A Maverick And A Half

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Thinking it safer to change the subject than wade through one that he knew absolutely nothing about, Anderson came around the hood of his truck and joined his son. In a gesture of camaraderie, he put his arm around Jake’s thin shoulders before he began to walk toward the building.

Jake looked around as they came around to the front of the building. Since it was evening in September, a bevy of streetlights were on, illuminating the front entrance.

“It looks like there’s going to be a lot of people here,” Jake observed.

Anderson couldn’t help wondering if that was a good thing or a bad thing in Jake’s eyes. There was still so much he didn’t know about this introverted boy he had fathered.

“Everyone who’s interested,” Anderson agreed. Which, he silently admitted, probably wouldn’t have been him if this meeting had been held six months ago. He would have felt it was sufficient to have one of his siblings attend it and then report back on the highlights.

But now he was a family man—or at least he had a family to concern himself with—and that meant that he had to take an active interest in what was going on in town. Especially when it might affect Jake, just as the subject for this meeting promised to do.

He thought back to the wedding celebration that had been held last July Fourth with its unfortunate incidence of spiked punch. Apparently, possibly because of the wedding and definitely because of the punch, love had been in the air that night. Because of that, a large number of babies had consequently joined the population of Rust Creek Falls. Babies who would eventually grow up into children—children who needed to be educated.

Presently, Rust Creek Falls Elementary was too small a facility to adequately accommodate all these added children. The focus of the meeting tonight was to determine whether the town council should give the okay to just build onto the existing school—or if it was wiser to build a second school altogether.

Although Jake hadn’t been part of that baby boom, he was here now and, with any luck, would remain that way. The boy was definitely going to be affected by what would be decided at the meeting.

“Everyone?” Jake repeated, still looking around. His head was turning from side to side as if he was a searchlight that had come to life.

Anderson thought he detected a hopeful note in his son’s voice. What was that all about? Was Jake looking around, hoping to see one of his classmates? A girl, maybe? If so, it was a good sign.

“Pretty much,” Anderson answered.

Jake spared him a look that could only be interpreted as hopeful. “Like Ms. Laramie?”

The second his son asked whether or not the woman would be attending, Anderson suddenly spotted the teacher in question approximately fifteen feet away from him, standing near the front entrance of the building—and talking to Paige.

Paige, from what he could tell, seemed to be alone. That meant that his brother-in-law was home with Carter, their two-year-old. Anderson wanted to catch up to Paige to talk about a few things, but not if it meant having to talk to Jake’s teacher, too.

Since he and Marina Laramie had that less than productive meeting at the school the other week, he hadn’t seen the woman or exchanged any words with her, either. But that didn’t mean she’d been completely out of his mind.

As a matter of fact, the exact opposite seemed to be true. For some reason, Marina Laramie kept popping up in his head at completely unbidden times and Anderson didn’t even remotely like the fact that she did. It made him feel as if he had no control over his own thoughts.

How else could he view having that woman’s face suddenly appear in his head while he was in the middle of thinking of something entirely different from an interfering, feisty redhead who thought she knew how to raise his son better than he did?

Never mind that she probably did and that maybe she was even right in her estimation that Jake needed to get involved in something outside of himself. The bottom line was that Jake was his kid, not hers, and he would raise the boy any way that he saw fit.

Suddenly, he felt Jake eagerly tugging on his arm. “Hey, Dad, look. There’s Ms. Laramie. Let’s go over and talk to her.”

But as Jake began to make his way over to his teacher, Anderson caught his son’s arm, clearly surprising the boy, who looked at him quizzically.

“Ms. Laramie is already talking to someone else,” Anderson pointed out.

Jake took another look just to be sure he was right.

“Yeah, but it’s Aunt Paige. Aunt Paige won’t mind,” the boy insisted, shaking his arm free.

The next minute, Anderson saw his son striding over toward the two women. With his long, lanky legs, Jake had reached Marina and his aunt in a matter of a few quick strides. And, as he watched, just like that he saw his son transform from an abnormally quiet, serious eleven-year-old to an animated, bright, smiling boy who clearly had a lot to say.

“Ms. Laramie,” Jake had called out before he’d even reached his teacher. When she turned in his direction, he grinned broadly and asked, “Are you going to the town meeting?”

Marina was clearly surprised to see the boy, but she recovered with grace and offered him a warm smile by way of a greeting.

“Yes, I am,” she told him.

“Me, too,” Jake declared proudly. “I’m here with my dad. He thinks that it’s a good idea for me to come see how people in a small town like Rust Creek Falls get things done.”

Marina looked past the boy’s head and saw his father coming up behind him. She inclined her head politely in a silent greeting.

Her vibrant blue eyes met Anderson’s as she told Jake, “Your father’s right. It’s always a good idea for you to see how things work firsthand.”

No doubt pleased at her seal of approval, Jake beamed. The next moment, he seemed to come to and realized that his aunt was standing right next to his teacher. “Hi, Aunt Paige.”

It was obvious by Paige’s expression that she was surprised by the boy’s animated response to seeing her at what was, essentially, a school board meeting.

“Hi yourself, Jake. So your dad dragged you to this, huh?” she asked sympathetically, reading between the lines. She shook her head.

“He didn’t drag me,” Jake corrected politely, apparently not wanting to lose any of the points he’d just managed to score with his teacher. Turning to his father for backup, Jake asked, “Did you, Dad?”

Anderson found himself being drawn into this unexpected interaction against his will, but he couldn’t very well not be supportive of his son. For some reason, having his teacher think well of him obviously meant a great deal to Jake.

“No,” he told Marina, “Jake came right along without a single word of protest.”

Which was technically true. It was only the boy’s body language that indicated he didn’t want to go to the meeting. That and his comment about not being allowed to reach the next level of the video game he’d been playing perpetually.

“Can we sit with you, Ms. Laramie?” Jake asked without warning as he looked at the woman with hopeful, soulful eyes.

The same eyes, Marina caught herself thinking, that his father had.

“Jake,” Anderson admonished, surprised by his son’s extroverted behavior, “you can’t just put someone on the spot like that. I’m sure Ms. Laramie has made plans to sit with her friends.” And that, Anderson hoped, was the end of that.

Except that it wasn’t.

“Actually, I haven’t,” Marina contradicted, addressing her response to the boy. “Except for your aunt, of course. Otherwise, I didn’t have any plans to sit with anyone in particular.” She smiled warmly at the boy who had given her some concern. “You’re welcome to join us,” she told Jake.

Jake looked positively overjoyed.

Anderson couldn’t remember ever seeing his son look so enthusiastic and overjoyed before.

And then it hit him.

His son had a crush on his teacher. There wasn’t any other explanation for the way he was acting or why he looked as if he was on the verge of doing cartwheels. This was a completely different boy from the one he’d roused from his room earlier.

“Dad, too?” Jake asked eagerly.

Anderson was completely floored by his son’s inclusion. Ordinarily, eleven-year-olds, whether they were male or female, were not nearly this thoughtful when it came to their parents. Or really anyone over the age of fifteen.

He could remember himself at that age. In comparison to Jake, he’d been a thoughtless, self-centered little know-it-all. Granted, he’d outgrown that phase a long time ago, but he’d still gone through it. Jake, however, had somehow managed to bypass all that. It made Anderson realize just what a special, decent adolescent Jake really was.

Even so, if Marina Laramie represented Jake’s big crush, he still didn’t intend to be put on the spot because of it. He was about to politely turn down the whole invitation before it was even tendered to him, but then he saw a quirky kind of smile curve the woman’s lips and heard Marina say, “Sure, why not? Your dad’s included, too.”

Then the petite redhead turned her very bright blue eyes on him and said, “You’re welcome to join your sister and me—and your son—at the meeting if you like, Mr. Dalton.”

She’d very deftly—and formally—put him on the spot. If he turned her down, he’d be the villain in his son’s eyes. He’d been struggling too hard to be Jake’s white knight to risk sabotaging himself just because it would entail spending an uncomfortable hour in the woman’s company. Uncomfortable not because he had any real, concrete reason to dislike her—he’d actually begun to think of Jake being a babysitter as a good thing—but because there was something about this woman that made him feel...well, antsy was as good a word for it as any, he decided.

She made him strangely restless, like he couldn’t find a place for himself whenever she was around.

He knew it was an absurd reaction, but it was his reaction and as long as he was experiencing it, he wasn’t going to be able to relax, certainly not anywhere around her.

But he supposed that not being able to relax was in reality a small price to pay in exchange for seeing his son looking so happy.

Looking like, he realized, a typical kid his age should look.

“Can we, Dad?” Jake asked eagerly, turning his face up to his father’s.

Anderson slipped a hand on his son’s shoulder in a gesture that spoke of familiarity and hopeful bonding. He reminded himself that this was all about Jake and nothing else, certainly not about him.