Lullaby for Two / Child's Play: Lullaby for Two. Cindi Myers

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Tessa gave him a long, studying assessment. “I agree. The principal said you were going to talk first. Do you have a prepared presentation?”

      He grinned at her. “Nope. I’m going to wing it.” Then he shrugged. “I’ve done this before about a thousand times. It’s all in my head.”

      She lifted her zippered portfolio. “It’s all in my notes.”

      He laughed. That was Tessa, always organized and prepared. He took a few steps closer to her and his laugh faded. “Are you going to cover alcohol and drugs?”

      She didn’t step back, just nodded.

      Her blond brows were so delicately shaped. Her fringe of lashes was darker than her hair. Her blue eyes had always been guileless. He could smell vanilla and strawberries again, and he saw the pulse at her neck beating.

      “Are you nervous about this?” he asked.

      “The presentation? Or giving the presentation with you?”

      “Either. Both.”

      “I’m not seventeen anymore. I don’t get nervous as easily.”

      The bravado was new, as was her confidence level. But so much was the same.

      He gently placed a finger on the pulse point of her neck and could feel exactly how fast her heart was beating. “You’re nervous about something,” he insisted.

      She could have slapped his hand away, which was sort of what he expected. She definitely could have backed away. But she just stood there, gazing into his eyes, and he realized that was worse than shutting him out.

      Because he saw the pain he’d caused Tessa…and now he knew she’d never forgive him.

       Chapter Two

      “I see the two of you have met,” said Joe Mercer, the principal of Sagebrush High School, to Tessa and Vince as he exited his private office.

      Tessa didn’t speak. She still felt breathless and disconcerted from Vince’s touch.

      “We went to school here together,” Vince filled in when the silence grew awkward.

      Joe, a handsome man in his midforties and prematurely gray, asked Tessa, “Is the school the same as you remembered it?”

      Walking into Sagebrush High brought back too many memories as far as she was concerned. Although she’d convinced her father to let her attend the public high school, she’d felt alone and very much the outsider here—until Vince had dropped into her life. “It’s the same. Though the halls have a new coat of paint and the auditorium was added on since I…we…came to school here.”

      As she glanced at Vince, she saw his eyes had turned a stormy gray. Was he remembering the kisses they’d shared behind locker doors? The quick hugs before a test? The afterschool rendezvous in his pickup truck in the parking lot? She might not want those memories to still be intact, but in spite of her best effort to tame or banish them, they were. The deepening of lines on Vince’s brow told her he couldn’t banish them, either.

      She purposefully glanced at her watch. “I suppose the parents will be gathering. Are we speaking to them in the auditorium?”

      “Unfortunately we won’t have enough parents here to need the auditorium,” Joe replied. “They think they know their kids so most don’t attend these meetings. We’re gathering in the library.”

      As the principal motioned for Tessa to precede him into the hall, Vince asked him, “You publicized this?”

      “Absolutely. Flyers went home with the kids. We posted it on our Web site. There was even a notice in the paper.”

      Vince had come up beside Tessa, his long-legged stride easily taking him ahead of her. When he realized it, he slowed.

      Just looking at him could still make her giddy. At eighteen, he’d been most girls’ fantasy date, with his good looks, sexy beard stubble and broad shoulders that could make a girl feel safe. At thirty-eight, he was so much more. The lines etched around his eyes had come from maturity and experience. She guessed his strong jaw still carried a shadowed beard line after five o’clock. But tonight he was clean-shaven, ready for his part of the program.

      She tried not to look too hard or see too much, but in spite of herself, she noticed that tonight he wore a denim blazer, white oxford shirt and black jeans, a broad-rimmed cowboy hat low over his eyes. He’d obviously kept in shape. She’d been able to tell that from the muscles evident under his polo shirt that day in her office. She’d tried to ignore the changes in his body as he’d handed Sean to her…as he’d loomed in the room while she’d examined his son.

      His son.

      “How is Sean adjusting to the move?” she asked, as their footsteps echoed in the hall and they drew closer to the library.

      “Probably better than I am,” Vince admitted with a rueful smile.

      She’d be safer not commenting on Vince’s adjustment. “If Sean’s sleeping, eating well and seems happy, then he’s adjusting.”

      “Sometimes he wakes up around 2:00 a.m. and wants to play. I walk him for a while and talk to him, then he settles down again.”

      She didn’t know why she was having such a difficult time imagining Vince with the baby, accepting full care of him. Maybe because while she was pregnant he simply hadn’t been around much and she’d wished he had been.

      As they entered the library, Tessa noticed that most of the rectangular tables for eight were filled, and about a hundred parents had gathered.

      Joe led them to the circulation desk. A podium was positioned in front of it with two chairs by its side.

      “I didn’t want this to be too formal,” he told them in a low voice. “If we can keep the meeting more conversational, give parents a chance to ask questions and not feel a barrier between you and them, that would be best. Chief Rossi, after my opening remarks I’ll introduce you. Is there anything I need to set up for you? A bit of a background?”

      “I’ll include my background when I talk to them,” Vince assured the principal.

      “The same for you, Dr. McGuire?” Joe asked.

      She nodded, eager to hear what Vince had to say. In spite of herself she was curious about where he’d been and what he’d done over the past twenty years. Not that he would go into all of that publicly. But she might get a hint.

      She was always all nerves before she gave a presentation. She was much better one-on-one, or in a small group. But she did it as a challenge, as she did everything. If she was afraid of something, she knew she had to walk straight toward it and face it. Was that how Vince ran his life, too?

      She sensed a confidence about him that had been lacking when he was a teenager. At eighteen he’d stood tall and said what he thought more because of defiance than confidence.

      Now, however, he walked up to the podium and gave the group a relaxed smile. After he swiped off his Stetson, СКАЧАТЬ