Kitabı oku: «Romancing The Teacher», sayfa 2

Lisa mentally rolled up her sleeves. “Okay, Malone, the first thing you’re going to have to understand is that this isn’t a game and that you’re not slumming. After your time here, you get to go home at the end of the day. For most of these people, this is home. You will treat it—and them—with respect and do what you can to make the experience of being here less painful for them.”

She was almost barking out the orders. “You a drill sergeant in your spare time?”

Her eyes narrowed again. Damn, but they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one. “No, a human being.”

“Ouch.”

She didn’t return his smile. She meant to get a fair amount of real work out of him. The shelter was always in need of some sort of repair. The boiler didn’t sound as if it was going to make it through another winter and there were holes in the roof the size of well-fed rats. The rainy season was just around the corner, right after Thanksgiving. That didn’t give them much time to get into shape.

Lisa glanced down at his shoes. “Your Italian loafers are going to get dirty here.”

Their eyes met as she looked up again. She found his smile really unsettling. “You know quality.”

Lisa looked at him pointedly. “Yes, I do.” The way she said it, her meaning was clear.

Ian laughed. Most of the time he dealt with people who fawned over him. People who wouldn’t know an honest emotion if it bit them.

She, obviously, did not fall into that category. “I like you, Kitty.”

She started to correct him again, then decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe if she just ignored his attempt at familiarity, the man would eventually give it up. He didn’t look as if he had much of an attention span. “How are you with a hammer?”

He’d built his own sailboat once. Actually, he and Marcus had. Marcus had talked him into it the summer before they graduated college. Marcus from Yale, he from NYU. But this woman looked like she’d probably consider that bragging, so instead, he shrugged. “I know which end to use.”

She sighed. Not handy, either. This was just getting better and better. “It’s a start,” she allowed.

“That it is,” he responded.

Ignoring the comment, or the chipper way he delivered it, she made a quick assessment of his body. He was muscular and lean, although she doubted he’d actually ever done any physical labor. He didn’t seem the type. Too bad, but he’d learn.

She thought of the most pressing repair item on her list. “Do heights bother you?”

His eyes slid over her body. She had the impression of being weighed and measured. It surprised her that there was a part of her that wondered, just for a moment, what his conclusions were.

“That depends on what I’m doing,” he finally answered.

Why did she feel as if she’d just been propositioned? “Nailing shingles,” she bit off.

His smile just widened. And burrowed into her despite her resistance. “Any chance of that being a euphemism?”

“None whatsoever,” she replied evenly.

“Didn’t think so.” It would feel good to do something physical for a change, he thought. Something to work up a sweat. “I can give it a try.”

“You need to do more than ‘try,’” she informed him, barely hanging onto her patience.

This wasn’t going to work, she thought, not with the attitude she saw. Granted she didn’t draw a salary here and her time was limited, but she felt part of something at Providence, something that went beyond a paycheck. And these people deserved better than having some bored blight on society doing halfhearted penance because he’d gotten caught going too fast after parking his judgment.

“Look, Malone, you either take this job seriously or have your hotshot lawyer get you reassigned to something else.”

The term made him laugh. If there was anything that Marcus wasn’t, it was a hotshot. “Marcus would really get insulted by that last remark.”

“Marcus?” Who the hell was Marcus? Or was he just trying to distract her?

“My lawyer. My friend,” he added. “He’s really a very dedicated person.” Ian’s mouth curved. “Not like me at all.”

She’d heard his voice soften, just for a moment, when he’d mentioned the man. Maybe this Marcus he mentioned really was a friend. If so, that meant that he was capable of maintaining a relationship with something other than his own photograph. Maybe there was hope for him.

Maybe all this was just bravado because being around the homeless and downtrodden made him nervous. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.

“He’s as solid as a brick wall,” Ian continued.

“And he’s as far from a hotshot as you are from possessing a sense of humor.”

He’d had her going there for a minute, thinking that maybe she’d been too hard on him. First impressions were usually right. And her first impression of him—good looks or no good looks—was far from favorable.

Ian watched in fascination as he saw her eyes flash. They turned from a light green to something he had once seen during a squall. He had a feeling that when she really got going, she was something else. The part of him that dissected and explored, that looked inside of every word, every sensation, every feeling, experienced a curiosity to discover what the woman before him was like when all of her buttons were pressed.

“I don’t laugh very much here, Mr. Malone.”

The retort just came out. It was, in actuality, a lie. Whenever possible, she tried very hard to bring laughter into these people’s lives. If not laughter, then at least a smile. But somehow, with Malone, that laughter seemed synonymous with a joke. And there were precious few jokes here.

“I don’t suggest you do, either,” she added. Lisa drew herself up, painfully aware that she was at least a foot shorter than this annoying man. It made her feel as if she were at a severe disadvantage and she didn’t like that. “Now if you’re through making observations, I’ll take you to that hammer.”

She turned on her heel and began to walk quickly from the room. Taking a second to admire the view from where he was, the way her hips subtly moved with each step, Ian fell into step with her. Because of his longer stride, he caught up within a moment.

“Looking forward to it,” he told her.

And she was looking forward to his hours of community service being over, she thought. Absently, she wondered just how many hours he owed the city. At the same time, she thanked God that she wouldn’t have to be here for most of them.

Chapter Three

Lisa glanced at her watch. It was almost seven. She’d stayed longer than she’d intended. Again. Whenever she came to Providence Shelter, time melted into this distant dimension and she lost all sense of it. One thing led to another and she would never seem to finish. But that was life. Ongoing. Neverending.

But right now her life was waiting for her back at her house and if she didn’t hurry, she was going to miss reading Casey his bedtime story. He was pretty out of sorts with her over the last time she’d come home late, only to find him fast asleep. She’d had to bribe him by letting him stay up an extra half hour on Friday night in order to get him to forgive her. She didn’t want that to become a habit.

Not to mention she still had papers that needed to be graded. She really owed it to her students not to fall asleep over them the way she had last time.

That’s what she got by trying to make do on five hours sleep, she silently upbraided herself. As her mother had pointed out to her more than once, she wasn’t a superwoman. There was no point in trying to act like one.

Just before she left, Lisa swung by Muriel’s office to get her purse. The room was empty. Just as well, Lisa decided. She didn’t want to get caught up in a conversation at this hour. Muriel was a lovely person, but she could go on indefinitely without ever reaching her point.

Crossing to the old desk someone had donated to the building, she opened the bottom drawer and took out her purse. Lisa closed the drawer and slung the purse strap onto her shoulder. She was ready to leave.

But she didn’t.

Whether it was a sense of responsibility or just plain old-fashioned curiosity, she couldn’t honestly say, but instead of leaving the building, Lisa found herself retracing her steps and going outside, where less than two hours ago, she’d left Providence Shelter’s latest penitent perched on a ladder, ready to make the necessary interim repairs to the roof.

Or so he had said.

Closing the door behind her, she looked around the back. Part of her expected to find Malone sprawled out on the ground, unconscious, a victim of a sudden attack of vertigo or some such paltry excuse.

Granted she might have been a tad too hard on him, but something about him reminded her of the last man she’d had the misfortune of dating. Thad, the divorced father of one of her students, had been charming on the outside, hollow in the inside. In the end, she honestly didn’t know who she was more disappointed in, him for stepping out on her or herself for being such a poor judge of character.

She knew better now.

Apparently not, Lisa silently amended the next moment as she circled around to the rear of the building and found the ladder just where she’d left it. Malone was definitely not where she had left him. Not on the ladder, not anywhere in sight.

Lisa could feel her jaw tighten. The man had fled the coop. Already. Blowing out a breath, she swallowed an oath. She might have known.

It was obvious that Malone couldn’t stick to a commitment. But she would have thought he’d at least last out the day. Frowning, she went back inside to see if she could find one of the older boys to move the ladder and put it away. It obviously couldn’t stay where it was. Thanks to Casey and her teaching position, she was well acquainted with the way the minds of the under-four-foot set worked. The ladder and all it represented was far too much of a temptation for the smaller residents of Providence Shelter.

As she turned the corner, she nearly bumped into Muriel. Lost in thought, the older woman was humming to herself. Lisa couldn’t remember ever seeing the woman look anything but sunny and optimistic.

“Leaving, dear?” Muriel asked.

Lisa nodded. “I’ve got to be getting home.” She hesitated for a second, debating saying anything. Technically, it wasn’t any of her business. But she had never operated that way, keeping out of her fellow man or woman’s business. Doing so would have made the world a very cold, isolated place as far as she was concerned.

Besides, Muriel deserved to know. She was far too busy to be aware of every little detail that went on at the house.

“Look, that new guy, the one the court sent here because of a DUI,” even saying the acronym constricted her throat. “I really don’t think that he’s going to work out.”

The look on the woman’s face told Lisa that Muriel knew instantly who she was referring to. “You mean the one who makes me wish I were twenty years younger?” The wistful smile on Muriel’s lips was unmistakable. “What makes you say that?”

Muriel was the kind who would find redeeming qualities in Genghis Khan, Lisa thought. “Well, I told him to replace the shingles that flew off the roof in that storm we had last month.”

“Good, good.” Muriel nodded, then seemed to realize that there was obviously more. “And?”

Lisa spread her hands wide. “And I just looked and he’s not there.”

Muriel glanced out the back window automatically, even though there was no way she could see the area under discussion. In addition, twilight had long since sneaked its way across the terrain.

“When did you tell him to do it?”

Lisa thought for a moment, trying to remember the time. “A little less than a couple of hours ago.”

Muriel’s expression all but said, Well, there you have it, but she added audibly, “Maybe he’s finished.”

Lisa didn’t have to get on the ladder to know the answer to that one. An expert might have completed the job, but Malone was no expert. “I doubt it. He’s not the handy type.”

The smile on Muriel’s lips turned positively wicked as it reached her eyes and made them sparkle. “That probably all depends on what you mean by handy.” The smile widened as Muriel’s thoughts took flight. “He strikes me as someone who could be very handy under the right circumstances.”

Lisa could only shake her head. Muriel spent most of her time here. It was obvious that she needed to get out and socialize more. “Muriel, you’ve been a widow too long.”

The woman’s dark brown eyes met hers. “You should talk.”

This wasn’t about her. Not in any manner, shape or form. “I’m not a widow,” Lisa reminded the other woman. “Casey’s father and I never got the chance to get married.”

Not that there hadn’t been plans, lots of plans. Plans that never had a chance to become a reality because the weekend before the wedding, Matt was struck by a drunk driver. He’d died instantly at the scene.

It had taken her a long time to recover and make her peace with what had happened. Having Casey in her life had helped most of all. But even that caused her to ache a little in the middle of the night. Ache because she had never gotten the chance to tell Matt that she was pregnant. He’d died without ever knowing that they had created a son.

“You know,” Muriel began slowly, running the tip of her tongue along her bright-red lips, “this Ian fellow might—”

“Stop right there,” Lisa warned abruptly, raising her hand like a traffic cop. “You have the same glint in your eyes that my mother periodically gets.” The one that would come into her mother’s eyes when she’d talk about friends’ unattached sons or nephews who just happened to be in town for the week. “And I can tell you right here, right now, that not even if Ian Malone were the last man on earth and tipped in gold would I entertain the idea of hooking my wagon to his star.”

“Interesting way of putting it,” a male voice interrupted.

Caught, Lisa could only look at Muriel’s face. The older woman didn’t bother suppressing her grin as she nodded her head. Malone. Somehow or other, the man had managed to sneak up behind her.

Okay, this wasn’t the time to look guilty. Instead, she summoned the indignation she’d felt when she’d first happened upon the unattended ladder.

Swinging around, Lisa went on the offensive. Her late father, a football coach for a semipro team, had always been a big believer in using offense rather than defense.

“I thought you went home.”

Ian summoned an innocent expression, enjoying himself. “My time wasn’t up yet.”

He might fool Muriel, but he wasn’t fooling her. “Then why didn’t you finish putting up the new shingles like I asked you?”

“You didn’t ask,” he corrected her, “you told. And I did.” Before she could open her mouth to challenge his answer, he had a question of his own. “Did you bother looking at the roof?”

She seemed annoyed, which gave him his answer. “From the ground,” Lisa said grudgingly.

He infuriated her by shaking his head. “Can’t see the new shingles from that angle.”

Ian found the suspicion that clouded her eyes oddly attractive. There was chemistry here, he noted, wondering if she was aware of it. Probably the reason she was snapping his head off.

“So you finished.”

Ian inclined his head and then saluted smartly. “Yes, ma’am, I did indeed.”

She’d believe it when she saw it, Lisa thought, but for now, she let that argument go. “So where were you?”

“I was in the activity room.” He nodded in the general direction of the room he had just vacated. It was also known as the common room and was where everyone gathered in the latter part of the day. “I didn’t realize that I had to ask anyone for permission before I walked anywhere.”

“You don’t,” she shot back, feeling like a shrew even as she went on talking. Muriel, she noticed, seemed content just to stand by the wayside and observe. “But there were other things you could have been helping with.”

“I know,” he said. His eyes shifted toward Muriel and he smiled. “I was.”

Muriel was too softhearted for her own good and she wasn’t about to stand around and watch her being manipulated. So she became the other woman’s champion and challenged Malone. “Like what?”

“I read a story,” he said simply.

Did he think he could just sit back and relax because he happened to be better looking than most movie stars? That didn’t give him a get-out-of-jail-free card. Not in her book.

“You can read on your own time, Mr. Malone,” Lisa informed him. “The court didn’t send you here to entertain yourself.”

“I wasn’t,” he contradicted. “I was entertaining your little friend.”

Lisa narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t the slightest idea what this man was talking about. “What little friend?”

“The little girl you were trying to bolster when I found you earlier.” It took him a second to remember the name the girl’s mother had used. “Monica. She looked lonely when I walked by, I stopped and gave her a book.” A whole stack of worn children’s books sat on one of the tables. The girl had looked embarrassed and had just held the thin book. That was when his suspicions had been aroused. “Except that somewhere along the line, public education failed her because she can’t read.” As quickly as his anger rose, it abated, hiding behind the shield he always had fixed in place. “So I read to her.” He looked at her intently and directed his question to Lisa rather than the woman who was paid to run the shelter. “Or is that against the rules?”

Lisa shifted, feeling uncomfortable. What’s more, she felt like an idiot. Maybe she was being too hard on Malone. After all, she didn’t really know him. His attitude just rubbed her the wrong way and had led her to certain conclusions.

To jump to certain conclusions, she amended, chagrinned.

“No,” she said, “that’s not against the rules.” Lisa paused, pressing her lips together. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

There was amusement in the blue eyes. They weren’t icy, she decided, changing her initial opinion. They were warm. Maybe a little too warm.

“It might sound more convincing if you didn’t act as if your mouth were filled with unappetizing dirt when you said it.”

“As opposed to the appetizing kind?” she guessed.

Ian laughed. She’d gotten him. Words were his stock and trade, but of late, in the last nine months, it felt as if he’d just closed up shop. Nothing was coming. No ideas, no snippets of plots, no stray dialogue flashing through his brain at odd moments, begging to be written down before they were forgotten. It was as if his fictional world, the world he often sought out for solace and in which he often took refuge, had completely deserted him, leaving him to fend for himself and deal with what was around him without the crutch he had come to rely on so heavily.

This with a deadline breathing down his neck.

For now, he smiled, his eyes on hers. “I stand corrected,” he allowed.

He looked over Lisa’s head at the woman he had checked in with when he’d first walked through the doors. He couldn’t help wondering if she was very shrewd or very vacant. Her expression could be read either way.

“Has anyone thought about setting up a few informal classes to teach the kids while they’re staying here? If most of them are transient, then enrolling in the local schools doesn’t sound like anything their parents are going to be looking into. Whole chunks of these kids’ educations are falling through the cracks and nobody’s noticing.”

Lisa looked at him, surprised by the observation. Was he actually deeper than that brilliantly blinding smile of his? “You sound like you’ve given this matter some thought.” She studied him for a moment, looking to be swayed one way or the other about him. “Like you’re familiar with it.”

The shrug was careless, tying him to nothing. “In a manner of speaking.”

Given the glimmer of a hint, Lisa wasn’t about to back off easily. “What manner of speaking?”

“Mine,” he replied.

The single word just hung there, suspended in space. Ian didn’t feel like sharing anymore, didn’t feel like telling this woman or her superior that he’d once been one of those kids who’d had sections of his life carelessly lost in the shuffle because no one was looking out for him.

After his family had been killed in the Palm Springs earthquake, it had taken Social Services more than six months to locate his mother’s parents. His grandparents, Ed and Louise Humboldt, lived on a small operating farm in Northern California, close to the Oregon border. Estranged from their daughter because of her marriage to a man they didn’t feel was good enough for her, they had no idea that anything had happened to her or to her husband and daughter, until Alice McKay from the Orange Country Social Services office had taken it upon herself, on her own time, to locate his only living relatives.

They were little more than strangers to him when Alice brought him up to the farm. He hadn’t wanted to stay with them, had wanted instead to go home with Alice because she was kind and her smile reminded him of his sister’s. But that wasn’t possible. So he had remained with his grandparents, who took him in out of a sense of duty.

They fed him, clothed him and gave him a roof over his head. In exchange, he did chores on the farm before school, after school and practically until he dropped at night.

Ed and Louise were good people, they just weren’t good grandparents. He knew they didn’t love him. They didn’t concern themselves with his education other than his getting one. He thought of running away several times, but instead, he remained. And then, as he settled in, a funny thing happened.

A whole new world opened up for him whenever he was around books. A world where there was no weight on his shoulders, no pain waiting for him around every corner and no guilt ready to spring up at him without warning. He read everything he could get his hands on, especially science fiction.

When he wasn’t doing chores or studying for school, he was reading. Morning, noon and night.

Around the time when he turned fifteen, he discovered that he could not only read about those worlds that existed between the pages of a book, he could create them. Create worlds where things happened the way he wanted them to. He wasn’t a victim anymore. Instead, he became a god. A god who presided over invisible worlds that existed first only in his mind and then on paper as well.

He finished writing his first book at seventeen, fashioning a strange world where people were ruled by their nightmares. Twenty-seven publishers rejected it. And one made him an offer.

He was on his way.

None of it would have happened if Alice McKay hadn’t taken it upon herself to hunt down his mother’s parents. Because if she hadn’t, if she had been content to do her job and nothing more, he would have gone on being sent from one foster home to another, one school system to another and, because of his progressively rebellious nature, never remaining anywhere long enough to learn anything or find any peace.

He’d dedicated Nightmares to her, paying her the highest compliment that he could by making her the godmother of his firstborn.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Muriel decided, after thinking about the idea of classes for a moment. Her eyes shifted back and forth between the two of them, finally resting on Lisa. “Why don’t the two of you see what can be worked out?”

Lisa frowned. She didn’t want to be pulled into this. Redeeming idea or not, she didn’t like the thought of working too closely with Malone. One altruistic moment did not a saint make.

“It’s his idea,” she protested, looking at Muriel pointedly.

The expression on Muriel’s face was mild. But once she’d made up her mind, nothing could dissuade it. “Yes, but you’re the teacher,” she reminded her.

That shouldn’t be held against her, Lisa thought, irritated.

Ian looked at her with mild surprise. “You’re a teacher?”

Lisa unconsciously squared her shoulders. “Yes.” She braced herself for some sort of crack. She wasn’t disappointed.

His mouth curved slowly, lazily. Wickedly. “No wonder I kept having the strange sensation of having my knuckles rapped.”

“Very funny.” She looked at him pointedly and decided—again—that she didn’t like his attitude. “If I were to rap something, it wouldn’t be your knuckles.”

He didn’t back off. She hadn’t thought he would. “Tell me more, this is getting to sound interesting.”

Lisa caught herself growing angrier without being entirely sure why. “Is everything a joke to you?”

“If you don’t laugh, you cry,” he told her with more solemnity than she thought possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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