“New students?” she asked, coming to the door.
“Ayjia will be joining your class, Miss Scott.”
“Ayjia! What a pretty name! Come in.”
“Um—” Mercedes began.
“Can I Auntie M? Pleeeeease?”
Mercedes stroked her hand down Ayjia’s out of control locks. “Of course.”
“Thank you!” Ayjia followed Miss Scott’s directions to join the girls coloring the letters of the alphabet.
Mercedes felt a little pang as she watched Ayjia enter without so much as a backward glance. Was it healthy? Was it right?
It was only an hour. It would give Mercedes the opportunity to pitch her new arrangement to the board uninterrupted. Of course that meant Dayton would have to stay the whole day— Uh, oh.
Mercedes met Dayton’s betrayed glare.
“And this is Dayton’s classroom,” Ms. Wilcox said from down the hall.
“You said—” Dayton began.
“I know what I said. Let’s just have a look.” Mercedes tried to take his hand but he pulled away, scuffing his feet as she led the way.
No dazzling display of educational activities and learning centers here. This was a traditional classroom with all the desks facing front and all the students bent to their work. A Mrs. Garvey Wannabe clicked her way over in low, chunky black-patent pumps, her cardigan buttoned to just below the ribbon tied in a bow at her neck.
“Mrs. Laurier,” Ms. Wilcox said. “We have a new student. Dayton Tischler.”
“Hebrew,” Ms. Laurier said with a vague frown at Mercedes. “You’re Jewish?”
“Does it matter?” Mercedes asked, gritting her teeth behind a cool smile, knowing she was doing it again, but unable to stop herself. The woman hadn’t given Dayton more than a passing glance. This was a bad idea all around. She shouldn’t be doing this to them. Porsha shouldn’t be doing this to them.
Mrs. Laurier tapped her chin as she repeated Dayton’s surname. “At least he’ll be in the last row. We’ll only have to displace three students.”
“Alphabetical order,” Ms. Wilcox explained.
“Right,” Mercedes said weakly, while Mrs. Laurier said, “Come along, Dayton. We’ll put you over here.”
Dayton didn’t move. “I don’t have to go to school today.”
Mercedes opened her mouth, but Mrs. Laurier spoke first. “Of course you do. All children go to school every day unless they are suffering an illness severe enough to keep them home. Come along now.”
With the eyes of his peers upon him, Dayton made the trek to the desk, casting a hate-filled glance over his shoulder at Mercedes.
L.C. looked for Mercedes at her desk, but found it empty. He was just about to head back to his unit when she came striding in from the courtyard, leggy and flustered, wearing a sundress of blue and white with poofy sleeves and stretchy lace that hugged her ribs and waist. It was cute, in a Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island way.
“Hi.” She circled to the inside of the horseshoe and dropped her huge purse on the upper counter of her desk. It knocked the morning’s mail off the front before it slumped backward to land with a jangling thump on the lower work surface of her desk, sending the computer keyboard askew. The mouth of her purse gaped open and a white envelope with a string of gilded names across its front slid onto the floor along with a pen, some lip gloss and a wallet.
Mercedes barely glanced at the mess. Her sigh rang with a need for deliverance. “Need something?” she asked.
L.C. leaned his elbow on the counter and surveyed the floor on both sides of the counter. “Going to pick up any of that?” he asked conversationally.
“No, I’m going to go eat a bottle of Pete Dolinski’s sleep aids. I am a useless human being who betrays little children. I don’t deserve to live.”
“And how’s your morning going then?” He didn’t bother to hide his amusement.
“Terrible.” The corners of her mouth went down and her eyes brimmed. “Dayton hates me. I told him he wouldn’t have to stay at school, but they kept him. I shouldn’t have left him but what am I supposed to do? Kids need to go to school, right? And I need to work. It would have been easier if his teacher had been like Ayjia’s, but no, Dayton’s teacher was trained by the Third Reich, far as I could tell, and if you’d seen the look in his eyes.” She pointed at her own, narrowed them into mean slits. “It was like all the trust he’d ever had in me completely evaporated in one tiny second. Don’t laugh. This isn’t funny.”
L.C. wasn’t really laughing, only smiling, and it was empathy. If she only knew how often he’d seen the exact look on Zack. Especially since arriving here in Flagstaff.
“Welcome to parenting.”
“Shhh!” She glanced around. “I haven’t told anyone yet. And it’s only temporary.”
“Then you can’t dig into that bottle of pills yet, can you? You’ll have to deal with this.” He bent to collect the mail.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said as he handed across the stacked envelopes then rounded the counter. “You really don’t have to do that,” she said as he scooped up the lawyer file and other items that had come from her purse.
“I don’t mind.” He let his gaze climb leisurely from her ankle to her knee, then her thigh, the bell of her skirt, the little eyelets in the lace across her stomach, the blue cups that held her breasts, the freckles high on her chest, the way her throat worked to swallow. The shine on her lips as she licked them. The startled uncertainty in her eyes. The shadow of...response?
Like fresh coffee, she was. Warm and aromatic and then—mmm—the welcome kick in the bloodstream.
“There’re perks.” He held out the stuff, held her gaze, heard himself say, “We should go out sometime.”
Her hand went to a spot low on her abdomen. “Yeah, that’d solve all my problems.”
Ouch.
She shut her eyes in a wince. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I just— Look at me, L.C.” She waved her hand around at the messy desk and the blinking phone, the courier boxes on the counter.
“Even before this, when I had free time, I spent it with the kids. I don’t have time to date. Well, unless I lose my job of course, which is so likely, I’m ready to vomit.” She pressed the heel of her hand deeper into her naval. “That’d almost be a relief at this point, because Dayton’s going to need—”
“How much caffeine have you had today?” he asked, mostly to distract her.
“What?” She dropped her hands to her sides. “A few cups, why?”
“You’re completely wired.” He set her stuff on her desk. “Look, Dayton will be fine. In fact, this will build trust. He’ll learn you only leave him in safe places with safe people and you always come back to get him.”
“Really?” Hope brightened her expression.
“Hell, I don’t know. That’s the kind of crap my ex-wife used to say. You seemed like you needed to hear it.”
“Damn it,” she sputtered. “I’m worried over here, L.C. I’m a wreck!” But she laughed, her exuberance natural and joyous. The kind of sound that produced a compulsion to make her laugh again.
Her humor pleased him and for a few seconds their gazes tangled and he didn’t care anymore that she had shut him down so bluntly. Hell, he should have known better than to suggest anything.
“I did need to hear that,” she said, her smile relaxing. “Thank you.”
He felt so good, he almost set himself up for another rejection, wondering if he would get a different answer on that date question.
“Hey Mercedes, have you seen—” Zack walked in the doors from the parking lot. He halted as he saw L.C. behind the desk with Mercedes.
L.C. ignored his son’s questioning look and picked up the checkbook he’d missed, setting it on the desk beside her wallet while Mercedes started rifling through the mail and said, “Have I seen who?”
“I was looking for Dad.” Zack’s tone was flat. “Did you get the approval on those purchase orders?” he asked.
Mercedes kept fingering through the mail, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Zack was murdering L.C. with a poisonous look that Dayton couldn’t touch in a million years. See, there was trust and there was trust. L.C. hadn’t earned any in a while.
“What purchase orders?” Mercedes asked, lifting an absent, questioning gaze.
“One of the water pipes is seeping,” L.C. explained. “The inside wall of our laundry room is a mess. Zack and I can pick up the supplies right now if I can get your okay. I need another pair of hands on the drywall and he has class this afternoon.”
“Oh. Well, a water leak has to be dealt with, doesn’t it? Go ahead, but I’ll have to talk to Harrison about how we’ll handle all the supplies you’ll need ongoing.” She blew out a breath that wafted a strand of red-gold off her temple and picked up the envelope that had the lawyer stamp on it. “I have to talk to Harrison about a lot of things.”
“Let me know what he says.” L.C. waited while she absorbed that he really did give a small shit about her problem. For her sake and the kids, he hoped she was able to pull off keeping them here with her.