They’re both learning from scratch

Molly Adamson has moved back to the place that made her happiest: Eagle Valley, Montana. Teaching college English classes is also a fresh start...even if he’s one of her students. Finn Culver. Athlete, heartthrob, homecoming date. After that disastrous night all those years ago, Molly never wanted to see Finn, now a handsome military veteran, again. But as she gets to know him through his writing, helping him conquer an undiagnosed learning disability, Molly sees much more than the swaggering charmer. Both teacher and student will learn a lot about love, and each other, if they can let the past go...

“I think you should continue the class.”

“I don’t see a lot of point in taking it.”

“I’ll...”

Molly’s voice trailed off and Finn’s expression shifted. “What, Molly?” One corner of his perfect mouth curved into a wry expression that was somehow both cold and amused. “Be gentle with me?”

The way he said it brought more color to her cheeks. “Yes. I will.”

“Thanks for the offer, but no.”

“I’ll...help you.” What on earth was she saying?

“No. Thank you.”

He pulled the truck door open and Molly heard the word “Chicken?” emerge from her lips. Finn stopped dead and turned back.

Had she really just said that?

Dear Reader,

Molly’s Mr. Wrong is all about trying to get life right. During high school, Molly Adamson was a shy, bookish teen with a raging crush on one of the high school elite. You know how that usually works out, right?

Right...

Well, in Molly’s case, she got a (mercy) date with her dream guy—Finn Culver—who then brought her home early from the homecoming dance and went out with another woman. Ouch. But those are the kinds of moments in life that inspire people to change, and that was when Molly decided to reinvent herself.

Fast-forward a decade and Molly is a successful college English teacher. She knows what she wants in life and she also knows what she doesn’t want. Top of the list for Doesn’t Want? Finn Culver blasting back into her life. But Finn is now one of her students, and Molly finds that while she knows exactly what she’s looking for in her Mr. Right, she keeps feeling a tug toward Mr. Wrong.

Is she ever going to get life right?

This was a fun book to write because once upon a time I was Molly. I didn’t have her homecoming experience, but I did have a couple of cringe-worthy high school moments. But don’t we all? I hope you enjoy Molly’s Mr. Wrong.

Happy reading,

Jeannie Watt

Molly’s Mr. Wrong

Jeannie Watt

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JEANNIE WATT splits her time between her homes in rural northern Nevada and western Montana. In Nevada, she enjoys the quiet life living off the grid, and in Montana she and her husband help with the family cattle ranch. Jeannie enjoys riding, hiking, sewing and making mosaic mirrors. She also enjoys adding to her small menagerie and has her eye on a baby goat. Shh—don’t tell her husband. Check out Jeannie’s website, jeanniewatt.com, for more information.

This book is dedicated to the Mathews Clan. You guys are the best!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“BE CAREFUL OF that box,” Lola Martinez called from behind the cash register as Finn Culver came in through the front door of the feed store. “It’s full of pottery.”

“Right.” Finn sidestepped the box blocking the aisle and barely kept from shaking his head as he crossed the store to his grandfather’s office. Two weeks had passed since he’d returned from overseas deployment, and he was still having trouble wrapping his mind around the changes that had occurred here during the year he’d been gone.

He’d left a dusty space containing the bare essentials for serious ranching and farming and come back to a full-blown Western gift boutique and coffee corner—thanks to his cousin’s new fiancée, Jolie Brody. The crazy thing was that his grandfather, Mike, who’d taught him his frugal ways, was good with it. No, he was great with it—because his friends hung around the store now, and he didn’t have to wait for Thursday-night poker to be with the guys. Business was booming, despite competition from chain ranch stores, and how strange was that when a year ago he could have fired a cannonball through the store and not come close to hitting someone?

“Hey, Finn.” Karl Evans, one of Mike’s best friends, hailed him from inside the office, where two of the three chairs that usually sat side by side in front of the small television had been swung around to face Finn’s desk. “We need an opinion.”

Finn gamely made his way to stand behind the chairs. He’d given a lot of opinions and settled a lot of bets since returning home. Debating and small-time wagering were a way of life for his granddad and his friends Karl and Cal Sawyer.

Karl looked over his shoulder at him. “We’re thinking of introducing Cal into the wonderful world of online dating. Which photo?”

On the desk were printouts of three hilariously unflattering photos of the missing member of the geriatric trio.

Finn’s face grudgingly split into a smile as he picked up the photo that made it appear as if Cal’s eyes had rolled back into his head. “You guys wouldn’t.”

“We’re just going to mess with his head,” Karl said with a laugh. “Teach him that it’s dangerous to miss buddy time.”

Finn pointed at the photo he’d just set down. “That one. Definitely.”

He left the two guys cackling and typing up Cal’s bogus profile.

“I have the grain order ready for approval,” Lola said as he came out of the office. She was an easygoing woman in her midforties who used to live next door to Mike. She was there temporarily until his cousin Dylan and his fiancée, Jolie, returned from Colorado, where Dylan was training in forensic biology. But with the way business was going, they could probably keep her on. He went to the counter and pulled the papers closer, reading through them slowly and making a checkmark by each item as he approved it.

“You okay?” Lola asked.

Finn glanced up in surprise. “Yeah. Why?”

“You seem...preoccupied?”

He jerked his head at the office door. “Just concerned that I might be the next guy in their sights for a prank.”

“Yeah. That wouldn’t be good. Those guys...they have too much time on their hands.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

* * *

“THIS IS A CUTE HOUSE and all, Molly, but what’s with these closets?”

Molly Adamson’s younger sister, Georgina, stood in front of the pint-size closet, holding a fistful of hangers and looking perplexed. At nineteen, she was a year older than Molly had been when the family moved from Eagle Valley, Montana, to Darby, Illinois, where her father had been tasked with reviving yet another failing store. Moving every year or two, depending on how long it took her father to work his magic or declare the store a bust, had been a fact of Adamson family life. But Molly had been lucky that the family had stayed in the Eagle Valley for three whole years, allowing her to finish high school there. It’d been the longest she’d ever lived in one place and probably the reason she was back. Eagle Valley was the closest thing to a hometown that she had.

Georgina set the hangers on the dresser and propped a hand on her hip as she regarded the space. “Didn’t people hang up clothing in the 1940s?”

“They probably didn’t own as much clothing as you do.”

“Point taken, but seriously, look at the size of this thing.”

Molly had to agree it was small, but other than the tiny closets, the house was perfect. Situated on the edge of town with a creek on the other side of the backyard fence and beyond that fields and mountains... It was more than she’d hoped for after making the decision to return. Housing options were limited in the Eagle Valley, unless you were rolling in money, which Molly definitely was not. Thank you, Blake. Her ill-fated relationship with an almost-pro ballplayer had played hell with both her finances and later her self-esteem, but it had also helped her to grow a backbone.

“I would have loved this closet when I was eight,” Georgina said. “Kid-size.” She tapped a finger on her chin. “Maybe I could build something. You know, shelving and stuff.”

Molly had seen that light in her sister’s eyes before. “Uh...give me a heads-up before you start knocking out walls, okay?”

Georgina flashed a smile. “I’ll probably be too busy with classes to do any serious renovation, but at semester break...don’t worry,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll have a plan in place.”

“Yes, I’d appreciate a plan.” Then it wouldn’t be like the time her sister had taken it upon herself to join her room to Molly’s by knocking out a space between wall studs with a hammer. Both girls had gotten a lesson in drywall installation and repair shortly thereafter, with Molly handling the brunt of the work, since she was sixteen and Georgina had been six. Their brother, David, who perfectly split their age span, being five years older than Georgina and five years younger than Molly, had enjoyed himself immensely, since for once he wasn’t the Adamson in deep trouble.

Molly walked down the hall to the kitchen, which was crammed with unopened boxes. She leaned against the door frame, letting her glasses slide down her nose as she regarded the room. Yes, she would make order of chaos, but she didn’t have much time, because her new job started in less than a week. Feeling a surge of adrenaline at the thought, she pushed off the door frame and opened the box closest to her and starting unwrapping her grandmother’s china and loading it carefully into the cupboards. Rain beat on the roof as she worked, a sound she hadn’t heard all that often in Phoenix, where she’d recently finished up her degree. Now it was a sound she’d been hearing for the past twelve hours.

“Need some help?” Georgina, apparently having given up on closet plans for the time being, drifted into the room. She opened a box without waiting for an answer and began unpacking kitchen utensils.

Finally, at nine o’clock, Georgina straightened from where she’d been kneeling next to the linen drawer and pushed her long dark hair away from her face. “Maybe I should go get us some takeout or something.”

“I don’t know how much takeout you’re going to find here. Maybe we should hit a grocery store instead.”

“Are you sure they’re open this late?” Georgina asked with a tiny smirk. “And that the sidewalks are still down, for that matter?”

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to move with me to a small town,” Molly said as she looked around for her purse. Although Eagle Valley was bigger than it had been when she left a decade ago.

“I’m all over this small-town thing.” Georgina lifted a piece of packing material and handed Molly her simple brown leather purse. “But I was eight when we moved. There’s a lot I don’t remember.” And a lot that she did. She’d talked about it on the drive from Arizona to Montana, wondering what had changed and who still lived there.

Molly had been surprised when newly graduated Georgina had decided to move back to Montana with her and start postsecondary at Eagle Valley Community College. She’d also been glad for the company. She’d spent a lot of solitary hours while Blake had been on the road, blithely unaware that he wasn’t as alone as she was, so being alone felt different now. It reminded her of how stupid she’d been.

Georgina rolled up the rickety metal garage door, putting up her hand as a blast of water blew in. “You know, I used to like the rain.”

Half an hour later they were back with a carload of groceries. Georgina rolled down the garage door while Molly gathered as many bags as she could carry in one trip. She was starving, and the sooner the frozen pizza was in the oven, the better. She started for the steps leading up to the kitchen door only to stop dead as she came around the front of the car.

“What?” Georgina asked as she almost ran into her from behind.

“That.” Molly pointed to the far wall where water was starting to seep across the garage from under the edge of the door that opened to the yard.

Her cute house had a problem more pressing than closet space. Her cute house was flooding.

“Did the creek overflow?” Georgina asked.

“I don’t think so. It seemed pretty low yesterday.” Molly quickly climbed the steps and unlocked the kitchen door, set down the groceries and headed out to the back deck. The creek was still in its banks, but something was making the garage flood.

Using the small flashlight on her key chain, Molly walked around the edge of the house and shone the light on the concrete garage entryway, which was lower than the surrounding landscape and created the perfect place for runoff to flow. Water lapped against the bottom of the door.

“Damn. That’s at least three inches deep.”

“Poor design for sure,” Georgina muttered. “What do we do?”

Molly pushed her wet hair back. “We get out of the rain and cook our pizza.”

“Seriously?”

Molly shrugged as she led the way back to the deck. “We have nothing in the garage other than the car. The house sits a couple feet higher than the garage, so we ignore it until morning.”

When she and the real estate agent were going to have a chat.

But it turned out that the agent was on vacation for the next week and a half.

“I have half an inch of water in my garage from the storm last night and I want something done about it.”

“We’re a real estate office,” the woman on the other end said irritably. “You need a plumber.”

No. She needed to know why this situation wasn’t mentioned when she specifically asked about flooding and plumbing problems and was told there were none. “Have Mr. Hettle call me when he gets back, please.”

There was a hearty sigh on the other end of the line and Molly forced herself to stay silent. Not to apologize. It was hard to break that habit, but hitting her breaking point with Blake had changed her, helped her find her backbone, and people with backbones didn’t apologize so that other people would play nice with them.

“I’ll connect you to his voice mail.” Molly was abruptly switched over and after the greeting, she left a short message. One problem not solved. She glanced at her watch, then went to the closet to grab her dark blue blazer. Even though her job didn’t start for another week, she had to attend orientation meetings over the next several days. “Hey, George! I’ve got to go.”

“See ya.” Her sister’s voice drifted down the hall from her room, followed by the sound of hammering.

Hoping all the walls would be in place when she got home, Molly backed her car out of the still-damp garage, then stopped when she noticed the older man next door digging around his rosebushes. Molly rolled down her window.

“Excuse me,” she called. The man looked up, then set down his shovel and crossed his yard to the fence. “My garage flooded last night during the rainstorm... Do you know if the people who owned this place before me had the same problem?”

The man shook his head. “Flooded, you say.”

“Water filled up the entry leading to the side garage door. It’s receding, but if we get rain again...”

“Ah. There’s a drain in the bottom of that concrete slab. Yours must be clogged.”

A clogged drain. Easy fix. Suddenly the world seemed brighter and Molly smiled at him. “Could you recommend a good plumber?”

“If you don’t mind waiting. They’re building more houses on that hill near the lake and the guy I know is pretty busy, but he’ll get to you. Eventually.”

“Is there anyone else?”

“Probably not anyone you want to hire.” The old man cocked his head. “How ’bout I send my grandson around? He’s pretty good with that stuff and he’d fix you up for free.”

Molly started shaking her head, then again stopped. Small town. Helpful neighbors...why say no to that? “If he doesn’t mind. I’d prefer to pay him, though. I’d feel more comfortable that way.”

“Well, I don’t know if he’d take money, but I can ask him to stop by tonight after he gets off work and he can see what’s what. Does six o’clock work for you?”

“Yes. It does.” And she needed to get moving. “I have to get to a meeting, but thank you. I really appreciate your help.”

The guy raised a dismissive hand. “Not a problem. We’re neighbors. Mike Culver, by the way.”

“Molly Adamson. Glad to meet you, Mike.” She put the car in Reverse, waved to her neighbor, and backed out onto the street. If Mike’s grandson could help her out with this problem, then her biggest dilemma would be closet space. After the trauma of the past few years, she could live with that.

* * *

FINN HAD A BAD FEELING about this. Mike was a totally capable plumber, a master of the drain snake, so why had he asked Finn to take care of his neighbor’s problem? He assumed it was because she was female. Finn had no trouble meeting women, but the kind of women he dated weren’t generally the settle-down kind. Mike wanted him settled—not that he was actively matchmaking. No, he’d just been dropping heavy hints for the past two years.

Finn also suspected that Mike considered himself the mastermind behind his cousin Dylan hooking up with Jolie Brody, who’d worked at the store. Maybe now that he’d tasted success, he was moving on to his next targets—him and Cal.

The thought made Finn’s blood run a little cold.

The lights were off in Mike’s house when Finn parked in the driveway. Maybe his grandfather really was busy and didn’t have time to help the lady. Feeling slightly better, he started up the neighbor’s walk. The door opened before he reached the low porch, and a slim woman with straight honey-colored hair that fell just past her shoulders and heavy black glasses that gave her a sexy secretary look stepped out the door to meet him.

“Hi,” she said as she closed the door. “You must be...” Her eyes widened as her voice trailed off and Finn had to stop himself from looking over his shoulder to see what had frozen her expression. “Finn Culver.”

She said his name as if it was an accusation and he had the distinct feeling that he had just crossed that line into the twilight zone.

“I am.” He ran his gaze over her, looking for a clue. He sure as hell wasn’t wearing a name badge, so he had to know her from somewhere. Mike said she was new in town, but there was something about her that niggled at his brain.

“You don’t remember me.” The words were spoken in the same flat tone as his name.

Angular face, hazel eyes, really nice mouth, kind of wide and full. A few freckles. Big glasses. He was drawing a blank. “You seem familiar.” No lie there.

“It was a long time ago,” she said.

“What was?”

She folded her arms over her chest. “The mercy date.”

CHAPTER TWO

MOLLY FELT LIKE smacking her forehead as she ran her eyes over the man standing in front of her, looking self-confident to the point of cockiness.

Okay—that had been stupid of her, not cluing in on the fact that her neighbor’s last name was Culver. But she hadn’t thought about Finn Culver in a long time. She had fresher humiliations to think about, like her ex-fiancé spreading the love as he traveled with his ball team. Finn Culver hadn’t even been a blip on her radar—or at least not until he appeared at her door just now, looking even better than he had in high school. Of course he couldn’t be one of those guys who started to thicken up in their early thirties. If anything, he was more muscular, his face more sculpted. And the little lines at the corners of his eyes added to the package. She hated the fact that the package still looked so good.

“Mercy date?” Finn repeated. Then an expression of dawning understanding crossed his handsome features and his face split into a grin. “Wow. That was a long time ago.”

And that grin pissed her off.

“Yes.” But not so long that she’d forgotten any of it. First there’d been the embarrassment of their mothers arranging the date so that Molly could attend the homecoming dance. To this day Molly didn’t know if her mother had been aware of the fact that she’d had a wild crush on Finn, who’d been two years older than her. She’d approached the date with anticipation and terror.

When the big day had finally arrived, she’d gone to the game with one of her friends since Finn was playing, hooked up with him afterward for the dance, thought they were having a good time, and then he took her home as soon as the last song had ended. No kiss at the door. Nothing. Oh well, she’d told herself. So he wasn’t a guy who pushed.

It turned out that he wasn’t a guy who pushed her.

After dropping her off, he’d gone to a party where he’d scored with one of the high school’s socially elite. Molly knew because the girl had wondered aloud in the locker room if she was going to get pregnant because she and Finn had “forgotten” to use protection. And then in a nightmare moment, the girl seemed to remember (a) that Molly was standing at a locker a few feet away and (b) that she’d also been with Finn that night, though not in nearly such an intimate way.

Heat rose in Molly’s cheeks at the memory. Everyone in school had soon known that Finn had ditched her to spend the rest of the evening with someone more in his league. And they’d sure had a great time.

She realized then that even though she hadn’t thought about it in a long time, she hadn’t forgotten the searing humiliation of the homecoming episode—she’d buried it and stacked rocks on top. But the feelings were pushing their way to the surface, and Molly discovered that those feelings were still just a bit raw. She didn’t have to put up with guys like Finn or Blake anymore. Not for one lousy second.

“You know,” she finally said, hoping he didn’t notice her overly pink cheeks, but needing closure on this matter, “I can understand how being saddled with a date our mothers cooked up might not have been the greatest, but did you really have to nail Sheena that same night?”

“Shayna.”

“I stand corrected.”

Finn shifted his weight uncomfortably. Good. “I didn’t intend to humiliate you.”

“Well, you did.”

“Obviously you’re still angry about it.” He quickly held up a hand. “Not that you don’t have cause. You do.”

“I’m not angry.” Molly drew in a breath. “But you know, honestly? I’ll be more comfortable calling a professional for this job.” She’d made her point and now she wanted him gone.

Finn rubbed the back of his neck as if his muscles had gone tight, then met her gaze, and she was irritated to discover that she still thought he had pretty amazing eyes. “Let me look at the problem. I owe you.”

“You owe me?” She spoke on an incredulous note.

“I showed poor judgment.”

“You were monumentally insensitive.”

“I was a horny teenage boy.”

“Who didn’t make one move on me.” The words blurted out and Molly was surprised to find that she didn’t regret them. Not one bit.

A look of surprise crossed his face. “You were so...”

He stopped before he got himself into trouble, but Molly was not letting him off the hook. Her eyebrows lifted coolly. “Please. Finish your thought.”

“Mousy.”

Molly’s eyes went shut for a fraction of a second as her lips thinned. Yes, she’d been mousy. Which was worse than being invisible, which is what she’d thought she’d been. She opened her eyes again and fixed her gaze over his head at his Mustang as her economical self battled with her pride. On the one hand, the incident had occurred a long time ago. His grandfather was her neighbor. On the other, he’d taken her out on a date, dumped her and screwed another woman that same night.

“Tell your grandfather thanks for sending you.” She started to cross her arms over her chest, then stopped abruptly. No more drawing into herself. “I appreciate you taking the time to stop by. I’ll reimburse you for your gas.”

“Forget the gas,” he said. “And for what it’s worth, I apologize for what I did.”

“Accepted.” Molly meant what she said—even as she wondered if he did—because she was not going to let ancient history weigh on her. But she also wasn’t having the guy work on her drain. Wouldn’t be beholden to him in any way, shape or form. “Now, if you don’t mind...I have more unpacking to do.”

* * *

“YOU’RE BACK ALREADY?” Mike looked over his glasses at Finn.

“Your neighbor—” for the life of him he couldn’t remember her last name “—wants to hire a professional.”

“Are you sure it’s not a case of her feeling uncomfortable about taking up your time and getting help for free? I mean, she wasn’t just being nice, was she?”

“Trust me. She wasn’t being nice.” She was totally pissed over an incident that he’d long forgotten. He doubted very much that she’d walked around regularly stewing about the incident for the past dozen years, but there’d been no question that once she’d been reminded, she still harbored resentment.

“Meaning?”

“She didn’t want me to do it. Maybe she took one look at me and decided I was incompetent.” Or an asshole. Actually, there was no maybe about that. He was not on her A-list.

Mike studied Finn for a long moment, his gray eyebrows coming close together, making Finn feel very much as he had when he’d been guilty of some kid crime and Mike had wanted him to fess up on his own. Finn always had, but today he didn’t think that Mike needed to know all the details of what had gone down between him and Molly whose-last-name-escaped-him.

“Is something weighing on you?” Mike finally asked. “You haven’t been yourself lately.”

Finn gave a snort. “I’m good.”

“You seem unsettled.”

Finn almost said something about the military changing a man, but he didn’t want his grandfather to latch on to the notion that he was suffering from PTSD. He wasn’t. He forced a smile. “Maybe I grew up a little while I was overseas. I’m fine. Anything else?”

His grandfather took a few seconds before shaking his head in a way that told Finn that the matter was not yet considered finished. “Nope.” Mike focused back on the ledger in front of him and Finn left the office.

Until now, he’d thought he’d done a pretty good job of hiding the fact that he no longer wanted to spend his life selling grain and Western doodads. He wanted to do something that spoke to him, that meant something. It wasn’t sales and it wasn’t mechanics, which had been his specialty in the service.

Finn had always been woefully bad about choosing the right path, unlike his cousin Dylan, who’d managed the store while he was overseas. He and Dylan had grown up together, sons of brothers, but Dylan’s father had been terminally ill during their teen years, so his cousin had been all about school and academics and doing well so that his father would be proud. Finn had been all about good times. Academics had never interested him. He excelled at sports, so that was what he’d pursued. After graduating from high school, he slid into the family business, apprenticing under Mike before taking it over when Mike semiretired.

The business had done all right under his watch, but it hadn’t thrived as it had under Dylan’s—or rather his fiancée Jolie’s—and Finn knew that was because managing the store was not what he wanted to do. It was what had been easy to do. His real life had started after closing, but that life—hitting the bars, playing sports, watching games—no longer called to him, either.

During the service a crazy thing had happened—he’d discovered that he enjoyed teaching new recruits the ins and outs of mechanics and enjoyed working with people in a way that didn’t involve ringing up a sale or loading a bag of grain. Teaching made him feel...valuable...in a way he’d never felt before, and on the flight back to the States, he’d come to the conclusion that he wanted to teach industrial arts, to show kids how to work with their hands. He had a feeling he’d be good at it, that it would give him satisfaction, but he didn’t know how his grandfather was going to take his abandoning the store.

Mike was getting older, had retired once, and there would come a time when he would retire again. Who would manage the place then? Because both he and Mike felt strongly about having a family member present in the family business.

Maybe Jolie when she and Dylan returned?

That would be a perfect solution.

One that he was going to discuss with his cousin as soon as he got a chance.

* * *

AS SOON AS the water had gone down, Molly took the top off the drain and shone a flashlight down the drainpipe, but she couldn’t see any obvious obstructions. She then pulled up a video on YouTube about snaking drains and watched it with Georgina looking on over her shoulder.

“Where are we going to get one of those things?” Georgina asked, pointing at the reel holding the industrial-size snake.

“I don’t think we are.” Not unless she could find a place that rented the equipment. She doubted that Finn had the equipment necessary to handle the problem either...unless of course he was a plumber. Which was totally possible, so she paid close attention to the last names of the plumbing experts she found online before choosing one to call. She wasn’t about to ask Mike Culver for his recommendation again, because she didn’t want to explain why she’d sent his grandson packing. She hoped to stay friendly with her neighbors.

Plumbers in the area were busier than she’d anticipated, working on the new houses going in around the lake. But the forecast was clear and sunny for the next seven days, so Molly didn’t panic when she couldn’t get an immediate appointment without paying an emergency fee. She took the first regular appointment, two weeks away, and told Georgina that they wouldn’t be storing anything that wasn’t waterproof in the garage for a while.

“Maybe you should have let the hot prom guy handle it.”

“Homecoming, not prom. And I’d rather sing opera naked in the park.”

* * *

“YOU SURE YOU don’t want to watch the game with us at McElroy’s Bar?” Karl asked as Finn got ready to leave the store for the evening. “We three could attract the girls and maybe one of them would feel sorry for you.”

“Hard to turn down an offer like that,” Finn said with a grin. “But I’ve got some stuff to catch up on at home.”

From the way Karl and Cal exchanged glances, Finn gathered that Mike had shared his concerns with the boys. Finn had to admit that he’d never turned down an offer to go out in favor of kicking around his house before he’d gone overseas, but he hadn’t had a focus or direction then, either.

“Give me a rain check,” he said. “The guy who sublet my place while I was gone let a few things go to hell, and if I don’t take care of things now, I’ll regret it later.”

“We understand,” Cal said, stepping forward to clap Finn on the upper arm, as if he were about to embark on a perilous journey and making Finn wonder if he’d be better off going with the guys to McElroy’s and letting them attract women for him. It’d get these two off his back, but the truth of the matter was that he wanted to register for classes and before he did that, he wanted to give his cousin Dylan a call.

“Thanks for understanding,” Finn said with a grave nod. He’d have to go out and disgrace himself one of these days to keep Mike from worrying about him.

He grabbed his coat off the peg by the door and headed toward the side exit. Behind him he heard Karl, Cal and Mike shutting down the office in preparation for dinner out followed by the evening game. He was glad his grandfather had good friends, because it was going to make it easier when Finn informed him that he wasn’t going to be with the store forever.

After returning home, Finn signed into his newly created account at Eagle Valley Community College and registered for two evening classes, figuring that would allow him to ease back into school without affecting management of the store. He finished his registration, then got to his feet, feeling a surge of energy. No, make that energy coupled with unexpected anxiety.

What in the hell had he just done?

When he’d walked across the stage wearing his mortarboard twelve years ago, he’d sworn that he’d never subject himself to anything close to a formal classroom again. Yet here he was, wading in.

For a good reason.

He opened a beer, turned on the game and tried to focus, but even though the score was close, he kept going over the pros and cons of his plans for his future. Maybe he should have used the money he had coming due to his military service to dive in with both feet and do a four-year college program instead of a couple of courses at the local community college. That would show commitment. Was signing up for only two classes a wishy-washy approach to his new life?

Finn didn’t do wishy-washy. But on the other hand, he couldn’t just abandon his grandfather on short notice...although he had a feeling that if he did, Mike would wish him Godspeed and hire someone to do his job at a lower salary.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Action erupted on the screen in front of him, the announcers went crazy, and Finn opened his eyes again. His team had pulled ahead. Cool. Karl was probably going nuts because he hated Finn’s team. Finn smiled faintly and took a long drink, wishing he was enjoying the moment more.

Finally he reached for the phone and dialed his cousin’s number. Dylan answered on the first ring.

“I’m going back to school,” he blurted as soon as his cousin had said hello.

“No kidding.” Dylan sounded stunned at his announcement and he didn’t blame him.

“Yeah. I am. I want to become an industrial arts teacher with an emphasis in automotives.” There was a long stretch of silence. “Hello?” Finn finally said.

“Yeah. I’m here. I just thought I heard you say you wanted to be a teacher.”

“Not a real teacher. A shop teacher.”

“Last time I heard, they were real teachers.”

“What I meant was that I want to teach hands-on skills that kids who don’t go to college can use in life.”

“You want to be a teacher.”

“Strange, huh?”

“I gotta say that I never saw this coming. What does Mike think?”

“I haven’t told him yet.”

“Why not?”

“I...don’t know.” Fear of failure maybe?

“What school are you going to?”

“The community college let me in. I got official notice last week. I’m only taking two classes. I thought it best to start slow.”

“Definitely. Especially after...uh...” Dylan gave a discreet cough and Finn filled in the blank for him.

“I did crappy in high school?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“I had no reason to do well. Now I do.” And his grades hadn’t been that bad. He’d graduated with a high-C average. He’d actually excelled in math, the only class he’d truly enjoyed. The rest had been more a chore than anything, but again, now that he had a reason to learn, he’d do better.

“I think this is a good idea, Finn.”

That was what Finn had been waiting to hear. Dylan knew school. He knew academics. He knew Finn.

“Maybe I’ll tell Mike, then. I can take math and English in the evening and still work full-time. After that, then we’ll have to work something out.”

“After that, Jolie and I will be back and she can take over your job.” Just the words Finn had hoped to hear.

They talked for a few more minutes about life in Colorado, then Finn hung up feeling a lot more certain about his course of action.

Hell, he was actually kind of excited.

* * *

“I KNOW THIS is a full schedule,” Mary Jean Flannigan, the curriculum director, passed a printout of Molly’s new classes across the desk to her, “but with funding cuts, we’ve all had to pull extra duty.”

“I’m okay with it.” As a new instructor to this school, she’d be stupid not to be okay with it, but the truth of the matter was that she didn’t mind being overloaded, and this schedule didn’t seem that bad. The only addition to the mock-up she’d received the week before was an evening basics class and a composition class run in conjunction with the local high school, which gave the high school participants college credit. Molly was well familiar with the program. She’d had nine college credits by the time she’d graduated from high school, but had never dreamed she’d one day be teaching in the program.

“Let’s see...” Mary Jean flipped through some papers on her desk, then squinted up at the computer screen. “Looks like you’re set. You’ll share an office with Kelsey Cunningham and you have a key to that, so...any questions?”

“Class lists?”

“Will be loaded by the end of the day.”

Molly smiled. “I’m set.”

She walked out of the director’s office and started down the hall to her office, only to slow her steps as she caught sight of a guy walking ahead of her who looked an awful lot like Finn Culver from the back.

Finn was a student?

He certainly hadn’t been one in high school. Rumor had it that the only reason he made grades was because the coaches needed him to be eligible to play.

It couldn’t be him.

But when the man turned down another hallway, Molly caught his profile and her stomach twisted a little. Yep. Finn.

She put her head down and continued to her office at a brisk pace. So what? He was probably there for the diesel mechanics course. Or maybe welding. Even if he was in one of her courses—so what? What had happened between them was history—and more importantly, it truly felt like history now that she had gotten her chance to address the matter with him. That had been satisfying, even if she hadn’t gotten her drain fixed for free.

Mousy.

Pfft.

The one thing she was never going to be again was mousy.

* * *

FINN HAD NO IDEA what to expect his first night of class. His schedule was simple—an hour-long English class on Monday and Wednesday and an hour-long math class on Tuesday and Thursday. Classes started midweek due to Labor Day, so he only had one of each that week. And thankfully, the classes started late enough that they didn’t interfere with work, meaning he didn’t have to tell his grandfather what he was doing just yet. He preferred to test the waters before making any big announcements and now, as he was getting out of his car in front of the community college, he was glad he’d kept his plans to himself.

Registering for the courses had felt surreal, but now that he was in the building, looking for his classroom, well, surrealism was replaced by good old-fashioned nerves.

Which was stupid. He’d seen action in the Middle East; he shouldn’t be intimidated by an English class. But his gut twisted as he recognized his room number. The two middle-aged women walking ahead of him went into the room. Cool. They didn’t look at all intimidating. They looked like normal people. Like him.

Drawing in a breath, he walked into the room, automatically searching for a chair in the back.

“I’d like all the students to sit in the first two rows, please.”

Finn froze at the oddly familiar voice, then slowly turned his head to meet Molly whatever-her-last-name-was’s rather grim gaze. Then he looked down at the schedule he still held in his hand as if it were a ticket to get into the room. M. Adamson.

Adamson. Her last name was Adamson. Bringing his eyes back up to hers, he tried to decide if the night could get any worse. Maybe if his car caught fire or something. Forcing a smile, he made his way to the second row and sat one desk away from one of the women he’d followed into the room. She smiled at him in a motherly way and he smiled back as he checked out Molly from the corner of his eye. She was welcoming another student, guiding her to the front of the room.

Son of a bitch. What were the chances?

He drew in a breath. He could do this. A woman he’d humiliated twelve years ago was now his teacher, but surely she’d treat the situation professionally and not find small ways to torture him. Because if she was going to do that...

What?

He was going to quit?

He didn’t think so. He centered his notepad on his desk, pulled a pencil out of his pocket and readied himself for battle. From the look Molly gave him before she turned to write something on the whiteboard, she was doing the same.

Let the game begin.

* * *

MOLLY HAD LEARNED that Finn was one of her students early that morning when the class lists finally posted—late because of a computer error. So she’d been ready for this moment. He hadn’t had a clue that she was his instructor, and she had to admit to feeling a certain satisfaction at the flash of the deer-in-the-headlights look he’d given her when he’d realized who his instructor was. Yes. That had been one small bright spot in what was no doubt going to be a series of long, self-conscious evenings.

Even now he was sitting with his feet stretched out in front of him, a half smile playing on his lips, looking way too sexy and comfortable. Making her feel less than comfortable. It was almost as if the air was snapping with small sparks now that he was in the room.

She started to speak, but had to stop and clear her throat. “Welcome to English Basic Comp. I’m Molly Adamson...”

She explained her grading procedures, her class expectations and what her objectives were for the course. She handed out the syllabus, gave a brief overview, then leaned back against her desk and asked if anyone had questions before they began the night’s work. Several hands went up, but Molly was expecting that. She’d taught classes specifically for older adults at college in Arizona while she’d worked on her degree and knew that nontraditional students liked to ask questions. They wanted some bang for their buck.

Finn had no questions and when she chanced a look straight at him, instead of letting her gaze skim past him as she’d been doing, she saw that his expression had shifted from cavalier to something bordering on serious.

She swallowed and called on the lady next to him—Debra—who had a lot of questions. When the students were finished grilling her, Molly handed out a paper.

“What you’re getting is your first assignment. A writing assessment to let me know where you are as a writer. The topic is simple—describe a moment in which your life changed forever. I’d like at least one page. No more than two.”

Finn was once again wearing his half smirk, but Molly ignored it.

“The computers are behind you. When you’re done, please hit Print, then place your papers in the in-box on my desk. I’ll have them back with comments and suggestions next week.”

Debra raised her hand. “Will this grade count?”

Shades of high school. Molly smiled. “I’ll put a grade on the paper, so you get an idea of where I think you are, but no. The first paper is for me to figure out what each of you need. Then I’ll do my best to give it to you.”

And damned if her gaze didn’t stray back to Finn, who met her look dead-on as the last words came out of her mouth.

CHAPTER THREE

FINN LEFT THE EVCC campus feeling drained and in deep need of a beer. No wonder there was so much drinking on college campuses. Although he wondered if regular students found sitting through a basic English comp class as challenging as he had. He’d sweated over that damned essay, typing a single sentence while Debra, at the computer next to him, seemed to be blasting out pages.

At least he could type, but he wasn’t fast. It’d been so long since he’d put thoughts down on paper that the whole process seemed foreign to him. But he’d done okay in the end, talking about how his parents’ divorce had affected him as a teen and managed a page and half. Hopefully Molly would go easy on him, realizing he hadn’t been in the classroom for a while. Hopefully...

Once he was on his way home, his tight muscles started to give. He rolled his neck and shoulders, told himself that the hard part was over. He’d sat through one class; Molly hadn’t embarrassed him, or even looked at him more than a couple of times...although that last look she gave him had him shifting in his seat.

Molly Adamson—he wouldn’t forget her last name again after tonight—didn’t look mousy anymore. A couple of times as she was answering student questions she’d become animated and he’d been surprised to see dimples appear at the corners of her mouth. She’d smiled and gestured, and then seemed to remember that he was in the room and instantly became the English Teacher.

She clearly was aware of him and probably still thought he was the king of assholes, but he felt better about the course walking out than he had walking in. He was also now less intimidated by his math class on Thursday. As long as it wasn’t taught by someone he’d once screwed over, he should be good.

* * *

MOLLY BIT THE END of her pencil as she read through Finn’s essay for the second time. The first time she’d thought he’d been putting her on, playing with her, so she’d skimmed over it, expecting to find some kind of punch line at the end. There was no punch line, so she’d turned back to the first page and started reading again. He hadn’t written about a moment, but rather a summer. His parents had divorced and he’d gone to live with his grandfather, Mike, while they sorted things out. It was the first time he hadn’t played summer ball because he’d been too ripped up inside, but he’d pretended to his friends that he had a shoulder injury.

Molly had had no idea that might Finn Culver’s life had been anything other than perfect during high school. He never showed a sign. But it wasn’t the experience she was grading. It was the writing, which wasn’t good.

His sentences were short and to the point, but more often than not, he used clauses instead of sentences...and sadly, the sentences/clauses were the strongest part of his writing. As far as structuring meaningful paragraphs, it was as if someone had fired a shotgun of disjointed thoughts at the page—and there were a lot of thoughts, since he’d dealt with a season—summer—rather than a moment as assigned.

Molly leaned back and tapped the pencil on her teeth. He couldn’t be serious. Could he?

She had to assume he was. He was paying for the course.

Finn, the sports hero, had obviously not spent much time in English class and now he was suffering the consequences. That piper, which people spoke of paying, was now making an appearance in Mr. Culver’s life, and she was in the unhappy position of having to point this fact out to him.

She marked his paper, the last of the evening, and slipped her grading folders into her bag as the phone rang. Please, don’t be the plumber canceling...

“Molly? Hey.” She froze at the rich deep tones of her ex’s voice. “Molly?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“How’re you doing in Big Sky Country?”

“I’m doing well, thank you.” If she didn’t make small talk, he’d get to his point and they could end this conversation all the sooner.

“I’m doing pretty good down here in Arizona, too, thanks for asking.”

She drew in a breath, but kept her mouth shut. “The season is winding down, but it’s been a good one.”

“What do you need, Blake?”

“I need the sale of the house to hurry along so I have some money to live on during the winter.” Twice the small house they’d shared had been in escrow and twice it had fallen through as the market fluctuated.

“And I’m supposed to do that how?”

“Would you let me borrow some money against the sale?”

“Are you kidding?” She used to be nicer about this. So much nicer.

“I need it.” His voice went flat.

“No.” Blake was still having trouble getting it through his head that she wasn’t in the make-Blake’s-life-easier club anymore. When he hit a wall, the first person he’d turn to, if he didn’t have a current girlfriend, was her. For old time’s sake. Because he’d made mistakes. Because he’d always loved her best.

Because he was a narcissist and she’d been stupid.

“Molly, I don’t have the resources to get through the winter.”

“Get a job.” She ended the call, then scrolled through her menus and blocked his number. There. Problem solved.

She should have done that the second time he’d called for a date. But no. She’d been blinded by his beauty, in awe of the fact that the gorgeous guy who sat next to her in English 405—an athlete, for Pete’s sake—wanted to go out with her. And he’d continued to go out with her. At first she thought he’d wanted help with his studies, but he did all right in his classes without her. That was when she’d given herself a good hard look in the mirror and realized that she really wasn’t that different from other women her age—she only perceived herself as different. As lacking in areas that other woman took for granted. Blake had even seemed charmed by her awkwardness and because of that, it had started to fade.

Her gift from Blake—a jump start to her self-confidence.

If she owed him for anything it was that, but not enough to lend him money. Especially when his behavior at the end of their short marriage had knocked her newfound self-confidence sideways.

She was still getting over a few of the knocks.

Molly pushed the thought aside. She’d moved back to the Eagle Valley because she’d been happy here. There’d been the usual high school traumas—cough, homecoming with Finn, cough—but in general she’d been a happily invisible nerd, with happily invisible nerdy friends. In Eagle Valley she’d found a sense of peace she’d never gotten anywhere else.

And it was a thousand miles away from Blake.

Yet still he called her to make things better.

She walked down the hall to her bedroom, glancing into Georgina’s room as she went by. One wall was stacked high with clear plastic bins that had become the temporary wardrobe solution. One bin sat on the floor next to her bed, which was scattered with the clothes she’d tried on before deciding on the perfect thing to wear for a Friday night out. Being as outgoing as Molly had been shy at the same age, she already had a circle of friends she’d met the first week of classes and had connected with two people she’d known when she’d attended third grade at Eagle Valley Elementary. Molly was in awe. To be born with confidence...what a gift.

But maybe if one had to fight to develop confidence, one appreciated it more.

And maybe they always had that tiny niggling fear that if they didn’t hold on to it with an iron grasp, it might just slip away.

* * *

FINN FOUND WALKING into English class the second time a lot easier than it had been the first. He held the door open for Debra and her friend Sharla, smiled back at them when they thanked him, and took the same seat he’d sat in the week before. Molly was busy talking to a student, but she glanced over at him as he sat and he nodded at her. Last week had been stressful. This week he was ready to light this candle.

Debra sat up a little straighter when Molly announced she was going to hand back last week’s papers.

“If your grade isn’t what you expected, don’t worry. The purpose of this class is to identify trouble areas and learn what to do about them. If you got over a 90 percent, you really don’t belong here.”

Debra leaned forward as Molly set her paper facedown on her desk, then eagerly flipped it over. Finn shot a quick look at the grade—85 percent. Debra beamed and started reading comments.

A 70 percent. That was all he wanted. Average. Nothing wrong with average.

Molly glided by his desk, set the paper facedown. Finn flipped it over. Then he almost flipped it back.

His gaze shot up to Molly, who happened to shift her gaze toward him just then. She gave him an unreadable look and walked toward the front of the class.

“As you can see we have some work ahead of us, but again, let me emphasize that this is a starting point.”

Finn’s starting point was almost at ground zero.

Okay, he had some problems putting words down, but...this grade smacked more of payback than it did of assessment.

“What did you get?” Debra whispered. Finn automatically shifted his paper, planning to say something along the lines of “not as good as I’d hoped,” but she caught a glimpse of the percentage before he’d managed to hide it. “Oh.”

Yes. Oh. He smiled gamely at the older woman. “It’s been a while since I’ve written anything.”

“That’s what this course is about. Getting comfortable with writing again.” She gave him an encouraging nod, then fixed her attention back on Molly, who explained that they’d start with sentence structure.

The sentence structure made sense as Finn listened. And he knew he was doing exactly what she was talking about, although according to Molly’s comments, he wasn’t. The remainder of the class was spent on simple exercises. Molly circled the room while Finn stared at his paper, a slow burn building into a flame. He didn’t get much done by the time class had ended, and Molly had avoided coming his way. He left the class with everyone else, but lingered in the hall until he was certain the last person, who seemed bent on telling her life story to Molly, had finally left. The hall, and probably the entire building, was empty when he walked back into the room. Molly did not look surprised to see him.

“Finn.” She held her folders to her chest as if they were a shield. “I assume you want to talk about your grade?”

“You assume correctly. What gives?” He set the paper down on the table. “If this had any more red, the white wouldn’t show.” He leveled a long, hard look at her. “Is this because of what happened back when we were kids?” Like an eon ago.

“This is because it’s that bad.”

He stilled for a moment. “That’s hard to believe because this is basic English, pretty much the equivalent of high school English, and I got straight Cs in high school English. I couldn’t have forgotten that much.”

“And I don’t think your grades in high school reflected your abilities.”

His gaze snapped up to hers. “What the hell does that mean?”

Molly let out a sigh. “You were an athlete...? A good one...?”

“You’re saying my grades were fixed?”

“I admit I have no way of knowing that, but this paper—” she pointed at the bloodbath sitting on the empty desk next to her “—is not C work in high school. Or here at EVCC.”

“According to you, it’s not even D work.”

“I have to be honest.”

He stared at her, at an uncharacteristic loss for words, then when nothing brilliant popped into his head, he snatched the essay off the desk and headed for the door.

“We can fix this, Finn.”

Like hell. As soon as he was out of her line of sight, he crumpled the paper, tossed it into the nearest trash can and headed out the door.

* * *

FINN HADN’T DROPPED the class. Molly couldn’t say why that was important to her, but she scanned the class lists on Tuesday and Wednesday, fully expecting to see his name missing. It wasn’t, but he didn’t show up for the Wednesday class, either. As she started the lesson, she saw Debra glance over at his empty chair and give her head a sad shake.

Molly didn’t feel sad. Reality was reality, and Finn couldn’t write. He could tackle the matter and try to improve himself, or he could ignore it. It appeared he’d chosen to ignore it. His choice. There was no reason that the class should feel empty without him.

Empty and a lot more comfortable. The nervous edge Molly had felt during the first two classes was gone and she traveled around the room, answering questions, offering suggestions as her class worked on skill-building exercises, feeling very much at ease. Therefore, she had no reason to look up Finn’s address and drive by on her way home—just to see if he was there. He lived just past the city limits, so it wasn’t as if she could tell herself she was taking a different route to her place. Nope. She went well out of her way to discover that Finn’s house was well lit and there was a truck and a car parked in front of the garage.

Finn was home. He just hadn’t come to class.

Molly drove on by, wondering why she had a sinking feeling. Finn had made the choice to screw up his high school education. Now he was living with the consequences. She’d only told the truth.

Maybe it was remembering the stunned look on his face as she’d told him that truth. The complete shock to discover that she wasn’t indulging in petty payback. She was doing her job. She let out an audible sigh that made her shoulders drop as she looked for a place to turn around so that she could drive back home. Too softhearted. That’s what she was. That was why Blake had been able to play her.

When she drove back by Finn’s house, she kept her gaze straight ahead. Right where it should be. If Finn chose to drop her class, it was none of her concern.

So why did it feel as if it was?

CHAPTER FOUR

FINN WASN’T A guy who backed away from trouble—if anything, according to his dad, anyway, he ran forward and embraced it—however, academic trouble was foreign territory. And apparently he was traveling that territory with an expired visa. So what was he going to do? Quit school? Tough it out? Risk flunking?

After glancing around to make certain that no customers had wandered into the warehouse, he peeled out of his T-shirt and shook out the grain dust. The stuff made him itch like crazy and he had to wear a paper face mask when moving the bags, which put up dust every time he set down a pallet a little too hard. He was tired of itching.

Mike loved his business, and until he returned from the service, Finn had been perfectly fine working there, too. Now he needed more. When he’d gone overseas, he’d discovered what it felt like to be part of something important. To make a difference. It didn’t help that he was becoming more and more convinced that the store no longer needed him. Before he’d left, he’d essentially been the only employee with the exception of the bookkeeper. The place had been dusty and lonely and he hadn’t cared as long as he could hook up with his friends after work, or go home and work on his cars and trucks.

Those things were no longer enough. He wanted to teach automotives and shop and, as he saw it, he didn’t need stellar English scores to teach hands-on courses, but he did have to pass the class to get a degree. Molly Adamson was standing in his way and he still believed that their past was firmly tied to the score she gave him.

Finn pulled his T-shirt back on, grimacing as he tugged it into place. Still uncomfortable, but not as bad. He walked across the warehouse to the small dust-covered fridge on the opposite wall and pulled out a water. He fumbled the plastic top after opening the bottle and it fell, rolling across the floor. A split second later, Marcel, the cat that had adopted the place as a scraggly kitten years ago, shot out from behind the pallet and attacked. After whacking the cap into submission, the cat stared at it as if daring it to move, then hit it with his paw, causing it to slide across the floor like a hockey puck.

“Good one, Marcel.”

The cat gave him a golden-eyed blink, then disappeared back behind the pallets. The cat was certainly a whole lot tamer than he’d been before Finn had gone overseas, but actually, so was he.

He finished the water, dropped the bottle in the recycling container that Lola had put next to the fridge, then started across the concrete floor to the forklift. Before he could fire it up, Lola announced over the intercom that a customer needed loading. Eighteen bags of alfalfa pellets.

Codie James. It was her usual order.

Finn smiled a little. He and Codie had had some good times, and maybe that was what he needed. To go out with someone like Codie who enjoyed life and seemed to know what she wanted.

When he emerged from the warehouse and approached her big red Dodge, though, she was talking to a guy who nodded and then headed for the store proper, and as she handed him the load ticket, he noted a big rock on her left hand.

“Hey,” he said. “Congratulations.”

Codie beamed. “I know... I said I was never settling down, but I met this guy...” She rolled her eyes toward the sky and gave a goofy smile, which made Finn smile in return.

“Must be some guy.”

“He is. Hang around and you can meet him.”

Finn glanced at the ticket, then gave her a quick nod. “I’ll get this loaded for you.”

“Thanks, Finn.” She reached out to run her hand over his shoulder and down his arm. “Good to have you back.”

“Good to be back.”

After Codie and her beau, Colin, who did seem really decent, left, Finn disappeared back into the warehouse, even though he didn’t have that much to do. Chase would arrive soon and then he was free to do...whatever. Everyone, it seemed, was moving on, and it aggravated him that he’d barely started his own moving-on process before hitting a major roadblock named Molly. Maybe he deserved some comeuppance, because he’d been a jerk with that whole homecoming dance thing, but he’d been a self-centered, hormone-driven teenager at the time.

And she’d been an insecure, quiet girl whose feelings you didn’t give much thought to.

Finn snorted. Well, now she’d gotten a few licks in of her own.

A vehicle pulled into the lot as Finn reached the warehouse door. He didn’t have to look back to know it was Chase—the loud 427 under the hood told the tale. The kid really needed to get a tune-up and he probably couldn’t afford one.

Chase disappeared into the store and Finn walked into the warehouse, where he stood for a few seconds, watching the dust motes drift about in the sunlight filtering in through the fiberglass roofing. The obvious solution, the one in which he didn’t cut and run, was to change English instructors and see if someone new, someone without an ax to grind, had the same opinion as Molly.

But what if that instructor told him he was incompetent, too?

He was no coward, but after what Molly had done...yeah, kind of hard to face the prospect of someone else announcing via red pen bloodbath that he was stupid. And he’d yet to discover what the math teacher was going to do to him.

But he would. This was just a bump in the road. He’d overcome it, because if he didn’t go to school, then that meant he was stuck here in the family business, or in some similar occupation. The life that had seemed so comfortable before going overseas no longer fit him.

He needed a way out, and Molly Adamson was not going to stop him.

* * *

SHE’D DONE THE right thing. No question about it. She had to be honest. Right? She’d been no harsher on Finn than she would have been on anyone else. It wasn’t as if she’d written insults in the margins. She’d even tapered off marking it up toward the end, when it became apparent that he wasn’t joking—that he was actually trying to write an essay.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of red ink on the paper by that time, and...well, maybe she had felt a certain level of glee during the first couple comments. And usually she read through the entire essay without writing anything, but with Finn she’d started marking as soon as she saw something to mark, which had been in the first sentence.

Not good, that.

And then he’d reacted just as Blake would have—with extreme outrage that someone had dared point out his faults.

Well, the faults are real, buddy. There was probably a root cause that could be addressed, but he’d left before she could speak to him about it and then failed to show up at the next class.

Typical spoiled-jock behavior.

Molly gathered the grammar pretests she’d given her freshmen into a neat stack and put them into the wire basket on the edge of her desk. Actually, she was kind of surprised that Finn was in school at all. From what she’d gathered, he’d followed the classic peak-in-high-school path and joined the family business. Nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t exactly ambitious. Molly liked guys who were open to new adventures—as long as they were safe and well-thought-out.

And she shouldn’t be spending so much time thinking about one student whom she’d probably never see again when she had so many who needed her attention.

Some of her students had some serious deficits in their English educations, which was something she had to address and remedy over the course of the next semester. But right now she needed to head home and remember that thing about not burying herself in work. Georgina was supposed to be cooking an actual meal and she was looking forward to food that wasn’t thawed or microwaved.

A muffled thud from the other side of the wall brought her head up. For the past thirty minutes or so, there’d been a lot of noise come from the art studio room next door—tables scraping along the floor and the odd thump.

Once upon a time, Molly probably would have ignored the noise, at least until she was more secure in her surroundings, but those days were gone. No more safe route. She needed to meet people before they sought her out. She needed to forget shyness and uncertainty and put herself out there, which was why she left her office and poked her head into the room next door on the way out of the building for the two-hour break between her afternoon class and evening class.

“Hello,” she called to the woman crouched next to a large cardboard box on the opposite side of the long room. The woman hadn’t been to any of the faculty meetings, and while the old shy Molly might have waited until the two of them had bumped into each other in the hall to introduce herself, the new Molly pushed herself to make first contact. She had no trouble addressing a roomful of students, but one-on-one always froze her up. She was working on it, though, so she smiled when the woman looked up, startled.

“Hi.” She got to her feet, pushing back the long blond hair that had fallen into her face while she’d been crouched over, and sidestepped a few boxes before starting across the room.

“I’m Molly Adamson, your next-door neighbor.”

“Allie Brody, and you’ll only be my neighbor one night a week. I’m teaching a community art class on Wednesday evenings.”

“Community, as in—”

“Regular Joes,” Allie said with a half smile. “Nonstudents. People who want to expand their horizons and get out of the house one night a week.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“It’s my first time teaching at the community college. I’m a little nervous.” She wiped her hands down the sides of her pants. “What do you teach?”

“English comp. Technical writing. One literature class.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“I’m not going to lie. It is. Fortunately, I love what I do.”

Allie cocked her head. “You look familiar. Do we know each other from somewhere?”

“I don’t think we do...but I did graduate from high school here.”

“Me, too,” Allie said. “Born here, graduated here, engaged, married and divorced here. I’m a lifer, it seems.”

Molly laughed. “I’ve spent my life moving, but I hope to settle for a while.” The five o’clock bell chimed and she said, “I need to get going.” Georgina had texted her that she’d started dinner a few minutes ago. “But I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.”

“Do you have a class tomorrow?”

“No. But I’ll probably be here. I promise myself every year that I won’t work late and usually that promise lasts until the first big batch of grading lands on my desk.”

“Well, if you are here, I wouldn’t mind some backup if my class gets rowdy. I’ll just knock on the wall and you can come and save me.”

Molly laughed. “I’ll be happy to oblige.”

She continued on out of the building, glad that she stopped by, but feeling a little off center, as she always did on first meeting people. She’d love to be more like Georgina, who never met a stranger. Or her brother, David, who didn’t care what people thought about him. But she wasn’t like her siblings. Or her parents. She’d been the nose-in-the-book nerd who had a difficult time leaving her comfort zone. Not that she didn’t want to...it was just that the fear factor had been so strong. Then Blake had come along and drawn her out of her shell.

It wasn’t until she’d discovered that he was a serial cheater while on the road that she realized that Blake took after his father...and that she closely resembled his stay-at-home mother who’d turned a blind eye to her husband’s indiscretions and made life as easy as possible for Blake, his father and his two brothers.

Well, that wasn’t what Molly had signed on for. She’d refused to give Blake another chance, even though he’d worked up a few man tears, and she’d insisted that they put the house they’d purchased together—stupid, stupid, stupid—on the market, then packed up and left. After getting a new place to live and a new wardrobe, so she could give away all the clothing that reminded her of Blake, she’d buried herself in her work until she felt as if she could face the world again.

Being cheated on hurt like hell. And trust...what was that? Not anything that Molly believed in anymore.

But trust issues or not, she was going to put herself out there. Step out of her comfort zone socially. She owed it to herself not to let what had happened with Blake ruin her future...she just wasn’t going to get herself into any kind of an emotional bind with any kind of flashy too-good-to-be-true guy again. From now on she was dating her own species—as in guys who were reliable, honest, predictable. She couldn’t live with lack of trust.

When Molly pulled into her driveway, Georgina was not tending to dinner—she was in Mike Culver’s yard crouched next to a flower bed. She waved and got to her feet as Molly walked to the fence that separated the properties.

“Mike is teaching me about fall bulbs,” she said happily. “If we put them in now, we’ll have flowers next year.”

“I’d like that.” Just as she was going to like living in the same place come spring that she was in now. Molly had never lived anywhere long enough to get too deeply into yard beautification, and in Arizona, her house had been xeriscaped in a minimalist way, as was common in the desert. No spring flowers except for yucca, which were pretty, but not in the traditional way.

“The people who lived here before weren’t much for flowers, but I always thought that some tulips around the trees and maybe some narcissi or daffodils in front of the lilacs would be pretty.”

“There are lilacs?” Georgina’s eyes widened.

“Those bushes over there are lilacs,” Mike said, pointing to the hedge at the edge of their lawn. “The heavy flowering kind.”

“I love the smell of lilacs. I haven’t smelled them since we lived in Iowa. Remember, Molly?”

Molly remembered, but she was surprised that Georgina did; she’d been so young then. “Didn’t we have lilacs when we lived here?” she asked her sister, who gave an emphatic shake of her head in reply. “Nope. We had those big yellow bushes—”

“Forsythia, probably,” Mike said.

Georgina looked impressed at the off-the-cuff identification. “And those pink roses that had no scent. We didn’t have lilacs.”

Molly smiled a little. She didn’t remember much about the flowers. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Mike leaned his arms on the top of the chain-link fencing. “I was telling Georgina that I can put together a mix of bulbs from the store and bring them home or I can get you a catalog.”

“You probably know what grows best.” And she would pay for said mixture of bulbs, of course, but it didn’t seem like the time to make that point.

“That’s what I thought,” Georgina said. “And I love surprises.”

“Then I’ll fix you up.” Mike smiled at Georgina, then shifted his attention to Molly, and she saw that his eyes were the same color as Finn’s. A deep, rich hazel. More green than brown. Why had she noticed that? A trickle of annoyance went through her. “Got that drain fixed yet?”

“I have a call in to a plumber. He’s working me in this weekend.” Mike had been right about all the locals being contracted to the construction companies. The Eagle Valley was experiencing a mini housing boom. “I called four before I got one. O’Malley’s Plumbing and Heating? He promised Saturday and said he wouldn’t charge weekend rates, since it’s a simple job.”

Mike didn’t look as if he fully believed the guy would honor his word. “Crazy, all this rain,” he said. “We had floods a little over a year ago, then this summer was so dry that there were bad fires.”

“I heard,” Molly said. “Some people lost homes.”

Mike gave a nod. “My nephew Dylan’s fiancée lost her ranch house in the fire.”

“That’s terrible.” Molly remembered Dylan. She’d liked him. He’d been a year ahead of her, quiet and studious. Invisible in a way. Like she had been, except that he could have been as popular as Finn, had he chosen to be. Somehow she didn’t think that popularity was one of her options. “Who is his fiancée?”

“Jolie Brody.”

Brody. Of course. Allie Brody looked just like Jolie Brody, whom she’d graduated from high school with.

“Does she have an older sister?”

“Three sisters.”

“I just met an Allie Brody at the college.”

“She’s the oldest. She’s teaching a night class at the school. Painting or something.”

Small world...but maybe not. It was a small town, so ending up with a class next to Finn’s cousin’s fiancée’s sister wasn’t that unexpected. And the connection to Finn was a bit distant. Still, she was going to watch what she said around Allie about certain people.

Molly frowned as a memory crept into her brain. “Wait a minute...didn’t Jolie used to...” Mike waited for her to finish and Molly, who wished she’d kept her mouth shut, searched for a tactful word. “Bother Dylan?” Torture would have been a better word, but she was being polite. The strained and somewhat adversarial relationship between wild-child Jolie and quiet Dylan had been legendary in Eagle Valley High School, now that she thought about it.

Mike laughed. “Yes, she did. She and Dylan worked things out.”

“I guess so.”

Georgina was following the conversation with interest and Mike glanced over at her and laughed again. “I’ll get you that mixture of bulbs and maybe we can put them in this weekend.”

“We?” Molly asked on a note of amusement.

“If you needed help, that is.”

“I think we’ll need a lot of help,” Molly said with a smile. If he wanted to help, she wasn’t going to stop him.

They talked for a few more minutes about colors, and then Mike’s phone rang from inside his house and he excused himself.

“I like him,” Georgina said as she and Molly walked to their back door. She shot Molly a look. “You’re going to fill in the gaps about this Dylan guy and his fiancée. Right?”

“I don’t know a lot,” Molly said as she opened the front door. “Dylan was really quiet and hardworking and Jolie was outgoing. Kind of a live-for-today girl.”

“Just like you?” Georgina asked with mock innocence.

“Exactly,” Molly replied. Because she was going to be more like that. Work in progress, et cetera. “All I remember is that they somehow drifted into nemesis territory due to being partnered up in some class and her not taking it seriously enough and him being worried about his GPA.”

“And now they’re getting married.”

“Yes.” Molly headed for the fridge. So very romantic. She wished them well, but hearts-and-flowers romance had been stomped out of her by the lights of reality being snapped on in her own relationship, brilliantly exposing the truth that lay before her and leaving her blinking.

She was still blinking a little. Blake had not only robbed her of most of her savings, he’d robbed her of her hard-won self-confidence. She’d fought to rebuild it little by little, but she hadn’t been able to let go of her resentment. It’d be a while before she could.

“I thought we’d microwave lasagna tonight.” The microwave was truly their best friend with their crammed schedules—which was why having a two-hour break to eat an actual dinner between her afternoon and evening classes was gold. “I made a salad.”

Molly drifted over to the counter and pulled a small tomato out of the mixture of greens and popped it into her mouth. She’d skipped lunch and was famished. “Sounds good.”

Georgina pulled the aluminum tray out of the freezer. “This Dylan is hot prom guy’s cousin, right?”

“Homecoming guy. He is.”

“But you liked him better.”

He didn’t screw me over, so yes. “He’s a nice guy. How were your classes today?”

The corners of her sister’s eyes crinkled as Molly firmly redirected the conversation away from “hot prom guy.” “Excellent. How was your day?”

“Excellent.” Molly used the hand-carved wooden tongs she and Blake had bought on a Mexican vacation to lift salad into a bowl. She’d gotten rid of most of her past, but some things stayed, for practical purposes. “They’re always excellent in the beginning. You know—when everyone has high expectations for themselves and not too much reality has set in.”

Except for in Finn’s case. She’d slammed that reality home there.

She’d address that tonight. She wasn’t exactly going to apologize, but she was going to explain what she thought might be going on. Not a conversation she was looking forward to, but one they needed to have. If he showed up to class.

* * *

FINN DID NOT show up for class.

Molly found her head coming up every time she heard the door to the main entrance, only a few yards down the hall from her classroom, open and close again. Finally she closed the door to her room so that she focused only on her class and not on the reasons Finn wasn’t there.

She knew why Finn wasn’t there. But she didn’t know what she was going to do about it.

What could she do?

Relax and enjoy teaching.

Not having Finn there made her feel as if she owned her classroom again—which was annoying. Of course she owned her classroom, but when Finn was there...she felt as if she were being judged. It made her thoughts trip over themselves, which wasn’t conducive to great lesson delivery.

Tonight her lecture flowed. She gave amusing sentence examples, had the class engaged for the entire fifty minutes. No stumbling about for explanations, no quick glances to a specific area of a classroom just to check whether or not one specific student was smirking a little.

After class ended, she explained a few finer points of the essay assignment with Debra and Mr. Reed, a sweet man in his late sixties, listened to Denny’s take on higher education, then turned off the lights and locked up the room, telling herself she should feel great. Class had gone very, very well.

But you’re tougher than this. You should be able to teach regardless of who’s sitting in the back row, history or no history.

Molly hated it when the nagging little voice in the back of her mind pointed out things she didn’t want to hear. She’d returned to the Eagle Valley because she’d wanted a nice, stable, unsurprising life in a nice, stable community. Getting the position at the community college had been a godsend. She’d been so very happy with how well things were working out, so determined to do the best job she could teaching her new students—right up until Finn had appeared in her life again and she’d indulged in her red pen revenge.

That wasn’t what a good teacher did, and beyond that, driving students away wouldn’t do her professional reputation any good. This job was important to her. She didn’t want to jeopardize it.

* * *

THE CLOCK SAID English class was halfway over and Finn felt nothing but relief at the fact that he wasn’t there.

Liar.

Okay, part of him felt relief that he wasn’t there and the other part thought he should have sucked it up and gone. He’d never quit anything in his life, and not going to class bordered on cowardly behavior. But what was the point, when he was going to drop the class anyway?

The point was that Molly was going to think she’d won.

Finn flipped through the channels a couple dozen more times, then got to his feet and grabbed his jacket so he could head to McElroy’s Bar. There probably wouldn’t be many people there on a weeknight, but Finn needed to do something other than sit in front of the TV and feel like he’d let himself down.

The lot was almost empty when Finn parked, but he figured he’d have one beer, talk to Jim McElroy and then head home again. He enjoyed getting out, being around people, but when he pulled open the heavy wooden bar door, the usual pleasant anticipation for the evening ahead was replaced with the feeling that he was avoiding the real issue in his life. Probably because he was. He didn’t really want to go to McElroy’s. He just didn’t want to be alone with his annoying thoughts.

Finn walked into the bar and paused just inside the door. The place was relatively empty, as he’d suspected. Wyatt Bauer was there leaning on the bar, staring at the sports news that played over Jim McElroy’s head. His eyes were glazed over and Finn wondered if the guy was even aware of what was happening on the screen, or if he was asleep with his eyes open.

“Hey, Wyatt,” he said as he walked by. Wyatt grunted in return. He was awake.

“Usual?” Jim asked.

“Sure.”

Jim poured a dark beer and set it in front of the stool Finn had settled on. “Haven’t seen you much since you got back,” he commented.

Finn gave a casual shrug. “Readjusting.” Which was true. He hadn’t seen action overseas, but the experience had changed him in ways he hadn’t expected. For instance, he knew now, more than ever, that he did not want to end up like Wyatt—a walking cautionary tale staring glassily at the television screen.

Jim gave a casual nod, then glanced up as the door opened again.

“Look who’s here,” a familiar voice said from behind Finn.

“We thought you were missing in action!” an almost identical voice chimed in.

Finn turned on his stool as the Tyrone brothers came in. “Just lying low,” he said. “You know...avoiding people such as yourselves.”

“I assume you’re buying after insulting us,” Terry, the older of the two brothers, said as he clapped a heavy hand on Finn’s back.

“I hadn’t really considered it.”

“Best reconsider,” Lowell said.

Finn signaled Jim, who nodded before turning to the taps. Terry and Lowell pulled up stools and after Jim set the drafts in front of them, they commenced catching Finn up on who had done what during the time he’d been gone. Not that long of a time really, but it seemed as if there’d been a lot of marriages and breakups and job changes while he’d been away.

Terry glanced at his watch when Jim asked if he wanted another beer, then practically jumped off his seat. “Gotta go. I promised Janice I’d be home ten minutes ago.”

“Trouble?” Finn asked. Terry had never been all that concerned about getting home before, but then Janice was usually there with him.

“There have been some new developments on the home front,” Terry said with a half smile before downing the last gulp of beer and setting the mug back on the bar. “I’m going to be a dad in three months. Got to start setting a good example for my kids.”

“Plural?”

“Twins.”

“Unfortunately, his newfound Mr. Mom status is screwing with my social life,” Lowell muttered. “We never go out and when we do, we have to be home at nine. How am I supposed to meet women?”

“Go without your brother?” Finn said.

“I need a wingman.”

Sadly true. Lowell never did anything alone. “Do not look at me,” Finn said.

“What? You have something better to do?”

“Maybe I’m getting old.” He drained the last of his beer, then looked up to find the brothers staring at him. “It happens to the best of us.”

Finn lingered after the Tyrone brothers left. He could talk to Jim.

“So what are you doing now that you’re back?” Jim asked as he wiped the immaculate bar yet another time. He tossed the bar towel into the bin under the bar, then waited for Finn to answer.

“Working at the store.”

“Taking it over again?”

“For the time being.”

“It’s changed,” Jim said. “All those gifts and things.”

“It used to be a lot quieter,” Finn agreed. “It’s more pleasant now in a lot of ways, and Mike’s really happy, but I don’t know. I guess I’m not used to it yet.”

“Not the place you left.”

“Not even close.”

Jim smiled a little. “Time marches on.”

Finn nodded in agreement. He pulled out his wallet and found a ten.

“Come back on Saturday,” Jim suggested as Finn headed to the door. “I have a band coming in.”

Finn raised a hand in acknowledgment, then pushed his way out the heavy wooden door and stepped into the chilly night air, knowing full well he wouldn’t be back. A cloud moved over the moon as he walked to his truck, but the sky was relatively clear. The predicted rain had apparently bypassed them and he was okay with that. He had to replace one of the haystack tarps that had a rip.

There was nothing wrong with tightening and replacing tarps on haystacks. Not one thing. But it wasn’t what he wanted to do anymore.

CHAPTER FIVE

AFTER SKIPPING ENGLISH, Finn told himself he had to go to math—even if it meant receiving another red-ink-bleeding paper. How else would he find out if math was another area in which he’d been fooling himself into thinking he had basic skills? Was it possible that his high school As in the subject had been the gift of teachers who were concerned with the school’s sports success?

Recalling Mrs. Birdie’s stern face, he thought not. The woman had been out for him, calling him on every infraction of the rules, then grudgingly giving him decent marks on his work. Mrs. Birdie hadn’t been a sports fan or a Finn Culver fan. Yet he’d gotten an A in the class.

Finn drove into the lot and, seeing Molly’s small car, parked next to it. He wasn’t certain exactly what his objective was—it was more of a go-with-his-gut moment. He walked into class a few minutes late, but congratulated himself on being there at all, and then found a seat in the back and waited to get his assessment paper back. The instructor smiled at him as she set down the paper and moved on. Annoyed that his heart was beating faster—it was only a math paper, for Pete’s sake—Finn flipped the paper over, then fought a smile as the taut muscles in his shoulders relaxed.

The only ink on the paper was turquoise, rather than killer red, a brief note asking him to show more of his work. He could do that—although he wasn’t all that good at laying out the steps in his head on paper in a way that others could easily follow. He knew that because it had driven Mrs. Birdie nuts. And many times he tackled things in a roundabout way that made sense to him, but wasn’t the prescribed method for solving the problem. But what did it matter as long as he came up with the proper solution?

Bottom line—this paper showed that he wasn’t deluding himself. He could do math. Did he need English at all?

Well...yes—if he was going to get a degree. But he didn’t need English right now. This semester he’d focus on his math class, learn to follow the prescribed steps and how to show his work. By the end of the semester, he’d be more comfortable in an academic environment and have a better idea of how to tackle learning without feeling intimidated. And he wasn’t going to give Molly another shot at eviscerating him.

And maybe tonight was the time to tell her that. Nicely, of course.

* * *

TRUE TO FORM, Molly was already breaking her promise to herself not to stay late on campus working. But the grading was piling up and if she didn’t keep on top of it, she’d get buried. Besides, Allie Brody might need to knock on the wall.

She set down her pen, pulled her glasses off and pressed the heels of her hands to her tired eyes.

“Hey...”

Molly jumped a mile at the unexpected male voice, automatically reached for her glasses and instead hit them with the back of her hand, sending them skittering onto the floor. Finn bent down to pick them up and solemnly handed them back to her. Molly set the heavy dark brown frames back on the desk. Having Finn a little out of focus wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“You missed class yesterday.”

Finn leaned carelessly against the door frame, the picture of the who-gives-a-damn jock he’d been in high school. “I’m going to drop it. I thought I’d give you official notice.”

Molly looked down at the papers in front of her. There were remarks written on the top one, but nothing like what she’d done to Finn. “But you haven’t dropped it yet?” When she looked back up at him, she saw him watching her carefully.

“Tomorrow. Just thought I’d let you know.” He smiled tightly and then pushed off the door frame and walked back down the hall, leaving Molly staring at the empty space he’d just filled. For a moment she sat stone still, then she jumped to her feet, grabbed her glasses so she didn’t trip over anything and started after Finn. He was already on his way out the main exit, so she hurried her steps, finally giving up and calling his name after pushing through the glass-and-steel doors.

He slowed down, then stopped and turned. Now she’d done it. She’d engaged and she had to follow through.

Drawing in a deep breath that wasn’t nearly as calming as she’d hoped it would be, she started toward him. “I think we should talk about this.”

“No offense, Molly, but there’s not a lot to say.”

Molly stopped a few feet away from him. “I want you to know that I wasn’t engaging in some sort of petty revenge when I marked your paper.”

He said nothing as he studied her with those striking hazel eyes, but if he hoped to fluster her, it wasn’t going to work. Much.

All right. It wasn’t going to work in any way that showed.

“I didn’t say one thing on your paper that wasn’t true, but... I was a bit overzealous with my pen.”

“Yet there was no petty revenge involved.” Finn sauntered forward as he spoke. A slow, almost predatory movement, as if he were a big cat moving in on his prey. Molly’s prey days were over, so she took a step forward, too. A brisk no-nonsense step that brought them almost chest to chest. Miscalculation on her part, but she wasn’t going to have him in the power role.

And she wasn’t going to react to the heat coming off his body or the fact that his scent now seemed to surround her and certain parts of her body were taking notice. That was what the Finns of the world, the Blakes of the world, banked on.

“Perhaps a little.” She’d almost stuttered. Damn. The old Molly was starting to take over now that they were so close, and she would not have that. She pushed her glasses up a little higher, straightened her back. Finn’s gaze narrowed, as if he was wondering what she was doing.

“And you have me pegged as a dumb athlete who was handed a diploma he didn’t deserve.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m not talking about what you said, Molly. I’m asking about what you think.” His voice went down a notch. “Is that what you think?”

Molly couldn’t help it—she glanced down, her gaze fixing on the gray cotton T-shirt that covered his flat abs...he’d been an athlete and it looked as if he still was—then forced her chin back up, meeting his eyes. “The idea had crossed my mind.”

“Points for honesty.”

She pulled in a breath. Big mistake. The heady scent of the man about two inches away from her once again filled her nostrils and she felt herself leaning forward, even closer to him, which was nuts, since she was already way too close for comfort.

“But I don’t think that’s the problem.”

She felt him go still, she was that close.

“What,” he asked softly, “do you think the problem is?”

She raised her chin, shaking back her hair in the process. “Have you ever been checked for dyslexia?”

“Dyslexia?” He frowned. “I don’t turn letters around.”

“It’s more than that.”

“Yeah? What else is it?” Finn took a step back, finally freeing up the space around her, and folded his arms over his chest.

“It has to do with organizing thoughts and finding the right word and translating what happens inside your brain onto paper.”

“I see.”

He was now officially closed off, his expression stony, his eyes narrowed as he regarded her.

“There’s a lot of information about it, if you look into it.”

“Yes...but will I be able to read it?” He was being sarcastic. Before she could answer, he said, “Thank you for the helpful suggestion, Molly. And the diagnosis.”

“I’m not diagnosing you. I’m offering up a suggestion as to what you might look into to—”

“Explain my shortcomings?” he asked mildly.

“If you want to put it that way.”

He put his hand on the truck’s door handle. “Well...your duty is done. Thank you.”

“I think you should continue the class.”

“I don’t see a lot of point in taking it.”

“I’ll...”

Molly’s voice trailed off and Finn’s expression shifted. “What, Molly?” One corner of his perfect mouth curved into a wry expression that was somehow both cold and amused. “Be gentle with me?”

The way he said it brought more color to her cheeks. “Yes. I will.”

“Thanks for the offer, but no.”

“I’ll...help you.” What on earth was she saying?

“No. Thank you.”

He pulled the truck door open and Molly heard the word, “Chicken?” emerge from her lips. Finn stopped dead and turned back.

Had she really just said that?

For a moment she thought he was going to address the remark, but instead he shook his head as if she were beyond help and got into the truck, closing the door and leaving Molly feeling worse than when she’d left her office. She turned and started back across the parking lot as students began to leave the building in small groups. Art class was over. Behind her, Finn’s truck fired up. There was nothing to do but close up her office, get into her car, curse the fates for the fact that she lived next to his grandfather and plot how never to see him again.

He’d been the jerk in high school, but she’d been the jerk just now.

* * *

OKAY. MOLLY HAD surprised him. Finn was going to give her points for that, even if she had pissed him off. And she wasn’t exactly the meek girl he’d taken on the mercy date at the behest of his mom ten or so years ago. She’d just freaking called him a chicken.

And dyslexia?

Yeah, right.

Finn’s mouth tightened as he wheeled out of the parking lot. He’d decided to try a few classes to better his life, not to make it worse. The satisfaction he got from finding out he could still do math—that he really liked to do math—was deeply overshadowed by the fact that he sucked at English. That he’d been passed along by his teachers. No...that wasn’t what bothered him most. It was the fact that it had been so clear to Molly that had happened. And meanwhile the thought had never crossed his mind.

When Finn got home, he paced through the house. Normally, in his old life, he would have gone to McElroy’s, but after last night, he didn’t think that strategy was going to work like it used to. The last thing he wanted was to become a bar fixture like Wyatt. Times had changed. Everything around him seemed to have changed.

And his house was ridiculously empty when he walked inside and let the door swing shut behind him.

Son of a bitch. He was losing it. That was what was happening. He needed to get a grip and make some decisions here.

He’d make decisions in the morning.

Finn put on a pot of coffee and headed out the side door of the house and followed the packed dirt path to the shop. He snapped on the lights and then slowly walked around the 1972 Ford three-quarter-ton he’d bought at an auction before heading off overseas, his steps echoing as he paced the concrete in the metal building. There was a skittering sound in one corner of the room and he figured that if there were mice in the corners, then there were mice in his truck. He’d have to do something about that.

He walked over to the arc welder, which he hadn’t touched since coming back, the sheet metal leaning against the wall. The hammers and anvils and forms his father had left when he’d moved south to live in a condo on a golf course—his lifelong dream finally achieved. Finn closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath that wasn’t tainted with grain dust. Just the good smell of grease and oil and metal. He’d done a couple quick walk-throughs after returning home, but he hadn’t actually put his hand to anything. Now the big question was...where to start?

* * *

GEORGINA GOT HOME a little after midnight—kind of late, since she had classes the next morning, but Molly reminded herself that just because she hadn’t gone out and done college stuff until she’d hooked up with Blake, it didn’t mean that Georgina couldn’t. And shouldn’t.

But still...she had an eight o’clock class the next morning.

“So much fun,” Georgina said as she dumped her purse and denim jacket on the chair and settled in next to Molly. “Chips?” She nodded at the half-full bowl, a sure sign that Molly was dealing with some kind of stress. “I thought you were all caught up on your schoolwork.” Her expression hardened before Molly could answer. “Did Blake call?”

“I’m happy to say that hasn’t happened.”

“Then...?”

Molly gave a dismissive shrug. “Sometimes I just like chips.” Too bad this wasn’t one of those times. But at least Blake wasn’t behind this stress—just someone kind of like Blake. Great-looking. Confident. Astounded at the idea that he wasn’t perfect.

“You need to come to this place,” Georgina said as she kicked off her shoes. She stretched out her legs and slumped back into the cushions, closing her eyes.

“Once I get my feet under me job-wise, maybe I will.”

“Promise?” Georgina asked.

“No.”

“Stick-in-the-mud.”

“That’s me.” Molly took another chip and nibbled the edge. She knew better than to keep chips in the house during potential times of stress, but at least she hadn’t gotten out the French onion dip.

Georgina yawned and got back to her feet. “Staying up?”

“For a while.”

Georgina started for the bathroom. “Don’t stay up too late,” she admonished.

Molly didn’t bother to answer. She got to her feet and took the chips into the kitchen, where she dumped the remainder of the bowl into the trash. Finn wasn’t going to push her back into old habits.

CHAPTER SIX

DYS...LEX...IA.

Finn typed the word into the search engine. He’d held off for three days, working on his truck as soon as he got home and avoiding his computer. But Molly had planted a seed that refused to die and now he figured if nothing else, he could prove her wrong. He clicked the first site that wasn’t trying to sell him something.

Take this quiz.

All right...

Finn took the quiz, which had to do with how well he remembered and organized and spelled. He spelled okay—he’d spelled dyslexia correctly after only one misfire. Obviously he was poor at organizing written work, but that was probably because he’d never paid much attention in English class—which explained a hell of a lot, really. He did have trouble with left and right—hated it when he had to come up with a direction quickly off the top of his head, but that didn’t prove anything. Pronunciation? Well, if he didn’t know a word, he didn’t say it. Slow reader? Not really...hmm...maybe...

He gave a small snort.

Define slow.

After finishing the quiz, he took another. By the time he finished the third, he had to admit that some of the symptoms seemed familiar.

Finn leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head as he studied the screen with his score. Maybe he was talking himself into having the symptoms.

Or maybe he needed to face the fact that he might actually be dyslexic.

But what were the chances of Molly picking up on it, while none of his English teachers had?

Probably pretty good if he was being passed along, as Molly had suggested. He’d had no aspirations for college. He’d made that clear to anyone who listened, so why not give him those inflated grades when the school’s reputation in sports needed to be upheld?

Finn didn’t like that possibility. He’d been happy with his Cs in English that he’d barely worked for, but had never questioned whether or not they had been a gift. Back then his biggest concern had been the next sporting event, the next party, the next anything-that-didn’t-have-to-do-with-school. He’d done his schoolwork, because his parents would have had his hide if he hadn’t, but he never considered the fact that maybe not everyone had the difficulty he had with some classes. School was supposed to be hard—and it was.

But maybe it shouldn’t have been as difficult as it’d been for him.

Finn got to his feet and paced through the house, then went back to the computer and started typing into the search engine box.

Professional dyslexia diagnosis...

Strategies to overcome dyslexia symptoms...

Famous people with dyslexia...

Athletes with dyslexia...

Smart people with dyslexia...

Finally, almost an hour later, he turned his computer off and headed for the kitchen, where he poured a glass of water and then took a couple aspirin for the headache that had started beating against his temples.

If he was dyslexic, then he had to deal with it, and from what he’d gleaned, a formal diagnosis wasn’t going to get him anywhere, because there was no cure or medication or anything. Just strategies to overcome symptoms.

Well, his first strategy was going to be to go to bed and deal with this tomorrow. Or the next day. He’d lived his life just fine until now, never dreamed anything was holding him back. He’d continue to live it just fine. He just might have to come up with a different career goal.

Or, hell, he might just tighten tarps and schlep grain and find satisfaction in other areas of his life.

But even as the thoughts passed through his head, he knew he wasn’t going to do that. He was going to come up with a way to deal with this and continue toward his goal.

* * *

MIKE TURNED AWAY from the rain-splattered window and shook his head gravely. “I’ll bet you anything that plumber never showed. You know how Neil O’Malley is.”

Actually, Finn had no idea how Neil O’Malley was, but obviously Mike did, since he’d paced to the front of the store about eight times to stare out into the driving rain and wonder aloud if his neighbors were dealing with a flood.

“Not our problem.”

Mike’s eyebrows shot up. “Those girls are my neighbors.”

“They have neighbors on the other side.”

“What is it with you and them?”

“Molly wanted to handle this on her own. If she didn’t, then I’m pretty sure she would have called.”

Mike gave his head another shake, then started for his office. Finn had a bad feeling about the gleam of grim determination he’d seen in his grandfather’s eye, so he followed. By the time he got to the office, Mike was already dialing the phone.

“Hi. Georgina? It’s Mike... I’m fine.” He cleared his throat. “How are you two faring in this rain?” He listened for a moment, his expression becoming more concerned by the second, then he turned toward Finn with an I-told-you-so look.

Hey, Finn felt like saying, I’m not the bad guy here. It wasn’t as if he’d kept Molly and her sister from phoning for help. As he’d told Mike, Molly had made it quite clear the first time Mike offered assistance that she didn’t want it.

“No plumber, and he won’t answer his phone.” Mike shot another look at Finn. “How bad is it? Uh-huh... Well, we can’t have that. Ask your sister if she’s good with someone coming over to help.” Mike laughed then. “Command decision, you say? Well, don’t worry. We’re on our way.”

We? Our?

Mike hung up the phone, then jerked his head toward the door. “You best get Chase and the snake and head on over.”

“What?”

“My bursitis is acting up with the weather.”

Finn simply stared at his grandfather. “I don’t want to just show up if Molly doesn’t know I’m coming.” Not after the parking lot encounter.

“She’ll get over it.”

Finn knew from experience that when Mike was in one of these stern parental moods, he may as well do as he was told. It didn’t matter if he was thirteen or thirty. “If she kicks me out, you owe me a beer.”

“If she kicks you out instead of thanking you for saving her garage from flooding...well, then I’ve read her all wrong.”

Finn thought that was extremely possible as he shrugged into his raincoat, then dashed out the side door and through the deluge. Lola had called Chase on the intercom and he was in the process of loading the drain snake.

“What’s going on?” he asked once they were both safely inside the vehicle.

Finn wiped the rainwater off his face with one hand. “Rescue mission. I think you’re coming along so the lady of the house doesn’t do me harm.”

“Why would she do that?” Chase asked in a mystified voice.

“Just kidding.” He hoped. He wouldn’t know for certain until they got there.

* * *

THE RAIN CAME DOWN in buckets and the plumber was a no-show. Molly dialed his number for the ninth time after trying every other plumber number in the book. Nobody seemed to work on Saturday. Either that or they were all out dealing with other people’s emergencies.

Molly tossed the phone onto the sofa and marched through the kitchen door into the garage and stood beside Georgina. Water was inching its way across the garage toward the kitchen and they pretty much had to act. Now.

“Do you know anything about sandbags?” she asked, only half joking. They had to do something before the water hit the kitchen.

“Mike’s on his way. He called a few minutes ago and I told him to come on over.”

“Thank goodness.” The only reason she’d turned Mike down the first time he’d offered was because she had this thing about being beholden to people.

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