Winning the Teacher's Heart

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Becca put an extra step between them, the icy edge of his reply seeming to have caught her more than his intended target.

The Sheriff transferred his glare from Jared to her. “Shouldn’t you be in the house with the kids?”

“No, I’m sure they’re fine.”

Jared raised his head to the sky. Now Becca decided to stand her ground, over his business, rather than standing up for herself.

Ken dismissed her with a shake of his head and drilled his gaze into Jared’s. “Bert ignored his family and went ahead and left you this property. I suppose he gave your brothers something, too.”

“Yes, he gave me the acreage here. You’ll have to check the county records for any other information you feel you need to know.”

Ken pursed his lips. “Hope you guys enjoy your blood money.” He jerked his head toward his car and his wife started walking toward it.

She stopped at the door and turned to Becca. “See you at church tomorrow.” She climbed in the car and her husband gunned the engine and roared out of the driveway.

“She almost makes me want to skip service,” Becca said. “But your brother gives some of the most thought-provoking sermons. I’d hate to miss one just to spite them.”

Becca’s enthusiasm for his brother brought back a little of the sting he’d felt yesterday when his grandmother’s words had made him think Connor was interested in Becca. He shook it off. “I wouldn’t waste perfectly good spite on Sheriff Norton. What’s with him anyway?”

Becca hesitated. “I...we...you mean, about the land.”

“Yeah.” As much as he’d wanted to light into Ken for what he’d said to Becca, he had no desire to get involved in whatever was between her and her ex-in-laws.

“Debbie is, was, Bert’s cousin, his only living relative. From what she said to me when he was first diagnosed, she’d expected to inherit everything. She and Ken were looking at it as a nice addition to their retirement assets.”

She shivered in the warm breeze and he checked himself from putting his arm around her shoulder.

“Debbie made a big show of going to visit him when he went into hospice. I don’t know that she talked to him three times a year before that.”

“She didn’t get his house, either.”

“Pardon?”

“Bert didn’t leave her his house either. He left that to one of the county home health aides he particularly liked. She told us at the reading of the will that when she told Bert her rent had gone up and she was going to have to move, he’d said he’d leave her his house. She never dreamed he’d been serious. Everything else went to the hospice organization and us.”

She touched her fingertip to her lips. “Strange. I had no idea you were close to him.”

“We weren’t. I worked for him some when I was a teenager.”

“Not to pry, but I’m curious about what Ken meant about blood money.”

“You caught that, too. I don’t know.”

“As a friend—” Jared was so focused on Becca considering him a friend that he almost missed the rest “—let me tell you that you don’t want to do anything to make an enemy out of Sheriff Norton, or Debbie, for that matter.”

Too late for that. It appeared he’d already made it back on the Sheriff’s enemy list without even trying. He looked at her solemn face. From her warning, at least Becca seemed to be on his side.

* * *

Jared hung up from the call with his financial adviser and dropped his cell phone next to him on the futon. Things were coming together. The contingent financing approval he’d applied for before returning to Paradox Lake had gone through. He glanced around the spare room Connor was letting him use. A basic twentysomething male room, from the garage-sale dresser to the footlocker at the end of the futon. Grandpa Donnelly’s antique polished-wood rolltop desk stuck out like a bicycle in a motocross race. Because Jared had loved the desk as a kid, loved rolling it shut and open, Grandma Donnelly had given it to him for his twentieth birthday and first major motocross win. He’d retrieved it from Gram’s the day after he’d run into Becca and the Nortons.

He locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back into the lumpy cushions. He should start thinking about a permanent residence. Permanent. He liked the sound of that. Becca was right that the land fronting the road by the pull-in would make a nice house lot. But after nearly fifteen years on the circuit living, breathing, sleeping work, he wanted to put some space between his home and his work. Not that he’d mind having Becca as a neighbor. He crossed his legs at his ankles and jiggled his foot. He hoped she and the other two residents of Conifer Road wouldn’t mind having him building his track and racing school there. Jared was expecting some opposition, but he was prepared.

“Hey, big brother.” Connor appeared in the doorway. “I figured I’d find you here goofing off.”

“This from a man who works for an hour one day a week?”

“Right.”

Jared swung off the futon. “What’s up?”

“I’m going for a swim down at the Camp Sonrise beach, one of the perks of having the Hazard family as parishioners. Want to come?”

“Sure. Give me a minute to change.”

“I’ll be out front.”

Jared bounded down the steps two minutes later. “We can take my bike.”

“No, let’s jog down to the lake. I need as much physical activity as possible to work off my morning.”

Jared studied his brother. “You had office hours this morning. Bad news?”

Connor waved him off. “No. The toddler room teacher at The Kids’ Place called in sick. Becca had trouble finding a substitute.”

“I take that to mean you hired Becca.” That would explain why he hadn’t seen her car in her driveway either of the times he’d been back over to his property.

“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you?” Connor picked up his pace. “Becca had me cover with the teacher’s aide until she could find someone else.”

“Gram said something about your dragging your feet about hiring her.”

“Hey, it wasn’t me. It was the day-care board.”

“They gave you a hard time? What could they have against Becca?” What could anyone have against her?

“Debbie Norton is on the board. She got some of the other members questioning whether we wanted to hire a divorcée. After Matt was the one who abandoned Becca and the kids for another woman and initiated the divorce.”

Jared pounded ahead, hitting the road so hard it sent a bolt of pain up the shin he’d broken in his accident last year.

“Sanity prevailed. We didn’t have anyone else who was as qualified as Becca, and she’s only filling in until the head teacher we hired for the fall can start.” Connor pulled ahead. “Since when have you been interested in small-town, social-political gossip?”

Jared switched gears into a full run. Forget the pain. He couldn’t believe how cruel and meddlesome Becca’s ex-in-laws were to her. “Since you became the purveyor of such information.”

Connor shrugged and matched Jared’s speed. “It comes with the territory, and I shouldn’t have shared that, even with you. All I wanted was some sympathy for having to spend two hours with a room full of two-year-olds. I certainly didn’t get any from the women.”

“That tough?” The men hit the beach with Jared a stride ahead and then slowed to a trot.