“Then...if we do this for you, then you gotta come see us play. I mean, that’s only fair, right?”
A smile tugged at her mouth. “I promise, I will come see you guys play. Because you’re right, that is only fair. But,” she said when another grin flashed, “you are not doing this for me. You’re doing it for yourselves. Capiche?”
“Whatever you say, teacher lady,” he said with another grin before ambling out of the room.
Which somehow felt a lot brighter than it had ten minutes before.
Awesome.
* * *
By the time rehearsal was over and she’d forced herself to go grocery shopping—since unfortunately she was not on the food fairy’s route—Claire was so tired she could barely manage a smile for her landlord when she got out of her car. Although Virgil Kane hadn’t performed in years, he’d once been a staple in Maple River’s community theater, so he was beyond thrilled to have a fellow thespian living upstairs. Now, bundled up like a steamship passenger crossing the North Atlantic, the little man was wedged into an old Kennedy rocker on his porch. Rain, shine or freezing weather, come six in the evening Virgil was at his post, although what he expected to see in the pitch dark, Claire had no idea. But routine kept him sane, he’d told her, especially after losing his partner of nearly five decades the spring before. And the cold, he insisted, kept him from becoming a wimp.
“Hey, Virgil,” she said, setting down the bags on the top step and rummaging around in them until she found the package of cream cheese–frosted cinnamon rolls. “Got something for you while I was at the store.”
“Oh, now, honey,” he said, the barest breath of Southern caressing his words, “you didn’t have to do that—”
“Hush, they were on sale. And I know how much you love them.”
“You are such a sweet girl, honestly,” he said, taking the plastic container from her. “What do I owe you?”
“Please, they were two bucks. But you might want to zap them in the microwave for a few seconds, soften ’em up a little.”
“Gotcha,” he said, gently setting the package on his lap, then adjusting a slightly ratty cashmere scarf around his jowls. “Oh! I talked to Gary today, he said he’s directing the Little Theater’s Streetcar in April and I immediately thought of you. Because, honey, you were born to play Stella.”
Claire sucked in a tiny breath. A Streetcar Named Desire? Hell, she’d kill for a role in the iconic Tennessee Williams play.
“When are auditions?”
“After Christmas.” Virgil smiled. “Shall I tell him you’re interested?”
“Absolutely. Although we’ll be doing the big spring musical then—In the Heights, although I haven’t told the kids yet—so I can’t jeopardize that.”
“No, no, of course not...”
But as she let herself into her apartment—where the cat looked up from the sofa and yawned, clearly perturbed at having his nap interrupted—she was actually goose bumpy. Not that she’d necessarily get the part, but—
Her cell rang. She hauled it out of her purse. Local, but unfamiliar. Frowning, she cautiously answered. “Hello...?”
“You told the guys they could call you anytime?”
Ethan. In a low, rumbly, slightly pissed voice that made her goose bumpy all over again.
As well as a little pissed herself, frankly. Righteous male incredulity tended to have that effect on her. But as weary as she was, she sank onto the sofa beside the cat, who hauled himself out of his nice, warm, kittified corner to drape his purring self across her lap. Whatever Ethan Noble had to say, she was ready.
“I did,” she said. Bring it on, buster.
* * *
Ethan’s first thought, when Roland and Zach told him at practice about their meeting with Claire, was that the woman had lost her mind, giving her private number to kids she barely knew. But before he could say as much, she said, “And how, exactly, did you get my number?”
From the kitchen, he heard the sounds of the twins’ bickering, Juliette’s lame attempts to shush them, Bella’s screeches about God knew what. Barney wedged his nose through the cracked-open door to what had at one time been Merri’s office, clearly seeking refuge. “It’s on file. Not like it’s any secret.”
“Oh. Right—”
“For the staff. Not for students. Seriously, what’s up with getting that personal?”
“Says the guy who apparently staged a very personal intervention a few years back to save DeVon White’s butt.”
Crap. “Roland told you that?”
“He did... Omigosh—what was that?”
The crash was loud enough to make Ethan’s head vibrate. But loud like a pot hitting the wood floor, not the ominous shattering of glass. “The kids are in the kitchen. Gravity happens. And DeVon saved his own butt. All I did was...” He paused.
“Light a fire under it?”
The dog stood on his hind legs to paw Ethan’s lap, grinning blissfully when Ethan scratched his head. “Something like that, yeah. But that was different. Their dad’s younger brother and I were on the team together, we hung out at each other’s houses. So we already had a history. You don’t know these boys from squat—”
“I somehow doubt they’re gonna stalk me, Ethan. And my ex used to sigh like that, jeebus.”
“I’m beginning to see why. And that’s not the point—”
“I’m not an idiot, Ethan, it’s not like I invited them home. And anyway, you want them to stay on the team, I want them to pass my class. And maybe, as a side benefit, to realize their heads are useful for something besides filling out a football helmet. I’d call that a win-win, wouldn’t you?”
Ethan rubbed the space between his brows. What clearly he—or anybody else, he suspected—wouldn’t win was an argument with this woman. Except then something occurred to him. “Nobody’s ever gone out of their way like that for them before.”
“Other than you, you mean?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because my job depends on my performance. Meaning it depends on my team’s performance. So I have... Whaddyacallit. Incentive. To, you know, stay employed. So my own kids don’t starve.”
Her laugh startled him. “And you are so full of it. You think I don’t hear how those boys talk about you? See how they look up to you? Because they know you care about them. As people, not only players. So don’t give me this saving-my-job crap, ’cause I’m not buying it.”
Something fisted in his chest. A memory, most likely. Of the last person who’d championed him like that. Not that his family didn’t, of course. Always had. But this...
“Feisty little thing, aren’t you?”
“Not so little,” she muttered. “But...yeah. Because I want the best for these kids, too. All of them.” He heard her take a breath. “My parents... They may not have always understood me, but they were still one hundred percent behind whatever I wanted to do. Every kid deserves that. Right?”
The dog got down, clicked out of the room. Ethan leaned back in the padded rolling chair, idly looking at the bulletin board smothered with Merri’s handwritten to-do lists and schedules and what-all he’d never bothered to take down. And, in front of the board, a dozen boxes packed up and ready to ship from Jules’s little eBay business. He wasn’t stupid; he could hear subtext as well as the next person. He could also choose to ignore it. “So this really isn’t only a job for you?”
“I told you it wasn’t. Oh, my gosh...if I’d only wanted ‘a job,’ I could think of a dozen things easier than teaching. Like becoming one of those dudes who swallows knives.”
“Or trying to make it as an actress?”
A moment passed before she said, “I’m still an actress, Ethan. Just not one pounding the streets of New York, begging for scraps from any pr
oducer or director who’ll give me ten seconds of his or her time—”
The boys burst into the office, demanding Ethan immediately arbitrate a heated disagreement about who chose the next video game to play. Underneath a galaxy of freckles nearly the same color as his hair, pink splotches bloomed across Finn’s cheeks.
“You got to pick last time, it’s not fair!”
“I did not! You did!” Harry glowered, his perpetually tousled dark blond hair even spikier than usual. “And Mario Kart’s for little kids—”
“It is not! Is it, Dad?”
“Is, too—!”
“Guys!” Ethan pointed to his phone. “Trying to have a conversation here.”
“But—”
“We’ll settle this later. And it’s almost dinnertime, so go wash up.” He waited until, both grumbling, they slogged out of the room before saying to Claire, “Sorry. You were saying—?”
“That happen a lot?”
“What? The fighting or the interrupting?”
“Whichever.”
“Yes to both.” Leaning forward with his elbows on the desk, Ethan released a tired chuckle. “To be honest, I haven’t had an uninterrupted phone call at home since... In a long time. Or a meal or night’s sleep either, come to think of it.”
“Wow.”
“What can I say, it comes with the territory. But you know, one day they’ll all be gone and...the silence will probably drive me insane. But where were we?” he said, sitting up again.
“Um, you’re obviously busy—”
“The kids will all still be here, trust me. Unless I’m keeping you...?”
“No, no...not at all.”
“Then you were saying something about...giving up on New York?”
She paused, then said, “Not so sure I gave up on New York as I came to my senses, maybe? Which I wouldn’t have done if circumstances hadn’t brought me back here. Gave me some space to look more objectively at my life. Because sometimes I think we keep doing things out of habit instead of rethinking whether or not we’re still moving in the right direction. Whether we’re still moving at all. And after my mother died I realized whatever I did next was entirely up to me. That my options were pretty wide-open, actually.”
Then she chuckled. “Well, within reason. It’s probably a pretty safe bet I’ll never be a concert pianist. But I did, and do, have a lot more choices than I might’ve thought at one time. And right now, teaching... It really is filling something in me I didn’t even know was empty—”
“Daddy?” Bella burst through the door, wearing a hoodie, a sparkly headband and a tutu. “Miss Louise says you have to watch me practice!”
“After dinner, sweetie, okay?”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” he said, his chest tightening when she ran over to give him a hug, then dashed out again. “Anyway,” he said over Claire’s chuckle. “Right now? Meaning your move back here isn’t permanent?”
She snorted. “I think I’ve got a few minutes before I start thinking in terms of this is it. So who knows? Maybe I’ll try New York again, find a new agent, start over. Or go out to the West Coast, see what’s up out there. In the meantime, I’m happy with things as they are.”
“So...no regrets?”
“About not taking Broadway by storm, you mean? It was a shot, Ethan. And I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.” She paused. “No matter how many times I felt chewed up and spit out again.”
“Why?” he asked, thinking about Juliette, her wide-eyed enthusiasm, her innocence, and his chest cramped. “Why would you choose to put yourself through that?”
Claire was quiet for a long moment before she said, “The same reason you went into the military, I imagine.”
Ethan bristled. “Hardly the same thing.”
“And yet, oddly—” he could hear the smile in her voice “—we both use the term theater to describe where we do our jobs.”
“Okay, that’s really pushing it—”
“And considering the work the USO has done for decades to boost soldiers’ morale? To make them remember there’s something worth fighting for? I don’t mean to imply our choices are, or were, equal, only that they’re equally valid.”
“I’m not sure—”
“I mean, when I look into those kids’ eyes in my classes, I think, I’ve got something to share with them, something real, something that goes way beyond how to write an essay or analyze Of Mice and Men. Because when I see that painfully shy kid shuck off his or her fear—of being criticized, of feeling vulnerable—and take command of the stage, or even the front of the classroom, there’s no better feeling in the world—”
Now it was Jules, her face flushed, her top splotched with various food stains. “Dinner’s ready!”
“Be right there,” he answered. Then, to Claire, “Now I have go, but...okay. I’ll admit, you make some good points.”
Her laugh was low. One might almost say...seductive. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And if they need a coach for the debate team? You would totally rock it.”
She chuckled again. “So. Still have issues about my giving my number to the guys?”
“Yes. But I get why you did it. And...thanks.”
“No problem. Oh, and I promised Roland I’d come to a game. See for myself what the fuss is all about. From a grown-up perspective, I mean. So you tell those two goofballs I expect them to play their asses off on Friday,” she said, then hung up as Ethan met his oldest daughter’s very curious gaze. Stanching his smile, he pawed through the mail his mother-in-law had left on the desk earlier. Mostly junk, except for the electric bill, which he ripped open, trying not to wince. Old houses had charm, but they also had zilch energy efficiency—
“Who was that?”
“Miss Jacobs,” Ethan said as he stiffly got to his feet, lightly bopping the top of his firstborn’s head with the mail destined for the recycle bin. “School stuff. So what’s for dinner? It smells great....”
But as he followed his chatterbox firstborn back to the kitchen, he realized that, for those few minutes while he’d chatted with Claire Jacobs? He’d felt...almost good. And you know what? Sometimes, life was all about the moment.
Especially when that was all it was, or ever would be.
* * *
Claire peeled the cat off her lap to finally put her groceries away, the apartment’s silence enveloping her like a hug. After a day of yammering kids and brain-jarring bells, the peace of her own space was a balm to her soul. Truly. Tossing her salad stuff in the fridge, she thought of how often Ethan’s kids had interrupted him, what he’d said about never getting a full night’s sleep, of the constant noise and drama he lived with, day in and day out, and she smiled. Because she did not envy him one bit, no, she didn’t.
Although—she dug a microwave dinner out of her freezer, kneed shut the bottom drawer—he did seem to have it all in hand, didn’t he? Sure, he sounded a little tired—what parent didn’t?—but she heard patience and humor and love in his voice. So much love...
She forked the plastic overwrap, shoved the tray into the microwave and her eyes stung. What the frack?
Claire looked from her tidy little kitchen to her tidy little living room, silent except for the heat humming through the vents, the microwave’s whirring. Wally’s purr, as he rubbed against her legs, begging. This was the life she’d chosen, a life where no one touched the TV remote except her, where if she wanted to have popcorn for dinner, she could. A life where she didn’t have to clean up after anyone else or fight for the bedclothes or argue about whether or not to leave the window open.
The microwave’s beep pierced her skull. She wrenched open the door, swearing when she pulled out the steaming-hot dinner and plunked it on a plastic plate. Through the closed window, she heard muffled laug
hter. A couple passing by, she saw when she glanced out. Arm in arm, her head against his shoulder. And she saw their future, a wedding and babies, of teenagers learning to drive and graduations and more weddings and grandbabies—
“Jeez, what is wrong with you?” Claire muttered as she snatched her dinner off the counter and marched the whole ten feet to her sofa, where she curled up and grabbed the remote to watch something mindless and silly and borderline appalling in its mediocrity, because she could.
And because anything was better than the silence.
Chapter Five
“Miss Jacobs!”
Wearing everything she owned and still about to freeze her tushie off, Claire turned in the deafening crowd surging toward the stadium entrance to see Rosie waving over her head as if she were trying to signal a ship from the shore of a deserted island. Eventually Claire thumped and bumped her way through the bodies to Juliette’s grinning friend, her earmuffs barely visible in her thick, windblown hair.
“At first I wasn’t sure it was you. Because, you know, I’ve never seen you at a game before.” Her smile somehow grew brighter. “You here with anybody? ’Cause you could totally sit with us, if you want.”
“Actually, I’m not.” And she’d so not been looking forward to freezing to death all by her lonesome. Not that she didn’t know anyone else, obviously—she was guessing at least ninety percent of the school was there—but it was clear they’d all come in groups. “So I’d love to sit with your family—”
“Oh, Dad works nights so Mom has to stay home with the younger ones. I meant with Juliette and them. Come on,” she said, tugging Claire through the crowd. “Jules just texted that they’re already here.”
Since declining would be beyond rude, Claire meekly followed, breathing in a lungful of cold, crisp, popcorn-and-nachos-scented air when they emerged from the cement stairwell into the bleachers. Definitely not what she’d expected, let alone planned, for the evening, but she was instantly caught up in the spectacle of it all—the bright lights haloing against the almost black sky, the mouthwatering scent of junk food, the thrum of anticipation vibrating from the stands as she and Rosie threaded their way through heavy coats and blanketed knees to get to the others.
Harlequin Special Edition November 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Weaver Christmas GiftThe Soldier's Holiday HomecomingSanta's Playbook Page 47
