Page 1 of Teacher's Pet

FOSTER

Istretch and bend, trying to get the damn kink out of my back. I’m feeling every one of my forty-one years.

Today I’m working on an external stone-edged barbecue for a patio on a house on Wildwood Mountain. It’s a pain in the ass getting the concrete and stuff this far up the mountain to work on the patio and the outdoor kitchen that this rich asshole is putting in and I’m exhausted. He keeps changing his mind about what kind of material he wants or how he wants it set up.

I’m about out of patience and it doesn’t help that my daughter has been riding my nerves lately. Apparently she’s moving right into the preteen shit at ten years old. She’s snarky and moody and barely speaks to me on a good day. On a bad day, she’s so damn testy when she talks to me that I have to leave the room to make sure that I don’t get snarky back.

I know she’s getting to the age when she’s missing her mother. Hell, I miss her too. Karen was a wonderful woman. It’s been four years since she died in a car accident on her way to pick Harper up from kindergarten. I didn’t know anything at all until the school called me and told me that nobody had showed up to pick our daughter up and then I tried calling Karen only to get her voicemail.

I’ve still got messages on my phone from her that I can’t bear to delete and I refuse to get a new phone even though the one I have is cracked and dies after just a few hours. It’s not very reliable but I just can’t bear to move on.

I turn my eyes up to the sky and groan, rubbing my aching back. My muscles are killing me and I’m ready to take a damn break.

As soon as I sit down, I see Damian come around the corner carrying a huge piece of rounded log that’s going to be a fantastic live-edge dining table that he’s working on.

He grunts at me and keeps going until he gets around the corner and I hear a loud crash.

“Fuck!” He growls.

“You good?” I holler, taking a sip of my drink. I figure he’d have more to say if he wasn’t alright.

“I’m fine,” he snarls. “Who the hell left all this paint over on this side of the building? It’s blocking the whole damn place.”

“I think that was that little shit, Chris. He went home early with a damn stomach-ache that was probably a fucking hangover.”

He’s one of the youngest guys and he’s an absolute mess. Goes out every night drinking and trying to forget something but he won’t talk about it.

“Yeah, well, that figures. Little asshole.”

Smirking, I down the rest of my water and set my empty container aside. I’ll go fill it up again later. For right now, I just want to get back to work and hopefully get this fucking thing done so that asshole can’t change it again on me without facing some stiff penalties.

My phone rings and I drag it out of my pocket as Tom comes around the corner with that fucking smile on his handsome face that just makes me want to plant my fist in it.

I answer my phone, distracted as hell. I’m about sick of Tom’s happy smirks and the way he daydreams about his new woman every damn second of the day.

I don’t have one anymore and I’m pretty sure I’m never gonna find a replacement for Karen, not that I really want one. I had a good woman. I lost her. I don’t want that to happen again. I’d rather be alone.

I rub my chest as I listen to the squawking on the other end of the phone, finally realizing that it’s my daughter’s school.

“What did you say?”

“I’m sorry but you’re going to have to come pick up your daughter. She’s been suspended for five days for fighting.”

My brows lift and I suck in a sharp breath. “Fighting? I think you must have the wrong person. That’s not my daughter.”

“Harley is the one and she was caught punching the boy in the nose. He had a bloody nose!”

I groan when the man on the other end of the phone starts almost waxing poetic about our children being our future and blah, blah, blah.

“Okay, let’s say she did punch the boy. Why would she do that?”

“We don’t really worry about that, Mr. Marcone,” the principal’s stuffy tone makes me want to punch his lights out. Which I’ve never actually done. I’m a lover not a fighter.

Or I was.

Now I’m just a dad. A dad that’s about to go ballistic all over this guy’s ass.

“Okay. Well, it actually does matter and the fact that you have no idea what happened but yet are totally willing to send my daughter home over it doesn’t say much for you”. And that is putting it mildly.

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