Romancing The Teacher

Lisa knew all about hanging on emotionally even when logic dictated otherwise. “Everyone needs to be able to hope,” she said, gently touching the little girl’s cheek.

“What everyone needs is to be prepared for disappointment,” a deep male voice rumbled behind her.

There was no malice in the voice, no overwhelming cynicism. Only resignation to the facts.

Swinging around, Lisa found herself looking up at a tall, darkly handsome man with intense ice-blue eyes. The sensual smile never reached his eyes or any other part of him.

She’d never seen him before.

He was dressed casually, but the dark-blue pullover and gray slacks looked expensive. The man seemed as out of place here as a genuine pearl necklace in a drawer full of costume jewelry.

Here comes trouble.

She had no idea where the thought had come from, but it flashed across her mind the second she saw him. The second his eyes touched hers.

“Who are you?”

Her voice sounded a little sharp to her own ear, but she didn’t like his philosophy. Liked even less that he expressed it in front of a child.

Behind her, she heard Monica and her mother leaving the room. She made a mental note to bring a small doll with her for Monica the next time she came.

If Monica was still here. Every little girl deserved to have a doll.

She looked at the stranger, still waiting for an answer. Was this some kind of a game for him? She was aware of his scrutiny. As if she was someone he needed to evaluate before answering. Just who did he think he was?

“Well?” she asked.

She had a temper, Ian thought. Probably helped her survive what she had to deal with in a place like this. “Ian Malone, at your service.”

He waited a moment to see if there was a glimmer of recognition. He didn’t write under his own name, but it wasn’t exactly a state secret that Ian Malone and B. D. Brendan were one and the same.

But there was nothing in the woman’s face to indicate that the name—or he—meant anything at all to her. Good. Even though writing was the only lifeline that he still clung to—and even that had been failing him for the past nine months—there were times when fame got on his nerves. It made him want to shed his skin, a snake ready to move on to the next layer.

She wasn’t saying anything, so he added, “I was told to report to you for instructions.” Marcus had dropped him off here, promising to be by later to pick him up. Marcus had made it seem like a feather in his cap, getting him this community service gig. Looking around, he was beginning to think a little jail time wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. “You are Lisa Kittridge, right?”

“Right,” she fired back at him. She didn’t like his attitude, she didn’t like him. One of the privileged who’d come here, slumming, to atone for a social transgression. She’d seen his kind before. “Who told you to report to me?”

“A little bird-like woman at the front desk.” He turned in that general direction. “British accent, bad taste in clothes.”

“That would be Muriel.” She took offense for the other woman. Muriel ran the shelter and had a heart as large as Dodger Stadium. “And for your information, I think she dresses rather well.”

“Can’t help that,” he murmured under his breath, then asked, “Is she a friend of yours?”

He asked a hell of a lot of questions for someone who’d been sent here in lieu of jail time, she thought. She felt her back going up even more. “We don’t go on retreats together or braid each other’s hair, but yes, you could say we’re friends.”

“Then I’d clue her in if I were you. Better yet,” his eyes washed over her and there was a glint of appreciation in them, “you could take her shopping with you the next time you go.”

She wasn’t flattered. She was annoyed. “Is this an effort for you, or does being obnoxious just come naturally?”

The smile gave no sign of fading. If anything, he looked even more amused. “It’s a gift,” he told her dryly.

“One you should return,” she countered. Because she was short of funds and long on work, Muriel had gotten to the point where she relied on Lisa heavily, so Lisa knew she had to make the best of this conceited misfit they’d been sent for however long he was here. “Let me guess, community service, right?”

Ian inclined his head, giving her the point. “The lady gets a prize.”

The shelter saw its share of first-time offenders whose sentences were commuted to volunteering a number of hours working for either the city or a charitable organization. Most of the time, the men and women came, did what was required of them and left without any fanfare, wanting to get it over with as quickly, as quietly as possible.

This one was different. This one had an attitude. Terrific.

“And just what was it that they found you guilty of?” she asked.

The answer came without any need for thought. “Living.”

“If that were the case, the shelter would never be shorthanded. What did the judge say you did?” she pressed. The sooner she got him to admit accountability, the more readily he would move on. Or, at least she hoped so.

He shrugged carelessly. He’d never liked giving an account of himself. It reminded him too much of being grilled by his grandfather. “My car had a difference of opinion with a tree. They both wanted to occupy the same place. The tree won.”

Her eyes swept over him. There were no signs that he’d even been in an accident. He had one small scar over his left eye, but that had long since healed and grown faint with time, so she doubted that he’d sustained it in an accident. “You don’t look any the worse for it.”

His mouth twisted in a semi-smile. “Too bad my car can’t say the same thing.”

Her eyes darkened like a sudden storm sweeping over the horizon. “You were drunk.”

He watched, fascinated by the transformation. She looked as if she would have thought nothing of grinding him into the ground. “Kitty, what I was—and am—is my business.”

“Lisa,” she corrected coldly. “My name is Lisa. Or, in your case, Miss Kittridge. And since you’re here, you’ve become my business.”

The smile was warm, disarming. It startled her how quickly it all but filleted her clear down to the bone. “Sounds promising.”

Lisa mentally rolled up her sleeves. “Okay, Malone, the first thing you’re going to have to understand is that this isn’t a game and that you’re not slumming. After your time here, you get to go home at the end of the day. For most of these people, this is home. You will treat it—and them—with respect and do what you can to make the experience of being here less painful for them.”

She was almost barking out the orders. “You a drill sergeant in your spare time?”

Her eyes narrowed again. Damn, but they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one. “No, a human being.”

“Ouch.”

She didn’t return his smile. She meant to get a fair amount of real work out of him. The shelter was always in need of some sort of repair. The boiler didn’t sound as if it was going to make it through another winter and there were holes in the roof the size of well-fed rats. The rainy season was just around the corner, right after Thanksgiving. That didn’t give them much time to get into shape.

Lisa glanced down at his shoes. “Your Italian loafers are going to get dirty here.”

Their eyes met as she looked up again. She found his smile really unsettling. “You know quality.”

Lisa looked at him pointedly. “Yes, I do.” The way she said it, her meaning was clear.

Ian laughed. Most of the time he dealt with people who fawned over him. People who wouldn’t know an honest emotion if it bit them.

She, obviously, did not fall into that category. “I like you, Kitty.”

She started to correct him again, then decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe if she just ignored his attempt at familiarity, the man would eventually give it up. He didn’t look as if he had much of an attention span. “How are you with a hammer?”

He’d built his own sailboat once. Actually, he and Marcus had. Marcus had talked him into it the summer before they graduated college. Marcus from Yale, he from NYU. But this woman looked like she’d probably consider that bragging, so instead, he shrugged. “I know which end to use.”

She sighed. Not handy, either. This was just getting better and better. “It’s a start,” she allowed.

“That it is,” he responded.

Ignoring the comment, or the chipper way he delivered it, she made a quick assessment of his body. He was muscular and lean, although she doubted he’d actually ever done any physical labor. He didn’t seem the type. Too bad, but he’d learn.

She thought of the most pressing repair item on her list. “Do heights bother you?”

His eyes slid over her body. She had the impression of being weighed and measured. It surprised her that there was a part of her that wondered, just for a moment, what his conclusions were.

“That depends on what I’m doing,” he finally answered.

Why did she feel as if she’d just been propositioned? “Nailing shingles,” she bit off.

His smile just widened. And burrowed into her despite her resistance. “Any chance of that being a euphemism?”

“None whatsoever,” she replied evenly.

“Didn’t think so.” It would feel good to do something physical for a change, he thought. Something to work up a sweat. “I can give it a try.”

“You need to do more than ‘try,’” she informed him, barely hanging onto her patience.

This wasn’t going to work, she thought, not with the attitude she saw. Granted she didn’t draw a salary here and her time was limited, but she felt part of something at Providence, something that went beyond a paycheck. And these people deserved better than having some bored blight on society doing halfhearted penance because he’d gotten caught going too fast after parking his judgment.

“Look, Malone, you either take this job seriously or have your hotshot lawyer get you reassigned to something else.”

The term made him laugh. If there was anything that Marcus wasn’t, it was a hotshot. “Marcus would really get insulted by that last remark.”

“Marcus?” Who the hell was Marcus? Or was he just trying to distract her?

“My lawyer. My friend,” he added. “He’s really a very dedicated person.” Ian’s mouth curved. “Not like me at all.”

She’d heard his voice soften, just for a moment, when he’d mentioned the man. Maybe this Marcus he mentioned really was a friend. If so, that meant that he was capable of maintaining a relationship with something other than his own photograph. Maybe there was hope for him.

Maybe all this was just bravado because being around the homeless and downtrodden made him nervous. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.

“He’s as solid as a brick wall,” Ian continued.

“And he’s as far from a hotshot as you are from possessing a sense of humor.”

He’d had her going there for a minute, thinking that maybe she’d been too hard on him. First impressions were usually right. And her first impression of him—good looks or no good looks—was far from favorable.

Ian watched in fascination as he saw her eyes flash. They turned from a light green to something he had once seen during a squall. He had a feeling that when she really got going, she was something else. The part of him that dissected and explored, that looked inside of every word, every sensation, every feeling, experienced a curiosity to discover what the woman before him was like when all of her buttons were pressed.

“I don’t laugh very much here, Mr. Malone.”

The retort just came out. It was, in actuality, a lie. Whenever possible, she tried very hard to bring laughter into these people’s lives. If not laughter, then at least a smile. But somehow, with Malone, that laughter seemed synonymous with a joke. And there were precious few jokes here.

“I don’t suggest you do, either,” she added. Lisa drew herself up, painfully aware that she was at least a foot shorter than this annoying man. It made her feel as if she were at a severe disadvantage and she didn’t like that. “Now if you’re through making observations, I’ll take you to that hammer.”

She turned on her heel and began to walk quickly from the room. Taking a second to admire the view from where he was, the way her hips subtly moved with each step, Ian fell into step with her. Because of his longer stride, he caught up within a moment.

“Looking forward to it,” he told her.

And she was looking forward to his hours of community service being over, she thought. Absently, she wondered just how many hours he owed the city. At the same time, she thanked God that she wouldn’t have to be here for most of them.

Chapter Three

Lisa glanced at her watch. It was almost seven. She’d stayed longer than she’d intended. Again. Whenever she came to Providence Shelter, time melted into this distant dimension and she lost all sense of it. One thing led to another and she would never seem to finish. But that was life. Ongoing. Neverending.

But right now her life was waiting for her back at her house and if she didn’t hurry, she was going to miss reading Casey his bedtime story. He was pretty out of sorts with her over the last time she’d come home late, only to find him fast asleep. She’d had to bribe him by letting him stay up an extra half hour on Friday night in order to get him to forgive her. She didn’t want that to become a habit.

Not to mention she still had papers that needed to be graded. She really owed it to her students not to fall asleep over them the way she had last time.

That’s what she got by trying to make do on five hours sleep, she silently upbraided herself. As her mother had pointed out to her more than once, she wasn’t a superwoman. There was no point in trying to act like one.

Just before she left, Lisa swung by Muriel’s office to get her purse. The room was empty. Just as well, Lisa decided. She didn’t want to get caught up in a conversation at this hour. Muriel was a lovely person, but she could go on indefinitely without ever reaching her point.

Crossing to the old desk someone had donated to the building, she opened the bottom drawer and took out her purse. Lisa closed the drawer and slung the purse strap onto her shoulder. She was ready to leave.

But she didn’t.

Whether it was a sense of responsibility or just plain old-fashioned curiosity, she couldn’t honestly say, but instead of leaving the building, Lisa found herself retracing her steps and going outside, where less than two hours ago, she’d left Providence Shelter’s latest penitent perched on a ladder, ready to make the necessary interim repairs to the roof.

Or so he had said.

Closing the door behind her, she looked around the back. Part of her expected to find Malone sprawled out on the ground, unconscious, a victim of a sudden attack of vertigo or some such paltry excuse.

Granted she might have been a tad too hard on him, but something about him reminded her of the last man she’d had the misfortune of dating. Thad, the divorced father of one of her students, had been charming on the outside, hollow in the inside. In the end, she honestly didn’t know who she was more disappointed in, him for stepping out on her or herself for being such a poor judge of character.

She knew better now.

Apparently not, Lisa silently amended the next moment as she circled around to the rear of the building and found the ladder just where she’d left it. Malone was definitely not where she had left him. Not on the ladder, not anywhere in sight.

Lisa could feel her jaw tighten. The man had fled the coop. Already. Blowing out a breath, she swallowed an oath. She might have known.

It was obvious that Malone couldn’t stick to a commitment. But she would have thought he’d at least last out the day. Frowning, she went back inside to see if she could find one of the older boys to move the ladder and put it away. It obviously couldn’t stay where it was. Thanks to Casey and her teaching position, she was well acquainted with the way the minds of the under-four-foot set worked. The ladder and all it represented was far too much of a temptation for the smaller residents of Providence Shelter.

As she turned the corner, she nearly bumped into Muriel. Lost in thought, the older woman was humming to herself. Lisa couldn’t remember ever seeing the woman look anything but sunny and optimistic.

“Leaving, dear?” Muriel asked.

Lisa nodded. “I’ve got to be getting home.” She hesitated for a second, debating saying anything. Technically, it wasn’t any of her business. But she had never operated that way, keeping out of her fellow man or woman’s business. Doing so would have made the world a very cold, isolated place as far as she was concerned.

Besides, Muriel deserved to know. She was far too busy to be aware of every little detail that went on at the house.

“Look, that new guy, the one the court sent here because of a DUI,” even saying the acronym constricted her throat. “I really don’t think that he’s going to work out.”

The look on the woman’s face told Lisa that Muriel knew instantly who she was referring to. “You mean the one who makes me wish I were twenty years younger?” The wistful smile on Muriel’s lips was unmistakable. “What makes you say that?”

Muriel was the kind who would find redeeming qualities in Genghis Khan, Lisa thought. “Well, I told him to replace the shingles that flew off the roof in that storm we had last month.”

“Good, good.” Muriel nodded, then seemed to realize that there was obviously more. “And?”

Lisa spread her hands wide. “And I just looked and he’s not there.”

Muriel glanced out the back window automatically, even though there was no way she could see the area under discussion. In addition, twilight had long since sneaked its way across the terrain.

“When did you tell him to do it?”

Lisa thought for a moment, trying to remember the time. “A little less than a couple of hours ago.”

Muriel’s expression all but said, Well, there you have it, but she added audibly, “Maybe he’s finished.”

Lisa didn’t have to get on the ladder to know the answer to that one. An expert might have completed the job, but Malone was no expert. “I doubt it. He’s not the handy type.”

The smile on Muriel’s lips turned positively wicked as it reached her eyes and made them sparkle. “That probably all depends on what you mean by handy.” The smile widened as Muriel’s thoughts took flight. “He strikes me as someone who could be very handy under the right circumstances.”

Lisa could only shake her head. Muriel spent most of her time here. It was obvious that she needed to get out and socialize more. “Muriel, you’ve been a widow too long.”

The woman’s dark brown eyes met hers. “You should talk.”

This wasn’t about her. Not in any manner, shape or form. “I’m not a widow,” Lisa reminded the other woman. “Casey’s father and I never got the chance to get married.”

Not that there hadn’t been plans, lots of plans. Plans that never had a chance to become a reality because the weekend before the wedding, Matt was struck by a drunk driver. He’d died instantly at the scene.

It had taken her a long time to recover and make her peace with what had happened. Having Casey in her life had helped most of all. But even that caused her to ache a little in the middle of the night. Ache because she had never gotten the chance to tell Matt that she was pregnant. He’d died without ever knowing that they had created a son.

“You know,” Muriel began slowly, running the tip of her tongue along her bright-red lips, “this Ian fellow might—”

“Stop right there,” Lisa warned abruptly, raising her hand like a traffic cop. “You have the same glint in your eyes that my mother periodically gets.” The one that would come into her mother’s eyes when she’d talk about friends’ unattached sons or nephews who just happened to be in town for the week. “And I can tell you right here, right now, that not even if Ian Malone were the last man on earth and tipped in gold would I entertain the idea of hooking my wagon to his star.”

“Interesting way of putting it,” a male voice interrupted.

Caught, Lisa could only look at Muriel’s face. The older woman didn’t bother suppressing her grin as she nodded her head. Malone. Somehow or other, the man had managed to sneak up behind her.

Okay, this wasn’t the time to look guilty. Instead, she summoned the indignation she’d felt when she’d first happened upon the unattended ladder.

Swinging around, Lisa went on the offensive. Her late father, a football coach for a semipro team, had always been a big believer in using offense rather than defense.

“I thought you went home.”

Ian summoned an innocent expression, enjoying himself. “My time wasn’t up yet.”

He might fool Muriel, but he wasn’t fooling her. “Then why didn’t you finish putting up the new shingles like I asked you?”

“You didn’t ask,” he corrected her, “you told. And I did.” Before she could open her mouth to challenge his answer, he had a question of his own. “Did you bother looking at the roof?”

She seemed annoyed, which gave him his answer. “From the ground,” Lisa said grudgingly.

He infuriated her by shaking his head. “Can’t see the new shingles from that angle.”

Ian found the suspicion that clouded her eyes oddly attractive. There was chemistry here, he noted, wondering if she was aware of it. Probably the reason she was snapping his head off.

“So you finished.”

Ian inclined his head and then saluted smartly. “Yes, ma’am, I did indeed.”

She’d believe it when she saw it, Lisa thought, but for now, she let that argument go. “So where were you?”

“I was in the activity room.” He nodded in the general direction of the room he had just vacated. It was also known as the common room and was where everyone gathered in the latter part of the day. “I didn’t realize that I had to ask anyone for permission before I walked anywhere.”

“You don’t,” she shot back, feeling like a shrew even as she went on talking. Muriel, she noticed, seemed content just to stand by the wayside and observe. “But there were other things you could have been helping with.”

“I know,” he said. His eyes shifted toward Muriel and he smiled. “I was.”

Muriel was too softhearted for her own good and she wasn’t about to stand around and watch her being manipulated. So she became the other woman’s champion and challenged Malone. “Like what?”

“I read a story,” he said simply.

Did he think he could just sit back and relax because he happened to be better looking than most movie stars? That didn’t give him a get-out-of-jail-free card. Not in her book.

“You can read on your own time, Mr. Malone,” Lisa informed him. “The court didn’t send you here to entertain yourself.”

“I wasn’t,” he contradicted. “I was entertaining your little friend.”

Lisa narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t the slightest idea what this man was talking about. “What little friend?”

“The little girl you were trying to bolster when I found you earlier.” It took him a second to remember the name the girl’s mother had used. “Monica. She looked lonely when I walked by, I stopped and gave her a book.” A whole stack of worn children’s books sat on one of the tables. The girl had looked embarrassed and had just held the thin book. That was when his suspicions had been aroused. “Except that somewhere along the line, public education failed her because she can’t read.” As quickly as his anger rose, it abated, hiding behind the shield he always had fixed in place. “So I read to her.” He looked at her intently and directed his question to Lisa rather than the woman who was paid to run the shelter. “Or is that against the rules?”

Lisa shifted, feeling uncomfortable. What’s more, she felt like an idiot. Maybe she was being too hard on Malone. After all, she didn’t really know him. His attitude just rubbed her the wrong way and had led her to certain conclusions.