Читать книгу: «The Summer Proposal»

Chapter One

“Really, Mr. Tarrington! This is most irregular! You should not be here.” The school secretary gave him a quelling look over the top of her bifocals that forty years of dealing with unruly grade-schoolers had perfected. To her annoyance, he didn’t even seem to notice.

“Yesterday was the day for parents to clear up irregularities,” Miss Boulton persisted. “Today is the day that the teachers have to get all the end-of-year records completed and turned in. Miss Raffet is much too busy to see you.”

“I won’t take up much of her time,” Caleb forced a reasonable tone despite the fact that he didn’t feel the least bit reasonable. But venting the turbulent emotions churning through him on a secretary, no matter how aggravating she was being, wouldn’t get him any closer to his goal. Which at the moment hinged on getting in to see Miss Raffet.

“Just see that you don’t!” Miss Boulton’s tone hinted at dire consequences.

She gestured toward the open office door behind him. “Miss Raffet’s room is to the right. Fifth door down. Please stop back here on your way out and let me know that you’re leaving the building. You wouldn’t want to get locked in for the summer, now, would you?”

To her irritation, her attempt at humor didn’t get any more of a response from him than her lecture. He merely nodded his head, gave her a perfunctory “thank you for your help” and left.

Miss Boulton watched him go, wondering what he wanted Julie for. Something personal? Something romantic? A flash of interest flared to life in her thin chest. Highly unlikely, she abandoned the idea almost immediately. Julie’s little students might love her to distraction, but in the four years she’d been teaching at Whittier Elementary, Miss Boulton hadn’t seen the slightest sign that a man might feel the same about her. Especially not one who looked like Caleb Tarrington.

She shook her head, effectively dislodging both Caleb Tarrington’s unwelcome presence and Julie Raffet’s romantic prospects from her busy mind as she reached for the internal phone.

Caleb paused outside the door the secretary had specified and took a deep, steadying breath, trying to organize his scattered thoughts. So much depended on him convincing the unknown Miss Raffet to help. If he couldn’t…

An image of Will’s pale face, his small features, rigid with fear he was desperately trying not to show, flashed through Caleb’s mind, and a fierce surge of love filled him. His son! Even after twenty-four hours, Caleb still expected the words to be accompanied by trumpet fanfare.

If only… Abruptly he sliced off the unprofitable line of thought. The past was dead. Over. All the regrets in the world couldn’t change it. All he could do was to try to shape the future differently. And the first step toward reshaping his son’s future was to enlist the aid of Miss Raffet. Caleb just wished he knew a little more about her. All his old friend, John, had said was that she was the best first-grade teacher he’d ever seen in his career as a school principal. That if anyone could help him, Miss Raffet could. But the question John hadn’t been able to answer was would she?

He’d soon find out.

Squaring his shoulders, Caleb marched through the door of Miss Raffet’s classroom. He paused just inside the large, sunny room, his eyes instinctively going to the battered oak teacher’s desk in front of the chalkboard. No one was seated there. His gaze quickly swept the room. The walls were stripped bare, and all the children’s desks had been removed. The space looked abandoned.

He walked farther into the room, not sure what to do. Sit down at the desk and wait for Miss Raffet to return? Or go back to the office and ask the elderly dragon masquerading as a school secretary if she might have any idea where Miss Raffet could be?

Wait, he decided. Facing the disapproving Miss Boulton again definitely qualified as a last resort. Besides…

He turned at the sudden thump to his left. The noise had come from behind a half-open door. A supply closet? he wondered. Could the elusive Miss Raffet be in it?

He watched as a woman slowly backed out of the closet. Appreciatively, Caleb eyed her trim hips, which were tightly encased in a pair of well-worn jeans. With obvious impatience, she shoved the door back and reached for something above her head.

Her action tightened the gray T-shirt covering her small breasts, outlining their perfection. Caleb swallowed, trying to ignore the unwelcome spark of sexual interest he felt.

Completely oblivious to his presence, she braced her slender legs and gave a hard jerk on whatever it was she was trying to get.

The thing she was yanking on suddenly came free causing her to lose her balance and land on her rear on the floor. A microsecond later, what appeared to be the entire contents of the shelf followed. Colored construction paper, yards of dusty white netting and some faded-looking plastic flowers bounced off her head and shoulders. Last to fall was a bag of gold glitter that broke as it hit her, sending gold dust everywhere.

It enveloped the woman, coating her light-brown hair and dusting her small, straight nose with golden freckles. Caleb blinked as the sun pouring in through the wall of windows behind her turned her petite figure into a radiant pillar of gold. For a heart-stopping second, long-forgotten Sunday-school images of angels welled out of Caleb’s subconscious. Then she sneezed, and the explosive sound snapped him free of his memories.

“Drat!” she muttered in exasperation as she ineffectively brushed at the gold dust coating her.

“Are you all right?” The deep velvety sound of a man’s voice poured over Julie, instantly smothering her annoyance. She instinctively turned toward him, squinting as she tried to focus through the glitter, which scattered at her abrupt movement.

Julie found herself staring at a large pair of black shoes. Not new, but immaculately clean and well shined. A part of her instinctively approved. Slowly, her gaze moved upward over long legs encased in suit trousers with a crease so crisp they must have just come from the dry cleaners. But this suit sure hadn’t come from the local department store. She studied the way the jacket molded his broad shoulders. Obviously hand-tailored by an expert. Although she had the feeling he’d look every bit as good in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Or even better, dressed like an Italian courtier from the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. All in velvets and silks and…

“Can you get up?” The worried note in the man’s voice pulled her out of her daydream.

Julie winced, embarrassed at being caught in such an unprofessional position by such a gorgeous specimen of masculinity. She studied his leanly chiseled features with a purely feminine appreciation, wondering who he was. Certainly not someone she knew. Or anyone she’d ever met. She definitely wouldn’t have forgotten a man who looked like the physical embodiment of every romantic fantasy she’d ever had. And a few she had yet to dream up.

“Did you hurt yourself?” he demanded, worried at her continued silence.

The concern in his bright blue eyes sent a shiver of response through Julie. If none of the normal, garden-variety men she knew saw her as a sexy, desirable woman, then one who looked like this guy sure wouldn’t, she reminded herself of a hard-learned lesson.

“I’m fine,” she muttered, taking the helping hand he held out even though she was oddly reluctant to touch him. But not only would it be rude to pointedly ignore his gesture, but he wouldn’t understand her hesitation. Any more than she understood it herself.

Even less did she understand her instantaneous reaction as his large hand closed around her much smaller one. Tiny pinpricks of sensation raced over her skin raising goose bumps as it traveled. Hastily, she pulled her hand back, breaking the disconcerting contact.

“You seem to be covered in this stuff.” He gently brushed her hair, dislodging both a cloud of gold sparkles and her remaining composure.

Hoping he hadn’t heard her quickly suppressed gasp, Julie hurriedly stepped back and made a production of dusting the glitter off herself as she struggled to recapture her teacher persona.

“May I help you?” Julie winced at the breathless sound of her voice. What was wrong with her? she wondered in confusion. She was acting as if she’d landed on her head not her rear.

“Not unless you happen to know where I can find Miss Raffet,” he said. “This is her room, isn’t it?”

“I’m Julie Raffet,” she said, watching with a combination of annoyance and dismay as his eyes widened in shock at her announcement.

“You were expecting a little old lady wearing a shapeless dress and orthopedic shoes?” she asked dryly.

“Not really, but on the other hand, I was expecting someone who looked old enough to have graduated from college. And John did say that you’d been teaching for years.”

“John?” Julie ignored her frustration at the proof that she hadn’t even registered as an attractive woman with this man and, instead, grabbed the thread of his conversation that sounded the most promising.

“John Warchinski. He was principal here a few years back.”

“Yes, I remember him. Although I’m at a loss to understand why he should be discussing me with you, Mr….?” Her voice rose, questioning.

“Tarrington. Caleb Tarrington.” He stared at her for a long moment trying to decide where to start. He hated revealing the abject failure of his marriage. An older woman, such as that blasted John had led him to believe Miss Raffet was, might have understood how a normally levelheaded man could have gotten himself into such a mess. But this woman…

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Julie suggested with her normal practicality.

Caleb grimaced, knowing that the beginning had been an acute attack of plain old lust on his part, but he could hardly tell Julie Raffet that. She looked as if she’d never even heard of lust, let alone experienced it firsthand. She’d probably be disgusted at his admission. Or even worse, think he was in the habit of letting his sexual appetites overrule his common sense and refuse to have anything to do with him. And he needed her far too much to risk scaring her off.

He decided to gloss over the beginning and concentrate on the present.

“The beginning started with a youthful marriage that didn’t—” Caleb made a gesture with his hand that conveyed a helpless sense of frustration “—work out.”

Julie searched his face, looking for signs of pain at the memory of his failed marriage. She couldn’t find any. Outwardly, at least, it appeared that he had recovered emotionally. But if that were true, then why was he finding it so hard to talk about it?

“I’m not doing this well,” Caleb muttered, caught between embarrassment at being forced to reveal what he preferred to keep hidden, and the knowledge that if he wanted to enlist Julie Raffet’s aid, he had to tell her enough to make her understand how desperate his need was.

“You’re divorced?” The question escaped Julie’s lips before she had a chance to consider the wisdom of asking. It wasn’t that she wanted to know personally, she assured herself. She was simply trying to help him get to the point.

“Yes.” The stark word sent through Julie a flood of contradictory emotions that she made no attempt to sort out.

“My ex-wife was an artist of considerable talent and, when she found out she was pregnant, she decided that marriage stifled her creativity. So she filed for divorce.”

Julie arched her pale brown eyebrows in disbelief. “She thought marriage was too stifling, but motherhood wouldn’t be?”

“Murna was into her Madonna phase at the time,” he muttered obscurely.

Wrong, Murna was into her lunacy phase, Julie thought acidly.

“And you let her have custody of the baby?” Some of the anger Julie felt at the emotional mess two supposed adults must have created for their poor, defenseless child sharpened her voice.

“Murna said that the baby wasn’t mine,” he said starkly.

“And you believed her?”

“I had good reason to believe her! But even knowing about her affairs, if I had just stopped and thought… If I had insisted on a DNA test…” His voice was harsh with pain, regret and self-condemnation.

“I see.” She felt an unexpected impulse to put her arms around him and comfort him. To try to ease the anguish darkening his eyes.

Don’t get emotionally involved, Julie reminded herself of one of the cardinal rules of good teaching. One she broke regularly.

“But all that’s history,” Caleb said. “What’s important is that yesterday morning without any warning my wife’s lawyer dropped Will off at my office along with a document from Murna transferring custody to me.”

Caleb’s voice was flat, revealing none of the tremendous upsurge of love he’d felt when he’d seen his son for the first time. He hadn’t needed the proof of paternity Murna’s lawyer had offered. His relationship to Will was written on the boy’s face for the whole world to see. No one who saw Will would ever mistake him for anything other than a Tarrington.

Caleb had wanted to throw his arms around his son and hug him. To try to explain why he hadn’t been a part of his life before. But Will’s rigid posture had discouraged any show of physical affection, and Caleb knew he couldn’t try to justify his absence from his son’s life by telling the child about his mother’s lies. A six-year-old couldn’t handle that kind of knowledge.

“To cut to the heart of the matter, Miss Raffet, the situation is this. I find I am suddenly responsible for a six-year-old son I know nothing about. Hell, I’ve never had more than a nodding acquaintance with any kid. Added to which, my housekeeper is an old maid who has never worked in a household with children.”

“Single,” Julie muttered. “We don’t say old maid anymore.”

Caleb didn’t even hear her correction. He was too intent on making her understand the gravity of his situation.

“But the coup de grâce came this morning when I asked Will what grade he was in so that I could enroll him in school for next fall. And do you know what he said?”

Too agitated to stand still, Caleb began to pace back and forth in front of the blackboard.

“Be careful not to get chalk dust on your dark suit,” Julie automatically warned.

“What?” Caleb glanced around as if surprised to find himself where he was. He gave her a rueful smile. “Then we’d be a matched set. Me in chalk dust and you in gold glitter.”

A set. The curiously seductive word lingered momentarily in Julie’s mind before she was able to banish it.

“My son said he didn’t know what grade he was in because he’d never been to school.”

“Kids say lots of things,” Julie warned him. “Especially at six. Their distinction between fact and fantasy is not very firm.”

“Well, he was dead-on with that particular fact! I called Murna to find out what was going on, and she said that she thought school stifled young minds. That she wanted Will to learn because he wanted to, not because he was forced to. So she simply registered him as a home-schooled student and left him to his own devices. She insisted that if I just leave him alone, eventually Will will learn everything he needs to know.”

“An…interesting theory.” Julie bit back her real opinion with an effort. Caleb Tarrington’s ex-wife sounded like the most selfish, egocentric woman she had ever run across. She must have been monstrously beautiful for Caleb to have missed what had to have been warning signs of her self-centered personality. The thought unexpectedly depressed her.

“Why now?” The question suddenly occurred to Julie.

“What?” Caleb looked puzzled.

“Why suddenly give you custody of your son after all this time?”

“Murna’s been commissioned to sculpt something or other in Venice, and she doesn’t think Will would like it there.”

Translated, it meant that dear Murna thought that a six-year-old would be too much trouble to drag around Europe, Julie thought angrily. So the woman off-loaded Will onto his father.

“Anyway,” Caleb continued, “when I realized that Will was going to have to go to school not knowing what all the other kids knew, I called John, the only educator I know, and asked him for advice.”

“And John suggested me?” Julie said slowly, beginning to understand.

“Yes, he said you were the best first-grade teacher he’s ever encountered.”

Julie tried not to be swayed by the compliment. But she was. John had never handed out praise with a liberal hand, and his comment was praise of the highest order.

“I want to hire you for the summer to teach Will what he needs to know so he can enter second grade next fall on a level with all the other kids his age,” Caleb said. “It’s going to be hard enough for him to adjust to living with a father he’s never met, in a town he’s never even heard of, without flunking the first grade through no fault of his own.”

“We don’t flunk kids these days.” Julie instinctively rejected the bleak picture he presented.

“So you plunk him down in the second grade where he can’t do the work and let him constantly fail?” Caleb demanded. “Is that supposed to be better?”

“No, of course not, and I sympathize with your problem, but I have plans for the summer.” Julie tried to sound firm. She did have plans, she assuaged her conscience. She was going to landscape her yard. And she was enrolled in two graduate classes at the university. And she had a stack of reading material six feet high to get through. Her entire summer was over-flowing with activities. Safe activities that wouldn’t threaten the secure life she’d built for herself. Something she instinctively knew Caleb had the power to do.

“You can name your price,” Caleb tempted her.

For one mad moment, a vision of her being enfolded in his arms filled her mind. Appalled, Julie shoved it aside. What was the matter with her? she wondered uneasily. Why did her attention keep drifting from what Caleb wanted to the man himself? She didn’t have an answer and that bothered her almost as much as her unprecedented physical reaction to him. She wasn’t used to her emotions going off on their own agenda. Usually they did exactly as they were told. Which was to stay firmly out of sight.

“It isn’t a question of payment,” she finally said. “It’s a question of time. I really do have a lot planned this summer.”

Caleb shoved his fingers through his dark hair in frustrated desperation.

“Please.” He gritted the word out as if it were one he didn’t use very often. “At least come and meet Will before you refuse to help. See what the situation is. Tell me what he needs.”

Julie stared into the swirling depths of Caleb’s blue eyes and was lost. His appeal, combined with the child’s obvious need, made her retreat from a flat refusal.

“All right, I’ll meet Will and assess his skill levels. But that’s all I’m promising,” she hurriedly added at his suddenly hopeful expression.

“Now?” Caleb asked eagerly, afraid to let her out of his sight for fear she’d change her mind.

Julie grinned at him. “You did meet Miss Boulton on the way in, didn’t you? The only way I’d get past her without having turned in my end-of-year reports is on a stretcher.”

“Tomorrow morning?” Caleb persisted. “Say, ten?”

“Okay,” Julie agreed, and then swallowed uneasily as her stomach suddenly lurched, giving her the oddest feeling that she’d just stepped off a stair that wasn’t there. She wasn’t actually getting involved with Caleb Tarrington, she assured herself. Not really. All she had promised was to meet his son. She’d do that and then recommend someone else to tutor Will.

“Thanks.” Caleb gave her a relieved grin that lit diamond sparkles in the depths of his blue eyes. Sparkles that momentarily seemed far more interesting than her carefully planned future.