you, Clay, for all your help.”
“Just doing my job,” he replied as he stepped out of the door. “Good night, Tamara.”
“Good night, Clay.”
She stood on her front porch long after his van had disappeared from sight.
It had been a long time since she’d felt a spark of physical attraction toward a man. But the moment Clay had stepped into the classroom and introduced himself, she’d felt a definite spark of warmth deep in the pit of her stomach.
The last time she’d found herself physically attracted to a man she’d allowed herself to be swept into a relationship that had not only ended in heartache, but had also left her questioning her values and the very essence of who she was.
She looked up at the moon peeping through the branches of the ancient trees. Good old Maxwell Bishop. He’d been her agent for six months before they had become lovers. He’d done amazing things for her career as an artist, but in the four months they had been a couple, he’d nearly destroyed her self-identity.
According to everything she’d heard about Clay, he’d be a danger to her in much the same way. This was one particular spark she intended to ignore.
Not that it mattered. Clay had made it quite clear that others would handle her case from here on out. Cherokee Corners wasn’t that small a town. The odds of her and Clay running into each other again were minimal.
Reluctantly, she left the night air and went back inside the cabin. She had just finished washing the coffee mugs to put back in the cabinet when the phone rang.
She hurried from the kitchen to the sofa and picked up the cordless from the end table. “Hello?”
“Are you all right?” Alyssa Whitefeather’s voice filled the line.
“Bad news travels fast in this town,” Tamara replied. “How did you hear about it?”
“I heard between a hot fudge sundae and a banana split.” Alyssa owned the Redbud Bed and Breakfast. The top two floors of her establishment were guest rooms and the bottom floor was Alyssa’s living quarters and an ice cream parlor. “Burt Creighton stopped in for a cup of coffee and was talking about the mess in your classroom.”
“It was a mess,” Tamara agreed.
“You must have been terrified when you saw it.”
Tamara thought of that moment when she’d first viewed the vandalized room. “Actually, it didn’t scare me at all,” she said. “Mostly I just felt sad for whomever had done such a terrible thing.”
“Well, it frightened me when I heard about it,” Alyssa replied.
There was something in her friend’s voice that sent a flutter of disquiet through Tamara. “Why? Have you seen something, Alyssa?”
Alyssa laughed, the laughter sounding forced. “Oh, you know me. I’m the local nutcase in town. I’m always seeing things that aren’t there, having visions that don’t make sense. I should probably be on medication.”
“Having a pity party, are we?”
This time Alyssa’s laugh was genuine. “Maybe a little one,” she admitted. “It’s just been a bad week,” she added.
Tamara heard the weariness in her friend’s voice. Over the course of their friendship Alyssa had confided in Tamara that she’d always suffered visions. Since Rita James’s disappearance the visions had increased in frequency and intensity.
“I’ll tell you what I think you need,” Tamara said. “You need dinner tomorrow night with a friend.”
“I can’t do that,” Alyssa protested. “Friday nights are the busiest of the week in the ice cream parlor.”
Tamara frowned thoughtfully. She knew there was no way she could talk Alyssa into closing up shop on a Friday night. “Okay, then how about we meet at the café about four. You can get back to work by five or five-thirty when your Friday night rush usually begins.”
“That sounds good,” Alyssa replied after a moment of hesitation. “I could use a little break. So, I’ll see you tomorrow about four. And Tamara, do me a favor and be extra careful.”
“Don’t you worry about me. I’m fine.”
With a murmur of goodbyes, the two hung up. It was getting late enough Tamara knew she should go to bed, but her head was too filled with thoughts to allow sleep.
She got up from the sofa and went into the small bedroom. She took off the traditional tear dress and hung it in the closet next to half a dozen others. She usually only wore the dresses on Tuesday and Thursday evenings when she taught her adult Native American cultural classes, or for special occasions and ceremonies.
She pulled on her nightie, a short yellow silk sheath with spaghetti straps, then returned to the kitchen for a glass of ice water.
While she sat at the table, a nice light breeze breathed through the window to caress her. The cabin had no air-conditioning except a window unit in the bedroom. She rarely ran it, preferring her windows opened and the sweet, forest-scented night air coming inside.
But tonight, with Alyssa’s pressure for her to take care, she finished her ice water, then closed the window and locked it. She did the same with the other windows in the cabin, then went into her bedroom and turned the window unit air conditioner on low.
She got into bed, although thoughts still tumbled topsy-turvy through her head. She had no idea what to anticipate when she returned to school the next day. The only thing she knew for sure was that she would not be teaching classes in her own classroom.
She remembered Clay’s question about students she might have that might nurse a grudge against her. Nobody specific came to mind, but her class was filled with wise guys and underachievers.
There were also some gems in the class, students who were taking the summer classes in order to graduate early or to fill the long summer days.
It was the long summer nights that far too often lately filled Tamara with longing. She was thirty years old and more and more felt the desire for a family. But in order to have a family, she’d have to first find a good man and that had been a problem.
She’d become wary since her experience with Max. And in the two years since Max, she had mentally formed a picture of the kind of man she wanted in her life. Alyssa always told her no such man existed, that she was too picky and her expectations were too high.
She rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling, a vision of Clay James filling her mind. Physically, he was everything she’d ever hope to find in a man.
As she thought of the way his shoulders had filled out his shirt, the lean hips in those tight blue jeans, she could swear the temperature of the room rose by several degrees.
But she knew better than to get her hormones racing where Clay James was concerned. According to Alyssa the only thing that interested her cousin came in test tubes and evidence sample bags.
According to Clay’s own mother he was an angry man who had turned his back on his Native American heritage.
