.” Susan closed the closet door firmly.

Lisa gave her mother a knowing look. “But you were thinking it.”

Susan laughed softly, shaking her head. “My daughter, the mind reader.” Because she didn’t really have to leave for another twenty minutes, Susan paused and gave herself a few minutes just to talk. Conversations were rare between them lately. Words were tossed around on the fly as Lisa hurried off in the morning and she at night. “You know, the FBI probably has a great opening for someone with your talent.”

Maybe she was feeling edgy, but she took her mother’s words as a criticism. She was in no mood to defend herself or get into a verbal battle. “It’s been a long day, Mom.”

“And this makes it different—how?”

About to retort, Lisa stopped herself. There was no reason to take offense. She knew her mother hadn’t intended her question that way. She was just being testy. It was all Malone’s fault, she thought. From start to finish.

“You’re right. But the shelter got saddled with one of these community service people this afternoon…”

Which meant that she got saddled with him, Lisa thought grudgingly, her voice trailing off. After all, Muriel could only do so much and since the funds had been cut, there was no money for a full-time assistant. The powers that be expected Muriel to do it all, or to depend on volunteers and court-ordered penitents doing atoning servitude.

Like Malone.

Ordinarily, she wouldn’t even give the community service people a second thought. But Malone had not only gotten a second thought from her, but a third and fourth one as well. The very fact that he kept preying on her mind bothered her more than she could say.

Susan waited. When her daughter didn’t say anything further, she coaxed, “Yes?”

Lisa shrugged. “There’s just something so irritating about him.”

Susan smiled and shook her head. She knew that Lisa sometimes grew impatient with people who weren’t as dedicated as she was. She was like that about teaching as well. As much as she loved her daughter sometimes, Lisa took herself too seriously. “You just have to remember that not everyone is as holy as you are.”

About to go upstairs to check on her son, Lisa stopped dead and swung around to look at her mother. That made it sound as if she looked down her nose at everyone and that just wasn’t true. “Mom!”

“Well, you try to be,” Susan replied matter-of-factly. There was affection in her eyes, as well as concern. “I’m still trying to figure out what you’re trying to prove, but then, I was never very good at puzzling things like that out. Probably why I never made detective,” she added philosophically.

“You didn’t make detective because you never studied for the exam. You liked being out on the street too much,” Lisa reminded her, then added with a touch of indignation, “And I’m not trying to prove anything—”

Now here they had a difference of opinion and of the two of them, Susan thought, she was the one who had the clearer picture.

“Other than the fact that you’re superwoman disguised as the not-so-mild-mannered Lisa Kittridge?” Before Lisa could protest, Susan cited the positions on her daughter’s unwritten résumé. “Super-mother, super-teacher, super-volunteer. On the daughter front,” Susan held out her hand and waffled it a little from side to side, “not so much, but as for the rest of it—”

Lisa sighed, running a hand through her straight black hair. She supposed her mother had a point. She was an overachiever. But then, she always had been.

“So I’m enthusiastic. Is it so wrong to be enthusiastic?”

There was enthusiasm and then there was compulsion. Susan worried that her daughter was leaning toward the latter. She had been ever since Matt had been killed by that drunk driver. “24–7? Yes, it’s wrong. Baby, you’re burning the candle at both ends.”

Susan saw a familiar look slip over Lisa’s face. The look that said her stubborn daughter was shutting down. And that no trespassers were welcomed. “My candle, Mother.”

“Yes,” Susan agreed. “And Casey’s,” she reminded her quietly.

At the mention of her son’s name, Lisa’s eyes widened. “Casey. Omigod, Casey.” For a moment, she’d forgotten all about him. A wave of guilt washed over her. “Was he very upset when he found out I wasn’t going to be home in time to read his story to him before he went to bed?”

Susan allowed herself a smile as she shook her head. “No.”

That didn’t sound like her Casey, Lisa thought. Was he coming down with something? “No?”

“No,” Susan repeated. “Because Casey didn’t go to bed.”

“He didn’t?” Lisa didn’t finish as she looked over her shoulder and up the stairs. It was almost eight o’clock. Casey has a seven o’clock bedtime. Occasionally, seven-thirty. “He’s still up?”

Susan nodded. She went to the hall closet and retrieved her purse, which looked like a smaller version of a knapsack but served her purpose well. “In his room, waiting for you to tell him what happened to the Indian in the Cupboard.”

Lisa sighed. That was the title of the book they were currently reading each night. Her son could be very willful when he wanted to be. But she’d thought that her mother could deal with that, given the strength of her personality. Obviously she hadn’t factored in the grandmother-pushover component. “Mom, why didn’t you get him into bed?”

“Oh, he’s in bed all right.” Susan passed the strap over her head and onto the opposite shoulder, messenger fashion. “Sleeping is another matter. He’s his mother’s son,” Susan told her daughter pointedly. “As I recall, I could never make you do anything you didn’t want to do even at that young, tender age, either.”

Lisa didn’t bother wasting any more time discussing who was the adult here. Besides, her mother had to leave for work. And she had one young man to put in his place. Taking the stairs two at a time, she raced up to the small bedroom that was opposite hers.

The door to her son’s room was ajar and she looked in. Casey was sitting in bed, propped up by the three extra pillows that were up against his headboard. His eyelids were drooping but they flew open immediately as the door opened.

When he saw his mother, a smile flashed across his lips, gone the next moment as he struggled to be a miniature adult instead of a five-year-old.

“You’re late,” he told her in a voice that sounded way too old to please her.

“Yes, I know, and I’m sorry.” Crossing to his bed, she turned the lights down a notch, bringing shadows out from the backyard and casting them onto the ceiling. “Couldn’t be helped.”

“How come you always help all those kids but you forget about me?”

Sitting down on the bed beside her son, Lisa slipped her arm around his shoulders and kissed the top of his head. Casey’s hair was straight and the color of newly minted gold. Like his father’s had been, she recalled. But Casey’s smile, his eyes, his manner, they all belonged to her side of the family. To her.

“I don’t forget about you,” she insisted in a voice filled with love and patience. “It’s just that those kids have nobody and you have me, you have G-Mama, you have Uncle Frank. You have lots of people who love you very much,” she emphasized. “The kids I see have next to nothing and no one.” She went on stroking Casey’s hair. The soft, silky feel was soothing. “I met a little girl today. She’s around your age. And she can’t read.”