Disappointed, he pushed to his feet. “Don’t apologize,” he said gruffly as she, too, stood. “I’ve been out of the family so long that I really don’t know anyone anymore. Your insight helped. Thanks.”
He wisely didn’t make an excuse to see her again, but walking away from her wasn’t nearly as easy as he’d hoped. As he thanked her again and let himself out, he found himself fighting the need to turn back and ask her out to dinner. If she’d given him the slightest encouragement, he would have been in trouble. She didn’t.
Two
He wouldn’t call her again.
Lying in her lonely bed that night, Rebecca stared at the ceiling in the dark and faced the fact that Austin would, in all likelihood, never call her again. She’d told him everything she could about the family and done all that she could to help him. There was little reason for him to contact her again.
She should have been relieved. By his very presence, he stirred feelings in her that had no chance of ever developing into anything but hurt and frustration, and she knew she should have been thankful to see the last of him. Instead, she’d never felt lonelier in her life.
Why, she wondered, couldn’t she be like other women? Why couldn’t she have a husband and children? Why couldn’t she know what it was like to have a man turn to her in the middle of the night and reach for her? Make love to her?
Because you can’t bear to have a man touch you, a voice in her head said flatly. Until you find a way to come to grips with that, you’ll never have anyone.
Slow tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. She’d tried, she thought, swallowing a sob. When she’d first come to live with Joe and Meredith, she’d been shy and afraid and had just wanted to hide away from the world and be left alone. She hadn’t even been able to sit at the table with the family at mealtime and eat. With time and patience and the best therapists, however, she’d started to trust again, to let people back into her life…not only Meredith and Joe, but the children, then her extended foster family and friends. Amazingly, she’d even gotten past the fear of dating. But she still hit a brick wall whenever it came to intimacy.
She’d thought she’d accepted that, but for the first time in a long time, she wanted something she couldn’t have. And it hurt. Turning over, she buried her face in her pillow and gave in to the sobs she could no longer hold back.
When she woke the next morning with a thick head and swollen eyes, she would have liked nothing better than to call in sick. But she knew she’d only brood if she stayed at home, and at work, at least, her students would keep her too busy to think of anything but them. With a groan, she rolled out of bed.
From there, everything seemed to go wrong. She couldn’t find the belt that went with her dress, the new shoes she wore hurt her feet, she misplaced her keys, and to make matters worse, she had to stop on the way to work and fill up her car with gas. By the time she walked through the front door of Coker Elementary, she was late, and Richard Foster, her boss, was waiting for her in the hallway outside the principal’s office.
“You’re late.”
Taken aback by the harshness of his tone—after all, she was only five minutes tardy and school wouldn’t start for another twenty minutes—she said breathlessly, “I know. I’m sorry. Nothing seemed to go right this morning.”
“You’re supposed to set an example for the students,” he retorted, his blue eyes diamond-hard behind the lenses of his glasses. “If you can’t be disciplined enough to be on time, how can you expect them to be?”
Technically, he had a point, and if they’d been running a boot camp, Rebecca might have agreed with him. But it was an elementary school, for heaven’s sakes, and most of the students were only just now beginning to show up for school. He wasn’t usually a clock watcher as long as his teachers were in their classrooms at least fifteen minutes before the first bell rang, and she still had five minutes to spare.
Surprised that he would nitpick over such a minor thing, she frowned. Something had to be wrong—this wasn’t like him. Then, before she could open her mouth and put her foot in it by asking if everything was okay, she remembered that he and Sylvia, his wife, were filing for divorce later that afternoon. And she’d forgotten all about it. No wonder he was in a bear of a mood, she thought sympathetically. She was friends with both of them and hated to see their marriage break up. They were one of those couples who had seemed perfect for each other.
“I’ll be more punctual next time,” she said quietly. “It won’t happen again.”
She was trying to be understanding, but she might as well have saved her breath. He only nodded curtly, satisfied. “Good. See that it doesn’t.”
And it was that, more than anything, that hurt. She knew he was going through a rough time, but she hadn’t done anything to him. Dismissed, her cheeks stinging, she hurried to her classroom without a backward glance.
From there, the rest of the day went downhill. She didn’t know if the moon was out of alignment or if her students had been possessed by aliens from outer space, but each class was more disruptive than the last. By the time lunch rolled around, Rebecca was exhausted.
She told herself things couldn’t get much worse. She was wrong. At the beginning of her first class after lunch, she’d hardly turned to write the homework assignment on the blackboard when Tabitha Long let out a bloodcurdling scream that Rebecca was sure could be heard halfway down the hall. “Hughie’s got a gun!”
Startled, her heart in her throat, Rebecca whirled just in time to see the redheaded troublemaker of the class teasingly brandishing something black at Tabitha. “Hughie Bishop, you bring that here right this minute!” she ordered sternly. “Now, Hughie!”
“Awh, Miss Powell, it’s just a toy,” he grumbled, holding it up to show her that it was just a homemade slingshot carved in the shape of a gun. “I was just playing.”
Her frown fierce and disapproving, Rebecca didn’t say a word. She just held out her hand.
His shoulders slumped in dejection, Hughie dragged his feet as he slowly made his way to the front of the classroom. “I wasn’t going to hurt anybody,” he said, pouting as he dropped the slingshot into her hand. “She was making faces at me.”
Rebecca didn’t doubt that Tabitha was guilty of instigating a scene—she had an irritating habit of sticking her tongue out at the other students—but that didn’t excuse Hughie’s behavior. He knew the rules: no weapons could be brought to school for any reason. “You can’t threaten someone just because you don’t like what they’re doing,” she lectured him. “Especially with a weapon. Yes,” she said quickly when he started to object, “this is a weapon and you leave me no choice but to report this to Mr. Foster after class. In the meantime, you and Tabitha will both move to the back of the room and spend the rest of the class writing a letter for your behavior.”
“But I didn’t do anything!” Tabitha cried.
Not surprised that she would paint herself totally innocent, Rebecca merely arched a brow at her. “Didn’t you? Think about it.”
Caught in the trap of her disapproving gaze, Tabitha knew better than to argue further. Hanging her head, she collected her books and moved to the back of the room. Hughie did the same, and with a sigh of relief, Rebecca placed the slingshot in the top drawer
