Joe tried to reach that comfortable state of ennui

The one he liked to wallow in right before the start of a new school year. But everything felt as if it was slipping out of his grasp. As if Emily Sullivan had ripped all the self-indulgent pleasure out of his back-to-school misery and twisted it into something…something even more twisted than usual.

Ideas crackled through his brain like static. He couldn’t stop considering all the possibilities, imagining all the delights of an ongoing ideological duel with a well-educated, intelligent adversary. The thrust and parry that could be played out before a captive but fascinated adolescent audience. It was tempting. It was intriguing. It was downright stimulating.

But Joe didn’t want to be tempted or intrigued. He certainly didn’t want to be stimulated. And definitely not by some chirpy student teacher with short skirts and big, wide eyes. Eyes with sparkly silver spikes that…

Stop right there. Get a grip, Wisniewski.

Joe took a deep breath, but regretted it instantly. There, just beneath the odors of musty texts and stale coffee, was a faint trace of something fresh and floral.

It was going to be a long, long year.

Dear Reader,

All of us have been touched, in some way, by special teachers who opened our lives to the possibilities beyond the classroom basics. In Learning Curve, Emily and Joe are given a chance to say thank-you for the lessons they’ve learned.

The teachers I tend to remember are those who shoved me out of my comfort zone and dared me to try something new. One of them told me I should try to write a book, and even though I laughed at the time and waited more than ten years to follow his advice, his praise meant enough to make me take that first uncomfortable step into a new world. This book is dedicated to him—my own small way of saying thank-you.

I’d love to hear from my readers! Please come for a visit to my Web site at www.terrymclaughlin.com, or find me at www.wetnoodleposse.com or www.superauthors.com, or write to me at P.O. Box 5838, Eureka, CA 95002.

Wishing you plenty of happily-ever-after reading,

Terry McLaughlin

LEARNING CURVE
Terry McLaughlin

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Professor Tom Gage, who told me I could write—

and then made me believe it, too.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER ONE

JOSEPH P. WISNIEWSKI listened to the slap and shuffle of his Birkenstocks echo along the empty corridor of Caldwell High School. He knew where his steps were taking him, but he wasn’t sure why anymore. That echo seemed to ping around the empty spaces inside him, searching for the answer.

He’d give himself until the end of the term to figure things out or hand in his resignation. To quit teaching.

He navigated a crooked course along the wide vinyl hall dulled by Mr. Stenquist’s ineffective floor wax, avoiding the sunlight flooding through the open classroom doors to nurse his hangover in the shadows. It wouldn’t be so easy to detour around the back-to-school business with his fellow faculty that was sure to nudge his early-morning headache into a mid-afternoon migraine.

“Suck it up, Wisniewski,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over the last batch of four-day stubble he’d feel until deep into Thanksgiving vacation. “This is why you get paid the big bucks.” Steeling himself to confront another school year, he shouldered his way through the office door.

Linda Miller glanced up from her command post behind the reception counter. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

Joe’s grimace eased into a smile. The middle-aged secretary’s crusty personality masked a gooey cream center. Linda might be mouthier than the average clerk, but she anted up pay phone coins for teen crises and found more niches for hopeless grads than the local armed forces recruiting office. “Hey, Linda.”

“What? No tan from the tropics? No handwoven shirt from Nepal? No bruises from a dustup with a jealous husband? Exactly what kind of summer vacation did you take?”

“The restful kind.” He turned to pull two months’ junk mail and memos out of his office box. “And I told you that black eye was a misunderstanding. Pamela was legally separated. The divorce decree was in the mail.”

“Hmmph.” She came around the counter with her nose in the air, sniffing with a smirk. “Aramis. A seductive scent. With undertones of Excedrin and Scope that almost disguise the subtle hint of too much Scotch.”

“Come on, Linda. Even you can’t smell Excedrin.”

“No, but I can see that whatever you took isn’t living up to its advertising.” She pinned him to the wall with a look that made him feel like he was ten years old and smeared with enough incriminating evidence to get grounded for life. “Just look at yourself. What a waste of tall, dark and handsome, not to mention all that education. Have you ever once used those over-the-top looks or that under-the-radar charm to pursue anyone suitable to be the mother of your children?” She shook her head. “You know, your brains are interesting enough when they aren’t pickled, and your conversation’s kind of pleasant when you bother to move beyond the grunting stage.”

Because he was just about to grunt a response before moving out of firing range, Joe stood his ground, resigned to taking a few more lumps. Knowing Linda, they were coming.

“Shame on you. Forty years old and nothing much to show for it.”

“Thirty-nine.”

“The way you look today, fifty would have been a generous guess.” She wagged a scolding finger under his nose. “Well, it looks like you’re finally going to pay the piper.”

The waving finger made his stomach pitch and roll. “I’m really not in the mood for a lecture on overindulgence at the moment.”

“That’s right—when it comes to lecturing, you’re the pro. But I’m not talking about talk.”

Something about the gleam in her eyes set off alarm bells that intensified the throbbing in his head. “What is it? What’s going on?”

The phone interrupted. Linda’s lips spread in a smile that hinted of hell on earth. “Duty calls,” she said, patting his arm before she retreated to her post. “Duty calls us all, sooner or later.”

He followed her into the cramped area behind the counter, dumping his unread mail into the wastebasket. Carefully nudging the clutter on her desk aside with one hip, he settled in to wait while she recited the late registration litany for a new parent.

“…Yes, I’m sure that would be all right, Joyce.” She tried to wave him away, but he dodged and stuck. “Donny can take the forms home Monday after classes.”

“Tell me,” he said with a growl when she dropped the receiver back in its cradle.

She folded her hands over a stack of fall sports schedules. “Maybe if you kept in touch, you wouldn’t come back to nasty little surprises.”

Behind him, another door clicked open. “Joe?”

“Speaking of nasty little surprises,” Linda muttered under her breath.

He turned to see Kyle Walford, Caldwell’s principal, step out of his office. Joe’s headache shifted into migraine mode ahead of schedule.

“Joe, buddy. Looking good.” Kyle swept a hand through his hair and smoothed down his tie as he moved toward the reception area. Joe wondered, not for the first time, how Kyle’s wife got the greasy stuff out of his ties. Then he wondered if there was any way to get out of grasping that same hand when Kyle offered it in greeting.

“Where have you been?” said Kyle. “I tried calling you all day yesterday.”

“That’s odd. There was no message on my machine.”

Kyle threw a companionable arm around Joe’s shoulders, an awkward position for them both since Joe was several inches taller. “Well, you’re here now, and there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

“I was going to check on a few things before the faculty meeting.” Joe dug his heels deep into his Birkenstocks, resisting Kyle’s attempt to maneuver him into the principal’s office. “I don’t want to be late.”

“You can’t be late if I’m not there,” Kyle pointed out, flashing even, white caps.

Joe remembered that Kyle’s smile had been bartered for a local dentist’s outfield billboard. He didn’t smile back. “Who is it that’s important enough to keep everyone waiting?”

“Well, Joe…it’s your student teacher.”

It wasn’t often that Joe got angry enough to worry about high blood pressure. But he could feel the adrenaline pumping through his system now. There it was, coiling in his gut and rippling along his jaw. He didn’t want his classroom turned into some sort of petri dish, didn’t want a stranger probing into the hows and whys of what he did—especially when he didn’t know how and why himself anymore. He just wanted to get his job done and make his escape every afternoon shortly after three o’clock. “I don’t have student teachers, Kyle.”

“Plenty of teachers do, sooner or later.” Kyle playfully punched Joe’s arm. “And now it’s your turn.”

“I don’t have student teachers, Kyle.”

“You’ve got one now.” Kyle’s fingers twitched a bit as he smoothed his already smooth tie. “Come on into my office and I’ll introduce you.”

EMILY SULLIVAN RECROSSED her legs, right over left this time, and reminded herself not to swing the suspended foot. Bruising the principal’s shins wasn’t the way to make a professional impression.

She reached down to tug at the hem of her skirt and watched it snap back into place a couple of inches above her knees, just like it had snapped back the other six times she’d tugged at it. Maybe she should have gone with the ankle-length skirt. Oh, well. No use second-guessing her morning fashion decision—and she did tend to step on that longer skirt and trip when getting out of chairs. Tripping and falling flat on her face probably created a less professional appearance than swinging a shin-bruising foot.

How could anyone relax in the principal’s office? Okay, the principal probably managed just fine. And at least she wasn’t staring at the fake walnut paneling from a juvenile delinquent’s point of view.

A delinquent adult’s, maybe. Her family certainly seemed to think so. That was why she had to clinch this student teaching assignment. It was her last, best chance to launch her grown-up life—even if, at twenty-nine, she was rusting on the launch pad. She’d studied subjects from anthropology to zoology, she’d waited tables in Dublin and sold perfume in Marseilles. She’d done just about everything but decide what to do with her life, blithely hopping from one campus, one major, one country, one job, to another. Now it was time to choose a career and stick with it. She’d run out of hopping room.

Kyle walked in, wearing his alligator-on-campaign grin. A dark, rangy man trailed him into the room, closed the door, and slouched against it, his hands in his pockets. Emily got a brief impression of worn jeans, wrinkled white shirt, black hair in need of a trim and waves of hostility.

“Emily Sullivan,” said Kyle, “meet Joe Wisniewski.”

She rose, hand extended, lifting her chin to look her new master teacher straight in his bloodshot eyes. So this was The Wiz, the infamous seducer of impressionable young minds and restless older women. He was exactly what she’d imagined, right down to the scruffy sandals.

What she hadn’t imagined was the potent appeal tucked inside the Heathcliff packaging. The sexual left hook knocked the wind out of her before she saw it coming.

“How do you do?” she managed to ask when she got her breath back.

Silence. Emily fought the urge to tug at her skirt until it morphed into a shroud. She wanted to wear it as she slipped into the hole in the ground she felt opening beneath her. And just when the absence of sound or movement had stretched her nerves to the snapping point, The Wiz shrugged away from the door and took her hand in his.

“Fine,” he said. His dark laser beam stare locked in on Kyle. “Just fine. Thanks.”

Emily slipped her hand out of his oversize grip and sank back into her chair. She would have preferred to dive under it instead, to tuck her head in the emergency position and pray that the impending nuclear blast didn’t spew too much radiation in her direction. Something was wrong—understatement alert. The tension in this office was a palpable, living thing. A thing with pastrami breath and a sinus condition, camped at an open fire. Which would explain why it was getting so warm in here. And hard to breathe. She tried to swallow without gulping out loud.

“So…” Kyle’s smile wavered a bit at the edges. “You might remember Emily’s brother, Joe. Jack Sullivan?”

Another marathon silence followed the question. Then, with a flick of a glance in Emily’s direction, Joe grunted. “I might.”

“He was a senior the first year you taught here at Caldwell, wasn’t he?” Kyle didn’t wait for Joe’s answer. “You made a big impression on young Jack, I hear. A big impression.”

The Wiz might have been carved in stone, except for the tiny muscle rippling along his jaw.

Kyle vaulted over another conversation chasm. “Jack Sullivan, Senior, was mighty impressed, too, I understand.”

“Is that so?”

Emily winced. She supposed that “impressed” was one way to describe sputtering, splotchy-faced outrage.

Actually, the member of the Sullivan clan who was the most enthralled, the most entranced, the most impressed by The Great and Powerful Wiz was impressionable thirteen-year-old Emily. She would sit in her spot at the Sullivan dining room table, swinging both feet, quietly devouring Jack’s civics class quote of the day and the delicious debates that followed like servings of dessert.

She’d never taken her turn in the classroom of the man behind the uproar. Shortly after Jack’s graduation, her parents had moved from the tiny mill town of Issimish to shorten Dad’s hour-long commute to his job in Seattle. And her fascination with the infamous Mr. Wisniewski had tangled with her fantasies into a knotty teenage crush.

Joe shifted his attention in her direction. “Is that so?” he asked again in that soft, dangerous voice.

“Yes, it is.” Time to focus on her goal, stiffen her backbone, and turn on the charm. She smiled her best Innocent-Your-Honor smile. “Quite an impression. In fact, that’s what brings me here.”

JOE CLIMBED THE STAIRS to the second floor of Caldwell’s main building that afternoon and headed toward his room. He shoved his hands into his pockets, silently cursing the unnatural alignment of crater-plowing asteroids, planet-destroying supernovas, galaxy-sucking black holes and all other cosmic disasters that had sent Ms. Emily Sullivan into his path, not to mention his classroom.

God. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was chirpiness. Emily Sullivan could give chirping lessons to a million yellow puffballs carpeting a commercial chicken incubator. And, as if her own big-blue-eyed version wasn’t bad enough, she’d gone and spread it like a virus, infecting the male portion of the Caldwell High faculty within minutes of bouncing into the conference room. She’d had them eating out of her fluttery little hands—right after they’d finished tripping over their tongues at her long-legged, short-skirted entrance.

Ed Brock, senior class adviser, had never been so animated about homecoming plans before Emily piped up with a few suggestions. Russell Strand, head math geek, almost choked in his own bow tie when she giggled a wrinkle-nosed giggle over one of his DOA puns. And the football coach couldn’t speak at all for a few moments after Emily’s blond curls brushed over his cheek as she reached to collect her complimentary season pass.

Even the female faculty members weren’t immune to Emily’s enthusiasm, applauding her proposal for a benefit debut performance of the annual spring play. Joe hated contagious enthusiasm almost as much as chirpiness, especially when it was the fund-raising kind. Most fund-raisers were a big waste of time, as far as he was concerned. They played havoc with scheduling, burned holes in the ozone layer and brought in approximately seventeen cents per hour of mental and manual labor. And now he was stuck with trying to round up student volunteers for the theatrical benefit.

Stuck. Stuck with a student teacher he hadn’t expected and didn’t want. Stuck with the administrative duties for a social studies department chair sidelined with complications from a difficult pregnancy. He was tempted to dump his student teacher on his chair’s long-term sub. It would be his personal social chemistry experiment: mix one part ignorance and two parts incompetence. No danger of an explosion—the school board had sputtered along for years on a similar formula.

He popped another couple of pain relievers and slipped through his classroom door, hoping to turn the lock for a few moments of peace and privacy. But Ms. Sullivan had already invaded this space, too. There she was: probing.

He watched her bend over to read the caption of a faded political cartoon pinned to the bottom edge of one of his bulletin boards. And he tried, he really did try not to notice the way that short skirt slid up the backs of those long, shapely thighs, or the way one of those blond party streamers slipped across her forehead to tease the tip of her turned-up nose.

God. Even her hair was chirpy.

Because he resented having to roll his own tongue off the floor and back into his mouth, he growled a bit more than usual. “There must have been an incredible flood of last-minute student teachers this year. I thought the university avoided placing them in out-of-the-way districts like Issimish, especially when there are so many more options closer to Seattle.”

“That’s right.” She straightened and turned to face him. “I was the one who suggested Caldwell. I asked my university adviser to pull some strings to get me assigned here. Specifically, to work with you.”

“Why?”

She twisted her hands together. “Because of what you did to my brother.”

“Jack?”

“Yes.”

Joe pulled his hands out of his pockets. “What did I do to Jack?”

“You inspired him.”

“No.” Joe felt something like panic welling up inside. “I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.” She took a step forward. “You changed his life. For a little while, anyway. But you did.”

He frowned and moved away from her. Around behind his desk, where it was safe.

She followed, facing him across its scarred oak surface. “You encouraged him to think, for the first time, his own thoughts, to question all the ideas that had been handed to him.” She ran a finger along a crooked gouge. “It may have been a brief deflection, but it was an important one. I think it was very important—downright momentous, in fact—that Jack took those first wobbly steps off the family’s well-beaten path.”

Joe didn’t want to be held responsible for anyone’s first wobbly steps, or for anything momentous. And he really didn’t want to be a human detour sign. Not unless it meant he could make Emily Sullivan disappear.

She turned back to the bulletin board and pointed at the curling slips of yellowed paper. “I’ll bet some of these headlines are the same ones you pinned up on your bulletin board the first year you taught here. The same ones that were here when Jack was sitting in this room.”

“I’m not big on redecorating. If you want the bulletin update job, it’s yours.”

Joe regretted the offer the moment he heard himself make it. It sounded like he was knuckling under and accepting the situation. But what else could he do? There she stood with those big blue eyes and those tousled curls and those odd little curves at the corners of her mouth that made her look like she was smiling even when she wasn’t.

She couldn’t be smiling all the time. Could she?

And what had he been regretting and resenting before he got sidetracked? Oh, yeah—there she stood, in her newly assigned spot, expecting some newly assigned duties. “There.” He waved in the direction of a particularly ragged display. “If you decide to stay, and if I decide you can—and that’s a couple of big ifs—there’s your first assignment.”

Emily laughed. Joe watched her nose scrunch up and felt a throat-constricting kinship with Russell and his bow tie.

“I wouldn’t dream of touching these bulletin boards,” she said. “They’re absolutely you. Look at this.” She walked over to one and then turned, crooking a finger in invitation.

Joe didn’t want to deal with overt invitations. Or covert invitations, or invert invitations, or any other kind of invitation that would lure him too close. “I know what’s on my walls.”

“Come on and take a look.” The finger kept curling, tugging at him with hypnotic pale pink nail polish. “Please.”

He scuffed across the room and leaned down to squint at a faded editorial on Ford’s pardon of Nixon. It was hard not to notice her fresh, floral scent competing with eau de chalk dust and essence of floor wax, but he thought he was doing an admirable job of blocking it out. “Yeah. Ford. Nixon. So?”

“There’s nothing here about Nixon going to China. I checked.”

“Try a little word association with just about anyone you meet. Nixon, Watergate. Nixon, crook. Not Nixon, China.”

Emily straightened, smiling her tilt-edged smile. “That’s my point, exactly.”

“Glad you made it. I’d be even gladder to get it.”

She leaned in a bit and lowered her voice. “You are, and I quote, ‘a corrupter of innocent young minds.’”

“Jack Senior, right?”

He thought he saw her wince before she nodded. “Yes.”

“You asked for this teaching assignment to upset your father?”

“Actually, my father finds my choice of a student teaching assignment…fascinating.” She linked her fingers under her chin and gazed up at him with something that looked suspiciously like admiration. “I want to inspire students, the way you inspired my brother. I want to watch you in action, to try to figure out how you do it.”

“No.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. The look on her face was drying up all his spit. “I mean, I don’t know for sure that I do it. If I do do it, I’m not sure how. And even if I thought I could do it, and knew how to do it, I know for sure I don’t know how to show anyone else how to do it.”

Time out. Time to stop right there, before he started making even less sense. But he should definitely stop before her naive enthusiasm—and that soft, dreamy look on her face—made him feel any more stiff and empty, old and dried up.

He shuffled back to his desk and dropped into his chair. “I don’t want to do this, Ms. Sullivan. I’m sorry if you’ve been led to believe differently, but the truth is, I didn’t agree to have a student teacher this year. I don’t work with student teachers anymore. I haven’t for a long, long time. I didn’t even know about your assignment here until a few moments before I met you this morning. And I don’t think this is a good idea, in spite of all your expectations and your obvious enthusiasm.” He slumped lower in his seat and stretched a hand across his forehead. “Or maybe because of them.”

Emily flipped one hand in the air, brushing aside his touching little speech. “Okay,” she said. “I knew coming into this it was going to be a tough sell.” She cleared her throat. “What I’d like you to do is to view my student teaching assignment as an opportunity for a kind of personal and educational renewal.”

“Renewal?”

“A chance to revisit your philosophical underpinnings. To sharpen and highlight the contrast between your views and those of another educational professional—just for the sake of argument.”

“And I suppose the person I’d be contrasted with would be you.” Joe straightened in his chair. An old, familiar feeling was spreading like heartburn through his gut. The kind of feeling he got whenever he pictured William F. Buckley squinting at him from the cover of the National Review. “And just what are these ‘ideological underpinnings?’”

“Let’s see if I remember the legend according to Jack Junior.” Emily raised her hands to tick off the items. “Joseph P. Wisniewski—the P an ongoing and entertaining mystery to your students. Raised at an Oregon commune and Rainbow Family gatherings. Homeschooled, for the most part, with extracurricular activities at antinuke demonstrations. High school years spent in San Francisco, where an early growth spurt grabbed the attention of the basketball coach and landed you a college sports scholarship.”

Emily ran out of fingers and crossed her arms beneath attractively perky breasts. “You joined the Peace Corps after graduation and took up teaching when you got back to the States.”

Dozens of years summarized in less than a dozen sentences. It didn’t matter—he’d lost track when she mentioned the Peace Corps.

Guatemala. Rosaria.

He shut his eyes against the old wounds, and then opened them to confront the new irritant: Emily Sullivan, a living, breathing reminder of what he’d been like when he started teaching at Caldwell. That first year, before the crushing news from Guatemala, before Rosaria’s death. The year he’d been fired up with purpose and filled with enthusiasm.

It was hard to look at her. Hard to look back. But he forced himself to meet her eyes, to smile, to nod. “An impressive performance. I think you managed to hit most of the highlights.”

“Thank you.”

Joe leaned back in his chair, which creaked a warning to keep his voice low and his wits sharp. “So you want me to agree to share my liberal, left-wing soapbox with a…” He gestured for her to fill in the blanks.

“A woman who was raised on Air Force bases and Reaganomics.” Emily leaned down and settled her hands on the edge of his desk. “A conservative Republican.”

“That’s redundant,” he said.

“That’s predictable,” she answered.

He shifted forward and noted the tiny flinch before her smile widened. He waited and watched as her knuckles turned white from her grip on his desk. But she didn’t back off, and she kept her eyes steady on his. He had to give her points for sheer spunk. “Oh, I don’t think you’ve got me completely figured out yet,” he said.

“Good. That’ll just liven things up.” She took a deep breath. “Come on, Wiz. Take me on for a couple of rounds. You’ve got nothing to lose but the right edge of that soapbox.”

He could see the freckles scattered across her nose, and the shards of silver ringing her pupils. One curl slipped forward over one of her eyebrows, and he caught his breath. Such an appealing package wrapped around such repulsive politics. He could reach out and strangle her. Or tip forward just a couple of inches and nibble on those smug, curvy lips. The first would earn him a prison sentence. The second would probably get him fired.

He was sure about one thing. Sexual harassment of a student teacher wasn’t part of his personal politics or his philosophical underpinnings. He leaned back and rubbed a finger across his mouth. “You know, a soapbox can have a pretty slippery surface. And I may have a few surprises left up my sleeve.”

“Sounds like a challenge—or a bargain. Either way, I’m taking it.” Emily slapped her palms against the top of his desk. “That’s the spirit. That’s The Wiz I’ve heard about. This is going to be great, just great,” she said, backing toward the door. “And don’t worry, we can work out the details later.”

She sidestepped into the hall. “I have a few surprises up my sleeve, too. See you on Monday—bright and early!” And then she was gone, taking most of the classroom’s oxygen with her.

Joe sighed and slouched deeper into his complaining chair. He closed his eyes and tried to reach that comfortable state of ennui he liked to wallow in right before the start of a new school year. But everything felt like it was trickling out of his grasp. As if Emily Sullivan had ripped all the self-indulgent pleasure out of his back-to-school misery and twisted it into something…something even more twisted than usual.

Ideas crackled through his brain like static. He couldn’t stop considering all the possibilities, imagining all the delights of an ongoing ideological duel with a well-educated, intelligent adversary. The subtle—no, the visceral thrust and parry that could be played out before a captive but fascinated adolescent audience. Hmm. It was tempting. It was intriguing. It was downright stimulating.

But Joe didn’t want to be tempted or intrigued. He certainly didn’t want to be stimulated. And definitely not by some chirpy student teacher in short skirts and big, wide eyes. Eyes with sparkly silver spikes that rayed out into sky-colored irises rimmed by beautiful navy rings….

Stop right there. Get a grip, Wisniewski.

Joe took a deep breath, but regretted it instantly. There, just beneath the odors of musty texts and stale coffee, was a faint trace of something fresh and floral.

Damn. It was going to be a long, long school year.

CHAPTER TWO

BRIGHT AND EARLY. Those two words certainly seemed made for each other, Joe thought as he shuffled through the main hall of Caldwell High at 7:45 a.m. on the first day of school. Sort of like black and blue. Or battery and assault.

He tucked a stack of folders under one arm and rammed his hands into his pockets, focusing on the floor to avoid eye contact. Eye contact could lead to conversation, which often led to dodging requests and other forms of aerobic exercise. And he wasn’t looking for a workout.

Two sleek, high-heeled shoes bounced into his path. By the time Joe’s gaze roamed over sexy ankles, shapely calves and knees that hinted at more interesting items above a no-nonsense hemline, he knew what he’d find at eyeball level: Emily Sullivan, his own personal triathlon.

She beamed up at him, her smile nearly blinding him with white-toothed enthusiasm. He hoped she came with a dimmer switch. “Good morning, Mr. Wisniewski.”

“Is it, Ms. Sullivan?”

“Well, of course! Don’t you just love the first day of school? All the energy, all the possibilities.”

She sighed a happy little sigh and scrunched up her nose, oblivious to the staggering and chest clutching going on behind her back. Her prim sweater set and that twist thing she’d done with her hair wasn’t going to fool the local male population. Might as well go for truth in advertising and hang a flashing neon Hot Babe sign around her neck.

“I was wondering,” she said, “if I could sit in on all your classes today, since it’s a noon dismissal schedule.”

“If you want to. It’s going to be pretty routine, just handing stuff out. Texts, course schedules. Threats.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

There it was, punching him right between the eyes in the first five minutes of the first morning of the school year: one of the many reasons he didn’t want a student teacher, even one who didn’t look like Emily Sullivan. It was going to be a lot of work for him to find work for his student teacher to do. “I could probably come up with something,” he muttered.

“Great!”

Great. It was going to be like training a puppy. An eager, squirming puppy that followed him everywhere, licking his shoes, looking up at him with big, wide puppy eyes no matter how many times he scolded or stepped on it. He hated stepping on puppies, but it usually happened sooner or later, because the damn things always managed to get right under his feet. Crowding him.

Might as well kill two puppies with one stone, so to speak. Give her something to do, far away from him. He pulled the folders from under his arm and chose some prep work. Emily could do it. She could feel useful and needed, a valuable partner on the educational team. She could establish a meaningful relationship with the copier. “Do you know where the copier is?”

“Linda showed me.”

Probably during some female bonding ritual involving office equipment. “Class rosters are inside. Copy the assignment sheets and reading lists, with a couple extra for each class, okay?”

“Okay. I can handle that.” She hesitated, her smile dimming just a bit around the edges. “But do you think I’ll be finished by the time the first bell rings?”

Squish. “If not, we’ll finish up at the break—my prep period is right after that. Don’t worry about it.”

Emily’s beam bounced back. “I’ll see you in class.”

Joe stood rooted to his spot, watching her blond twist bob through the hall, wondering how he was going to get through five class periods of puppy eyes following his every move.

“Hey, Wiz.”

He turned as Matt Zerlinger, a senior in his Government and Current Events classes, motioned with his chin toward Emily. “Heard you got a student teacher this year. That her?”

“Yeah.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.”

Matt grinned. “Shit happens.”

“Yeah.” Joe sighed. “And because I have a student teacher, and I need to set a better example, I have to warn you to watch the language in the halls, Matt.”

Matt’s smile widened. “This is going to be fun.”

“Shit,” said Joe.

“Oh, that reminds me.” Matt cast a glance down the hall. “Dornley was looking for you.”

The athletic director. Probably looking for another sucker to coach another orphan team. “Damn.”

“Yeah. Just thought I’d warn you.”

Joe clamped a hand over Matt’s shoulder as they headed toward the stairway. “In addition to running interference for Dornley, I see you’ve registered for two periods with me. What’s the angle?”

“An awesome recommendation for Berkeley.”

“So, you’re going for it.” Joe squeezed Matt’s shoulder before dropping his hand back into his pocket. “Is Walt going to come through with the funding?”

Walter Mullins was Matt’s latest stepfather. Matt’s mom went through husbands like she went through bottles of cheap vodka, but Walt seemed to have some staying power.

“I’ve been working on him,” said Matt, “but it’s too soon to tell. Gonna have to hit the scholarship scene pretty hard.”

“Let me know what I can do to help.”

“Count on it.” Matt shrugged his backpack higher on his shoulder. “Walt says since this is all your idea in the first place, the least you can do is find a way to help pay for it.”

Joe knew it wasn’t wise to get too attached to a student, but Matt had snuck under his emotional radar as a scrawny freshman using his wits to keep pace with the upperclassmen on a backpacking trip. Matt was still a little on the scrawny side, but once he filled out the gangly frame and ditched the lab tech look, the womenfolk would start paying more attention. “Hey, two smart guys like us should be able to come up with some college funds.”

“Yeah.” Matt scrubbed the toe of a stiff new Birkenstock against the floor. “Wonder if that hot new student teacher would be of any assistance.”

“The student teacher’s name is Ms. Sullivan. And she’s not going to seem so hot after she starts handing out detention slips and essay tests.”

“I don’t know.” Matt shook his head. “Hot is hot.”

“She’s too old for you, Matt.”

“I don’t want to date her. I’m just going to enjoy the scenery. Besides,” he added, “the student betting pool is placing the best odds on Walford to make the first move.”

Real pros, those student bookies. “He’s married.”

“Yeah, but it’s kinda shaky right now. His wife went to Boise to visit her mother right after the Fourth of July picnic, and she hasn’t come back yet.” Matt shook his head. “And he’s enough of a loser to hit on the hired help.”

Hitting on the hot new student teacher—the worst kind of power play. And where power was involved in a relationship, it opened the door to some pretty ugly things, with exploitation heading the list. Good thing Joe kept reminding himself of the potential for disaster. Good thing bright and bouncy Emily Sullivan wasn’t his type.

The first bell sent Matt jogging back to his locker and Joe trudging toward the stairs. He tried to focus on his first period class, but all he could come up with was visions of wide blue puppy eyes and the student bookies branding his forehead with an L for Loser.

EMILY WAS SURE that most people never realized how much energy it took to be energetic.

She turned down Main Street shortly after a late lunch at Al’s Pizzeria, so tired she was afraid she’d lose the steering wheel tug-of-war with her battered, bullying ’92 Chevy pickup. It was a good kind of tired, though. The kind that carried a kick, with sparks of self-satisfaction snapping beneath the layers of exhaustion.

She had moved a mountain of texts up a mountain of stairs, had overseen a pile of photocopying and a fist-bruising stack of stapling. There had been enough paperwork to tie up the State Department in a red-tape bow, enough crises to keep a soap opera afloat for a season and no chance for a coffee break. Her back hurt almost as much as her feet, and she suspected her bladder had stretch marks.

But there had also been dozens of shy smiles and friendly greetings. Her welcome to campus had been so warm, so energizing, that if someone asked her, at this very moment, to shift her growling truck to light speed, she was pretty sure she could pull it off.

Cast in the afterglow of all this goodwill, the heart of Issimish sparkled. Main Street’s shop windows reflected the polish and flair filtering down the interstate from Seattle’s suburbs. Even the town’s rough and rowdy origins were getting a stylish makeover, something a little more quaint and a little less quirky.

She thumped over the railroad crossing at the edge of the new industrial park and sped out through orchards lining the old county road, rolling down the window to inhale the ripe tang of a football season afternoon. Houses thinned, separated by acres of bramble-edged fields instead of neatly fenced yards. The pickup’s treads whined over the ragged pavement, their vibrations humming through her in an edgy accompaniment.

Emily planned on keeping the buzz buzzing with a liquid caffeine recharge and the semisweet chocolate bar she had hidden in the back of her kitchen junk drawer. Her schedule until the end of her college term, at Christmas, was a tight one: high school observations in the mornings followed by the lengthy commute to her university classes in the afternoons and evenings. She only had a few hours left to pound out a paper on Piaget due in tonight’s Ed Psych class. And she should record her impressions of day one in her Social Studies Methodology journal before day two hit.

Impressions. Joe Wisniewski, still and self-contained, striking a deceptively lazy pose. Hitching one hip over the edge of his desk, those dark eyes scanning the room for student outlaws. Gary Cooper, calmly lecturing ’til high noon.

Okay, so she was still a bit impressed by The Great and Powerful Wiz, thrilling to his slow grin, or the quirk of an eyebrow, or the rumble of that deep voice. Her adolescent tingles and twinges had matured into, well, more mature tingles and twinges.

There she sat, tucked into the corner of a classroom she’d dreamed of joining at thirteen and clawed her way into at twenty-nine, echoes of her adolescent longings tumbling through her insides while her outsides calmly took notes. Studying his every move, pondering his every word—and wondering what was wrong.

Maybe it was the contrast of her own excitement with Joe’s apparent lack of enthusiasm, maybe it was his laid-back ease and deadpan delivery, but nothing had been quite what she’d expected. He’d been a bit too laid-back, a bit too deadpan, not exactly the inspiring educational model she’d hoped for.

Still, he seemed to have a quiet rapport with his students. And he definitely had a subtle magnetism that tugged at her on every level. Her instincts told her there was something there, beneath the surface, something he was holding back.

But what if those instincts were nothing more than the kind of fantasizing she’d engaged in as a teen? What if this attraction turned into a major distraction? She needed to analyze his effect on her and his other students, not simply sit there and enjoy it. She needed to focus on her job, to evaluate his classroom management style, not get sidetracked by wide shoulders and lean hips.

She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She wouldn’t let it happen. Couldn’t let it happen. There was too much riding on this assignment: her career, her family’s approval, her own self-esteem. Her future.

She was in charge of her educational experience, not The Wiz. If he didn’t offer the inspiration she’d hoped for, she’d work harder to find it elsewhere. Maybe, with time, she’d find what she needed within herself, wrapped in her own dreams and abilities.

In the meantime, if she had to spend several months observing a subject, it might as well be a good-looking one. “Can I pick ’em, or can I pick ’em?” she asked no one in particular as the truck rattled over a series of potholes.

Daydreaming of dark eyes and a deep voice, Emily pulled into her gravel drive and swerved to avoid clipping the fender of a silver Volvo sedan.

Uh-oh. Mom alert.

Emily frowned. What was on Kay Sullivan’s agenda today? More questions about her daughter’s career choice? Doubts about her living arrangement? A reconnaissance mission to check on the refrigerator’s contents or the dryer’s lint trap?

At the moment, Kay was plucking weeds from the box of overgrown petunias on Emily’s front porch. She straightened and waved. “Yoo-hoo, Emily!”

Emily sighed. As if anyone could miss the tall, slim blonde in a bright red double-breasted dress with coordinating red lipstick and shoes. Kay’s was the only coordinated ensemble in the ragtag front yard—although the brownish patches of rust on the gutters did match the brownish patches of gopher mounds in the grass.

“Hi, Mom.” Emily hopped down from the truck, plotting a way to fast-forward through the visit so she could attack the Piaget project before it reached critical mass. Kay had a languid Louisiana way of drawing out an afternoon chat until it felt like a two-week delta cruise into the Twilight Zone.

Emily pointed to a wire-handled shopping bag near the doorstep. “What’s in there?”

“Cookies and milk, just like old times.” Kay’s cheek brushed Emily’s with the scent of gardenia. “To celebrate your first day of school.”

“Oatmeal and butterscotch?”

“With extra chips.”

Kay did have her good points—a couple dozen of them, judging from the size of the bag. Butterscotch could fill in for chocolate, in a pinch. And oatmeal counted as nutrition. She could chew fast, shorten the visit and skip dinner. “Sounds perfect. Except for the milk. I don’t drink it anymore.”

“I remember. But it goes with the cookies.”

Of course. Just because neither of them would actually drink the milk didn’t mean that the afternoon snack of cookies would be offered without the appropriate beverage. It simply wasn’t done. After all, Kay Sullivan was the high priestess of family food rituals. She packed a picnic luncheon every Fourth of July, even when it rained. Spread coconut frosting on the Easter cake, which everyone scraped off. And labored over a jellied tomato aspic every Thanksgiving, though no one had yet worked up enough courage for even one taste. That, too, was tradition: the untouched aspic, trembling on the table in virginal apprehension.

“You know,” said Emily, “they drink tea with cookies in England.”

“I suppose they do.” Kay picked up her package. “It would be rather continental, wouldn’t it?”

“Come on, Mom,” Emily said as she unlocked her door. “Let’s live dangerously. I’ll put the kettle on to boil.”

She caught her mother’s quick, discreet appraisal of the empty walls and curtainless windows as they stepped over the threshold. “My goodness,” Kay drawled. “It’s so refreshing, the way you’re using all this natural light and the open floor plan.”

Emily bit back an excuse and led the way to the kitchen.

“It’s probably best not to invest in things that may be discarded. This is simply a temporary situation, after all.” Kay’s smile was a hopeful one. “Who could possibly know how long you’ll be here?”

Emily dodged the question and arranged the cookies on a paper plate in the center of the tiny kitchen table. She knew her parents didn’t understand her decision to dip into her savings to make the move out of their Seattle condominium.

A change of subject was called for, and Emily knew just the tack to take—her sister-in-law’s pregnancy. “How’s Susan doing? Getting rounder?”

Kay’s eyes went soft and dreamy at the mention of her first grandbaby. “Just imagine, my little Jack, a father.”

“Someone new for you to spoil.”

“I never spoiled you and Jack.”

“I was talking about Dad.”

Kay laughed. “Oh, yes. I’ll admit to plenty of spoiling there. Although it always seems to work in both directions.”

Emily turned to snatch the screeching kettle off the burner. Oh, how she wanted that for herself, that deep affection glowing beneath the patina of years spent rubbing along together. A husband might be a low-priority item on her list of short-term goals, but she intended to have her own glow one of these years.

She poured boiling water over tea bags in her two least chipped mugs, set them on a tray with some folded paper towels and paper plates and snuck a peek at the pig-shaped garage-sale clock before carrying everything to the table. Three o’clock—time to get this visit moving toward the finale. “So, let me give you the completely condensed version of my first day at school. It was great.”

Kay cautiously lowered herself into a plastic lawn chair. “That’s wonderful, Em. But then, you’ve always been able to find some degree of success in whatever you choose to do. All those different jobs—every last one of them.”

Emily sighed over the references to her short attention span and lack of commitment and then piled her plate with cookies and spooned three helpings of sugar into her mug. “Well, today, my successes included photocopying, collating and stapling.”

“My goodness.” Kay sipped her tea and managed to look impressed. “That sounds ever so productive.”

“It sounds as awful as it was. But it had its moments.” Emily wrapped her hands around her mug and leaned forward. “I wish you could have seen the students’ faces—all those expectations. I’m going to love it, I just know it. If I survive the planning, the teaching, the paperwork, the assignments for my university classes and all the extracurricular activities I plan to squeeze in.”

“Oh, you’ll survive. You thrive on hard work. You always have.” Kay smoothed a hand over the paper in her lap as if it were fine linen. “Now, when are you going to let me take you shopping and buy you something special to brighten up this place a bit?”

Emily blew on her tea to cool it. She wasn’t surprised by the shift in topic. Her mother was far more comfortable discussing homemaking than career planning. “Somehow I knew that’s where this conversation was heading all along.”

“Conversations are like the wind. They go where they will.” Kay rose from her seat. “Sometimes they’re wild and stormy, and sometimes they’re just as fickle as a little breeze, blowing every which way and never keeping to any one direction.”

“And sometimes they’re as steady and predictable as a trade wind.” Emily knew better than to assume that Kay’s meandering didn’t have an eventual destination. “Is that why you drove all this way out from the city this afternoon? Because you were looking for a fresh excuse to drag me out on a shopping trip?”

“Not entirely. I wanted to see for myself if my youngest chick was healthy and happy.” Kay leaned down and placed a kiss on her daughter’s head with a loud smack.

Emily smiled. “Definitely both.”

“It’s working out then?” Kay carried her mug to the sink. “This teaching assignment?”

“After just one day filling in at that naval base classroom in Naples, I knew I was meant to be a teacher.” Emily twisted her mug in a circle. “This is the one career that will make the best use of all my studies. And all my travels and experiences.”

She sipped her tea. “I wanted this assignment at Caldwell with Joe Wisniewski, and I did everything but hold my breath until I turned blue to get it.”

Kay found a dish towel to scrub over the counter. “How is The Wiz? Do they still call him that?”

“Yes, he’s still The Wiz.”

She watched her mother fussily fold the dish towel and then shake it out to start the process again. Emily was surprised to see a blush creep into her cheeks. “Mom?”

“Is he still a hunk?” Kay dropped the towel over the edge of the sink and faced her daughter. “He used to be. Is he still? A hunk?”

CHAPTER THREE

HUMILIATION ALERT. Did Kay know about Emily’s adolescent fantasies? Did she suspect they were the real reason for this student teaching assignment? Not that a tiny crush had anything to do with anything, Emily was quick to reassure herself.

“Well, is he?” asked Kay. “A hunk?”

“Oh, yes.” Emily sighed. “He’s definitely still a hunk.”

Kay slipped back into her seat and leaned forward in conspiracy mode. “Rumor had it he was carrying on with Ginny Krubek, all those years ago.”

“Ginny Krubek?” Emily frowned. “Wasn’t she the stylist at The Cow Lick?”

Kay nodded, and then broke a cookie in two and put half on her plate. “The Wiz came roaring into town on his motorcycle late that summer, looking like sin on wheels.”

“I saw him walk out of the post office one morning.” Tall and tanned, so dangerously different than everyone else on the street. “I remember he had a ponytail.”

“He had Ginny cut it off the second week of school.” Kay lowered her voice to a whisper. “That was the same week Patsy Velasco started telling anyone who’d take the time to listen that Wiz had a tattoo. Of course, plenty of people around this town had plenty of time to gossip over information of that nature.”

Gossip temporarily knocked Piaget off the list of priorities. “I never heard anything about tattoos,” said Emily.

“That’s what made Patsy’s news so interesting. She said it wasn’t exactly available for public viewing.”

Imagining middle-aged Patsy Velasco viewing any of Joe’s less public places was doing something nasty to the butterscotch in Emily’s stomach. “Go back to the part about Ginny Krubek.”

“Oh, yes. Well,” Kay said, crossing her arms on the table, “like I said, rumors were flying fast and thick that there was something going on between Wiz and Ginny, too. Ginny was sure talking it up around town, at any rate.”

“Wasn’t there a Krubek in Jack’s class?”

“Yes, Steve Krubek. And the principal back then, Mr. Rockman, was fit to be tied. He threatened to withdraw Wiz’s contract. After all, Ginny’s husband was a school board member back then. I’m sure the poor man was putting a lot of pressure on Mr. Rockman, behind the scenes.”

“I knew there was something weird going on.” Emily drummed her fingers on the table. “I figured there had to be more than one reason Dad was always getting so upset about that new teacher.”

“Your father liked Wiz just fine, in spite of all their political disagreements. I think those two rather enjoyed arguing with each other. Dad used to say Wiz was one of the few intelligent life forms this side of Seattle. He did think Wiz could have been a little more discreet, though. Or at least discouraged Ginny’s attentions. I always thought she was inventing most of what she was spreading around. Maybe even all of it. Who knows for sure?”

Emily finished off the broken cookie. “Why would Wiz put up with Ginny’s big mouth? Or Patsy’s, for that matter?”

“I got the impression that Joseph P. Wisniewski wasn’t the kind of man who would give a hoot what other people said about him. Or thought about him, at any rate. That’s one of the things the women found so exciting.” Kay shook her head and laughed. “Lord, we were all so jealous of Ginny and Patsy back in those days.”

“Even you, Mom?”

Kay straightened in her chair and brushed at the front of her dress. “You forget I’m married to a hunk of my own. I have neither the time nor the inclination to notice anything about another man. Even if he does look like a gypsy with the very devil in his eyes.”

Emily grinned. “That’s still a pretty good description.”

“Oh, I imagine he’s even more attractive now. Men get that chiseled look to their faces when they get a little older. Unless they go doughy. I can’t imagine Wiz ever getting doughy, though. He was already a little chiseled to begin with, and besides, he had plenty of room for some more meat on those bones.” Kay twitched a wrinkle out of the tablecloth. “Is he going gray? Losing his hair?”

“I don’t think gray hair or male pattern baldness are in the picture yet.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Kay shook her head and settled back. “He’s only about ten years older than you, if that. He always did seem so much older, even back then. Some people do, you know.”

Emily thought for a moment about all she’d heard of Joe’s unconventional lifestyle and his reckless choices in women. Living like that would probably age anyone—and not the way a fine wine aged. “Well, he’s had an interesting life.”

“Yes, he certainly has, hasn’t he? Up to and including the moment he decided to settle down to teach at that tiny school in this speck of a town. Why a man like that would ever choose to live in a place like this has always been a mystery to me.”

Kay nibbled a bit more on her cookie and stared out the window. Emily studied her mother, certain now that Kay had just pulled off another fast one. This afternoon’s meandering conversation had ended up precisely where she’d meant it to end. With a subtle warning to steer clear of any involvement with a man who was completely wrong for her daughter under any circumstances.

Emily had already figured things out for herself: Joseph P. Wisniewski was bad news. As a master teacher…well, she was prepared to give him another chance. Or two. After all, he hadn’t wanted her in his classroom. But as a prospect for a romantic relationship outside the classroom? There was no evidence he was capable of anything resembling romance or a relationship.

Not that she should be entertaining thoughts about a romance or a relationship in the first place. Either one would jeopardize this assignment. And she couldn’t disappoint her family again, not with another failed attempt at a professional career, and not with a questionable choice for her personal life.

She flicked a glance at the pig and tried not to wince. Half past time to drag her mind away from tattoos and tackle tonight’s university assignment.

If there was one thing Kay could field like a major league champ, it was a social cue. She peeked at her watch and gasped. “Look at the time! I’ve truly overstayed my welcome. And I’ll be lucky to make it back to the city before that awful rush hour traffic starts up.” She stood to smack a little air kiss near Emily’s left ear. “You’re such a gracious hostess, dear, putting up with this interminable visit from your mother.”

“I enjoyed every minute.”

“Yes, the gossip was delicious.”

“So were the cookies. Thanks.”

Kay turned at the door. “Don’t be a stranger, Em. Let’s get together again, soon.”

“Okay.” Emily gave her mother a quick squeeze. She was pumped up on butterscotch and gossip now, ready to take on Piaget. She could even face the prospect of a discussion on decorating. “How about a shopping trip the weekend after next?”

“Call me.”

“I will.”

Emily stepped out on the crooked little porch and waved as the silver sedan backed into the county road. “I will,” she promised them both.

JOE HEADED THROUGH the main doors of Caldwell High the following week and made an immediate about-face, hoping to escape Volunteer Friday before anyone noticed. No such luck.

“Hey, Wiz!” Sophomore Lindsay Wellek waved him toward a card table wrapped in gaily painted butcher paper and stacked with pamphlets in more somber, politically correct recyclable shades. “A lot of people have been checking us out. I think the Garden Project is really going to take off this year.”

The Garden Project—the sole survivor of his misbegotten attempts at service learning, and the one extracurricular commitment he’d kept to ward off the possibility of a more strenuous assignment. “That’s good to hear,” he said.

He recognized the light in Lindsay’s eyes, that heady mix of altruism and activism that fired the soul with strength and confidence in cause and self. He’d seen it in the mirror, not that many years ago. But now, surrounded by all this energy, with the scent of pledges and possibilities wafting through the corridor and the bustle at the tables humming like the soundtrack for Norma Rae, he felt as if the last embers of his fire had gone cold a lifetime ago.

When had he become more concerned with logistics and permission slips than with the basic joy of being a part of something good? When had he lost the ability to bask in the contentment of counting for something, of mattering to someone?

At what precise moment had he turned into one more member of the establishment?

Hell, he wasn’t even a good bureaucrat. He’d forgotten about this morning’s activities.

“This looks great,” he said. “Did you paint this sign yourself?”

Lindsay’s blush clashed with her red hair. “Yeah.”

“Hey, Wiz.” Matt stopped at the table, shrugged his backpack higher on his shoulder and reached for one of the pamphlets. He studied the information with great care, ignoring Lindsay’s wistful glances.

Joe rolled his eyes at the teen angst tableau. He wanted to say something, to shove Matt off the curb and into the rush of oncoming female traffic, but he reminded himself that matchmaking was against one of his religions.

Besides, he’d nearly been sideswiped himself recently.

He settled a hand on Lindsay’s shoulder. “You need to get yourself into Mrs. Mazza’s art class next semester. I’m sure she’d appreciate having a student with some natural talent for a change.”

Lindsay’s blush deepened, and he gave her shoulder a tiny squeeze before straightening to level a long stare at Matt.

“What?” Matt asked.

“Get your nose out of that pamphlet and enjoy the scenery.”

He turned and started a zigzag path through the crowd, checking in with the club officers stationed at other tables. And noting Emily’s bold, spiky signature on far too many of the sign-up sheets. She was probably deep in chirp heaven this morning, spreading enthusiasm like pepper spray at an Earth First protest. Spreading way too much of her energy far too thin.

She’d learn her lesson soon enough. Extracurricular activities were education’s answer to Chinese water torture. They wore teachers down, drip by time-consuming drip.

He hoped she wouldn’t cry on his shoulder when the going got tough, or expect him to bail her out when she started to sink. One more reason he didn’t want a student teacher.

There she was now, pausing at the table advertising winter term cheerleading tryouts, scribbling in the bulging organizer that seemed to be a detachable part of her anatomy. There was no way in hell he’d help her with a cheerleading commitment.

“How’s it going, Wiz?”

He turned in time to catch Mitch Dornley’s admiring glance at Emily’s legs, and he shifted position to block the athletic director’s view. “Fine. It’s going just fine.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

Mitch hesitated, waiting for a response, but Joe let him sweat. He knew what was coming. It was the same routine every year.

“We’ve got another vacancy on the coaching staff, Wiz.”

“That’s tough.”

Mitch hesitated. “It’s a tough one to fill, all right.”

Foreign languages like Innuendo lost a lot in the translation for Mitch. He scratched his bald spot and stuck to his game plan. “It’s the JV girls’ basketball team. They’re a little low on talent this year, since we had to promote a few to fill in the gaps on Varsity. And those girls’ JV teams are always kind of touchy. All those hormones and stuff.”

“Nasty things, hormones.”

Mitch nodded, obviously relieved to have escaped the ravages of estrogen. “I was just thinking…well, you did play hoops in college.”

“I played, Mitch. I didn’t coach.”

“You coached track. The first year you were here.”

“The post-traumatic stress episodes are finally tapering off,” said Joe. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Good morning, Wiz.” Emily breezed into the conversation. “Hi, Mitch.”

“Hey there, Emily.” Mitch arched back and sucked in his gut. “I was just trying to talk The Wiz here into coaching JV girls’ hoops.”

“Really?” Emily seemed surprised. “Why?”

“He played hoops in college.”

“Playing isn’t the same thing as coaching, Mitch,” Emily pointed out. “Coaching takes special skills. Not everyone has them.”

Mitch puffed up again. “That’s right.”

“I coached track once.” Joe couldn’t explain why that had popped out. Maybe the puffing was contagious.

“You did?” She stared up at him. “Imagine that.”

“Can’t you?”

She smiled politely. “Not really, no.”

Sheesh, where was a little chirpiness when a fellow needed it? “Well, I did. My first year here.”

“Oh.” Emily brightened. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

The day’s first bell set off slamming locker doors and last-minute pamphlet grabbing.

“Sorry,” Emily said as she turned to go. “Can’t be late taking first period attendance.”

“Catch you later, Wiz.” Mitch jogged up behind Emily, catching her by one arm. He leaned down close to her ear and whatever he said had her laughing and shaking her curls against his shoulder.

Joe stood in the hall, students and staff churning around him like salmon headed upstream to spawn, and watched Emily disappear up the stairs. What in the hell was all that about? What did she mean, she couldn’t imagine him coaching? Didn’t she think he was patient enough? Sensitive enough? Inspirational enough? Did she think he was too lazy? Too irresponsible? Too out of shape?

Okay, so he probably was—or wasn’t—a lot of those things. But just because he thought so didn’t give her the right to entertain the same opinions. She certainly didn’t know him well enough yet to catalog or appreciate the impressive list of his negative qualities. The fascinating backstories, the intriguing layers, the varied nuances—the mud-splattered tapestry of his soul.

He stalked into the office, snatched his mail out of his box and dumped it all into the nearest trash container. He stood there for a moment, visualizing himself kicking the can, imagining the whump of the metal, feeling the thwack against his sandal. Ahh, that was better. Slightly less violent, definitely more mature, and the next best thing to actually putting a dent in the can. Or picking it up and heaving it at the nearest window—or Dornley’s head. Whichever got in the way first.

“Well, if it isn’t another wonderful, wonderful day,” Linda practically purred from behind her counter. “Good morning, Wiz. And how are you doing?”

“Can it, Linda.”

“You’ve already handled that little chore.” She held up a note. “I managed to rescue this before you went through your daily filing routine. You might want to answer it before Blob Dixon threatens to cut off the funding for whatever he’s promising to fund this week.”

He grinned at Linda’s pet name for Bob, part owner of Dixon’s Hardware and full-blown parental plague on Caldwell High. Bob also happened to be Joe’s landlord, a fact he repeated every couple of weeks or so, just in case the concept hadn’t yet lodged in the one short-term memory cell of Joe’s brain. “What does he want this time?”

“A parent-teacher conference.”

“It’s only the second week of school.”

“He has some concerns about your student teacher.”

There was another reason he didn’t want a student teacher. Now he was going to have to deal with all the parental concern issues Emily dragged to his classroom door. “He just wants to check her out,” he said. “Up close and personal.”

“Blob and every other red-blooded single male in the school community. Some of the married ones, too.” Linda shot a slitted glance at Kyle’s door, and then rested an elbow on the counter, waving the message. “Tell me, what’s it like mentoring the Student Teacher Most Likely to Cause a Traffic Pileup?”

Joe took the memo and crammed it into his pocket. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

She laced her fingers beneath her chin. “Oh, yeah.”

“Well, for your information—and for Blob Hardware’s, and for anyone else who asks—she’s doing fine. Just fine.” The second bell rang. “She’s up there right now, taking roll. She’ll probably march the troops through maneuvers and drill them on essay responses before I arrive.”

“I’ve heard she’s a take-charge gal. I also hear she’s got a date for every dance-chaperoning duty this fall.”

“Yeah, well, things’ll quiet down once everyone gets used to everyone else.”

“Hmm.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What was that supposed to mean?”

“What?”

“That ‘hmm.’ I know that ‘hmm.’”

“Oh, nothing.” Linda rubbed at a speck on the counter. “Better get up there, Wiz. High school students have been known to eat student teachers and subs for breakfast, especially since most of them don’t eat anything before they get here.”

“I thought that’s what the candy in the snack machines was for.”

“Hyped up on a sugar fix and ready to rumble,” said Linda. “Either way, things could get ugly.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think anyone’ll try anything. They’ve been pretty easy on her so far. If I didn’t know better, I might start believing some of these crazy rumors going around.”

“I heard her dad is a three-star general who used to send her to basic instead of summer camp.”

He grinned. “You wouldn’t happen to know where that rumor got started, would you?”

She inspected her nails. “Not a clue.”

“Speaking of military types, how’s Alice?”

“Your department chair? Still AWOL. Having a real tough time with this pregnancy, from what I hear.” She paused. “I don’t think she’s going to make it back at all this year.”

“Damn.” Joe took a deep, resentful breath and let it rush out in despair. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“I guess I’d better get up there.” He glanced at the ceiling. “Things may be nice and quiet right now, but what really worries me are the crazy ideas Ms. Sullivan might be pouring into those empty heads.”

EMILY STARED at all the hands in the air, exhilaration and terror churning in her stomach along with her leftover pizza breakfast. She wished her university adviser was here to observe how well she was directing this American History discussion. And she hoped Joe wouldn’t tell her adviser he wanted her out of his classroom because she directed discussions just like this.

“Does anyone disagree with what Matt just said?” she asked, looking for someone who hadn’t yet had a chance to speak. “Angie?”

“No way!” Angie twisted in her seat to face Matt across the room. “I mean, it’s so obvious that the Boston Tea Party was totally an anarchy thing. You know, like those people who smashed the windows in Seattle.”

“Yeah, but at least those Seattle dudes didn’t wear disguises,” added someone from the back row.

“Starbucks coffee and English tea,” rumbled Joe’s soft voice from the classroom doorway. “Hmm.”

Emily winced at the ominous sound of that hmm. She turned to see him lounging against the wide wood trim. One corner of his mouth slid into a wry grin. The kind of grin that could mask any number of things: irritation, amusement, her imminent dismissal. The kind of grin that scrambled her pulse and scattered her thoughts.

“Guess some people can get a little violent about their caffeine addiction,” he said. “But anarchists? That’s an interesting take on the Sons of Liberty.”

She cleared her throat and pasted on a bright, confident smile to mask her panic. “We were discussing how some British taxpayers might have been angry about the actions and beliefs of some of the American colonists. Considering a different point of view.”

“Is that so?”

“Just for the sake of argument,” she added.

“Well, now. That sounds…fascinating. Sorry I missed it,” he said. “How about a little review of the highlights?”

He slipped his hands into his pockets and settled into one of those deceptively negligent poses. “Just for the sake of argument.”

CHAPTER FOUR

AN HOUR LATER Emily faced Arnold, the copier, her fingers hovering just above the green start button. “Okay, Arnold. Time to boldly go where no copier has gone before.”

“Arnold?” Linda leaned against the doorjamb, a cup of coffee in one hand. “As in Schwarzenegger?”

Emily shook her head. “As in Kitchener. Not the Terminator—the Tormentor, in third grade. He used to trip me and steal my snack at morning recess. Then he got a crush on Alexa Poukopolis, and I got to keep my Twinkies.”

“Men.” Linda sipped her coffee. “Food and sex.”

Emily nodded. “Hit and run.”

The copier clunked once, twice and then flashed a jammed code. Emily sighed. “Is it just me, Arnold? Or do you treat all the girls this way?”

“It’s the colored paper. Can’t do anything creative on this machine.” Linda opened the front compartment and ripped a shredded piece of paper out of the gears. “Did Wiz ask you to do this?”

“No, this is for the hospitality committee. Double-sided.” Emily refilled the feed bin with a thick stack of plain white paper. “Wiz wouldn’t use green paper for a handout.”

“Guess not.” Linda reached past her to punch Reset. “But it might be fun to see what would happen if you brought him a stack in hot pink. I have a secret stash of neon stuff. You could tell him we ran out of white.”

“Are you trying to cause problems for me?”

“Just looking for a little more entertainment. I enjoyed hearing about the show you two put on yesterday. Maybe I’ll get lucky and see your next spat live.”

“What spat was—oh,” Emily said. Her cheeks were getting warm. “That was just—well, I was—”

“Marcy told me there was a fight in the faculty room.” Linda set her coffee on the counter and hoisted herself up next to it. “But I didn’t believe it until Russell came in, shaking his head and saying he’d never seen Wiz get red in the face before. I’m just sorry I missed the opening round.”

“There wasn’t any opening round.” Emily keyed in the copy commands and punched Start. “We were having a simple, civilized, philosophical discussion.”

“I heard you two were going at it in the hall during break.”

Emily’s face grew uncomfortably hot. “We weren’t ‘going at it.’ Not exactly.”

Not unless you counted intense hissing from nose-to-nose range.

Linda looked unconvinced. “Maybe not in the halls. But in the faculty room, definitely. I heard it from a couple of sources who had ringside seats. What was that about him being a jerk?”

“The word was knee-jerk. As in response.”

Linda’s smile was beatific. “Hmm.”

Emily sighed. “Here I am giving my master teacher a bad time when he’s been nothing but generous and patient with me.”

“Pull-eez. Joe’s patience is laziness in disguise. And generous?” Linda snorted.

“I’m trying to be grateful here,” said Emily.

“How about honest? What’s he been generous with besides copying duties?”

“That is part of the job.”

“A very small part.”

Emily pushed aside another batch of misgivings about this internship assignment and pulled the feed bin open to slip the printed papers in, sunny side up. “Maybe he just needs time to get to know me better.”

“And maybe he’s keeping you at arm’s length precisely because he doesn’t want to.”

“He made it pretty clear he didn’t want me here.” She muttered a quick prayer to the copier gods and hit Start again. “I figure he needs another couple of weeks to come around. Eventually, he’ll have to get used to the idea of sharing his classroom.”

“Don’t count on it.”

Emily leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. Beside her, papers slapped and settled into the side tray without a hitch. “I can be very persuasive when I set my mind to it.”

“That’s what’s going to make this so much fun to watch.” Linda sipped her coffee. “And I’m not the only one looking forward to the fireworks. Most of the faculty think you’re the best thing to happen to Joe Wisniewski in years. More than one witness to yesterday’s ‘philosophical discussion’ mentioned how good it was to have the old Joe back, even if it was only for a few minutes. We all thought he’d dried up and fossilized way ahead of schedule.”

“The old Joe?”

“Lord, yes.” Linda flapped her hand. “He was hell on wheels his first year here.”

“I’ve heard some stories.”

“He used to drive us nuts with his causes and his arguments. I think he won most of the debates just by wearing down the opposition. He had more energy than any three of us put together. He was like a walking vibrator. You could get a buzz just from being in the same room with him.”

Emily pulled the papers out of the tray, trying to imagine Joe’s laid-back charm hyped up into killer charisma—The Wiz she’d known through her brother’s tales and her parents’ reactions, The Wiz she’d daydreamed over. “So, what happened?”

Linda frowned down into her mug. “I don’t know. He never talked about it. He took off work for a while that spring—which was a shock, because he’d never taken so much as a sick day. And when he came back, he was sort of…I don’t know. Defeated. Dull. It was like all the life had drained out of him. He never told any of us what was wrong. What had happened.”

“That’s so sad.”

“Yeah.” Linda took another sip of coffee. “The old Joe—the Joe that I remember—that Joe never came all the way back. But a couple of teachers saw a bit of that old fire in his eyes when he was arguing with you.”

Emily started in on a second batch of copies. “I wonder what happened?”

Linda shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a mystery.”

Joe was turning out to be a mysterious man. And Emily never left a mystery unsolved—it was so careless, so untidy. Besides, whatever had happened to Joe all those years ago had affected his teaching, which was affecting her internship.

She hesitated to dig too deeply into his private life, particularly when the public parts were so…well, scandalous. Maybe she wouldn’t need to unlock the secrets of his past to get him fired up again. There were other ways she could help him rediscover the joys of teaching or the excitement of a worthy cause, to help him find happiness.

“A mystery, hmm?” she asked Linda. “Sort of like the P in Joseph P. Wisniewski.”

Linda smiled along the rim of her mug. “I happen to know the solution to that little mystery. But before you start in on me,” she said, holding up her hand, “I have to tell you I’m sworn to secrecy.”

“Come on. Not even a hint?”

“You’ll never guess. Not in a million years. And that’s the only hint you’re going to pry out of me.”

“Ms. Sullivan?”

Emily glanced behind her to see Kyle standing in the workroom doorway.

“Yes?”

“May I see you in my office?” He frowned at Linda, lounging on the counter. “When you’re finished with your work here.”

A summons to the principal’s office. Disaster alert. Plague, pestilence and another dose of fake walnut paneling. “I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you.” The door clicked shut behind him.

“Oh-oh,” said Linda. “Watch out.”

“Why?” Emily’s pulse rate spiked. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Linda narrowed her eyes at the spot where Kyle had been standing. “And that’s what has me worried.”

“Did someone call with a complaint?”

“No. You’re doing fine. He’s probably just fishing, that’s all.”

“Fishing?”

“His wife never came home from her little summer trip, you know. And he’s been sighted at the local watering hole on more than one weekend evening.”

“His wife left him?”

“That’s the rumor.” Linda slid down from the counter. “So, watch out.”

“For what?”

“For a move.”

Emily shuddered. “Yeeuchh.”

“It shouldn’t be too tough to spot,” Linda said. “Kyle may think he’s smooth, but he never made it past the slippery stage.”

EMILY WALKED down the short hall as if it were the plank. She knocked on Kyle’s office door and waited for his “Come in” before entering.

“Emily!” He smoothed his tie as he rose from his chair and walked out from behind his desk. He waved at one of the padded chairs in front of it. “Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”

She tried to do just that, settling back and tucking her feet beneath her. The blinds behind his desk carved daylight into slits, and the dust motes blinked SOS as they floated on their oxygen ocean. The stuffy space smelled of floor wax and freshly applied cologne.

Kyle leaned back against his desk, crossed his arms and smiled down at her.

She smiled back and waited for him to speak.

And waited some more. And smiled a bit harder. And hoped her cheek muscles wouldn’t start to spasm.

“How’s it going so far?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said. “I really like it here at Caldwell.”

“That’s good to hear.” His smile didn’t change as he nodded or spoke. It seemed to be molded out of some substance that looked like flesh and bone but couldn’t quite capture that genuine, lifelike quality. “I want you to be happy here,” he said.

“I am so far.” Up until about five minutes ago, anyway.

“Any problems with any of the students?”

What was he fishing for? What had he heard? Calm down, she ordered herself. If Linda didn’t know why she was in here, no one knew. And as for Linda’s theory about what Kyle was after… Emily shuffled that thought out of the way.

“Problems with the students?” Emily asked. “None. No problems at all.” She pulled one foot out from under her chair and crossed one knee over the other to get more comfortable.

“So, no problems,” said Kyle. “Glad to hear it. We’re proud of our students here at Caldwell.”

“They’re terrific.”

“And the staff? I hope they’ve been helpful.”

“Oh, yes. Extremely.”

“Good, good.” He smoothed his tie again. “We want you to feel like part of the team here.”

“Thank you.”

He cocked one hip against the edge of his desk, shifting his weight to one foot and letting the other dangle near her knee. When Joe made that same move, it was fluid and casual. Kyle’s version was posed and calculated. She tried to ignore his loafer’s subtle invasion of her space and her urge to shift out of reach.

“You’re probably aware, Emily, that there are several staff members who are single, like you.”

She nodded, hoping Linda’s theory wasn’t about to become fact.

“And many single people these days meet and get to know each other at the workplace,” he continued.

She nodded again, feeling like a bobble-head doll.

“I was wondering if there might be any circumstances in which you would consider a friendly, social interaction with a member of this staff. A social relationship, outside of school.”

“Well.” She cleared her throat. “I’d certainly be willing to attend any parties for the faculty members.”

Kyle tilted his head back and laughed a forced little laugh. “I’ll make sure you get an invitation.”

Emily laughed, too. Hers sounded a bit strangled.

“Actually, Emily…” Kyle hesitated, and the smile disappeared. His hand passed once more over the silk of his tie, a long, teasing stroke. “I was wondering how you might feel about the possibility of developing a…a personal relationship with someone on staff.”

Think diplomacy, she told herself. Think tact and subtlety. And if that doesn’t work, think Sherman tank blasting a hole in the walnut and leaving caterpillar treads on the splintered furniture and the splattered principal on the way out.

She smiled a neutral smile. “I hope to develop personal relationships with several of the members of this staff before I leave. I think I’ve already begun to form some friendships. And I’d like to develop some mentoring relationships, too.” She settled back a bit and spread her hands. “There’s a lot I can learn from many of the people here.”

“Yes, of course. That’s something we can discuss at some other time.”

He rubbed at his chin. “The reason I asked to see you today is to find out whether or not you might consider dating one of the staff members.”

“Dating? No.” She shook her head. “That wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Kyle’s plastic smile was back. And something else, too. Something in the way he leaned forward and glanced down at her neatly crossed kneecaps.

Something fishy.

The vision of her suspended foot swinging up into Kyle’s carefully positioned crotch was strong and clear and too tempting by half. She uncrossed her legs and tucked her feet beneath her chair. “I have a personal rule against dating coworkers,” she said. “It seems the best policy.”

“Yes. Simple and tidy.” Kyle nodded. “I can certainly see how it might seem that way.”

Emily had no intention of hanging around so Kyle could ask her to indulge in some friendly social interaction just to test the limits of her simple, tidy rule. “Well,” she said, setting her hands on the arms of her chair and edging toward escape. “Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?”

“No. I just wanted to touch base,” he said, and paused to let the words hang between them. “To see if you’re happy here.”

“Thank you for taking the time to check with me,” she said, ignoring the remark about touching base as she stood to go. He didn’t move, and she was forced to dance a quick sidestep to avoid brushing against him.

“If there’s anything I can do for you, Emily,” he said, following her to the door, “anything at all, you let me know, okay?”

“I will. Thanks again.” She felt his eyes on her back as she fled toward sunlight and fresh air.

JOE MUTTERED A CURSE as he stepped into Caldwell’s quad at lunch break. Drifts of smoke carried the stench of burning byproducts, piles of refuse dotted the lawn and something that was supposed to be music throbbed from the speakers behind an oversize grill. Another football season hot dog barbecue in all its glory.

He carried his curried-chicken-and-brown-rice salad across the quad to a twisted fir tree, found his favorite napping space between two root bumps and stretched out on his back on the grass, his head cushioned on his hands. He gazed up through the tree limbs and contemplated saying something to someone about the song lyrics, but decided it was such a petty thing compared to the unrecycled waste and charcoaled carcinogens surrounding him. He simply closed his eyes to shut it all out.

“Pardon me.”

Emily. He turned his head toward the sound of her voice and opened his eyes. She was standing above him, sunlight rimming her curls in a blinding corona. He squeezed his eyes shut, but her afterimage danced in a negative exposure. “Yes?”

“Is this exposed root taken?”

“No.”

He cracked one eye open to watch her sink to the ground, cross-legged and skirt-draped.

She held out a can of soda. “You looked thirsty.”

He crossed his ankles and shifted his hands more comfortably under his head. “I was hoping I looked asleep.”

“Nope.” She set the can down near his elbow. “I could see your eyes twitching.”

He watched her sip her soda, her mouth puckering around the rim of the can and her long neck arching back in a grateful curve. She swallowed, lowered the can and ran her tongue along her moist upper lip.

Joe looked away. He wasn’t feeling drowsy anymore. He was feeling far too awake. And far too aware of Emily’s throat and tongue and lips. “What do you want, Ms. Sullivan?”

“To buy you a soda. To say thank you for agreeing to this internship.”

She lifted the can of cola and offered it again. It wouldn’t have been polite to refuse.

“To have a simple, friendly conversation,” she added.

He wondered if this was a student teaching assignment. Have a friendly chat with your master teacher sometime during the first month of classes. Report due on Monday.

Then he glanced up at her and saw the nerves behind her smile.

God, he was getting cynical in his pre-middle age. He really ought to apologize for any number of things: for not initiating a friendly chat himself, or for his bad habit of suspecting ulterior motives. For not seeming more grateful for the offer of free carbonated chemicals. For spending half his time plotting to get rid of her and the other half visualizing her naked in his bed.

This was why etiquette had been invented—to safely channel all manner of primal urges and sociopathic aberrations into G-rated clichés the whole family could enjoy. “Thank you,” he said as he took the can.

“You’re welcome.”

“So.” Joe set his soda on the grass beside him, shifted to his side, braced his head in his hand and prepared to engage in something simple and friendly. “What are your plans for this weekend?”

“Short-term or long-term?”

A two-tiered plan for a two-day weekend? Why did he think any conversation with Emily could be simple? “Forget I asked.”

“Okay.” She shoved a hand into her skirt pocket, withdrew a folded wad of paper and waved it under her chin. “New topic. I have here a list of names beginning with P,” she said.

He groaned. “Believe me, I’ve heard them all.”

“Not, apparently, all of them.” She shifted and wriggled her curvy rear end over the root to torture him. “I figured I could arrange the search in either alphabetical order or categories.”

“Categories?”

“Categories makes the most sense to me, too.” She smoothed her paper over her lap. “I thought I’d start with Polish names. Just in case someone overlooked something that goes with Wisniewski. Names like Pawel? Piotr? Prosimir?”

He shook his head. “No, no and nope.”

“Prokop. Parys. Pankracy. Pius. Pielgrzym. And this one,” she said, handing him the paper. “I don’t know how to pronounce it.”

Przybywoj. “Neither do I.”

“Oh, well.” She took her list back with a sigh. “I didn’t expect to get it on the first try.”

He watched her refold the paper and carefully shove it back into her skirt pocket. They sat for a moment in silence, watching students materialize and vanish through the grill smoke.

Emily picked up her soda and sipped, and then gestured with the can to encompass the scene on the quad. “So, is this where you picture yourself in ten years?”

Joe narrowed his eyes. “Why should I?”

“Because this is where you want to be, what you want to be doing.” She cocked her head to one side with a bright smile. “Because you find teaching challenging and satisfying. Because it makes you happy.”

He stared at her seemingly innocent expression, searching for a trick. Strange that she’d ask him the one question he’d been ducking lately. “Happy?”

“Happiness is a worthwhile goal.” She set down her can. “I’m hoping teaching will bring me happiness. For any number of reasons.”

Her idealism itched along his conscience like a rash. He frowned at her and grabbed his soda. “Do you have another list in your pocket?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “And we don’t have to talk shop if you don’t want to.”

Thank God. “What will we talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Life, for instance. Specific or generic. Past, present or future. For a start.”

“For a start,” he said. “Would that fall under the short-term or long-term goals for this conversation?”

She smiled one of her widest smiles, the one that twisted and tickled something deep inside him. “Any topic, Joe. Any or all of the above. You could start with the easiest one first.”

“Don’t you have something else to do right now?” He rolled onto his back and set the can of soda on his chest before closing his eyes. “Someone else to interview about the meaning of life?”

“No. I don’t have university classes on Fridays, so I thought I’d hang out here for the rest of the day. Maybe find another opportunity for a friendly chat.”

Joe groaned. “Lucky me.”

He listened to her laugh and couldn’t suppress a miserly smile. He enjoyed hearing her laugh, and he liked knowing that something he’d said was the reason. He enjoyed her company, and her chatter, and her scrunching nose and pinwheeling hands. And he liked this simple, friendly feeling. It was…nice.

He really hated that particular four-letter word, but there it was: nice. He couldn’t come up with a better term for this warm and fuzzy friendship he felt settling over them just the way he imagined grandma’s favorite afghan might feel—soft and familiar and scented with something other than barbecued pork extract. Warm, and fuzzy, and safe. Nice.

He hadn’t planned on it, hadn’t been looking for it, hadn’t been working at it, but there it was. And what was extra nice was that he was fairly sure Emily felt the same, too. The sound of her laughter was a good sign. That and the fact that she hadn’t given up on him and moved away.

So he made the effort to straighten up, chance a sip of the soda she’d given him and take the simple, friendly conversation to another level. “You know, Ms. Sullivan, not everyone chooses happiness as a life goal. Some people put other people’s happiness ahead of their own.”

She tilted her head. He knew that tilt. It meant his philosophical underpinnings were about to be run through the wringer.

“And doesn’t the creation of that happiness give a deep sense of accomplishment and satisfaction to the happiness causer?” she asked.

He shifted forward. “What about pure altruism? Doing good for others at the risk of complete self-sacrifice?”

“Does it have to make you unhappy to be pure? Can’t an act still be altruistic even if there’s a little niggling shred of satisfaction mixed in with the sacrifice?”

“So, in your world, self-satisfied self-sacrifice is, in essence, a selfish act?”

Emily leaned closer. “What is self-sacrifice without some degree of self-satisfaction?”

“Altruism.”

“Or martyrdom.” She tilted her head again. “So, Joe, which kind of teacher are you? A slightly impure altruist? Or a chest-thumping martyr?”

“Neither. And I have the paychecks to prove it.”

Damn. She’d snuck in under his guard and landed another sucker punch. She’d gotten his brain in gear, his juices flowing and forced him to examine his motivations for teaching. He was feeling bruised, and confused, and annoyed, and something else he didn’t care to label at the moment, because it felt like one of those feelings that would get him fired if he followed through on it.

He settled back against the ground and closed his eyes to shut her out and end the conversation. “It’s just a job, Emily.”

When she didn’t respond, he cracked one eye open to see her smiling down at him. One of her admiring smiles. The kind that made him squirm.

CHAPTER FIVE

EMILY PERCHED on her bar stool a week later and surveyed the Friday-night scene at a university area pub: a room packed with hopefuls looking for hookups. The stale beer, the stale peanuts and the stale lines were standard issue atmosphere.

Next to her, Social Studies Methodology classmate Marilee Ostrom ran a red-lacquered nail along the edge of her margarita glass and licked the salt from her finger. Then she leaned forward and set her elbows on the glossy pub bar, crossing her arms to neatly frame her ample breasts for the male art critics on the other side of the counter.

“Okay, you’re right. Nice moves,” said Emily. “But it’s the cleavage that makes it work.”

“You’ve got cleavage.”

“Barely.”

“There’s nothing bare about it tonight,” said Marilee, glancing at Emily’s gray turtleneck sweater. “You won’t land a live one if you don’t get your hook in the water.”

Marilee tossed her lush auburn hair over her shoulder with a sensual shrug. Everything about Marilee was lush and sensual and made for red. Not a sophisticated burgundy or a down-to-earth rust, but a sex-served-straight-up, sirens-screaming, fire-engine red. “Besides,” she said, “your reel will get rusty if you don’t play out a little line every now and then.”

All this fishing talk was reminding Emily of Linda’s theory about Kyle. “Can we drop the fishing analogies? And besides, I’m not interested.”

“I’ve always believed that the best way to top off a girl’s night out is with a man in the morning.” Marilee tipped her glass in a discreet gesture. “That one, over there, the one with the dark green sweater—he looks like your type.”

Emily glanced at a lanky all-American candidate with squared-off shoulders and a squared-off jaw. “Yep, he sure does.”

“So, give him some encouragement,” said Marilee.

“I don’t want to encourage him.”

Marilee rolled her eyes.

Emily stared down at her drink. “It’s complicated.”

“Is there someone else?”

“Why does there have to be someone else?”

“Because Chad, or Blake, or Whoever over there is seriously cute.”

Marilee smiled at the dark and brooding guy in black leather at the other end of the bar, and he smiled back through a ribbon of cigarette smoke. Dark and brooding would suit Marilee, Emily thought.

They watched him send up another smoke signal. “Go ahead,” Emily said. “Go fish.”

“And leave you crying over your mysterious someone else?”

“I’m not. I won’t.”

Marilee rolled her eyes again. “You’ve got all the symptoms. Sighing, dressing like a nun. Ignoring Troy in the green sweater.”

“Maybe I’m just picky.” Because she could feel a blush coming on, Emily turned to stare out at the crowd.

Marilee shook her head. “I’ve got you pegged. And your cheeks are turning bright pink. You’re like a human traffic signal. Stop. Go. Go away.”

Emily reached back to pick up her wine and took a big sip of avoidance.

Marilee gasped. “I know who it is. It’s your master teacher. The tall, dark and cranky one with the troubled past. You like him.”

“Of course I like him.”

“No. I mean, you like him. As in ‘I like what I see and I want to see more.’”

“I couldn’t do that,” Emily said. Marilee lifted one auburn eyebrow, and Emily’s cheeks got warmer. “It’s complicated.”

“We’ve already established that.” Marilee toyed with her straw. “So he’s your master teacher. So you’ve got an itch for him that can’t be scratched till the end of the term. Doesn’t mean you can’t brush up against him every now and then in an innocent social setting. Find out if he’s a little itchy, too.”

Emily spun the stem of her glass. “No way. He’s my teacher and my job supervisor. That’s two big check marks in the hands-off column.”

And she’d better remind herself about those check marks whenever she started feeling a little warm and rashy. Joe would be evaluating her performance during the next few weeks. Things could get sticky if either of them acknowledged a sexual attraction or, worse, followed up on it.

The smart thing to do would be to get herself reassigned to another school—it might not be too late in the term. But there were mysteries to solve, and things she wanted to help Joe rediscover. And there were other things she still believed, deep down in her heart, only Joe could teach her.

“So there are some complications.” Marilee shrugged. “I don’t see anything here a little time won’t cure.”

The smoker slid off his stool and sauntered to an empty booth, casting lures in his wake. Marilee’s lips bowed in a smug curve. “Unless the complications on the personal level are complicating things on the job level,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“All that photocopying and note-taking you’re stuck doing while the rest of us are enjoying some one-on-one time with students.” She set her drink on the bar. “Are you letting the personal complications get in the way of the job?”

Maybe she was. Maybe she’d been distracted by Joe’s good looks and his mysterious past. Maybe she’d been a little too admiring, a little too curious—and a little too passive.

Maybe it was time to be more assertive, time to stop settling for copier crumbs and grab a bigger share of the classroom pie. Maybe the only way she’d ever find out if she could handle the challenges of a teaching career was to challenge Joe on his own turf.

While she was considering all the maybes, Marilee slid off her bar stool and slipped her purse strap over the shoulder of her bright red dress.

“You can’t just open up a can of worms like that and then leave me here,” Emily said.

Marilee waggled red-tipped fingers in farewell. “Fish or cut bait, Em.”

JOE CONFRONTED another restless Friday night. The end of another week of teaching, another week of trying to figure out if making an effort was worth the effort. One week closer to the end of the school year and the decision whether or not to sign another contract.

He stood at the living area window in his cramped apartment tucked above Dixon’s Hardware, staring down into the glowing puddles ringing the streetlights along Main Street, and poured the last half inch of a bottle of Merlot into a large goblet. He swirled it, watching the wine glide down the curved sides. Good legs.

Legs. Female legs. Long, satiny and tangled with his. The perfect distraction from thoughts of the job.

He could phone Dolores over in Orchard View. He’d buy her a few drinks, and she’d offer her warm bed and willing body in exchange. She always did. Dependable, divorced Dolores. Maybe tonight he’d take her up on it.

He frowned down into his glass, knowing the company of a forty-five-year-old shopping network addict wasn’t the cure for this particular case of restlessness.

Maybe he’d make a plan. Short-term, just for the next few hours; long-term, to get him through Saturday night, too. Maybe he’d open another bottle of wine and settle in at the piano, spin out whatever blowzy, bluesy tune the vintage suggested. Ambivalence in the key of Burgundy.

He turned from the window, set the goblet on a side table and stretched out along the oversize sofa squeezed into the undersize space. The secondhand-shop leather cushioned him like an old ball glove, and he focused on the comfort as he willed himself to relax.

The clock struck nine, and the room dimmed as the shop lights beading the street below winked out. Rain splashed over the gutter, and the furnace whumped and hissed. He tapped one foot against the other, adding to the sullen syncopation.

So, is this where you picture yourself in ten years?

He swung his feet to the floor with an oath and flicked the switch on the side table lamp. Light spilled over his empty goblet and beside it, his cell phone.

Conversation could be a cure for restlessness. He’d had a taste of conversation, of connection, in the quad with Emily, and the sample had left him hungry for more.

He lifted the phone, hit the first number on his automatic dial and waited through the electronic clicks and trills to hear the voice of his aunt in San Francisco. Anna Green, his one and only family member. An activist with a heart as deep as San Pablo Bay and enough political savvy to fill it ten times over.

“Anna,” he said when she picked up. “It’s me.”

“So it is.” His aunt’s gravelly voice sounded like his childhood—earthy, basic, and a little rough around the edges. “Where are you, kid? Anywhere close?”

“Here at home,” he said.

“Friday night, single fella, stuck at home. What’s wrong with this picture?”

“It was a rough week.”

“Aren’t they all?” she asked. Joe could hear papers rustling in the background and pictured her fidgeting with her work. Anna never did one thing at a time when she could do two.

“The first couple of weeks of school don’t usually hit this hard.” He didn’t usually have to deal with a fresh and lovely young woman probing into his intellectual and emotional nooks and crannies.

Joe slouched down and rubbed his free hand over his face. “What’s on the political agenda these days?”

“SUVs. Elitist weapons of death.” He listened for a few minutes while she read him an abbreviated version of her current riot act. The follow-up literature would probably hit his mailbox within a week. Anna didn’t write, she pamphleted.

But he’d always been able to derail her from her one-track speeches for the critical moments of his life. And she’d managed to keep him fed and clothed, disciplined and educated after his mother had abandoned him on her doorstep. He was grateful for the care she spared for her nephew in the midst of her greater quest to care for humanity.

He waited for her to wind down, waited for an opening. “Is it all worth it? What you do, I mean.”

“That’s one of the most ridiculous questions you’ve ever asked.” Her exasperation sputtered through the wires. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t mean the causes. Or the effort,” he said.

“What do you mean, then?”

“I mean…” What did he mean? “Does it—does your work make you happy? Are you happy, Anna?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” No more sputtering now. “It’s what I choose to do, every day. It’s my life—it gives my life meaning and direction. There aren’t many people who can say that about what they’ve chosen to do.”

Anna’s words rippled through his dark and empty spaces. Something coherent struggled to take shape, but he was too weary to concentrate. Too much wine, too much rain.

“This is an interesting series of questions,” she said. “I’m wondering what inspired it.”

“A conversation I had this week. About altruism.”

“Hmm.” The paper rustling slowed. “I think that, to some degree, I need to feel good about myself. About what I do. What about the job you do? Some folks might call teaching an altruistic profession.”

“But I get paid to do it.”

“So do I. All my causes put food on my table. Just because they’re bigger than a classroom doesn’t mean they’re any more important.”

Joe rubbed tiredly at his face and silently cursed Emily Sullivan for making him feel like a project with a due date. Short-term, long-term, end-of-term—any way he looked at it, he was going to have to define himself as a teacher and a human being before he could help guide her through the process. And he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer to the big essay question waiting at the bottom of the page.

“So, what’s the real reason for the call?” Anna asked.

“Nothing special. I just wanted to talk.”

“About the justification for our existence? Most folks start out with something simple, like, ‘How’s the weather down there?’”

He thought of Emily’s simple, friendly chat. “Maybe I’m a little rattled. New school year, remember?”

“Yeah. Any changes? How about a new principal?”

“No, still stuck with Kyle.”

Joe smiled at Anna’s inventive curse. She’d met his boss once; survivors of the disaster scene still cringed at the memory. “Word is his wife left him.”

“Smart move.”

“There’s more.” He stalled for a moment, and then dived into the news he realized he’d wanted to share with her all along. “I’ve got a student teacher.”

“It’s about time, kid.” The paper rustling stopped. He had her complete attention now. “Here’s your chance to make a bigger impact. Mold another teacher to fight the good fight.”

Joe quickly blocked the image of his hands molding Emily’s curves. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. She comes from a military family. You know the type—solid, upstanding, old-fashioned. Big-time conservatives.”

There was another pause. A long one. And then Anna did something she didn’t do very often. She laughed. A rolling, raucous, riot of a laugh. The kind of laugh he hadn’t heard from her since that Love Boat actor decided to run for Congress on the GOP ticket. He could hear Anna’s partner, Carol, in the background, ask what was going on.

Anna finally managed to ask, “Is she pretty?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Is she?”

“What if she is?” said Joe. “She’s not my type.”

“What do you mean, she’s not your type? Is she mine?”

“No!” Joe stalked to the window and lowered the blinds. “I mean, I don’t think so. No.” God, no.

“So, what’s she like?”

“Think Shirley Temple on speed.”

There was that laugh again. And when Anna repeated his description for Carol, he got to hear it in stereo. “So glad I could provide this evening’s entertainment,” he said.

Anna sighed a settling-down sigh. “God, I’d love to meet her.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you would.” He grinned at the thought of Emily deconstructing Anna’s underpinnings. “She’ll be at Caldwell until the end of the semester.”

“That’s only, what, months away?”

Joe shut his eyes. “God.”

“You know how time flies when you’re having fun,” said Anna.

“This isn’t fun.”

“Yin and yang, kid,” said Anna. “Find the right balance, achieve harmony.”

Joe grunted. When it came to Emily Sullivan, his take on yin and yang was probably something a lot more physical than what Anna had in mind.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “Thanks, Anna.”

He said goodbye and disconnected. The sudden silence magnified the emptiness of his dark apartment.

He snatched his empty goblet from the side table and carried it into the kitchen. No more wine tonight. And less wine in the nights to come. He needed to keep a clearer head.

Damn it, he hadn’t asked for a session of self-analysis. He’d been reasonably content with his life before Ms. Emily Sullivan barged into it and started asking all her questions about goals and happiness. Okay, maybe not content, exactly, but resigned. Resignation was a good thing, especially for his mental health. It meant he’d faced his mistakes and learned from them. That he was doing everything in his power to keep from making them again.

Which meant he never should have allowed Ms. Fresh and Lovely Sullivan to step one foot in his classroom door. But there she was. Probing.

Tempting.

He cursed and swung back into the living area, scrambling for control. He was the authority figure here, damn it. What he needed to do was to start acting like it. He’d probably be sore. He hadn’t used those particular muscles for a long, long time.

Better sore than sorry.

From here on out, the honeymoon period was over. Fini. Kaput. He wasn’t going to let her get to him again, to get the upper hand again. He’d take the lead in their conversations.

These first few weeks of her part-time internship were supposed to be an observation phase in her student teaching year—well, she could damn well observe. Nothing more. Let her sit out there with the other students, far away from his desk. Far away from him.

When it was time for the next phase, he’d set up separate discussion groups, separate projects. No need for teamwork. Keep her moving in baby steps, carefully placed. That was the plan. The end of the term would be here before she knew it.

Better still, there might be some way to get rid of her. He’d make a few phone calls, talk to a few people. He’d ease her out, before she realized what was happening. Before she could shake him up like this again.

Before she wormed all the way under his skin and drove him completely over the edge.

There you go, Emily, he thought with a smile. Plans. Short-term and long-term goals, neatly outlined and ready to be implemented.

He walked over to his piano and stared down at the keys. There it was again—the tune that had been teasing through the back of his mind all week. All it needed was a different tempo: lazy, with a touch of the blues.

He stretched one hand over the keys and began to pick out the first few notes of “Animal Crackers in My Soup.”

CHAPTER SIX

ON MONDAY MORNING, Joe watched Emily hunch over her observation post in the back corner of his second-period Current Events class. She was doing an admirable job of ignoring the bright blue Skittle wobbling on top of the radiator a few inches from her elbow.

Her neighbors were having a more difficult time ignoring the results of an incident involving a dangling backpack, an open box of candy and Emily’s swinging foot. Every once in a while someone shifted, and another Skittle scuttled across the room. A discussion on the European economic union couldn’t compete with the subtle soccer matches going on in the aisles.

When the bell rang, she stood with the other students and began her end-of-observation routine: double-checking her schedule in her organizer before closing it, arranging her pens in a predetermined order in the pen compartment of her briefcase, marking her place in her journal before slipping it into its special slot.

She adjusted the strap over her shoulder and turned to leave, but Matt stepped into the aisle, blocking the path from her desk to Joe’s. “Hey, Ms. Sullivan.”

Emily gave him one of her more businesslike smiles. “Hi, Matt.”

Joe turned to wipe his lecture notes off the board and give them both a little privacy. He suspected Matt had a bit of a crush on her. There was a lot of that going around. She’d have to learn to deal with it on her own.

“I heard you’re going to coach the JV girls’ basketball team,” Matt said.

The eraser scudded across the board and flopped on the floor in a little puff of chalk dust. Joe swiveled to scoop it up and caught Emily’s quick, guilty glance.

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