Forever with You

“She’s only watched them a couple of times, but Kristi is already in love with her. Cass, on the other hand, misses coming over to her auntie Shayla’s after school.”

Shayla slapped a hand to her chest. “Don’t. I feel guilty enough as it is that I can no longer watch them after school.”

“Oh, stop it,” Leslie said. “You know I’m just teasing. You’ll be able to watch them for me tomorrow, though, right? It’s Parent/Teacher Conference night at the school.”

“Of course,” Shayla said. “Xavier is more excited than I am. He just bought a bunch of board games. He’s going to be so disappointed when all Kristi and Cass want to do is watch YouTube videos of cats doing tricks.”

Shayla had married Dr. Xavier Wright a few months ago. A transplant from Atlanta, Xavier had settled into life in Gauthier much easier than Leslie had when she’d first moved here. He’d charmed the pants off everyone in town, including her sister-in-law.

Shayla plopped an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her upturned palm. “Sooooo,” she said, stretching the word out in a singsongy voice. “What’s this I hear about you and Sawyer Robertson chatting after church?”

“Oh, please don’t start,” Leslie said. She pushed up from the table.

“I just want to know what was said.” Shayla whined. “Come on, Leslie. This is huge.”

“No, it’s not. And I hope the nosy, meddling people in this town will just let it go.”

Shayla caught her wrist, halting her exit. She waited until Leslie turned to face her before she asked, “Is it that you’re just not ready to date yet?”

Leslie’s eyes fell shut. “I just...” But she didn’t know how to put what she was feeling into words. So she went with the easiest cop-out. “Yes. I want to take my time,” she said. “And I don’t need the pressure of knowing that everyone around here is looking at my every move.”

“Okay, okay,” Shayla said. “I will put the word out that everyone needs to back off.”

“Including my well-meaning sister-in-law?”

“Do I have to?” Shayla pouted. Leslie just stared at her. “Oh, okay,” Shayla grumbled. “No more talk about Sawyer, even though he was at one time considered the biggest catch in Gauthier. Used to drive us girls crazy back in high school. He’s also—”

“Shayla!”

“Sorry,” she said. “Anyway, since you won’t allow me to take you out to dinner, at least let me order a pizza so you don’t have to cook tonight.”

“I can order a pizza.”

“Can I at least pay for it?”

Even though their once-stony relationship had vastly improved over the past year, there was one area where she and Shayla still butted heads. Leslie had lost count of the number of times she had to remind her sister-in-law that she and the girls were not her financial responsibility. They both knew that her late husband’s pension from the Army didn’t cover much. And, even though she made decent money as a financial analyst, raising two daughters on her own was an expensive undertaking.

But they were not in dire straits. Not even close. She’d saved well over the years, and because they lived in Braylon and Shayla’s childhood home, she didn’t have a mortgage. She could pay for a pizza.

But she didn’t want to argue with Shayla, and Leslie knew if she turned down her sister-in-law’s offer it would turn into a skirmish.

“Make sure you order one half with just cheese,” she told her. “Kristi has decided she no longer eats meat.”

“I love that kid,” Shayla said.

“And thanks again for putting up with our little impromptu meeting.”

“You know you all are welcome anytime. Just tell Celeste to use her inside voice next time.”

Laughing, Leslie hugged her good-night before Shayla retreated behind the counter. Leslie picked up a couple of oatmeal-and-cranberry cookies from The Jazzy Bean’s healthier sampling of baked goods. If they were having pizza tonight she might as well go all out and let the girls have dessert, too.

Even though she lived within walking distance of Shayla’s coffee shop, she had driven here straight from the office. She backed out of the slanted parking spot and in less than five minutes pulled into the driveway of the house she’d lived in since marrying Braylon eleven years ago. A part of her was happy to have her daughters growing up in their father’s childhood home, but there was another part of her that dreaded walking through the door.

It had been an ongoing struggle for nearly two years. Being in that house surrounded by memories of a husband who was no longer here, a life that no longer existed, was nothing short of torture. Some nights it took every ounce of strength she possessed just to find the courage to fall asleep in her own bed.

Which was why Leslie had finally decided to put action to the thoughts that had been swirling in her brain for the past couple of months. She had requested a meeting with her boss and was going to ask for a transfer to the company’s Houston office.

Leslie closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “The girls will like Houston,” she said to the empty car.

It would be nice if she really believed that.

She had grown up in Houston, and even though it was only six hours away by car, she only went home about once a year. It hadn’t always been easy growing up in those rough inner-city streets. But at least Houston wasn’t filled with so many heartbreaking memories. Braylon’s death had created a pall over just about everything that she had grown to love about Gauthier over the years. She needed to break free from it all.

Leslie grabbed her laptop bag from the trunk and entered the house through the side door that led to the kitchen. The moment she walked in, her legs were surrounded by bony five-year-old arms.

“Mommy!” Kristi exclaimed. She pulled away and looked up at Leslie with those deep brown eyes that looked so much like Braylon’s. “Why are you just getting home? It’s already dark.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie.” Leslie pulled at one of her bouncy curls. “Mommy had a late meeting at work, and then I had to meet with a couple of other mommies at Auntie Shayla’s restaurant.”

“Cassidy said it’s a coffee house and café, not a restaurant.”

“Well, excuse me,” Leslie said. “I had a meeting at Auntie Shayla’s coffeehouse and café. Where’s Cass?”

“In the living room. She’s teaching Brittany how to twerk.”

“What?”

Leslie tossed her bag on the kitchen table and rushed to the living room. She found Cassidy and Brittany Meyer, the sixteen-year-old babysitter she’d hired a few weeks ago, in the middle of the living room with their hands on their thighs and their rear ends in the air, gyrating like a couple of washing machines. Buster made figure eights between their legs.

“Excuse me, but what is going on here?” Leslie called over the music.

“Hey, Mom,” Cassidy said.

“Hi, Mrs. Kirkland,” Brittany said with a wave.

“What’s going on here?” Leslie asked again, pointing to the television that had a YouTube video of someone giving instructions on how to do the dance move that Leslie had expressly forbidden either of her girls from doing.

She turned to face the girls and folded her arms over her chest. “You know the rules, Cassidy. This is a no-twerking household.”

“But Brittany said that white girls can’t twerk, so I wanted to show her that she could learn to twerk if she really wanted to.”

Lord, help her.

“Sorry, Mrs. Kirkland,” Brittany said. She pointed the remote at the TV and the screen went black. “I didn’t know about the no-twerking rule.”

“No twerking and no playing with the stove,” Kristi said, eating the oatmeal cookie that was supposed to be dessert.

“It’s okay,” Leslie said, waving off Brittany’s concern. “I didn’t think I needed to say anything, since these two already knew about the rule.” She gave Cassidy and Kristi another stern look as she handed Brittany a twenty-dollar bill. “Thanks for staying a little later today.”

“No problem. I’m sorry I can’t watch them for you tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about it. The girls will be going to their aunt’s.”

“We’re going to Aunt Shayla’s tomorrow?” Kristi asked, jumping up and down in excitement.

Leslie walked Brittany to the front door just as the pizza deliveryman was pulling up. There were more excited screams at having pizza for dinner.

Other than the dozen times Leslie had to reprimand Kristi for trying to feed Buster pepperoni—she’d apparently turned back to a carnivore overnight—dinner went off without incident. By the time they were all fed and showered, Leslie was dead on her feet, but it still would be a few hours before she could crawl into bed. She had a ton of work she’d been forced to bring in from the office.

She was so determined to do it all, but Leslie knew this superwoman thing was nothing but a facade. She couldn’t do it all. And if she didn’t slow down, sooner or later, she was going to pay for it.

Chapter 3

Her arms crossed over her chest, Leslie meandered around the science lab as she waited her turn with Cassidy’s science teacher at GEMS’s Biannual Parent/Teacher Conference night. The first conference of the year, which had been scheduled in the fall, had been preempted by a tropical storm that veered toward the Mississippi coastline just before making landfall, but still caused heavy flooding in Gauthier and surrounding towns. For some parents tonight would be the first time they got the chance to meet with teachers this school year.

An official event wasn’t necessary for parents and teachers to meet and discuss school happenings. Leslie would guess that most parent/teacher conferences took place in the grocery store or the bank or the pharmacy. The majority of the teachers at GEMS had lived in Gauthier their entire lives. They’d gone to high school with Braylon, or they attended the same church, or they were regulars at Shayla’s coffeehouse. It was the nature of living in a small town.

And then there was Gabriel Franklin. The outsider.

He wasn’t the first nonlocal to teach at GEMS, but the handful of teachers who had come to Gauthier from other cities had blended in rather easily and didn’t make many waves.

Mr. Franklin had begun procuring his reputation as a skilled but demanding teacher just a few days into his first week at GEMS. He had challenged the students—and thus the parents—by requiring more time at the dinner table doing homework. It had been a shock to everyone’s system.

Some parents had complained, but others had agreed that Mr. Franklin’s way of teaching would help the children in the long run. The fact that he was a bit of a charmer hadn’t hurt, either. He’d won over half the hearts in Gauthier during the first PTO meeting of the year, when he’d given an impassioned plea to the parents, daring them to push their children so they could meet their fullest potential.

That was probably the same time Leslie’s little harmless infatuation with him had begun. She figured it had started because he’d come along around the same time she had made the decision to become more active at the school. His enthusiastic teaching style and the devotion he showed to each student were inspiring. This was not just a job to him. Gabriel Franklin cared about the work he did. He was everything Leslie wanted her daughter’s teacher to be.

He was also smart and cute and young and off-limits.

She had never been bold enough to ask, but Leslie figured he had to be in his late twenties. A smart, cute twentysomething-year-old teacher who probably spent his weekends partying in New Orleans didn’t go for a midthirtysomething-year-old widow with two children and a dog.

So, yes, her silly little crush on the cute Mr. Franklin was also a very safe crush, because Leslie knew she could never date her daughter’s teacher.

She glanced toward the front of the classroom where he was currently speaking with Sadie and Michael Crumb, parents of Gauthier’s infamous set of triplets, Micah, Michelle and Michael Crumb Jr. From what Leslie had heard, the triplets were a handful. According to Cassidy, the Crumb children thought they were hot stuff because they had made it into the local paper. Her daughter was now determined to do something even grander than being born on the same day as her siblings so that she could have her picture in the paper, as well.

If the intense body language was any indication, Mr. Franklin and the Crumbs would not be done anytime soon, so Leslie continued her tour of the classroom. It looked as if there had been a lot more activity since she last visited a couple of weeks ago.

Her eyes wandered over the collection of petri dishes, each with various amounts of bacteria growing inside of it. She suspected that this project was the reason behind Cass’s sudden insistence that everything in the bathroom and kitchen be wiped down completely before they went to bed at night. Mr. Franklin had put the fear of mold spores into her daughter’s heart, and everyone in the house had to suffer the consequences.

Leslie ambled over to the rear of the classroom where glossy posters of the steps of the scientific method, the effects of erosion and diagrams of the food chain hung on the wall next to several snapshots of the students exploring the boggy edges of the Bogue Falaya River during last month’s field trip. She had joined them as a chaperone for that adventure. She was still finding mud in places where mud shouldn’t be.

She peered inside the huge terrarium on the counter that spanned the back wall and jumped back when a praying mantis poked his head out from behind a rock.

“Mrs. Kirkland?”

Leslie jumped again. She pivoted and found Gabriel Franklin right behind her. She took a startled step back and nearly lost her footing.

“I’m sorry.” He reached out and grabbed hold of her arm. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“That’s okay.” Leslie flattened her palm against her chest and sucked in a deep breath. “Just give me a minute.” Straightening, she expelled a shaky laugh. “I was so engrossed in looking around the classroom. A lot has changed since my last visit.”

“That’s right. You haven’t been here in a few weeks. Remind me to show you the new microscope once we’re done. By the way, I’m sorry about that last meeting running a little long,” he said over his shoulder as they walked back to the front of the classroom.

“There’s no need to apologize. I can understand why the Crumbs need a little extra face time.”

“Yes, the Crumb children.” He shook his head and let out a deep chuckle. “They are a rather, uh, unique bunch.” Perching a hip on the edge of his desk, he motioned for her to take a seat in one of the plastic blue desk chairs.

As she slid onto her seat, Leslie reminded herself that this very nice man with this very nice smile was her daughter’s very young teacher. Her daughter’s teacher.

But he did have a very nice smile. He had a slightly crooked front tooth that gave his face just the right touch of personality. His gold-toned skin stretched over enviably high cheekbones and a strong, square chin. And that wavy jet-black hair looked so soft that her fingers itched with the need to run through it. Between Sawyer Robertson and Gabriel Franklin she was racking up the encounters with pretty men this week, wasn’t she?

He cleared his throat and said, “Uh, Mrs. Kirkland?”

Leslie’s neck stiffened in shock as she tore her attention away from his full lips—lips that were now curved in a slight grin.

Had he caught her staring?

His dark brown eyes sparkled with amusement as he cleared his throat again. Yes, he had. The faint blush that stole over his fair skin erased all hope that she had not embarrassed the both of them by ogling his lips as if they were a dessert buffet.

No words could describe this level of mortification. She would trade her entire James Lee Burke hardback collection in exchanged for a chilled towel to cool her heated cheeks.

Leslie curled her fingers around the edge of the desk and forced herself not to find something else in the room to stare at. If she didn’t maintain eye contact she would only look guiltier.

“You were saying?” she asked.

The amusement lingered on his lips, which did not ease her discomfort level in the least. How had she let herself get caught staring at him? She’d become an expert at covert crush tactics.

“I was saying that I’ve been waiting for you to return to the school so I could talk to you about Cassidy. It’s not something I felt comfortable discussing via email.”

Whatever embarrassment she’d felt just a minute ago evaporated as Leslie’s stomach tanked. “What’s going on with Cass? Is something wrong?”

“No, no, no.” He put both hands up. “It’s nothing to get too alarmed about. I don’t have to tell you that Cassidy is one of my standout students. You’ve seen her in action on the days you’ve volunteered.”

Leslie eased back in her seat, the knot that had instantly formed in her stomach unfurling. “What I’ve seen is that she turns into a show-off when I’m here.”

“That is true.” He chuckled. “But in a good way. Her enthusiasm is exactly what I want to see from my students. She comes up with the most thought-provoking questions during class discussions. I was surprised when the third-grade teacher told me that Cassidy barely said a word last year.”

“Cass has been slowly coming out of her shell,” Leslie said. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed the faint marking on her arm, but she used to have a rather large birthmark on her arm and back that made her very self-conscious. She’s been undergoing treatment to get it removed.”

Her daughter had inherited the port-wine-stain birthmark from Braylon, who’d had a similarly large marking on the side of his face. Cassidy’s birthmark had been a contentious subject that nearly drove a wedge between Leslie and Shayla last year after Shayla had spoken to Cass about having it removed without consulting Leslie first.

Leslie had been against it, fearing that her daughter was getting rid of one of the biggest reminders of her father. She had not considered how embarrassment over the birthmark had been holding Cassidy back. Since she’d started treatments to have it removed, Cass had blossomed, going from a child who barely spoke to one who now came home with reprimanding notes from teachers for talking too much in class. The turnaround had been remarkable.

“And here I thought it had something to do with my stellar teaching skills,” Gabriel said.

She grinned at his joke. One thing she’d learned in these months since Gabriel Franklin arrived at GEMS was that he was the complete opposite of arrogant. Leslie figured that played into the infatuation, as well. She’d never been one for giant egos.

“You’ve certainly made an impact on her,” she said. She folded her hands on the desk. “I don’t know if you realize just how much Cassidy enjoys your class, Mr. Franklin. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t have something to say about a science fact she’s learned or an experiment you performed. It’s a relief to see her so excited about school. She wasn’t always this way.”

Genuine gratitude cloaked his features. “You have no idea what it means to me to hear that,” he said.

He stood and smoothed his hands down the sides of his khaki pants. Now all she could think about was last night’s discussion of how cute his butt looked in them.

“Thank you for taking such an interest in our children,” she said, reminding herself of why she was here. “And for working so hard to make learning enjoyable.”

He shrugged, that humility once again on display. “The more interesting you keep it, the better the students will retain it. At least that’s my philosophy.”

“It’s a good philosophy,” she said with a gentle smile. “It’s working.”

She became acutely aware of the quickening of her pulse as his steady gaze found a home on her mouth and remained there. The faint makings of a grin edged up the corner of his lips once again, and Leslie had to glance away to catch her breath.

Okay. So this turn of events was a bit unsettling.

It had been a while since she’d had a safe crush, but she was certain one of the tenets was that the safe crush should not become privy to her feelings. Gabriel Franklin’s knowing smile and penetrating stare indicated that he was all kinds of privy to what she was feeling right now. This could not be good.

“How about that new microscope?” Leslie pointed over her shoulder toward the back of the classroom.

“Yes. It’s nice,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets and leaning a hip against the desk.

“You promised you would show it to me,” she said.

That didn’t sound nearly as innocent coming out of her mouth as it had when she’d said it in her head.

And now he was blushing, too.

Oh, God, could I be more mortified?

“The microscope,” Leslie prompted. “You promised you’d show me the new microscope.”

Several beats pulsed by as he continued to stare at her, his gaze tracing over her face. Finally, he said, “I did, didn’t I?”

He pushed away from the desk and headed for the rear of the classroom. Leslie sucked in a steadying breath before following him.

“I really appreciate the cookies you donated for the bake sale,” Mr. Franklin called over his shoulder. “Between the money that raised and the donation from the PTO, I was able to purchase the microscope months earlier than I thought I would be able to. It’s been a great addition to the classroom. The students love it.”

He’d already fixed a slide in place by the time Leslie arrived at the piece of equipment.

“This is water that I scooped up from Ponderosa Pond.” He motioned for her to look into the eyepiece, his eyes brightening with the enthusiasm she so often witnessed when she volunteered in his class. He was such a science geek. Lord, help her, but it only enhanced his sexiness.

“Don’t expect Cassidy to go swimming in it anytime soon,” he added with a chuckle. “All the kids were horrified.”

Leslie lowered her right eye to the eyepiece and grimaced. “I don’t blame them. I don’t swim, but if I did I wouldn’t swim in there, either.”

“Why don’t you swim?” he asked.

She looked up and realized just how close he was standing to her. Only inches separated them.

Breathe, girl.

She shook her head. “I just...don’t like it. I grew up in the city. I never learned how to swim.”

“You should learn.” Had his voice dropped an octave? “You might find that you enjoy it.”

Yes. Yes, it had.

Standing this close, her eyes were drawn back to the attractive way his upper lip dipped in the center. Leslie ordered herself to look away, but then his tongue swept out, glided over his lips, and looking away became next to impossible. She was momentarily mesmerized by the smooth, glistening skin. When she finally drew her eyes back to his, they no longer bore the trace of humor they’d held the first time he caught her staring. This time his gaze was measured, potent and concentrated directly on her.

“You’re standing really close,” Leslie said.

He nodded. “I realize that.”

“Mr. Franklin—”

“You can call me Gabriel, you know,” he said, the pitch of his voice still on the husky side. “We’re at school, but technically it’s after hours.”

Leslie swallowed. Then she swallowed again.

“I...I, uh.” She slipped away from the microscope and took several steps back. “I’m not sure that’s appropriate.”

Appropriate? What was she? Her mother?

Taking yet another step back, Leslie asked, “Can we get back to discussing Cassidy?”

Tilting his head to the side, he rubbed the back of his neck and let out a deep breath. When his gaze returned to her, disappointment was evident in his brown eyes.

“You’re right. I apologize if you found anything I said inappropriate, Mrs. Kirkland.”

Mrs.

Great. Now she really felt like her mother.

“I didn’t mean to—” Leslie started, but he held his hand up, staving off further comment.