Winning the Teacher's Heart. Jean C. Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ aides he particularly liked. She told us at the reading of the will that when she told Bert her rent had gone up and she was going to have to move, he’d said he’d leave her his house. She never dreamed he’d been serious. Everything else went to the hospice organization and us.”

      She touched her fingertip to her lips. “Strange. I had no idea you were close to him.”

      “We weren’t. I worked for him some when I was a teenager.”

      “Not to pry, but I’m curious about what Ken meant about blood money.”

      “You caught that, too. I don’t know.”

      “As a friend—” Jared was so focused on Becca considering him a friend that he almost missed the rest “—let me tell you that you don’t want to do anything to make an enemy out of Sheriff Norton, or Debbie, for that matter.”

      Too late for that. It appeared he’d already made it back on the Sheriff’s enemy list without even trying. He looked at her solemn face. From her warning, at least Becca seemed to be on his side.

      * * *

      Jared hung up from the call with his financial adviser and dropped his cell phone next to him on the futon. Things were coming together. The contingent financing approval he’d applied for before returning to Paradox Lake had gone through. He glanced around the spare room Connor was letting him use. A basic twentysomething male room, from the garage-sale dresser to the footlocker at the end of the futon. Grandpa Donnelly’s antique polished-wood rolltop desk stuck out like a bicycle in a motocross race. Because Jared had loved the desk as a kid, loved rolling it shut and open, Grandma Donnelly had given it to him for his twentieth birthday and first major motocross win. He’d retrieved it from Gram’s the day after he’d run into Becca and the Nortons.

      He locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back into the lumpy cushions. He should start thinking about a permanent residence. Permanent. He liked the sound of that. Becca was right that the land fronting the road by the pull-in would make a nice house lot. But after nearly fifteen years on the circuit living, breathing, sleeping work, he wanted to put some space between his home and his work. Not that he’d mind having Becca as a neighbor. He crossed his legs at his ankles and jiggled his foot. He hoped she and the other two residents of Conifer Road wouldn’t mind having him building his track and racing school there. Jared was expecting some opposition, but he was prepared.

      “Hey, big brother.” Connor appeared in the doorway. “I figured I’d find you here goofing off.”

      “This from a man who works for an hour one day a week?”

      “Right.”

      Jared swung off the futon. “What’s up?”

      “I’m going for a swim down at the Camp Sonrise beach, one of the perks of having the Hazard family as parishioners. Want to come?”

      “Sure. Give me a minute to change.”

      “I’ll be out front.”

      Jared bounded down the steps two minutes later. “We can take my bike.”

      “No, let’s jog down to the lake. I need as much physical activity as possible to work off my morning.”

      Jared studied his brother. “You had office hours this morning. Bad news?”

      Connor waved him off. “No. The toddler room teacher at The Kids’ Place called in sick. Becca had trouble finding a substitute.”

      “I take that to mean you hired Becca.” That would explain why he hadn’t seen her car in her driveway either of the times he’d been back over to his property.

      “Yeah. Didn’t I tell you?” Connor picked up his pace. “Becca had me cover with the teacher’s aide until she could find someone else.”

      “Gram said something about your dragging your feet about hiring her.”

      “Hey, it wasn’t me. It was the day-care board.”

      “They gave you a hard time? What could they have against Becca?” What could anyone have against her?

      “Debbie Norton is on the board. She got some of the other members questioning whether we wanted to hire a divorcée. After Matt was the one who abandoned Becca and the kids for another woman and initiated the divorce.”

      Jared pounded ahead, hitting the road so hard it sent a bolt of pain up the shin he’d broken in his accident last year.

      “Sanity prevailed. We didn’t have anyone else who was as qualified as Becca, and she’s only filling in until the head teacher we hired for the fall can start.” Connor pulled ahead. “Since when have you been interested in small-town, social-political gossip?”

      Jared switched gears into a full run. Forget the pain. He couldn’t believe how cruel and meddlesome Becca’s ex-in-laws were to her. “Since you became the purveyor of such information.”

      Connor shrugged and matched Jared’s speed. “It comes with the territory, and I shouldn’t have shared that, even with you. All I wanted was some sympathy for having to spend two hours with a room full of two-year-olds. I certainly didn’t get any from the women.”

      “That tough?” The men hit the beach with Jared a stride ahead and then slowed to a trot.

      “That tough. Remind me of this morning if I ever get any ideas of having kids of my own.”

      “Becca’s kids seem okay,” Jared said without thinking. “But you’re right. Us Donnelly men are not cut out to be parents.” He stopped at the camp dock, dropped the towel he’d hung around his neck and pulled off his T-shirt.

      Connor followed suit. “So, that’s the way it is. Becca Norton.”

      Jared answered his brother by diving into the lake. “Whoa!” he shouted when he surfaced.

      “Yeah, bro, I meant to tell you. With the below-normal temperatures we’ve had at night this month, the lake’s cold.”

      “No, it’s great. Just what I needed.” To cool off my reaction to your too-close taunt, little brother.

      Connor shot off the dock with a cannonball.

      “Way to go, Pastor Connor. That was a good one.”

      Jared shook off the water Connor had splashed in his face. A small mob of kids was invading the beach, led by several women, including Becca and Jinx Hazard Stacey. “Look out, Conn. They’re coming for you.”

      Connor paddled over to the dock ladder. “No, that’s the third-through sixth-grade kids,” he said over his shoulder. “They’re people. Nothing like the little darlings I got to experience down and dirty this morning.”

      Jared followed him up the ladder and picked up his towel. “You were two once. I remember you being two. Mom used to make me watch you in the backyard so she could get stuff done in the house.”

      “I was one kid. There was a whole herd of them at day care.”

      “Sure.” Jared toweled СКАЧАТЬ