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He cut off the thought.
She gave him no more attention than she gave the principal as she showed Eli where to sit, and after assuring herself that he had the usual school supplies, she moved back to the front of the class. Without a glance their way, she picked up right where she’d left off. “Okay, so if the tornado is spinning to the right,” she turned on her heels and the braid she’d woven her hair into swayed out from her spine.
Max started when Joe Gage headed out of the classroom and pulled the door closed, cutting off whatever else Professor Sarah was imparting. “She’s a good teacher,” Joe said. “Strict. But she really cares about her kids.”
Max headed back up the corridor with Joe. “How long has she been here?”
“This will be her sixth year. So, Donna tells me you’ve already completed all the paperwork for Eli. You put your mom down as his caretaker? Is Genna up to that?”
He could have asked a dozen questions about Sarah Clay.
He asked none.
“Eli doesn’t need a lot of care. He’s pretty independent. He’ll do as much taking care of her as she does him.” He didn’t like feeling as though he had to explain himself. “With the job I might not always be available. You know. If Eli got sick or something, my mother can make decisions about him.”
“Fine, fine.” Joe accepted the explanation without a qualm. “I’ll be glad when Genna can make it back to work here. So, I know Eli lost his mother a year or so back. I’m sorry to hear it. Anything else in your personal life that he’s dealing with that we might need to know?”
Max shrugged. “He’s annoyed as hell that I took him out of his regular school to come here.”
Joe smiled. “That’s not too surprising.” He stopped outside the office. “Any questions you have?”
None that he intended to ask Joe Gage. He shook his head and stuck out his hand. “Good to see you again.”
“Deputy.” Donna waved at him from her desk. “The sheriff just called here looking for you.”
Not surprising. “I’m on my way over to the station house.”
“I’ll let him know for you,” she offered.
“Don’t worry about Eli,” Joe told him. “He’s in good hands.”
Sarah Clay’s hands, Max thought, as he headed out to his SUV.
It might have been seven years, but he still remembered the feel of those particular hands.
He climbed in the truck, and started it up, only to notice the brown bag sitting on the floor. Eli’s lunch.
Dammit.
He grabbed it and strode back inside, right on past the office, around two corners, to the third door. He knocked on the window.
Once again, inside the classroom, Sarah stopped and looked at him.
The glass protected him from the fallout of that glacial look. He definitely hadn’t imagined it, then.
She moved across the room and opened the door. “What is it, Deputy?”
He held up the lunch sack. “Eli forgot this.”
Her eyes seemed to focus somewhere around his left ear. She snatched the bag from his fingers and turned away.
He started to say her name. But the door closed in his face.
Chapter Two
By the end of the day, Sarah felt as if she’d been through the wringer. She didn’t have to look hard for the reason why, either.
Not when he sat in the chair next to her desk, a sullen expression on his young face. The rest of the students had already been dismissed for the day.
She pushed aside the stack of papers on her desk and folded her hands together on the surface, leaning toward him. All day, she’d been searching for some physical resemblance between him and his father, and it annoyed her to no end.
Unlike Max, who was as dark as Lucifer, his son was blond-haired and blue-eyed and had the appearance of an angel. But he’d been an absolute terror.
Nevertheless, she was determined to keep her voice calm and friendly. “Eli, you’ve had a lot of changes in your life lately. And I know that starting at a new school can be difficult. Why don’t you tell me what your days were like at your last school?”
“Better ’n here,” he said.
She held back a sigh. She’d be phoning his last school as soon as possible. “Better how?”
“We had real desks, for one thing.”
She looked at the tables. The only difference between a desk and the table was the storage, which was taken care of by cubbies that were affixed to each side of the table. “Do you prefer sitting at your own table?”
He lifted one shoulder, not answering.
“If you do, then all you have to do is say so. We both know that you won’t be sitting next to Jonathan tomorrow.”
“He’s a tool.” His expression indicated what a condemnation that was.
“He’s a student in my class, the same as you are and doesn’t deserve to be picked on all afternoon by anyone.”
“I wasn’t picking on him.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Really?”
“I don’t care what he said.”
“Actually, Jonathan didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Eli, I saw you poking at him. You were messing with his papers. You even hid his lunch from him. And then on the playground after lunch, you deliberately hit him with the ball. So, what gives?”
“He didn’t dodge fast ’nuff or he wouldn’t have got hit.”
“This isn’t the best way to start off here, you know.”
“So call my dad and tell him that.”
She had no desire whatsoever to speak to his father. Just seeing Max in person for a brief five minutes had been more than enough for her. “Let’s make a deal, shall we? Tomorrow is a brand-new day. We’ll all start fresh. Or, we can add your name to the list on the board.” She gestured to the corner of the board where two other names were already written. “You know how that works. The first time, you get your name on the board. The second time, you get a check mark and a visit to the principal. If you get another check mark, you’re out of my class.” Something that had never once occurred, but it was the commonly accepted practice at her school.
Eli looked glum. “That was Mr. Frederick’s rule, too.”
“Mr. Frederick was your last teacher? Did you think that system was unfair?”
The boy lifted his shoulder again, not looking at her.
She propped her chin on her palm. “I want you to enjoy class, Eli. It’s no fun for any of us if one of our class members is miserable. But the fact of it is, if you’re caught trying to deliberately hurt another student, there’s not going to be anything I can do to help you. Principal Gage has very clear rules about behavior. What you did on the playground today was wrong.”
“The ball hardly hit him.”
“Only because he wasn’t standing still. And don’t act as if you were playing a game of dodgeball, because I know you weren’t.”
His face scrunched up, like he’d swallowed something bitter. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“It’s Jonathan who deserves the apology. You can use my phone here to call him, if you’d like.”
His lips parted. “Now?”
She could almost have let herself be amused by his appalled expression. “No time like the present. And I’ll bet that Jonathan is home by now since he lives just around the corner.” She plopped the phone on the corner of her desk in front of Eli and pulled out the phone list. “Ready?”
Eli morosely picked up the phone and dialed the number that she recited.
Deciding to give him at least the illusion of some privacy, she rose and moved away from her desk, crossing the room to straighten the art supplies still scattered across the counter. The students had been painting Thanksgiving turkeys that afternoon.
Behind her, she heard Eli deliver his apology. Short. Brief. About what she’d expected.
But at least he’d offered it.
She hadn’t been sure he would, given his mutinous attitude that afternoon.
She tapped the ends of her handful of paintbrushes on the counter, then dropped them into the canning jar where they fanned out like some arty bouquet. She turned around to face Eli and caught him surreptitiously swiping his cheek.
Tension and irritation drained out of her the same way it always did when it came to working with kids.
Evidently, Eli—son of Max Scalise or not—was no exception.
“Remember that tomorrow is a brand-new day,” she said to him. “All fresh. Right?”
He didn’t exactly jump up and down in agreement. But he didn’t roll his eyes, either.
“Come on. I’ll walk you out. Is—is your dad supposed to pick you up?”
He shook his head. “I gotta walk.”
This time she didn’t hold back the urge to smile slightly. He made walking sound like a fate worse than death. “To your grandmother’s house?”
“To the station house.”
“Well, that’s even closer.” She pushed a mammoth amount of papers and books into her oversized book bag and grabbed her own coat off the hook. “Have you met the sheriff yet?”
Eli shook his head.
“He’s not too scary,” Sarah confided. “He’s my uncle.”
At that, the boy looked slightly interested. He hitched his backpack over his shoulder and followed her into the hallway. “You got relatives here?”
“Lots and lots. Can’t swing a cat without hitting a member of the Clay family.”
“Gross. Who’d wanna swing a cat?”
She chuckled. “Well, nobody, I guess.”
“There you are.”
Her chuckle caught in her throat at the sight of Max standing in the middle of the corridor. His dark, slashing brows were drawn together over his eyes. They varied from brown to green, depending on his mood.
Currently, they looked green and far from happy.
She looked down at Eli beside her. “Guess you won’t have to make that walk after all.”
The corner of his lips turned down. “Think I was better off if I’d’a had to,” he muttered.
She curled her fingers around the webbed strap of her book bag to keep from tousling his hair. Terror or not, there was something about the boy that got to her.
Not that most kids didn’t, she hurriedly reminded herself.
“You’re late,” Max said. His voice hadn’t changed. It was still deep. Still slightly abrupt. As if he spoke only because he had to.
“Only about ten minutes. He had some questions we needed to take care of,” Sarah said, answering before Eli could. The boy shot her a surprised look that she ignored.
Max’s eyes narrowed. He still had the longest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. Long and thick, and as darkly colored as the hair on his head. “What kind of questions?”
She decided to let Eli handle that one.
“About, uh, sports,” he finally said.
Max looked suspicious. “Truck’s in the parking lot,” he said after a moment. “Go wait for me.”
Eli gave that little shrug of his and headed down the hall. “See ya tomorrow, Miz Clay.”
“See you, Eli.” Her hand was strangling the web strap. “Deputy.” She barely looked at Max as she turned on her heel, intending to head out the other way. She could wend her way through the school to a different exit.
“Sarah—”
Every nerve she possessed tightened. She felt it from the prickling in her scalp to the curling in her toes. And though she would have liked to keep walking—no, she would have loved to keep walking—she stopped and looked at him over her shoulder.
After all, he was the parent of her newest student. She would have to deal with him on that level no matter what her personal feelings were.
“Yes?”
His lips compressed for a moment. “I…how are you?”
