Page 7 of Welcome to Forever
Chapter 3
This didn’t bode well for Seaside Elementary. Ben had barely been here two hours and already he’d been involved in some sort of incident.
Micah walked right in, didn’t bother to speak to the office secretary, and headed straight toward Principal Chandler’s open office door, pausing at the sight of her—wearing the same fitted skirt that had hugged her body so perfectly this morning.
He glanced over at the wheelchair in the center of the room and back at her. “Where’s Ben?”
“He’s in class, sitting in one of the nurse’s spare wheelchairs,” she said.
Which was no doubt oversized for his small frame. “Is he okay?” Micah asked, his voice coming out harder than he intended.
She nodded as she stood and walked around her desk. “Yes, he seems fine. As I said on the phone, I’m very sorry about this, Mr. Peterson.”
“You can’t monitor every second of the day. I know that.” But she could make damn sure Ben’s teacher kept better control over her classroom. Ben had already been nervous about being the new kid. Micah could only imagine how he was rolling with Seaside’s punches thus far. But if she said he was fine, he wasn’t going to interrupt Ben’s first day any more by checking on him while he was in class.
He crouched beside the chair and inspected the tire. Last year’s chair had solid rubber tires that never would have gone flat. This one had pneumatic tires that resembled those on a ten-speed bicycle, allowing him to move over more surfaces, including outdoors. “Tell me again what happened.”
“A child stabbed it with his pencil,” she said, stepping up beside him. “I don’t think it was directed at Ben as much as an attention tactic. The school will pay for any replacement parts.”
Micah laid a bicycle repair kit down on the floor and started to patch the puncture, doing his best not to notice Kat’s long-as-summer legs standing a few feet away. “It needs a patch and some air, just like if you had a bike flat. I keep a kit on me at all times.”
“I see.” She shifted around, as if looking for something to do. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.
“Love some.” Micah had been up more hours than usual, which may have accounted for his outburst this morning. He’d been an ass, and he knew it. But Ben was his son and, while he was easy to love, it was damn hard not to worry about him.
Glancing over, he watched her grab two mugs from a cabinet, enjoying the view as her skirt raised two inches along the backs of her thighs.Bless the person who’d placed those mugs on the top shelf.But he wasn’t supposed to be looking at the good—and engaged—principal that way.
“He had a flat last month, too,” he said, redirecting his attention to the task in front of him. “The mobility guy who sold us this chair said flats could happen, but rarely did.” Shaking his head, he reached for the mug of coffee that she handed him. “I guess he didn’t realize how active Ben was. Especially for a kid with his level of cerebral palsy.”
She pulled up a chair and sipped her coffee as she watched.
Her high-heel shoes were gone, he noticed. There were a lot of things he noticed sitting at this angle. His man parts reacted without consulting with his brain first. His brain knew that checking out Ben’s principal was a bad idea. Clearing his throat, he forced his eyes back to the chair and started pumping air into the tire. He refocused his thoughts back on his son. “Ben might’ve said it didn’t bother him, but believe me, it does. He knows you can’t control what others do, but today’ll hurt. The best I can do is teach him to hold his chin high. It’s not as much fun to bully someone who doesn’t let it get to them.”
“That’s pretty good advice.” She held on to her mug with both hands, making her look too young to be in charge of a school. When he met her gaze, however, he saw what a quick glance of her appearance didn’t tell: It didn’t matter how young she looked, she’d already seen too much in life.
Which raised all kinds of questions in his mind that he had no business contemplating.
“Listen, I’m sorry about this morning,” he said, lowering his voice and turning back to the wheelchair. “Ben had a rough time last year. I just want to make sure he does okay here.”
“No need to apologize. And he’ll be fine. We’re in this together.”
In this together. Those words were foreign to him. Since Jessica had quit her role as mother, he’d been handling everything on his own. Of course, Kat hadn’t meant anything by saying that. She was a principal and he was a parent. In that sense, they were a team. But damn if something about those words didn’t make him ache. It also made him feel like running the hell out of her office, which he needed to do anyway. His phone was blinking, no doubt signaling a dozen messages from his squadron. “Ben’s wheelchair is ready to use,” he said, standing.
“That was fast.”
“I’m a pro at patching tires,” he said, relieved there wasn’t damage to the chair. Ben’s fragile ego was another story. “I’ll pick him up after school.” He placed his empty coffee mug on the counter and headed toward the door, feeling her follow behind him.
“Again, I’m s—” she began, stopping when he turned back. “Right. I already said that. Well, hopefully our next meeting will be under better circumstances.”
A few lurid fantasies of reasons he’d like to be called back to her office filtered through his mind. Reining in his imagination, he waved. “See you this afternoon, Kat.”
As he walked through the front office, he tipped his head at the young secretary, who was smiling like the cat who’d swallowed a canary.What was that about?He probably didn’t want to know. He had bigger things to worry about. Tonight, he’d have to break his son’s heart and tell him that his mother was going back to war—that she’d volunteered to go.
Micah climbed into his Jeep and headed toward the military base. If Jessica was going to be an absentee mother, he’d just have to be a better father. That meant no more dating women like the last one he’d gone out with—Nicole. And certainly no ogling his son’s principal. Even if he was interested in dating, Kat Chandler had a ring on her left hand, which made it as clear as the diamond at its center that she was off the market.
—
Dinner sizzled on the stove in front of Kat—a can of SpaghettiOs.
