She hesitated, then said, “If you really want the truth, he has a massive ego and I’ve seen the careless way he treats the girls at school. It’s a bad combination.”
J.C. nodded. “I don’t really know him personally. He’s Bill’s patient. All I know is what I see on the field.”
“Lucky you,” she said, then winced. “What is wrong with me? I’m not usually so indiscreet when it comes to students.”
“I think we’re past worrying about being careful with each other. If we’re going to get to the bottom of what’s happening with Misty, we need to trust each other enough to speak frankly.”
“But one thing has nothing to do with the other,” she said.
J.C. hesitated. It was a shot in the dark, but it was something worth considering. “You sure about that? You just said Greg’s careless with the girls he dates. Could Misty be one of them?”
She shook her head at once. “I’d say she has better sense, but at that age, who knows? The problem with your theory, though, is that he’s not in either of the classes she’s been skipping. And the word around school is that he’s seeing Annabelle Litchfield.”
“Oh, well, it was a thought.”
“And not a bad one,” she said, then caught sight of her friends who were waving from the stands. “I see the other teachers. I should join them. If you’re not meeting anyone, you could come along.”
“And stir up even more talk?” he asked, grinning at her.
She smiled back at him. “That ship sailed long ago. First Sullivan’s and then we walked in here together. Haven’t you noticed that since the touchdown more eyes are on us than on the field? I can’t imagine having you sit in the bleachers with a bunch of women would make anything worse.”
“All women? Where are the men?”
“Sitting with their wives,” she said. “There’s not a bachelor on the faculty. Trust me, you’ll feel like a king.”
He laughed. “How can I possibly resist that? Lead the way.”
They climbed up to the top row, where three women moved over to make room for them. He already knew all of them, at least by sight.
“You sly girl,” Nancy Logan said in what was meant to be a whisper but was easily overheard. “How’d you snag the hottie?”
Laura blushed furiously. “I haven’t snagged anyone. J.C. and I were just having a quick bite to eat and realized it had gotten late and we both had plans to be at the game.”
“So you had dinner and then you came to the game together,” Nancy said, her grin spreading. “In my world that sounds a lot like a date.”
“Mine, too,” the others echoed.
J.C. saw that their teasing had Laura even more flustered. He leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Don’t panic. I can handle the talk, if you can.”
She turned to him wide-eyed. “But there shouldn’t be any talk, not about dating. You don’t date at all. I don’t date you. I just explained what happened.”
“And they’re obviously not buying it,” he said, impulsively taking her hand snugly in his. “Let’s just go with it.”
“Go with it,” she repeated, her eyes widening with alarm. “What does that mean, go with it?”
“It means tonight you and I are on a date. We’ll think of it as an experiment. Maybe I’ll discover that I’ve been wrong to forego a social life since moving to Serenity,” he added, though he suspected the opposite was more likely. All the talk might very well reinforce his conviction that he was better off alone.
Laura already looked uneasy. She swallowed hard at his assertion. “This is a bad idea, J.C.”
“Not to worry,” he consoled her. “Tomorrow we can break up. Happens all the time.”
“Not to me. Not in this town.”
He winked at her. “Then I’ll be your first.”
Something in the way she blanched at his choice of words set off alarm bells. No way, he thought. It wasn’t possible, was it? Could Laura Reed possibly be as innocent as all that? It should have terrified him, but suddenly he found himself more intrigued than ever.
5
Laura had spent most of the night wrestling with the covers and her confusing thoughts after spending the evening with J.C. To her surprise he’d fit right in with her friends from school. Once the teasing remarks had quieted down, they’d all cheered themselves hoarse as Serenity had managed to prevent a tying touchdown in the final seconds of the game.
Outside the stadium, he’d offered her a ride back to her car, but she’d insisted that Nancy could drop her off. He’d looked vaguely disappointed, which had surprised her after his insistence earlier in the evening that she wasn’t to construe his dinner invitation as anything other than a chance to discuss Misty and the problems she was having at school.
On the way to the parking lot by the medical practice, Nancy had had a million questions, which Laura had managed to sidestep fairly deftly, she thought.
“The man just offered to bring you over here himself. What is wrong with you?” Nancy had asked, regarding her with dismay. “I know his company has to be far more scintillating than mine.”
Laura had laughed. “Despite what he said at the game, we were never on a date, Nancy. Scintillating doesn’t enter into it.”
“Well, it should,” Nancy told her. “He’s the most available bachelor in the entire town, a doctor, no less. The competition has been fierce for years, and you’re the first woman I know of, at least locally, that he’s been out with.”
“Well, I happen to know for a fact that he has a date with a nurse practitioner in the morning,” she said, hoping to silence any more uncomfortable speculation about the two of them. J.C. might be a mystery she wouldn’t mind unraveling, but it simply wasn’t in the cards. One bit of wisdom she’d taken from past experience was an understanding of when to cut her losses.
“He told you he has a date tomorrow?” Linda asked. “What kind of man brags about a date when he’s out with someone else?”
“The kind of man who wants to make it clear he isn’t on a date with me,” she told her. “Do you get it yet?”
Nancy shook her head mournfully. “Well, I say it’s just sad. You looked cute together, and there were sparks. I could feel them.”
“Because you have a vivid imagination. It’s all those romance novels you read.”
“True, I want sparks like that,” Nancy admitted wistfully. “I have this sinking feeling, though, that I’ll never find them in Serenity. You know what slim pickings there are in this town. There are a few decent guys our age, but finding the whole package—intelligence, a sense of humor, good looks and a solid
