Sealing the Deal (32 page)

His stepfather had joined her mother, taking his thirty-year pension from being a police detective and leaving the force. Now they were working together, writing books and running a blog about traveling in middle age. It was brilliant. Every trip they took was deductible, and they were able to go to the places they’d always dreamed of visiting.

Maybe Danielle Bradshaw had benefited from a mass exodus of older teachers with a promotion. “How old are you?”

Sweet Lord, he’d gone and blurted that out. He forgave himself because his curiosity was killing him.

She stopped and turned to face him. “Did you really just ask me that?”

“I’m afraid I did. Sorry.”

“Thirty-one,” she replied. “Any particular reason you need to know?”

Not at all surprised his cheeks felt flushed, he shrugged. “I’m really sorry. I was… curious. You seemed kinda young to be department head.”

Unlocking the door, she spoke over her shoulder. “I just got the job this year. You’ll be my first newbie.” She opened the door. “Here you go. Room thirteen.”

“Great,” he mumbled. Being a new teacher was tough enough. The last thing in the world he needed was to start out with an unlucky room number.

“It’s haunted, you know.” She tossed him an enigmatic smile.

“My room?”

“Yep. When the school was first built, this was a dressing area for the guys who refereed our basketball games. One of them collapsed during a game in 1976.”

“Heart attack?” he asked.

She nodded. “He died in this room.”

“Wonderful. Now I’ve got a ghost
and
an unlucky room number.”

Her laugh was as sweet as her voice. Some women had voices that grated on him. High-pitched. Squeaky. Made him want to gnash his teeth.

Dani’s voice was a pleasant register, her laugh husky and genuine.

“At least the heat and air-conditioning work in this room,” she countered. “My room is like a refrigerator all winter.”

“Where’s your room? I mean, you’re my mentor, right? Shouldn’t we be close?”

“I’m in eleven. Right across the hall. Don’t worry. If the kids get out of control, I’ve got a whip and a chair handy. Just scream. I’ll come running.”

His first classroom, a chance to start his career. Hopes high, Nate flipped on the bank of light switches. The fluorescent lights buzzed and popped, sputtering to life. One look around made him wish they hadn’t.

The place was horrible. Desks were lined up in institutional rows, all the seats a boring brown. The walls were what his mother always called “school beige,” and there wasn’t even a window to bring in any light.

Prisons had to be more inviting.

“Looks like I’m heading to Education Depot at lunch,” he said, talking more to himself than his boss. There was a shitload of stuff he’d have to buy. Bulletin board borders. Posters. A desk calendar. He was definitely starting from scratch since his mother had been a science teacher. None of her leftovers would really work with the exception of her
YOU CAN’T SCARE ME, I TEACH
poster.

“Nope,” Dani retorted. “Lunch will be with our department. It’s the only chance we get to meet before school starts tomorrow. You’ll have to go shopping after school.”

He frowned, panic tickling at his nerves.

He shouldn’t even be here. Nate had already accepted a job with a department store regional office, writing copy for their advertisements. He was supposed to start tomorrow. All the teaching jobs he’d applied for had been filled during the summer months, so he’d given up hope for this school year. That was as it should be. Teachers should be hired early enough to give them time to plan lessons, decorate classrooms, and gird their loins to face the students.

Instead, he’d received a phone call from Jim Reinhardt yesterday morning. Hoping to put his degree to better use than penning advertisements, he’d interviewed right after lunch and signed his contract first thing this morning. He had not a damn thing ready for the kids who’d be stepping across the threshold of room thirteen tomorrow to greet their new English teacher.

How in the hell am I going to do this?

“I’ll help as much as I can.” Dani laid her hand on his arm. “I’ve got your back.”

So he’d spoken the question aloud. Not a surprise. His former girlfriend said it was one of his less endearing habits. Of course, she had her own bad habits, one of those being her getting agitated with him easily and often.

Dani drew back her hand and moved toward the bare teacher’s desk with the grace of a ballerina. Her hair made him think of a dancer, too. Blond, even a lighter shade than his own. She’d pulled it into a tight bun that accentuated her slender neck.

He suddenly wanted to see how long her hair was, whether it was naturally straight when she let it down. And when she fixed her intense blue eyes on him, every thought he had seemed to fly right out of his brain.

Thirty-one. Eight years older. Nate had always been drawn to older women, probably because girls his age were so damned flighty. His one serious relationship had almost resulted in marriage, but his girlfriend’s behavior had changed abruptly after a miscarriage. She’d started going to parties, saying she needed to be young, that losing their baby had made her realize exactly how close she’d come to having to grow up before her time.

They’d broken up after dating less than a year.

Every date he’d gone on since then had left him fearing he’d never have another serious relationship. Did all twentysomething girls think going out and drinking themselves stupid was the only way to celebrate a weekend?

Nate hated going out. Drinking made his head hurt. Besides, he didn’t have too many close friends, so a night on the town would be boring. The friends he did have jokingly—or perhaps insultingly?—called him an old fogey. So what? He liked to be in bed by the end of the local news each night, and he was the ultimate creature of habit.

No, girls his age didn’t interest him.

But Danielle Bradshaw?

She
interested Nate. A lot.

For all he knew, she was happily married with five kids. That, and she was his new boss, the woman who’d be evaluating him to see if this would be his one and only year teaching at Douglas High. He had no business thinking about her as anything but a colleague.

The weight of the world suddenly settled on his shoulders. Tomorrow, six classes of eager new students would be sitting in those stark desks, expecting him to have a syllabus, a set of class rules, and a lesson to teach them.

What he had was jack shit.

Dani stepped over to one of the desks, her gaze sweeping the room. “I don’t know about you, but I hate having rows like this. I put my desks in pairs.”

“I can move things around?” The only classroom he’d spent time in had been when he student taught, and his supervising teacher hadn’t wanted Nate to do anything to personalize the room. That only emphasized the fact that it wasn’t Nate’s classroom.

She laughed at his question, and he felt his mouth twitch, threatening a grin in response. “It’s your room,
Mr. Ryan
. You can move the desks, the bookshelves, the—”

“Should be easy since they’re empty,” he drawled. “Not sure I’ll ever get used to Mr. Ryan, either.”

At least she got his dry sense of humor because she chuckled again. “When you hear it a hundred times a day, you will. And no worry on décor. I’ve got a ton of posters you can use.”

“Posters?”

“One of our teachers left a couple of years ago. Went on maternity leave and never came back. She left all of her stuff, and I didn’t toss it.”

“Typical teacher.”

She cocked her head. “Pardon?”

“You’re a pack rat.”

A smile lit her face. “I resemble that remark. But how do you know that? This is your first job, right?”

He nodded. “My mom was a teacher. I don’t think she’s ever thrown anything away. Always says she might need it for her classroom.”

“If she’s anything like me,” Dani said, “she never uses any of it. Right?”

“Right.”

“Let’s go to my room.” She herded him toward the door and flipped off the switches. “We’ll get you some stuff to brighten up this place.”

Although he appreciated her help, he had something more pressing. “I’d rather you hand me a stack of lesson plans for the week. I’ve got nada, not even a copy of the texts and novels I need to use.”

She shut the door behind them. “Don’t worry, Nate. I’m the other sophomore-level teacher. We need to sync our lessons, so for now, I’ll share all mine with you. As the year goes on, we can start to plan things together.”

Surely he’d heard her wrong. Share all her lesson plans? She couldn’t mean that. Most teachers seemed to guard their lesson plans as if they were printed on gold tablets. “Really?”

“Really. We’ve spent the last couple of years aligning curriculum. All of us share so we’re teaching the same things at the same time.”

“Thank God.” Right after the words fell out of his mouth, he realized how desperate he sounded.

“C’mon.” She started walking down the hall, the heels of her shoes clicking against the terrazzo floor. “Let’s go see what we can scrape up for this nightmare of a classroom.”

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