Rumor Has It

Holly sighed and hugged her hard.

“I’m so happy you’re back,” Kate said.

“Even though I yelled at you in a whisper?”

“Even though.”

Holly squeezed her hand. “You know, if you’d asked me, he’s not who I’d have picked for you.”

Kate nodded. “I know.”

Holly stared at her for a long moment. “But I’d have been wrong. He thinks he’s an island. He’s certainly always been a rock. For me. My mom. Everyone.”

Kate nodded. She knew this, too. She’d seen this.

“But he’s never had anyone be his rock.” She smiled. “Be his rock, Kate.”

“Ms. Evans!”

Scott again. He was back at her side, cradling a lump of something in the front of his sweatshirt. “Scott, I told you not to touch.”

“Not touching. Carrying.” He revealed his precious cargo.

Three bunny babies.

“Bunny multiplied!” he said joyously.

Kate met Holly’s amused glance. “Really have to go now.”

* * *

By the end of the day, Dell had come by to check on the bunnies, and Kate had arranged homes for them when they were old enough to be separated from Bunny.

And she’d nearly recovered from the fact that people knew she’d slept with Griffin.

Nearly, but not quite

All she had left now were parent conferences. There had been four of them each day after school all week long. Today the first one was with Dustin’s parents.

Emily Anders was divorced from Trevan so the meeting was tense from the start. They sat at the art table. Trevan’s arms were crossed over his chest, his jaw tight, everything about him and his expensive suit saying, Pissed-off male.

Kate did her best to put them at ease. “Dustin’s doing extremely well in math and science.” She handed them Dustin’s progress report.

Trevan’s jaw bunched as he looked it over. “You’re aware that in order to play in his travel league, Dustin needs to maintain a certain grade level.”

“Yes.”

“So why did you give him a D in spelling?”

“That’s what he earned.”

Trevan gave her an intimidating stare that Kate refused to let get to her.

“This will take him out of tournament play until the next grading period,” he said.

“His homework and test scores are below grade average,” Kate said. “I’ve been offering to help after school, but you’ve turned that help down.”

Emily turned to her ex. “Is that true?”

Trevan ignored her and stared at Kate. “You know he has daily baseball practice for his travel league. It’s extensive and time-consuming.”

“Oh my God,” Emily said. “Are you kidding me? He’s eight. I’ve told you a million times, you’re putting too much pressure on him.”

Kate agreed. “School is important, too, Mr. Anders.”

“So is this,” he said, voice low, vibrating with temper now. “He has to do better.”

“Yes, he does,” Kate said. “Or he’s going to miss our next few field trips, one of which is tomorrow. He’s going home with some extra credit tonight. You could help—”

“Or you could help by taking some of this ridiculous pressure off,” Trevan said. “It’s second grade for crissake.”

“Second grade is important,” Kate said. “But my offer of tutoring is still open.”

“My tax dollars pay you to teach him in the amount of time you have,” Trevan said.

“You often taken him out early,” Kate reminded him. “And he misses valuable class time.”

Emily gasped. “Trevan, we agreed that you would no longer do that!”

Trevan’s face remained cool and blank, but pure temper sparked in his eyes. He’d slipped up, and he clearly blamed Kate for making that public.

Emily drew a deep breath, and ignoring her ex now, she spoke directly to Kate. “You’ve been very generous with your time. We’re grateful.” She rose and gave Trevan an expectant look.

Grim-faced, he rose, too. “Teaching is your job, Ms. Evans. Not the school play or Bingo Night or running through the park feeding all the bums. My job is parenting. You do your job and I’ll do mine.” And then he left the classroom without another word.

Kate let out a breath.

“I’d apologize for him,” Emily said into the silence, “but I no longer have to do that.”

Kate smiled and did her best to shrug it off. “I know it’s not easy to hear your child needs extra help.”

“No. But you’re a lot kinder than I could ever be,” Emily said, and left.

Kate didn’t feel kind. She felt a little shaken, a feeling that didn’t improve when she called for the next parents to come into her classroom for their conference and saw that among the others waiting for her was Griffin, wearing a guest tag in what she recognized as Ryan’s handwriting, complete with a smiley face alongside his name.

Eighteen

Grif questioned his sanity while waiting in the hallway of the elementary school for Kate. He’d had breakfast with Adam and Dell then spent the day working on the ranch with his dad.

It had been a good day. A damn good day. And he had no idea the last time he could have said that about a day with his dad.

He had things he could be doing and absolutely no business waiting here for a woman who’d already gotten what she wanted from him.

But there was something niggling at him. His sister had gotten into his head. She’d accused him of taking advantage of Kate, and now he kept thinking about that.

Kate had promised she was fine, had even joked about their chemistry still being a problem, but was she really okay? She wasn’t a one-night sort of woman, and now he was wondering if maybe she was just pretending all was good just to assuage his guilt. Maybe . . . maybe she was secretly pining away for him.

He watched yet another parent come out of her classroom. It had been some sort of parent-kid afternoon, and he’d seen the way Kate handled herself and others.

Effortlessly.

Every single kid got a kind word. Every parent the same. Never a lack of patience or an awkward moment.

Nope, she only exhibited those particular personality traits with him.

Which for some reason made him like her even more. He looked at his watch. She’d been on her feet all day. That had to be exhausting. And doing it while dealing with kids . . . well, that was Grif’s very own definition of hell.

But she didn’t look strained. She looked . . . sexy and adorable in yet another colorful cargo skirt, cardigan sweater, and leggings. Her hair was up, prim and proper today, and she was apologizing to one of the parents for having to wait to speak to her.

Grif watched as the parents filed out with smiles on their faces, each thinking that their kid was the shit. It couldn’t possibly be true, but Kate made them believe it.

“You didn’t like school much, did you?”

Grif looked down at Tommy. The kid was wearing jeans that were slightly too big on his scrawny frame so that when he walked, he had to hitch them up or lose them. One of his battered sneakers was untied. And in complete opposition to the bedraggled, vulnerable appearance he gave off, his hoodie featured the Incredible Hulk in all his green fierceness.

“I like school,” Tommy said.

This surprised Grif, given that Tommy never seemed to actually be interacting with anyone other than himself. “You do?”

“Yeah. The library’s full of books, and you can pick whatever you want. And there’s Internet on the computers in there so I can play games. Words with Friends is my favorite. I’d rather play on a cell phone, but my dad says I can’t have a cell phone yet, so I play it on my iPod Touch when I’m at home.” He shrugged. “And I like the brownies. And Mrs. Hinkle. She’s the cafeteria lady. She doesn’t make me eat my veggies if I don’t wanna.”

Grif nodded. “That’s a most excellent cafeteria lady.”

“You don’t like veggies either?” the kid asked, tilting his head up. As he did, his hood fell back.

There was a bruise under his left eye, and it looked new. “When I was your age,” Grif said, “I used to sneak my veggies to the dog beneath the table until I got caught.”

“You get in trouble?”

“Always.” It was the truth. Holly could have murdered someone and gotten away with it, but Grif had lived on his father’s shit list. It was just a matter of how far up or down on the list he was at any given point. “How about you?” he asked. “You get in trouble?” He paused. “Maybe today?”

Tommy went still then pulled his hood back up over his head. “No. I don’t really get into trouble very much.”

“Maybe someone caused you some trouble, then.”

Tommy didn’t answer that one. Instead he walked down the hallway and out to the playground.

Grif went with him and then crouched down to look into Tommy’s face. “He bothering you?”

“No.”

“Tommy.”

Tommy looked away. “I hit him first,” he whispered.

This shocked Grif into a short laugh. “Yeah?”

“He was picking on Gwendolyn. She’s in my class. He told her that her dad works for his dad and is a complete loser and that so was she. I looked for an adult like we’re supposed to, but there was no one.”

“And?”

“And Dustin was still too close to her, so . . . I pushed him, and then his elbow hit me in the eye when he went down.”

“That was nice of you to stick up for your friend.”

“No man left behind,” Tommy recited. “Even if it’s a girl, right?”

“Right,” Grif said.

Tommy nodded, then nibbled on his lower lip, pride gone, replaced by unhappiness. “He cried,” he whispered. “He tried to hide it, but I saw.”

Grif let out a long breath. “You have your iPod Touch with you?”

Tommy pulled it out and Grif took it. “I’m loading the Find My Friends app and putting myself on it. Next time you look around for an adult and can’t find one, you’ll be able to find me. You text me, and I’ll come. No matter what. Okay?”

Tommy looked awed. “’Kay. Will I be able to see how far I am from you? Like exactly?”

The kid was so much like Kate, with his need for the little details, Griffin’s heart clenched a little. “Yes, exactly. And let’s do this, too . . .” Grif loaded a good map app as well. “Now you can see mileage from one place to another, any place.”

“Cool!”

Just then Ashley zipped into the parking lot and honked for Tommy.

Tommy waved at her. “Gotta go,” he said to Grif. And with the resilience only a second grader could exhibit, he ran off.

Grif watched Ashley wait until Tommy had his seat belt on before ripping out of the lot, and that’s when he caught sight of the Lexus changing spots from the far north part of the lot to directly behind Kate’s car.

Someone else waiting on Kate, he thought, and then she was walking out to her car. When she caught sight of Anders, she stood at her car door while the guy approached.

Grif didn’t know what the guy was saying to her so he moved closer and was glad for it when he saw Kate stiffen. The dickwad was in her face, yelling at her about his son’s grades and some missed tournament. It wouldn’t have been surprising for her to be shaken at the confrontation.

But that’s not what happened. Nope, the curvy little dynamo’s eyes were calm but flashing a steely determination, her shoulders squared.

She wasn’t shaken or afraid. She was annoyed as hell, and it made Grif grin.

He loved her ’tude. The only thing that could improve this scenario would be for her to use one of her new self-defense moves he’d taught her to flatten the guy. Yeah, Grif would really enjoy that.

Kate glanced at Grif as he moved in close to her side, giving him a narrow-eyed look that said, Don’t you dare interfere.

Yeah, she was made of damn sturdy stuff, and she knew how to handle herself. She’d been born handling problems, and this was just that. Just one more problem in a long line of problems.

But that didn’t stop Grif from staying right at her back. He was close enough to catch the scent of her—a sexy-smelling shampoo, some sort of lemon disinfectant, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, crayons.

Trevan gave him a fuck-off-and-die look. “This is a private conversation,” he said.

“Then take it down a notch,” Grif suggested.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Okay,” Kate said quickly, turning to Grif and putting her hands on his chest. “I need a moment.”

Grif shrugged, easy. “Take as many moments as you need.”

“Alone,” she said.

“No.”

Kate inhaled deep. “Griffin, there’s confidentiality involved here. Give me a minute. Please?”

He stared down into her eyes, saw her courage and tenacity, and couldn’t say he was surprised. She was incredibly strong, much stronger than he’d given her credit for. Nodding, he stepped back. Not far, and not out of intimidation or hearing range, but enough that Kate gave him a nod of thanks.

Then she turned back to Asshole Dad of the Year. “I thought I was perfectly clear the other afternoon about what Dustin needed to do in order to get a passing grade,” she said. “It wasn’t a difficult task.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that maybe Dustin doesn’t want to be a baseball star. Maybe he did this on purpose so that he wouldn’t have to play this weekend.”