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But he was different. And he’d be fooling himself if he thought she’d want anything but the old Nate, the strong, can-do-anything man he’d been. That was the man she had loved, not the shell of a used-up soldier he’d become. “Never mind.”
“Don’t do that. You were about to say something. Tell me.”
He looked past her, into the bright and sunny classroom that so captured Jenny’s personality in the vibrant wall hangings and the sunflowers decorating the bulletin boards. “I…I think Jimmy is trying to feed Lindsay a worm.”
“Oh, God, not again,” she muttered and spun away.
Within thirty seconds, she had the offensive invertebrate back outside, Lindsay calmed and Jimmy seated at a desk in the hall. “Exile worked well with Napoleon,” Jenny explained, joining Nate at the back of the room. “And it works well with Jimmy Brooks, too.”
“You’re a genius.”
“Nah, I just have a system that works for me. All teachers do.” She glanced at her watch, then stepped away from him, clapped her hands and two dozen heads popped to attention. “Story time, children. Everyone grab a mat and take a seat on the floor. Today, we’ll read together instead of having a silent reading period.”
A few minutes of scrambling, and then the class had assembled in a circle on the floor around a small rocking chair. Jenny grabbed a book off the shelf and pressed it into Nate’s hands. “Here you go.”
“What do you want me to do with this?”
“Wear it.” She grinned. “No. Read to them.”
“Me?”
“That’s what you’re here for.” She leaned closer and the scent of sandalwood wafted up to greet him. In the bottom of his foot locker was a box of letters that held that very scent, faint now after all these years, but still discernible if he placed them very, very close to his face.
How many times had he done that in those lonely years in the marines? Those days after he’d lost her, when the only thing he’d had was a few sheets of sandalwood-scented stationery? Too many times, he knew.
He jerked himself back to the present when he saw her staring at him. “What’d you say?”
“I said, go read to them before they start a riot in the circle.” She gestured to the group of kids, already starting to argue and tease each other.
He grinned. “Your wish is my command.”
Jenny smiled back. “Now why can’t all men say that more often?”
“Because we rarely mean it.” He caught her chuckle as he made his way through the crowd of children, who parted like the Red Sea to make room for him and his cane to wriggle through. Once he was settled in the chair, he cracked open the story and began to read.
At first, his voice droned in a monotone, the cadenced speech pattern he’d developed after so many years in the military. But then, as the pages passed and the story began to grow more interesting, Nate slipped into the voices of the characters, adding inflections to the old man, high pitches to the shrieking neighbor woman and a deep baritone for the firefighter who all starred in the tale.
The children stopped squirming and talking. They perched their elbows on their knees and leaned forward, ears pitched toward the sound of his voice. When he reached the last page, several of them let out cries of disappointment.
“Let’s thank Mr. Dole for his spirited reading debut,” Jenny said, stepping into the circle.
The applause that encircled him could have been coming from Carnegie Hall. Nate shut the book. “It was fun.”
“I told you so,” she whispered, taking the novel from him and replacing it on the shelf. “You always were a ham.”
The children got to their feet, replacing their carpeted mats in the pile and heading back to their seats. Jenny grabbed a stack of worksheets off her desk and handed them out, directing the class to write a short paragraph on the story and draw a picture of their favorite character.
Nate came up beside her. “I was not a ham,” he said.
Jenny laid the extra sheets on her desk and quirked a brow at him. “Who starred in every production put on by the Mercy Elementary Players?”
He chuckled. “I don’t think playing the lead in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown qualifies me for Oscar status.”
“You loved it. Admit it. I’m surprised you didn’t go into acting.”
He let out a snort. “There’s plenty of that in the marines, believe me. Pretend the drill instructor doesn’t make you so mad you want to scream until your voice gives out. Pretend the food in the mess hall doesn’t taste like something left over from the Dark Ages. Pretend you don’t miss the people back home so much you can barely sleep at night.”
She toyed with the pencils in a white Hug a Teacher mug on her desk. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Miss…people?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “A lot of them.”
“Miss Wright?” A little boy in the second-to-last row raised his hand.
She got to her feet and left her desk, as if she were grateful for the change of subject. “Yes, Lionel?”
“How do you spell grenade launcher?”
“Why? There weren’t any weapons in the story.”
“I know. I’m writing about Sergeant Dole instead. He’s cool. I even got a picture of him killing the—”
“Lionel, that wasn’t your assignment.”
“Yeah, but, I’m writing a story.” He raised his paper as proof. All of the lines were filled in with neat, tight script. “And didn’t you always say it’s not so important what we read and write about, but that we’re reading and writing?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“This is what I want to write about.” He turned and replaced his paper on his desk, pencil at the ready. “So can you tell me how to spell grenade launcher?”
“Some interesting reading material for today?”
Nate saw Jenny pivot toward the woman who’d entered the room. “Dr. Davis!” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Apparently not.” She looked down her glasses, surveyed the classroom, then crooked a finger in Jenny’s direction. Jenny crossed the room and met the principal at the door. “What were you reading to these children today?” Dr. Davis asked.
“This is heroes’ week. Our first book was about a firefighter who rescued a family.” Jenny withdrew the novel from the shelf and handed it to the principal. The two of them moved into the hall, leaving the door ajar.
Dr. Davis flipped through the pages and harrumphed. “Then why are the children writing stories about war weapons?”
“They’re not—”
“Jenny is an excellent teacher,” Nate interjected in a soft tone, joining them. “She gets these students motivated and hasn’t taught them anything inappropriate. The grenade-launcher thing came about because the kids heard I was in the marines and one boy decided to write a story about me instead of the assignment.”
“I was about to explain the right way to do their worksheet,” Jenny said.
“I hope you don’t think it would be fun,” on this word, Dr. Davis directed a pointed glance at Jenny, “to share war escapades with these impressionable minds.”
“No, ma’am, I did not,” Nate replied. “Miss Wright, in fact, kept everything away from that focus.”
“Well,” Dr. Davis said after a moment. “That’s a relief.” She handed the book back to Jenny, then left.
Jenny poked her head back into the room. “Class, continue working on your assignment, doing it the way I told you to.” She gave Lionel a pointed glance. “I need to talk to Master Sergeant Dole in the hall.”
A few voices uttered the fatal “Uh-oh” as Jenny shut the door a little more to block prying eyes and ears.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.”
“Against Dr. Dragon Lady?” he said. “I think you could use all the allies you can get.”
Another teacher came striding down the hall. Jenny lowered her voice. “Nate, don’t come marching in here and try to fix my life like it’s old times. I don’t need you to take charge anymore. I’m a big girl now.”
“I wasn’t trying to do that.”
“Oh, yeah?”
He took a step closer to her, invading her space, putting a chink in the wall of invulnerability she had built up in the years since they’d broken up. “Yeah.”
With that one word, the air between them hushed. For a moment, she was lost in the depths of his eyes, her heart racing like a hummingbird. He grinned at her, the same easy grin that had always made her melt. The smile reached his eyes, softening the hard lines put there by his years in the military. For a moment, he became the Nate she remembered. The Nate she couldn’t say no to.
The Nate she’d—
Jenny heard the click-click of heels against linoleum and looked away. Dr. Davis was coming back around the corner, heading down the hallway toward her classroom.
Oh, no.
She considered grabbing Nate and ducking back into the room before the principal reached them—until she glimpsed a familiar pair of overalls coming toward her from the opposite direction.
Oh, God. The Animals Where You Want ’Em guy. He’d probably come to collect on his payment after all.
But no, he had something with him. Something smaller than a pig. And furrier, too. In fact, it looked a lot like—
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