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“I don’t have time after school.” He replaced the apple on the desk. “Maybe Eli would be better off with a different teacher.”
Her fingers curled. “I’m the only third grade teacher here.”
For the first time, he showed some sign of frustration. He pushed his long fingers through his short hair, leaving the black-brown strands rumpled. “Damn small town,” he muttered.
Defensiveness swelled inside her. “You’re the one who came back here, Max. Lord only knows why, after all this time.” She felt the warmth in her cheeks and knew they probably looked red.
“I came for my mother’s sake.”
The dam of discretion she ordinarily possessed had sprung a leak, though. “How admirable of you. It’s been once in…how long? Twenty years?” The last time he’d been in Weaver, she’d been all of six years old.
His lips tightened. “Twenty-two years, actually.”
“Like I said.” Her lips twisted. “Admirable.”
“I’m not here to argue with you, Sarah. What happened in California between you and me was a long time ago.”
Seven years. Four months. A handful of days. “If you think I’m holding the fact that you dumped me against your son, you’re way off the mark.”
“I didn’t dump you.”
She gave a short, humorless laugh. “That’s exactly what you did. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I never even think about it.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“Then why the hell are you so angry?”
Her lips parted, but no answer came. She’d gotten over angry a very, very long time ago. But the hurt?
That was a much harder row to hoe. Chock-full of boulders and stone-hard dirt.
“Maybe I just don’t understand why my uncle thought you’d be a good choice for deputy,” she finally said.
His well-shaped lips thinned. “I am not my father.”
“No, he just rustled Double-C cattle. You rustled—” She broke off, her face flushing again.
“Rustled what?” He planted his hands on the desk that stood between them and leaned over it. “You?”
She would have backed up if there hadn’t been a wall right behind her. “There’s not anything in Weaver that’ll hold your interest for long. I think you’ll get bored stiff catching the occasional speeder and settling disputes between Norma Cleaver and her neighbor over her dog barking at night, and you’ll take off again, leaving my uncle to find yet another deputy.”
“I think your uncle is capable of deciding whether or not that’s a problem for him.”
“I just don’t like knowing my family is going to be disappointed by you.”
He stifled an oath. “Jesus, Sarah. We saw each other for less than a month. Does it occur to you that you might be overreacting?”
Anger wasn’t beyond her, after all. It curled low and deep inside her like a hot ember.
Mirroring his position, she pressed her hands against the edge of the desk and leaned forward. Close enough to see the individual lashes tangling around his green-brown eyes. To see that the faint crow’s-feet beside those eyes had deepened and that an errant strand of silver threaded through his thick, lustrous hair, right above his left temple. “Dumping me was one thing. Lying to me was another.”
“What, exactly, did I lie about?” he asked, his expression suddenly unreadable.
She could hear the roar of kids coming down the hall. Chorus practice was definitely over. “I’m not interested in giving you a list, Max. What would be the point? You know your own lies better than anyone.” She pushed the homework page that Eli had swiped at him. “Talk to your son,” she said evenly, “about his behavior in school. We need to get this straightened out for his sake.”
“Eli never had trouble in a class until now.”
Meaning this was her fault?
She didn’t reply. If she did, she’d lose her temper for certain.
Chrissy Tanner was the first student to round the classroom door, closely followed by several more, and Sarah was heartily glad to see them.
When Eli skidded around the corner, his eyeballs about bulged out of his head at the sight of his father standing there. He gave Sarah a furtive look as he gave his father a “yo” in greeting and headed to his lone table.
Max looked back at Sarah. The radio at his hip was crackling and he reached for it, automatically turning down the volume. “We’ll finish this later.”
It sounded more like a threat than a promise of parental concern.
And the problem was, Sarah didn’t know what they were to finish discussing. The problems with Eli, or the past.
Once Max departed though, Sarah enjoyed one benefit from his unexpected appearance in her classroom. Eli didn’t do one thing to earn a second glance from her for the remainder of the afternoon. He even offered to help clean up the counters after their science experiment.
She handed him the sponge. “Don’t make me regret this,” she murmured.
He gave her an angelic smile that she wanted to trust.
And aside from flicking water at Chrissy when she began telling him that he was sponging all wrong, he behaved.
In the end, as she was driving out to her aunt Emily’s place later that evening, she decided to look on the afternoon as a success.
By the time she arrived at the horse farm that bordered a portion of the Double-C, Sarah was more than ready to put thoughts of both the Scalise men out of her head. And the evening of wedding planning with Leandra would surely provide enough distraction to do just that.
She didn’t bother knocking on the door at the Clay Farm house. She’d grown up running in and out of Leandra’s house just as comfortably as Lee had run in and out of the big house at the Double-C. The kitchen was empty and she headed through to the soaring great room. There, she hit pay dirt.
Leandra was standing on a chair, long folds of delicate fabric flowing around her legs while her fiancе’s mother, Jolie Taggart, crouched around the hem, studying it closely.
“Looks serious,” Sarah said.
Leandra shot her a harried look. “I never should have thought it was a good idea to wear a wedding gown. Who am I kidding? I’ve already done the whole white wedding thing. People are going to think we’re ridiculous.”
“The only thing people are going to think is that they wish they were as lucky as you, getting married to the person you love.”
Leandra had come back to Weaver only a few months ago to shoot a television show featuring their old friend, Evan Taggart, who was the local veterinarian. The show had been a success, but even more successful was the love they’d managed to find along the way.
“And besides, you’re not wearing white,” Sarah pointed out. “You’re wearing yellow.”
“Hint of Buttercup,” Emily Clay corrected blithely. She sat to one side with Sarah’s mother, Jaimie, watching the fitting. “And if you’d wanted to elope with Evan, you’ve had ample time to do so.”
“Well, thanks for the sympathy, Mom.” But Leandra was smiling faintly, even though she was dragging her fingers through her short, wispy hair. She turned her gaze on Sarah. “I’m telling you. When you get married, just pick the shortest route between you and the preacher, and forget all this folderol.”
“I’d need a date with a man first before I could entertain such lofty notions as marriage.” Sarah dropped the box of soft gold bows that she’d picked up in town on the floor beside her mother and aunt. “We just need to attach the flower sprays with hot glue. Glue guns are in the box, too,” she told them, then looked back at Leandra. “And you’re just stressing because you’re trying to do too many things at once. Put together a wedding in about a month’s time and take care of all the details for Fresh Horizons.”
“Speaking of which—” Leandra jumped on the topic “—I wondered if you’d mind helping me look through the resumes of all the therapists that I’ve received.”
Sarah immediately started to nod, only to stop and eye her cousin suspiciously. “How many are there?”
Leandra lifted her shoulders, looking innocent.
Sarah was reminded of Eli’s habit of making that sort of shrug, accompanied by that sort of look. Usually, when she’d pretty much caught him red-handed at something. “That many, huh?”
“Yeah. Nice problem to have, though, right? We figured it would be hard to find a therapist willing to come to Weaver to staff the program. Even though our focus will be the use of hippotherapy—I mean this is a horse farm, and we’ve got the best pick of animals to train for it—there could well be situations when hippo-therapy isn’t the strategy that the therapist will want to use.” Animation lit her cousin’s features as she lifted her arms to her side. “Anyway, we’ve got a huge stack of resumes to go through. It’s great.”
“Keep still, honey,” Jolie said around a mouthful of stickpins.
Leandra lowered her arms. “Sorry.”
“Good thing your future mother-in-law is better with a needle than I am,” Emily observed, grinning. She, like Jaimie, held a margarita glass in her hand.
Jolie carefully placed another pin. “Never fixed a wedding gown that was six inches too long before, though.” She looked up at Leandra, smiling. “And stressful or not, my son will fall in love with you all over again when he sees you in this.”
Sarah sank down in an oversized leather chair and stretched her legs out in front of her. “The sooner you settle on a therapist, the sooner we can get the brochures out to the schools and agencies in the area. I was at a meeting recently and three other teachers had families that they know will be interested in your program.” She glanced around and saw no evidence of a child around. “Where’s Hannah, anyway?” Hannah was Evan’s niece, for whom he had guardianship, and was Leandra’s inspiration for realizing that Weaver and the area surrounding it needed more specialized services available for children with developmental and physical disabilities. She’d felt so strongly about it that she’d even given up her hard-won promotion on the television series.
“With Evan. They went to Braden to see her grandparents for a few hours.”
“I’m glad Sharon stopped fighting Evan on Hannah’s guardianship.” Jolie stuck her unused pins into a red pincushion and sat back to study her efforts with Leandra’s hem. “Poor woman has lost her daughter—poor Darian, too—but neither one of them are up to the task of dealing with Hannah’s autism.”
Sarah was watching Leandra’s face. She’d lost a daughter, too, only Emi had been a toddler. Sharon and Darian’s daughter, Katy, had been serving in the military and up until recently, they’d been caring for Katy’s four-year-old daughter, Hannah. “How’s Hannah adjusted to you moving to Evan’s place?” She was concerned for the little girl, but she was also concerned for her cousin, who’d blamed herself for the loss of Emi.
Leandra’s gaze, when it met Sarah’s, told her she understood exactly what Sarah meant. “We’re all adjusting just fine.” Her lips curved. “And Evan’s learning what it’s like to be outnumbered by females under his own roof.”
“Don’t think he’s suffering too badly,” Jolie observed, looking amused. “You can take off the dress, honey, but watch the pins.”
Leandra gingerly stepped off the chair, holding the long folds up and baring the thick red-and-black argyle socks she was wearing.
“Nice fashion touch there.”
Leandra rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. This is the first winter I’ve spent in Wyoming in a long time. It’s cold!”
The rest of them just laughed.
“Come help me get out of this thing,” Leandra bid as she passed Sarah. Jolie had pushed herself off the floor and was helping herself to the pitcher of margaritas that Emily and Jaimie were already sampling. Sarah rose and followed her cousin out of the great room and up the stairs to Leandra’s childhood bedroom. Little had changed there since they’d been teenagers. Except the posters of Leandra’s favorite rock star were gone.
“So—” Leandra said, the moment they closed the door “—how’s it going with Eli? More to the point, how is it going with Max?”
“There’s nothing going with Max.” Sarah began unfastening the long, long line of pearl-like buttons stretching from Leandra’s nape to below her waist. “I thought these things were just for looks,” she said. “You know, to hide a sensible zipper or something that won’t take a week to unfasten.”
“But you’ve seen him since Eli’s first day at school, right?”
Her cousin knew that she’d run into Max at her folks’ place, because Sarah had told her. And her cousin also knew why it mattered, because Leandra was the only one Sarah had ever told about her ill-fated affair with the man. She was the only one who’d known about Sarah’s pregnancy.
About the miscarriage that followed.
“He came by the school today,” she admitted. “To discuss Eli.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” She slipped a few more buttons free. “I think you can step out of the dress now.”
Her cousin did a little shimmy and pushed the fabric down over her slender hips. Sarah took the dress and held it up while Leandra pulled on a dark brown velvety sweat suit. “This dress is so beautiful,” she murmured.
Leandra took the dress and carefully laid it aside on the foot of the bed. Then she took Sarah’s hands in hers. “Talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Truly.” She squeezed her cousin’s fingers, then headed for the door. “Come on. Margaritas and glue guns are waiting.”
“You know, you were the one who kept telling me I needed to talk about Emi.”
“You did need to talk about her. But there’s a world of difference between that and what happened between Max and me.”
“You were in love with the man.”
Sarah wrapped her fingers around the doorknob. “I thought I was,” she corrected. “A big difference.”
Leandra just looked concerned. She picked up her wedding gown. “Is it?”
“Look, don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl. Eli is the only challenge I have where the Scalise family is concerned.”
Leandra followed her into the hallway and toward the stairs. Her gown rustled softly as they walked. “Then you won’t be bothered at all by knowing that your mom has invited Genna Scalise and Max and Eli over for Thanksgiving dinner next Thursday.”
Sarah stopped dead at the head of the stairs. “What? How do you know that?”
“Before you got here, your mom and mine and Jolie were all talking about Thanksgiving dinner. The only place with a large enough dining room to seat everyone and still be inside, is at the big house.”
“Which has what to do with Max?”
Leandra looked knowing. “Sounding a little perturbed considering his presence isn’t bugging the life out of you.”
“Leandra—”
Her cousin looked slightly repentant. “Sawyer really likes Max, Sarah.”
“I assumed he must or he wouldn’t have hired him.” She didn’t like the increasingly dry feeling in her mouth.
“Did you know that Sawyer is thinking about retiring? He and Dad were talking about it the other day.”
For as long as Sarah could remember, her uncle had been sheriff of Weaver. He was as popular as he was effective. “No, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable, given how long he’s served. But what does that have—Oh, no. No.” She shook her head. “If Sawyer thinks Max might be a good replacement, he’s way off base.”
They heard a low, melodious chime and Leandra looked down the staircase. The foyer below was empty, but they could hear peals of female laughter coming from the great room, and footsteps heading toward the front door. “You want to go to Sawyer and tell him just why you feel that way?” She lifted her brows, waiting for a moment. “I didn’t think so.”
“And since Sawyer thinks he can groom Max to be his replacement, he invited them all for Thanksgiving dinner. Just one big happy—” Sarah’s throat tightened “—family.”
