thought as he climbed back up into his truck. He needed to keep his distance from Jake’s bubbly, interfering teacher. Everything in his gut—the center of his very best survival instincts—told him that he needed to steer clear of her if he knew what was good for him and if he intended to get through this time of parental custody intact.
Not just intact, he reminded himself. He needed to do more than to remain intact. He needed to come out a winner when it came to all the matters that concerned Jake.
From the second he had found out about his son’s existence, Jake was his number one priority.
As for this Ms. Laramie, the woman might be a real stunner, but she was way off base. Jake, a mother’s helper? Anderson silently questioned as he now frowned at the idea. Not his boy, he thought. Not if he had anything to say about it.
In order to terminate the awkward meeting with the fifth-grade teacher, Anderson had told her that he had to be getting back to his ranch. But instead of doing that, he decided to stick around until Jake finished playing basketball. When he thought about it, staying in the vicinity of the school made a lot more sense than driving to the ranch and then back again.
Leaving the building, Anderson got into the cab of his truck and drove around to the back entrance of the school. He told himself it was closer to where Jake would get out once basketball practice was over but to be quite honest, he wanted to be sure that Marina Laramie didn’t accidentally look out the window and see him parked out in front. It would just complicate everything.
He had no idea why he put so much thought into this, but he did. For some reason, the woman made him uneasy. Avoiding her seemed the best way to go.
The moment he pulled up the brake and turned off the engine, he began to get fidgety. Accustomed to working hard from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning until he fell into bed at night, just sitting in the truck waiting had him growing progressively more restless with every passing moment.
Anderson was not a man who did “nothing” well.
He was contemplating getting out of his truck and walking around the school grounds until practice was over when the cell phone he’d thrown in the glove compartment of his vehicle—an old flip phone model—rang.
At first, Anderson didn’t even hear it.
His cell phone hardly ever rang, so it caught him off guard. It took him a moment to connect the faint sound to its source of origin.
He flipped the phone open and fairly barked, “Hello?”
The annoyed greeting would have been enough to scare a great many people away. Paige Dalton Traub was not one of those people. Younger than Anderson by five years, she was every bit as feisty as her brothers. She had to be. Having grown up with three bossy brothers and two equally bossy sisters, it took a great deal for her feathers to get even slightly ruffled. It took even more for her to become even mildly intimidated, and certainly never by a sibling.
Paige recognized her brother’s less than dulcet tones immediately.
Rather than return his less than warm greeting, Paige went straight to the heart of the matter. “So, how did it go, big brother?”
Anderson had no idea what his younger sister was talking about. She might as well have been talking gibberish. Most women, in his limited experience, did.
“How did what go?” he countered, irritated.
Paige laughed shortly. “Ah, there’s that disposition of a wet hornet that I know and love,” she noted sarcastically. “You might recall that initially, you called me, and I assumed that the reason you called had something to do with Marina and your son. Am I right?” she wanted to know.
“Yes,” he conceded grudgingly through clenched teeth.
“Well, I’m here now so spill it. Do you know why Marina wanted to see you, and is everything okay?”
Instead of answering her directly, Anderson approached her question from a different angle. “You told me about his teacher having a kid of her own, but you never mentioned that the woman was touchy-feely.”
“She touched you?” Paige asked, clearly taken aback. She and the fifth-grade teacher had gotten to know one another over the last year or so and while Marina was friendly enough and everyone liked the woman, she wasn’t the type to touch a student’s parent.
“No,” he bit off, annoyed that his sister wasn’t following his train of thought. “But she wanted me to get all touchy-feely with Jake.” As he spoke, his mouth curved downward into a distasteful frown. “She seems to think that Jake’s too quiet.”
“I should have that problem,” Paige commented with a laugh. “I only wish that at least some of my students would be quiet like Jake.” After a slight hesitation she asked, “So how did she suggest you do it?” When he didn’t say anything, she prodded him a little. “How did she suggest you get closer to Jake?”
He frowned so hard he thought she could literally hear it in his voice as he said, “She asked me for permission to turn Jake into a mother’s helper. Isn’t that just crazy?” he wanted to know, assuming that his sister would have the same sort of reaction to the other woman’s idea that he did.
Paige took him totally by surprise when she replied, “Actually, Anderson, I think that might not be such a bad idea.”
It took him a second to collect himself and recover. “What? Is this some kind of a woman thing?” he asked, stunned.
“Only in the sense that women are more intuitive than men,” Paige replied brightly, no doubt knowing that her remark would get to him. “But seriously,” she continued, the humor fading from her voice, “I think that maybe Jake might be a little too isolated. I’ve been keeping an eye on him at school and I don’t see him interacting with the other kids during recess.”
Anderson wondered how long she’d been holding off saying anything to him. Apparently today was the day to tackle the subject.
“He’s a sweet kid,” she continued, “but he needs to acquire some people skills, Anderson. To that end, I think it might do him some good to take care of another person instead of just being aware of his own small sphere.”
“Well, it’s not like he’s going to go backpacking on some survivalist’s journey, fending for himself and that baby,” Anderson retorted. He felt disappointed. He’d expected Paige to be on his side, not playing for the opposition. “Jake would be taking care of that baby under this Ms. Laramie’s supervision the whole time—at the very least. You can’t tell me that she won’t be watching Jake like a hawk the entire time.”
“Not necessarily. I think that the whole point would be to give Jake the assignment, exercise a little supervision and then step back to see how he does.”
Anderson banked down the urge to laugh at his sister’s naivety. “Would you step back if this was you we were talking about and the baby you were leaving with someone was Carter?”
Again Paige didn’t answer him the way he thought she would. “If I trusted them to look after my son and felt that I had made myself perfectly
