Dare to Love (12 page)

“And we'd have more brain cells,” a bespectacled boy called out.

“We'd have more energy and drive and stuff,” someone else said.

Pretty soon the entire class, with the exception of one grubby blond boy who had refused to join the rest of them down on the floor, was calling out benefits to be had by staying straight. Some made more sense than others, but they were all equally important simply because the kids were calling them up from within themselves. Just like Doug had suggested all those weeks ago, the kids were buying into the program by coming up with their own conclusions.

If only Doug were able to feel half the personal satisfaction Andrea did as she listened to the kids. If only she could be sure that he allowed himself to feel anything at all.

It was so hard for Andrea to believe that less than a month ago, the man had been trying to go to bed with her. The way he'd been acting for the three weeks they'd been working together, you'd think she was sixty years old and married.

And there were times when she wished she was. She kept telling herself that Doug was constantly on her mind because he was her responsibility—and because it was human nature to want what you couldn't have.

But when she lay alone in her apartment at night, remembering something Doug had said, or feeling weak inside as she thought of an expression she'd caught on his face, she had a hard time convincing herself that he meant no more to her than any other professional challenge.

And then, as the morning hours loomed close and panic started to set in, she'd console herself with the fact that she'd been alone a long time. She was still living in a healthy adult body with healthy adult needs. Her attraction to Doug was a result of neglected hormones. There was nothing personal in it.

She'd fall asleep believing herself, too. Until the dreams set in.

* * *

“O
KAY
,
THIS IS IT
, guys. If we don't get ‘em now, we're sunk. I'll fake it to Brackwhite, you two head straight up the center and Avery, you get to the short outside so I can lob it over to you.”

Doug nodded, going over the play in his mind. He'd been a member of the precinct's intramural football team for only a couple of weeks. He didn't want to let the guys down now when their first big win depended on him.

He left the huddle and jogged over to his place on the twenty-yard line. They should pull this off without a hitch. They'd better. He didn't relish the idea of walking into the locker room with the braggarts from Precinct 11. He'd probably need to punch out one or two of them.

“Twenty-six, forty...” Doug was listening to the quarterback's calls, waiting for his signal. He looked over to the sidelines, judging how far he could go and still be in bounds, and was startled to see a boy walking off in the distance. A slight boy. A slight, blond, grubby boy. Was that Jeremy? He hadn't been in class all week.

Before Doug could tell for sure who the boy was, he'd been blindsided by the nose guard from Precinct 11 and was eating grass. His ribs ached. He couldn't breathe. His head felt like he'd bashed it into a slab of concrete. He forced his eyes open long enough to see that he'd blown the play. And that the boy was gone.
Damn.

* * *

“I
HAVE A FAVOR
to ask, baby.”

Andrea sat at the kitchen table and watched her mother roll out dough for homemade pasta, marveling for the thousandth time that she went to all that trouble when there was perfectly good pasta for sale down at Gibraldi's market.

“What do you need?” she asked, munching on a carrot stick.

Gloria started cutting lasagna-size lengths of dough. “Remember I told you about that nice man who moved in next door?”

Andrea reached for another carrot stick. “The one with the two little boys?”

“Yeah. They're such good little guys, Andrea. They march behind Mark with these little bubble mowers every weekend, helping him cut his grass.”

“What's the favor, Ma?”

“Well now, don't say no right off, Andrea. Just hear me out. You see, Mark won this mystery-weekend adventure for two. Well, he didn't win it, exactly, little Shawn did by accident. Anyway, Mark's not going to go, because he doesn't have anyone to go with.”

Andrea quit chewing. “No, Ma.”

“I told you to hear me out. It might be fun, Andrea. You arrive at this hostel in Cincinnati on a Friday afternoon and they stage this crime. You and twenty other guests have the place to yourselves, and all weekend to solve the crime. The winner gets a room for a whole week at the hostel.”

“Oh, great. So what would I and what's his name do with that?”

“You'd give it to him, of course, since he's the one who won the mystery weekend to begin with. It might be fun, Andrea. Just think, a real policewoman playing at solving a crime.”

“No, Ma.”

“He's alone and lonely, Andrea. He's an architect and he works at home so he can watch out for his boys. He hardly ever has an opportunity for adult conversation. He
needs
this weekend.”

“No, Ma.” Andrea picked up another carrot and started crunching again.

“His wife left him high and dry. He came home one day to find the boys alone with a note from her. She needed to take time off from family life and go find herself. So he quit his job, moved the boys to a new city where there weren't constant reminders of their mother and is doing the best he can to give them a good life. Don't you think he deserves one simple weekend away?”

Andrea could think of someone else who deserved a weekend away, someone who'd been all work and no play for weeks, someone she'd love to have to herself for an entire weekend.

No!

What she'd love was to find a nice safe man she could spend some time with without risking her heart, someone with other responsibilities and obligations taking up his time so he wouldn't need much from her. And she needed to find him soon, so she would quit being obsessed with Doug Avery.

“Sure I do,” she said, finally answering her mother's question. “I just don't see why I should have to go with him. Come on, Ma, the man doesn't even know me.”

But he definitely has other obligations that take up most of his time,
was her next thought.

“That's just it, Andrea. I talk about you so much that he feels like he does know you. And it has to be you, because he doesn't know anybody else here yet.”

Andrea wondered how Mark kissed.

“You mean he doesn't know anybody who's going to watch his boys for an entire weekend?”

Gloria had the decency to blush.

“Okay, Ma. You win. I'll go.”

* * *

T
HE BOY WAS THERE
again, hanging outside his apartment. He was there every morning, watching Doug from his world-weary, bitter, eleven-year-old eyes. Doug called out to him, but the boy didn't seem to hear. He just stared, daring Doug to make something of it. Doug put his briefcase down and started back toward him. He watched the boy, willing him to stay put, to trust him, but just as he was getting close, the boy vanished into thin air. He didn't run away, didn't go anywhere, he just ceased to exist....

Doug sat up in his bed, pulling a corner of his tangled sheet up to wipe the sweat from his chest. He'd had it again. The dream had been visiting him on and off for weeks.

The damnable thing was that he knew who the boy was: Jeremy Schwartz. He was the boy Doug had seen coming out from behind that bush his first day as a DARE officer. He was the boy in class who refused to sit with the rest of them on the floor, who refused to participate in the DARE program at all. Doug had done his best for the kid. He'd tried to include him. There was nothing more he could do.

But he didn't go back to sleep. No matter how sure Doug was that he'd done all that could be expected of him, the boy continued to haunt his dreams. And if Jeremy didn't figure in his dreams, Andrea probably would. The two seemed to take turns monopolizing his nights, until he thought he'd lose his mind.

Doug figured he'd tasted every inch of Andrea's body so many times these past weeks that he should no longer be hungry for her. But he was tasting something in his dreams that he'd never seen in real life. And he wanted to see her. To see her, to touch her, to make love to her until neither one of them could possibly ever have a need again.

Instead, he satisfied himself with being close to her every day, with soaking up her smile when she greeted him, with remembering the soft, full feel of her breasts the one and only time he'd ever been close enough to touch them.

Letting out a long sigh, Doug headed for another cold shower.

* * *

D
URING THE FIFTH WEEK
of the semester, Doug started talking to the kids about ways to say no. It was an easy week for him because he had the kids role-playing, matching types of peer pressure with the most effective ways to resist it. Other than offering a little guidance, his job mainly consisted of being an audience.

He and Andrea were sitting on opposite sides of a classroom on Wednesday afternoon, listening to a boy trying to use a short-term excuse to solve a long-term problem, when the loudspeaker above the door started to crackle.

Doug looked up, startled. Ordinarily the system was used only for morning announcements and the daily Pledge of Allegiance.

“Teachers, boys and girls? This is Mrs. Menlo. I want you all to listen very carefully to me and follow my directions as quickly and quietly as possible. There's been a tornado sighted nearby and it's heading in our direction. I want everyone to line up, single file, and walk,
don't run,
out into the hallway. You're to remain seated along the nearest north wall until further notice.”

Pandemonium broke out in the classroom and Doug knew a moment of sheer panic as he realized that, for the moment,
he
was the teacher. It was up to him to calm down twenty-six frightened children and get them safely out into the hall.

He headed for the door with the thought that he wasn't going to lose anyone and watched as the children scrambled for belongings, for escape, for each other.

And then an ear-splitting whistle cut through the tension. Everybody in the room froze, their eyes on Andrea.

“Mrs. Menlo said quietly,” she said. “Now I want everybody to find a hand to hold and line up behind Officer Avery.”

Doug was amazed at the effect her calm words had on the kids. Not one of them complained about having to hold hands—they actually seemed to welcome the contact. Andrea's understanding of what the children needed, her ability to give it to them, was something Doug still had a hard time grasping, even after seeing her in action for more than a month. What was even harder for him to believe was that her words had a calming effect on him as well.

He saw her grab his DARE bear on her way to the end of the line.

The children filed out into the hallway and walked, still holding hands, to the nearest north wall. They ended up in a little corridor near the janitor's closet. They were the only ones there.

“Okay, everybody sit.”

“Officer Parker? Are we going to die?”

Andrea sat down at one end of the line, Doug at the other.

“It's not likely that anyone will be hurt, Mary—even if the tornado hits, which it probably won't,” Andrea said.

Doug noticed that she hadn't actually answered the girl's question.

“How long are we going to have to sit here?” A boy in the middle of the line asked.

“Probably not long, but we'll stay here as long as it takes,” Doug said, taking the easy question for himself.

“I have to go to the bathroom. I feel like I'm gonna throw up.”

“Come here, Sara, sit by me,” Andrea said, drawing the girl beneath her arm. She handed Doug's bear to the frightened girl. “Try not to think about it. You don't really want to be in the bathroom with all those windows right now, do you?”

Doug heard a soft “uh-uh” and breathed a sigh of relief. He wished he had a few more of the little DARE mascots. A tornado he could handle, kids out of control he wasn't so sure.

The children sat quietly for a while, but they soon grew bored with the forced inactivity. In spite of his and Andrea's instructions, their voices rose higher and higher, competing with their neighbors', until Doug wanted to gag a kid or two.

“How about a game of I spy?” Andrea's voice rose above the din.

“I'll go first.”

“No way! You always wanna be first.”

“We'll start at Officer Avery's end of the line and work our way down,” Andrea said. She had the patience of a saint.

Doug was relieved to have the problem solved, until he realized that they were all waiting for him to begin. He had no idea what to do. He'd never even heard of the game. But he didn't want the kids to know that. He didn't want them thinking he was strange.

He saw comprehension dawn on Andrea's face as she looked at him, and knew that she was going to rescue him, just like she'd rescued the children.

“Officer Avery and I will be referees. Jimmy, you start.”

The skinny boy next to Doug rattled off the famous verse ending with the color gray. Doug waited to see what was going to happen next. So far, the game didn't sound like much.

It didn't take long for him to realize that he was wrong. The kids all got into the spirit of the game, trying hard to be the first to guess what Jimmy had spied. They gave as much energy to their guessing as they had to their earlier panic. Doug started to relax.

Half an hour later they were playing another game, and this time Andrea and Doug joined in. They were going down the line saying words, and each person had five seconds to think of a word that started with the last letter of the previous word. Doug's turn came. He had to think of a new word that started with an
X.

He never had a chance. Just as everybody's eyes turned toward him, their little hallway was filled with a frightening rumble. Several children screamed, a couple of them started to cry.