Falling for the Teacher

“Okay, so I am nervous,” she said. “It’s not like I’m in any position to back out now anyway. The proverbial die has been cast, and, a die, I might add—” Katarina felt herself wearying of the metaphor before she’d finished using it, but seeing no where else to go “—that in no small part is due to a certain small person walking next to me.”

Lena didn’t bother to turn her head as she trudged forward. “Excuse me. I don’t know where you get the idea that I had anything to do with your teaching this class at the Adult School. I’ve been much too busy making sure I got into the Tai Chi class to meddle in your affairs. It happens to be very popular among people of a certain, more mature, age. That’s the problem with you young people today. You always think the world revolves around you. Haven’t you ever heard of Copernicus?”

“That’s Galileo, Babička, and, no, I hardly think the world revolves around me.” In fact, these past few months Katarina had felt more as if the world, at least the world as she knew it, had passed her by. “And besides, at thirty-three years old, I hardly qualify as young anymore.”

“In my book, anyone under the age of sixty is young. And for your information, I am not small!”

Katarina smiled. Her grandmother barely scraped the bar at five feet. Not that Katarina was any giant at five-four, but she could still claim to be the tallest woman in her family. Her mother, for all her outsize personality, stood a mere five foot two.

“All right, I take back the comment about you being small, but stop pretending you didn’t interfere, or, if you prefer, influence.” Katarina lifted her umbrella to talk face-to-face. “I know you, Babička. You wouldn’t have been able to stop yourself from calling Iris Phox and suggesting I teach a course on inves—”

Thwa-ack! A wall of water drenched Katarina. It got her face, splashed her coat. Soaked her shoes. Her designer umbrella? Gone with the wind. Having flown out of her hand, it tumbled down the street, ricocheting from one curb to the other, eventually chasing a speeding motorcycle like a Border collie dashing after a Frisbee.

Katarina wiped her wet bangs out of her eyes and fumbled for her headband, only to find it had disappeared somewhere in the torrent, too. “I don’t believe it! F—” She quickly remembered that her grandmother was standing next to her. “Sorry, Babička.” She looked sideways. Her grandmother wasn’t there. She looked down. She wasn’t there, either. Frantically, she looked behind her. “Oh, my god, Babička! Where did you go?”

Despite the glow of the streetlamps, the moonless night and pouring rain made it difficult to pick out more than diffuse shapes in the distance. She scanned the sidewalk up ahead, and at last spotted her grandmother standing next to a tree.

Katarina rushed to her side. The spurt of energy accentuated her limp. “Are you all right?”

Lena stood there undaunted in her foul weather gear, a rubberized Rock of Gibraltar. She harrumphed. “I thought we just finished establishing that Zemanova women are not delicate flowers.” Lena patted the back of her hand against Katarina’s arm. “Move. You’re in the way. I can’t see.” She peered down the street.

Katarina followed her grandmother’s gaze. The motorcycle that she had glimpsed earlier? It had come circling back, slowly, coming to a stop within arm’s distance. The rider’s feet, clad in a pair of mangy-looking hiking boots, touched the pavement on either side of the bike. He softened the throttle and lifted off the seat. The rain spattered against the black visor of his helmet. In a quick, fluid motion, he reached behind.

For Katarina, memories instantly came flooding back. The routine stop at an ATM machine late at night…The thief from out of nowhere…The gun…The threats…The pain…

The biker brought his arm forward.

Katarina didn’t stop to think. She went ahead and pushed her grandmother behind her. Then when she saw the biker hold up something long and cylindrical, her heart gave an extra jolt, and her eyes widened.

Four months ago, she had stared down the barrel of a gun, a horrific sight she’d never forget. Once more it looked as if fate had chosen to mark her as a victim of violent crime. She staggered, but refused to waver. If nothing else, she would make sure Babička wouldn’t have to go through what she had already experienced once.

“ Babička, here, take these.” She fished the car keys out of her coat pocket and thrust them out. “Run back to the car. Get in and drive away.”

Lena tried to step forward, but Katarina blocked her. “What are you talking about?”

“The gun.”

“What gun?”

Katarina wiped away the rain that clung to her eyelashes and blurred her vision. She blinked. What gun indeed?

What he was holding was her umbrella. And by the look of it, right side out, closed and neatly snapped shut.

The surge of adrenaline gradually dissipated. Okay, her heart was pounding like a pile driver to be sure, but at least it was functioning.

“Did one of you ladies lose an umbrella?” the stranger asked.

Lena stepped from behind the speechless Katarina. “My granddaughter. She dropped it when you got her all wet when you went driving by like some crazy maniac. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

The biker flipped up his visor. The glow from a streetlamp cast his features in shadowy angles and planes. But despite the rain and other obscuring elements, his firm jawline cut the air like a piece of granite.

“I’m very sorry,” he said.

Did slabs of granite move? Katarina wondered.

“It’s just that I’m…uh…kind of preoccupied at the moment—” he rubbed his chin “—and I didn’t see you in the dark with the rain. I know it’s no excuse, but I hope you’re okay. No permanent damage or anything?”

Katarina shook her head. It was impossible to make out the color of his eyes but his teeth shone white as he spoke in low, rushed tones, and she could sense the anxiousness in his voice, a sexy, mellifluous baritone of a voice.

Katarina told herself not to take any notice, that whatever she was sensing was more probably an aftershock from envisioning what might have been. “Wet but otherwise fine,” she said in answer to his question. At least the wet part was accurate.

“Well, if you’re sure…?” He fidgeted with the handlebars. “Listen, I don’t mean to, to…ah…splash and run, but if you’re really okay, I have a small family crisis I need to deal with. It’s really urgent.” He worked his lower lip.

Katarina couldn’t help noticing how full it was. Aftershock, aftershock, she told herself and swallowed. “Not, not to worry,” she said.

“I can give you my phone number to let me know about dry cleaning expenses or something?”

“No, really, I’m fine. And everything will be fine once it dries out.”

He reached for his visor.

Katarina held out her hand. “Just one thing. My umbrella?”

“Oh, right. Sorry about that.” He seemed to hesitate, then thrust it at her. “If you’ll excuse me then.” He nodded goodbye, flipped down his visor and thundered off into the night. The heavy strumming of the rain muffled the sound of the engine until it vanished into oblivion.

“‘Splash and run.’ I like that,” Lena said. “But careless, much too careless.” She turned and inspected her granddaughter. “Katarina? What do you think?”

“Yes, Babička?” Katarina pulled her gaze away from the disappearing figure, half hearing what her grandmother said and having less than half an interest in responding. She sucked in the insides of her cheeks and forced herself to concentrate on the essential here and now. “Listen, I think we need to hurry if we’re not going to be late to class.”

Lena stood unmoving with her eyes focused on the receding figure. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear what I said.”

“I didn’t,” Katarina said.

Lena held up her hand to thwart any protests. “Waddayaknow! Look!” She pointed down the road. “He’s stopping at the high school! All I can say is, if he turns out to be the defensive driving instructor, I’m going to have to call Iris again and let her know. We can’t have that.”

Katarina pointed her umbrella triumphantly in the air. “Ah, hah!” she said. “See, I was right! You did call Iris Phox about me teaching! Now you can’t deny it.”

Lena turned back to her granddaughter. “So sue me. As your grandmother, I only had your best interests at heart.” Then she nodded and smiled what could only be described as a very ungrandmotherly-like smile. “He was something, wasn’t he?”

“Babička!”

Lena shrugged. “I may be no spring chicken, but I still know a rooster when I see one.” She sniffed loudly. “Unlike some people, I might add.”

“I’m not immune to the opposite sex, you know,” Katarina protested.

“What I know would fill a book, a very large book. Come, I hate being late. And, you, brush your hair and wipe your face when you get inside. You never know what might happen.”

CHAPTER THREE

KATARINA GAZED AT THE brass knob, its surface marred by the sweaty palms of generations of eager young minds, and realized that the whole problem was she could imagine what might happen. Not with the mysterious biker. That was out of the realm of imagination. But with the class.

They’d hate her. She would bore them. They’d ask her questions she couldn’t answer. She’d run out of things to say. People would get up and leave early. And on and on.

And the really frustrating part about it all? She had absolutely no experience when it came to dealing with these kinds of anxieties. Up until the shooting, she had been fearless, some coworkers at Curtis Worldwide Home Products Inc., would have said even reckless, especially those she had passed by in her rapid rise to senior vice president for finance. But then, she had never had a reason to doubt herself.

From an early age, Katarina’s single mother had taught her to be independent. This was the same single mother whose own independent streak now took her to Antarctica to carry out geological research. And why should Katarina have doubted her word? After all, Katarina had been blessed with the two best qualities a single child could have: the ability to amuse herself with long hours of reading, and the self-confidence to believe she could do anything if she set her mind to it. She had succeeded in school, college and business school, graduating at the top of her class and sailing into a dream job out on the West Coast. If someone needed a report by midnight, she could produce it. A partner to climb Kilimanjaro? No problem.

But ever since a bullet had ripped though her right knee, that kind of fortitude, some might even say bravado, seemed to have vanished.

Still, the mantra “Zemanova women are tough” had been needlepointed into every pillow in the house in a figurative sense, and Katarina hadn’t dared tell her mother and grandmother about her anxieties. Instead, she had assured them that there was no need for either to fly out during her long convalescence. And it went without saying that she’d thrown herself into her postoperative physical therapy with the same overachieving ardor that had propelled her to accomplish so much already.

Despite the tedium and the pain, she had been all smiles for her doctors and therapists. Over the phone to her family, she had conveyed nothing but upbeat sentiments. When her company said, “Take as much time as you need before you come back,” she had said that she was sure she wouldn’t be long. Yet, deep down she knew it was a lie.

She was already drifting, unable to make decisions, even the simplest like whether to wear brown pants or black, to have coffee or tea, to do the crossword puzzle in pen or in pencil, or not to do it at all.

So after four months of physical recovery, she had gravitated back to the one place that had always felt safe no matter where life had taken her—Babička’s house in Grantham. Lena had never challenged her, didn’t ask her about her short or long-term plans, and didn’t question her feelings. Until this matter of the Adult School, that is.

So Katarina mustered the same family backbone that had gotten her grandmother through early widowhood as a recently arrived immigrant. It had also gotten her mother through college and graduate school raising a young child alone. Alone because she had insisted from the moment she’d discovered she was pregnant that the father was out of the picture, and refused to reveal his name. Likewise Katarina now took a deep breath and reached out, adding her own sweaty palm to those that had come before her. What was Franklin Roosevelt’s adage: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?”

She pushed the heavy wooden door with so much conviction that it swung wildly and banged into the inside wall. Well, that got everyone’s attention, she thought before saying out loud in a forthright manner, “Good evening, everyone.”

She crossed the floor to the desk at the front of the classroom, listening to the distinctive squishing sound made by the crepe soles of her shoes. She unpeeled her raincoat, dropped it over the back of the chair and wiped aside her wet hair. Finally looking up—she could delay the inevitable no longer—she offered a tight-lipped smile to the students in her night school class. Why wasn’t she surprised at what she saw?

Clearly, Babička’s maneuverings had gone beyond securing her this part-time post. Among the eager faces looking to her for guidance and inspiration were several of her grandmother’s friends and aquaintances.

Katarina nodded hello, first to Carl Bedecker who sat front and center. Carl’s wine-colored V-neck sweater had a Kiawa Island logo stitched on the upper left, above his prominent bulging stomach that stretched the knit fabric below. He greeted her with a beaming smile showing somewhat yellowed teeth. The twinkle in his rheumy eyes brought to mind a kindhearted Norman Rockwell figure on a Saturday Evening Post cover until…

Until he winked at her with what was definitely not a Norman Rockwell kind of smile. Katarina sighed internally but tried to tell herself to be charitable. According to Lena, who had felt the need to catch her up on the local gossip in the first hour of her arrival, Carl’s wife, Trudy, had passed away two years ago. Since then he had let his two sons take over the family nursery, and with too much time on his hands, he was at something of a loss.

Carl is probably just lonely, Katarina told herself, possibly a little rusty when it comes to social interaction.

Carl winked again.

Forget rusty. Katarina pretended she didn’t see the gesture and shifted her attention to a woman on Carl’s left. She was well into her seventies, but talk about denial. Multiple hoop earrings dangled from her earlobes and her short, spiky hair had phosphorescent purple highlights. This could only be Wanda Garrity, no question about it.

Wanda was a member of her grandmother’s Thursday tennis doubles group. Babička had told her that Wanda always brought her Boston terrier, Tiger, to the tennis courts even though dogs were strictly forbidden. In fact, recreation department authorities had even posted a sign to that effect, expressly with Tiger in mind. Wanda had taken absolutely no notice, obviously considering herself a higher authority.

The rec department hadn’t dared to argue.

Katarina couldn’t help noticing the enormous tote taking up most of Wanda’s desk. Katarina didn’t need X-ray vision to hazard a guess as to what was inside. That the bag jiggled at random intervals confirmed her suspicions.

The door closed softly behind her and Katarina turned.

“Sorry I’m late,” came a gravelly voice. “I don’t move as swiftly as I used to.”

Katarina immediately recognized Rufus Treadway, moving slowly with the aid of a walker. As one of the vocal leaders of the black community, Rufus was an institution in Grantham. He also owned the Nighttime Bar whose decidedly downscale, painted cinder block exterior defied the gentrification of Grantham with a confident sense of reverse snobbery. The Nighttime Bar had been serving Rolling Rock on tap for more than sixty years, ever since Rufus’s late father decided to change his gas station into a watering hole. The dark wood stools with cracked faux leather seat covers had supported the weight of countless patrons. Everyone from governors residing in the local mansion, to garbage men sharing rooms in boardinghouses. They all came, drawn by the beer, camaraderie and quality of the live jazz.

Katarina smiled and held her hand out to an empty chair in the front. “The hip replacement still acting up? Lena told me you had had an operation not too long ago,” she said. She rested against the front of the teacher’s desk to take the weight off her own sore leg.

Rufus nodded. “Don’t you know it? The doctors tell you it only takes three months to recover, but they don’t tell you that those three months will be hell.”

“If you knew ahead of time, you’d never go through with it,” Katarina said. She knew only too well from personal experience. “Still, I know that my grandmother is expecting you to be out there for the summer seniors’ basketball league, so you’ve got to keep up with your rehab.” She reached around for her briefcase and pulled out the class list.

“For those of you who don’t know me—or my grandmother—” Carl chuckled a little too loudly “—my name’s Katarina Zemanova, and I’m your instructor for ‘Fundamentals of Personal Investing’. By way of an introduction, I recently moved back to Grantham from California where I was the financial officer for a major household products company. So, not only can I teach investing, but I also know more than most people about bleach.”

She saw Wanda rummage around in her enormous bag and lift what looked to be a white tennis skirt. Katarina cleared her throat. Wanda let it slide back in.

“Anyhow, why don’t I take the roll so I can put some names to faces for those of you I don’t already know?” As she worked through the list of about fifteen students, Katarina made small talk, putting people at ease. Finally she reached the last name on the list. “Worthington. Matthew Worthington.” She looked up. “Matthew Worthington?”

A pale hand rose from a back corner of the room. “Just Matt,” came the reed-thin voice.

Katarina slanted a few degrees to get a better view. She slanted a few more. “Just Matt” was maybe all of sixteen. The spray of pimples across his forehead confirmed that his adolescent hormones were making their presence felt. Unfortunately pimples weren’t the problem. His age was, at least as far as the rules were concerned.

Katarina worried her bottom lip before saying something to that effect.

“I know that…ah…this class is supposed to be for adults,” he said as if sensing her ambivalence. His voice cracked as painfully as chalk on the blackboard, and he halted in midstream, visibly gulping for air. “I thought that, though…you know…that maybe you might make an exception since what I want to do is…ah…maybe find out about saving for college? You know?”

“I do know,” Katarina said. “I went to college on a scholarship and worked jobs the whole time.” Zemanova women did not shrink from responsibilities or “Cry in their mlieko” as Babička was want to say.

“So, far be it from me to discourage your desire. Still, given the structure of the Adult School and the fact that you probably already have homework from earlier today, wouldn’t it be better if your mother or father attends the class instead?”

“That might be kind of hard. My mom’s dead.”

Katarina felt a little piece of her heart crack off. She rested her palm on the desk and gripped the corner hard with her fingers. “I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling inadequate with her clichéd response, even if the sentiment was genuine. “Not only for your loss but the fact that you’ll shouldering more responsibility than most young people your age.” She paused, groping for a solution.

“What about your father? Would that be possible?” she asked.

The boy cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing painfully. “It’s not like we talk all that much.”

The door opened behind her, but Katarina didn’t turn around. She was trying to stay focused on the teenager. “I know how parents can be busy, especially single parents. Still…” She waited, trying to coax a reply.

Matt tucked his chin into his concave chest. The writing on his T-Shirt, Pirates Are Way Cooler Than Ninjas, cupped his jawbone like a cotton nest. She saw his lips move, but couldn’t hear his words. “What’s that? I didn’t quite get what you said.”

“What he said was that he doesn’t like to bother me, which may explain why he failed to let me know where he went this evening.” The voice, a deep baritone, came from behind.

Katarina watched as all the students shifted their eyes, and collectively held their breath. And for a fraction of a second, given the mean age of her students, she had this crazy hope that the Adult School kept a defibrillator on the premises. She glanced down at her watch. Not even fifteen minutes into her first class and already she was facing a crisis.

“Mr. Worthington, I presume?” she said, giving a pretty good imitation of an offended schoolteacher. She slowly turned around while heartily congratulating herself on being a better actress than she would have imag—

Holy mother of…

The darkness of night hadn’t done justice to the way his shoulders filled out the jacket. Nor had it allowed an onlooker to see how the angles of his face came together in a combination that wasn’t so much handsome as arresting. And now, without the helmet, Katarina could see how his inky-black hair tumbled over his brow and curled around the collar of his leather jacket. Lines fanned out from his dark green eyes, lines that didn’t seem to go with anything remotely resembling smiling. The grim line of his full lips and the determined set of his jaw confirmed that judgment.

Forget offended. Before her stood a smoldering Brontë hero. Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester. No, definitely Heathcliff.

“Actually it’s Mr. Brown,” he said, but he didn’t bother to shift his gaze from the back of the room.

Katarina pushed away from the desk, wincing with the sudden pressure on her bad leg. “Sorry. Mr. Brown. I just assumed that you and Matt had the same last name. My mistake.” She held out her hand. “I’m Katarina Zemanova, the teacher for this class, and even though these may not be the best of circumstances, I am delighted to welcome you here.” She might not feel brave inside, but Katarina could at least make a good show of it on the surface.

The man glanced down at her hand as if not quite sure what to make of her gesture. There certainly was no immediate reply, and just when she thought she would have to rescind her invitation, he abruptly thrust out a hand.

The brief contact should have passed without fanfare, except for the annoying little voice in her head that kept pointing out how big his hand was, and how the pads of his fingers were rough with calluses. How his skin was cold to the touch but somehow warm, very warm within. Maybe, just maybe, that little voice had read too many of her grandmother’s romances?

Katarina ended the handshake after one firm up-and-down motion; then she reflexively tried to wipe away a lingering tingling sensation. “Won’t you have a seat then?” she offered.

He stood still and silent.

It was like pulling teeth. “I know how anxious you must have been, but now that you’ve found your son, you can relax.”

“There’s no relaxing when you have a teenager,” Rufus said from his seat in the front. That raised a nervous twitter from several students.

Katarina looked around the classroom. All eyes were on her to do something. Except two green ones that stayed focused on Matt. The cords in his neck strained like the stretched lines on a skiff heeling hard against the wind. His nostrils narrowed as he breathed in deeply.

Katarina rubbed the side of her nose. She could do this. What was dealing with a little father/son strife when she’d faced down a bullet? She could do this, right? Right?

“Perhaps I could be of service?” Carl said, starting to rise. “I’m the father of two grown sons.”