liked him. She couldn’t possibly like him!
“Sally remarried about two years ago,” he explained. “When Jason was fifteen. He didn’t take it well, didn’t care much for Bob, her new husband. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t much like the fact that there’s now a new baby in the household.”
He shook his head. “Sally doesn’t know the first thing about dealing with teenage boys, I’m afraid, not that she was much better when Sean was younger. I tried to be there for him, but I was building my company and working ninety-hour weeks. And a child should be with his mother, or so the books say. When he ran away from home for the third time in a month, she called me in hysterics and said it was my turn. I agreed, wholeheartedly, and Jason moved in with me. Now, instead of fighting Sally’s ridiculous coddling of my son, I’m fighting your off-the-wall methods, which are equally softhearted and maddening. And Jason is still—what do you call it?”
“Acting out,” Cassandra told him, bristling. “And now I understand why! How could you not have told me about the new stepfather? The new baby? Don’t you know that these things have a profound impact on a boy Jason’s age? He loves his mother, and now his mother has a new man in her life, a new child. Of course he’s feeling displaced, unloved, passed over.”
“Oh, really. You should have seen his bedroom, Ms. Mercer. From the time he was born, that kid had everything he ever wanted.”
“Material things are no substitute for love. I’m telling you, he was feeling displaced, shunted aside. And then his mother goes and proves it to him by all but throwing him out of the house, straight at a man who pulled himself up from nothing and probably thinks a child like Jason is spoiled rotten and in need of a good smack upside the head to settle him down.”
“There you go—more mumbo jumbo, more textbook pap meant to—”
But Cassandra cut him off. “God!” she exclaimed, laying her head back against the seat as she slumped down on her spine. “That poor kid! I’m surprised all he’s done is break a couple of windows and almost fail a couple of classes.”
“Let’s just hope you haven’t told Jason that almost failing a couple of classes and breaking a couple of windows is permissible behavior because he now lives with his father instead of his mother,” Sean shot back, reaching up a hand to jerk loose his designer tie and then roughly unbutton the collar of his designer shirt. “Or is this the new ‘in’ thing with guidance counselors—explaining away unacceptable behavior and placing all the blame on the parents and not the kid?”
“Mr. Frame,” Cassandra began, pulling herself upright on the seat. “You have no idea how difficult it is to deal with the teenage child. I see what he does in school, yes, but unless I am informed as to his home background, his relationship with his parents, his general physical health—circumstances that are not apparent when I sit across the desk from a mulish young boy who thinks he hates everything and everyone in his life when, in reality, he is simply a painfully unhappy lump of insecurity and fear—well, it just makes my job all that more difficult, that’s all.”
“So you forgive him, play cheerleader, tell him to go away and sin no more, and you think you’ve done enough? This is your main problem, Ms. Mercer, as I’ve said time and again—your psychobabble methods. Where’s the discipline, the punishment? When does he learn that all actions have their consequences? Surely not in Ms. Cassandra Mercer’s office.”
Cassandra felt her mouth open, heard words coming from it, and still couldn’t believe what she said. And, to her everlasting embarrassment, the words she had said, the words that hung in the stuffy air inside the Jeep for long moments, were “You, sir, are a horse’s ass!”
“That does it!” Sean shouted over the roar of the storm as he started the Jeep, slamming the vehicle back into gear and easing his foot onto the gas pedal. “Either we get out of here or I’m going to murder you,” he said as he began rocking the Jeep, throwing it into reverse, pushing it into low gear—and getting them nowhere.
Cassandra was furious. “Oh, stop it! We’re stuck, and that’s that!”
“Damn it!” he exploded as he turned off the ignition and slammed his fist against the steering wheel before pressing his head back against the headrest. “I’d rather be in Alaska, snowbound with a polar bear!”
Cassandra pleated the skirt of her long, full cotton dress with her fingers, wondering why her anger had felt so good, why she suddenly felt so free, so liberated. Why had watching the unflappable Sean Frame lose his cool made her feel so much more in control?
Who knew?
Who cared?
She only knew she liked the feeling. “Oh, really, Mr. Frame?” she shot back, staring straight at him. “Well, I’d rather be tossed overboard into a school of hungry piranha. Or is that piranhas? Piranhi?”
He turned his head on the headrest and eyed her carefully, assessingly. She saw the way his open, sparkling-white shirt collar pressed against the side of his tanned chin, and her stomach did a small flip. “I’d rather,” he bit out challengingly, “be in orbit for six months with a rabid rhesus monkey.”
So, he wanted to play “can you top this insult?” did he? She narrowed her eyes, her heart pounding. “I’d rather be trapped in an elevator with an amateur rap group on their way to their first audition.”
“I’d rather be locked in a bank vault with the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir—all of them singing the Hallelujah Chorus and suffering with laryngitis.”
This was fun!
“Ha! Kid stuff!” Cassandra exclaimed joyfully, then struggled for another comeback. “I’d rather—I’d rather be shipwrecked with Bill O’Reilly!”
Sean gave out a shout of laughter, then held up his hands in surrender. “You win, Cassandra. You win. Although, I must say, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Neither did I,” Cassandra answered quietly, frowning at her own audacity, then smiling as she realized he had addressed her by her first name.
Then Sean waved his right hand as if asking for silence. “I think I see something moving out there,” he said, using his sleeve to wipe steam off the inside of the window and peer into the now almost total darkness outside the Jeep. “Hand me my flashlight.”
“Since you asked so nicely, Sean,” Cassandra grumbled, remembering again how much she really didn’t like this man, although it had been rather nice to hear him call her Cassandra instead of Ms. Mercer. But that didn’t change the fact that he probably couldn’t find the word please with half a dozen flashlights!
“Here,” she said, shoving the thing at him. “Maybe it’s Bullwinkle Moose come to rescue us. Because, if you haven’t noticed, there aren’t any lights to be seen anywhere below us, except those at the hospital. The substation must have been knocked out by the slide, considering it’s only about a half mile higher up on the mountainside.”
Sean didn’t answer her but only cursed as he reached to roll down the window, then realized that the Jeep had push-button controls and the engine had to be engaged in order to operate them. He turned the ignition key to the “accessories” position with a determined hand, then lowered the window and stuck the flashlight outside. “There! Over there! Some nut’s trying to walk out of here. Hey! Buddy! We’re over here!”
Cassandra leaned across the
