by Day Leclaire
That didn’t sound good. Ty slanted a glance in Cassidy’s direction. So far, she displayed only mild curiosity. For his own physical well-being, he’d prefer she stay nice and relaxed. “So what’s up?”
“The school called.”
“And...?” A flailing elbow caught him in the ribs and he hastened to moderate his tone. “Oh, really? Why?”
“Oh, shoot. He’s fine, he’s fine. Sorry. I worried you for a minute there, didn’t I?”
“Just for a minute.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the boy. Not physically.” Laughter drifted across the line. “At least not yet But he’s gotten the teachers in an uproar over something. They’ve asked Cassidy to come to the school right away.”
“This can’t wait until tomorrow?”
“Apparently not. And Ty...”
“Yeah?”
“They want you there, too.”
Uh-oh. “Me? What the hell for?” Cassidy’s elbows started flailing again and he threw an arm around her, plastering her to his side. Unfortunately, her knees took up where her elbows had left off.
“You’re asking me that? You know the boy. What trouble do you think he’s gotten himself into this time?”
The possibilities were endless. “We’ll be there in a couple of hours,” he said, and hung up.
Now he had a choice. He could either escape the bed and tell her the news from a safe distance, or he could confine her tightly enough to escape serious injury. After the night they’d shared, he knew which he’d choose. He rolled over on top of her, wrapping himself around the most delicious piece of femininity he’d ever had the pleasure of holding.
“I’ve got something to tell you....” he began.
“I just don’t understand,” Cassidy fussed. “He’s been there less than a week. What could he have done in just a couple of days?”
Wisely, Ty kept his opinion to himself. “Beats me” seemed a safe response.
“I mean, he’s only ten. How bad can it be?”
Considering how well his answer had worked last time, he decided to try it again. “Beats me,” he repeated.
“And they want to see you, too?”
“Beats me.”
“What?”
“Oh. I mean, yeah, they want to see me, too.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I assume we’ll find out when we get there.”
The minute they stepped into the office, they were ushered into a conference room. From the amount of gawking going on, Ty had a really bad feeling about what had happened. A few minutes later, the principal walked in with a woman he introduced as Mrs. Lopez, the seventh-grade science teacher.
“Thank you for coming so promptly,” the principal said, offering his hand first to Cassidy and then to Ty. “I’m Kyle Peters.”
“Has Hutch done something wrong?” Cassidy burst out, clearly unable to contain herself a minute longer. The principal and Mrs. Lopez exchanged troubled glances and she groaned. “I know that look. What is it this time? Did he blow up the lab? I’ll replace the equipment, I promise. It’s just that he’s so smart and so curious—”
“The lab’s fine, Ms. Lonigan,” Mrs. Lopez hastened to assure her.
“And...uh...all the school’s computers work? They don’t do anything...odd?”
Alarmed, they stared at Cassidy. “Not as far as we’re aware.”
“Oh, okay, then.” She beamed in relief. “Well. I guess that just leaves the snake.”
The principal’s hands tightened around the folder he was holding. “What snake is that?”
“That coral snake he picked up the other day. I can explain. You see—”
“Er, no.” Mr. Peters blanched. “This has nothing to do with snakes.”
“Honey, why don’t you let them tell us what the problem is instead of scaring these nice people by guessing?” Ty suggested.
“Oh. All right. But if it’s about that time he turned everyone blue—”
“Cassidy!”
With a weak smile, she subsided. “Sorry.”
“It’s about his science project,” Mrs. Lopez hastened to say. “His former school told us he’d been assigned one and since it fitted in with our current curriculum, I asked to see it.”
Cassidy looked blank. “A science project? That’s it?” She offered a huge, relieved grin. “What’s he want to do this year? Gene splicing? Level five viruses? Cure cancer?”
“Not exactly.” Mr. Peters frowned. “I’ve sent someone to bring Hutch to the office so we can discuss this with him, as well. But first I thought we’d fill you in. I don’t quite know how to say this other than to come right our and tell you. He wants to marry you off to Mr. Merrick It’s a... a love experiment, I guess you’d call it.”
Ty cursed beneath his breath. Of course. That explained all the cute little stunts. Love...logic-style. “I’m gonna kill that kid.”
“I gather you don’t approve,” Mr. Peters said.
“Actually, I do approve.” What he didn’t approve of were the looks they were leveling Cassidy’s way. Like she’d done something wrong raising the boy.
“Perhaps you don’t realize the full scope of what he’s attempted,” Mrs. Lopez offered. She flipped open the folder in front of her. “According to his notes, he went to Yellow Rose Matchmakers with the express purpose of finding a—”
“A father,” Ty interrupted. “Yes, I know. I have from the beginning. My grandmother and I own the Yellow Rose. I was there when Hutch showed up.”
Mr. Peters lifted an eyebrow. “And you approve of this sort of manipulation?”
Ty leaned across the table so they could get a clear look at his expression. He wanted to be certain they saw just how serious he was. “I’m all for anything that will get Hutch’s mother to marry me. Hell, if pasting wings on cows and tying rockets to their backsides so they could be sho over the moon would get Cassidy to marry me, I’d be the first one in the pasture with a bucket of glue.”
In desperation, they turned to Cassidy. “You realize Hutch set everything up? He caused you to lose your apartment. He disabled your car battery so you’d be at Mr. Merrick’s mercy. He...” Mrs. Lopez blushed. “He disconnected your bed rails.”
Cassidy waved a hand through the air. Ty ducked. Mrs. Lopez flinched backward. Mr. Peters wasn’t so quick or so lucky. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. You see, I have this false body image and my arms are three inches—”
“Sweetheart? Let’s stick to the bed rails.”
“Oh, right. Hutch wanted Ty to come to my rescue. Like a knight in shining armor-type thing.”
“If you say so,” Mr. Peters said dubiously.
“Hey! He’s only ten years old. He wasn’t thinking about...he wasn’t trying to...” It was Cassidy’s turn to blush. “It wasn’t a bed thing. It was a rescue mission.”
“Let’s start with the apartment,” Mrs. Lopez suggested. “He caused you to get evicted. Doesn’t that concern you in the least?”
“See, you’re wrong there. We were evicted because of Miz Mopsey.”
“That’s the dog.”
“That’s right.” Cassidy tilted her head to one side, the beginnings of a frown puckering her brow. “How did you know?”
Mrs. Lopez tapped her notes. “It’s here under Plan B.” She slipped a pair of glasses on the tip of her nose. “I quote, ‘Walk Miz Mopsey past Mrs. Walters’s door and make a racket. Maybe she’ll notice for once.’” The teacher glanced up. “Unfortunately for you, she did.”
“Look...is all this necessary?” Ty demanded. “If Cassidy had gone in to talk to the woman, she’d have found out they didn’t have to move that night. Doris would have given them time to find a new place.”
“How do you know that?” Cassidy asked, her frown deepening. “Come to think of it, how do you know he first name?”
He shrugged uneasily, realizing too late that he’d given away more than he should have. “I didn’t think it wa proper that she throw you out in
the middle of the night So I talked to her about it when I went to pick up you car.”
“Ah, yes. The car.” Mrs. Lopez shuffled some papers “It didn’t work because of a burned out... Here it is. A caliper switch.”
“A caliper switch? No such thing,” Mr. Peters inter jected.
Ty nodded. “Yeah, I know. It was the battery cables.”
Cassidy rounded on him, catching him in the ribs. “You knew? You knew and didn’t say anything?”
Damn. “You didn’t want my help, remember?” he re torted defensively, clutching his side. “I offered and you said hell no, let the kid do it. If you’d bothered to ask, I’d have told you what was wrong with the rattletrap.”
“I did not say hell.” She turned to address the schoo officials. “I did not say hell. I don’t swear.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t say help, either. And since you didn’t, I didn’t.”
She swiveled again; Ty recoiled again. “Because you wanted to take me home with you. So you lied.”
“That’s right. No! That’s—”
“Moving along...” Mr. Peters interrupted. “Shall we talk about the skunk that got into the cabin?”
“Shall we not?” Ty suggested hopefully.
Cassidy folded her arms across her chest, the first safe move she’d made since they’d gotten there. “Don’t try to tell me Hutch is responsible for that, because I won’t be lieve you. He couldn’t have found a skunk and then lured him into our cabin in the little bit of time we were at Ty’s.’
“Knowing your boy, I’m not so sure,” the principal observed tartly. “But, in this case, you’re right. That’s no what he did.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Instead, he set off some chemicals that smelled like a skunk.”
“They didn’t do a bit of harm,” Ty insisted. “And I had a long talk with him about it and made him scrub the cabin from top to bottom. You’ll notice he didn’t try anything like that again.”
“You what?” Cassidy erupted from the chair, practically knocking him to the floor.
He rubbed his sore shoulder. Jeez! That’s what he got for defending her son. Next time, the kid could take the heat all by his lonesome. “What? What did I do?”
“You knew about all these things he did and never told me?”
Ty climbed to his feet “You caught on eventually! Remember when we ran out of gas? I told you then it was Hutch and you said we should ignore him.”
Hurt turned her eyes to pewter. “I’m his mother. You should have let me know what he was up to from the start.”
“Why? So you’d have an excuse to leave? Damn it, Cassidy. I’d just gotten you there. If I’d ratted on the kid, you’d be in Georgia right now.”
“You promised to be honest with me!”
“I think I see what happened,” Mr. Peters said. “Hutch contrived all these incidents and Mr. Merrick encouraged him.”
“That is not what happened.” Ty glared at the principal. “You’re missing the point here. This ten-yeu-old boy is desperate for a father. And so, in his own inimitable fashion, he decided to do something about it. Because of the way his mind works, he went about it in a very methodical manner, using logic and intelligence to try to—”
“Manipulate people. Mr. Merrick, I appreciate that you’ve put up with all this to help out your grandmother and protect your joint business interests, but you must agree it’s not appropriate.”
Cassidy slowly sank into her chair. “Excuse me? What did you say?”
“I am not doing this for my grandmother’s sake,” Ty interrupted in hardened tones. “I told you why I was doing this. Winged cows with rockets on their butts, remember?’
“Are you sure? With all the bad publicity Yellow Rose Matchmakers has received recently, I can understand why you’d be so accommodating to Ms. Lonigan and her son I suspect you can’t afford any more problems.”
“Oh, no,” Cassidy whispered.
Mr. Peters shot her a pitying glance. “There’s more.”
Ty’s hands clenched. How he wished he could wrap them around the principal’s throat. Everything he’d done could be explained. Though the way the school officials were doing the explaining, it would like as not breal Cassidy’s heart, not to mention his arms and legs. “I think we’ve heard all we need to.”
“I’m afraid you haven’t. Hutch told us about the re porters who were at Yellow Rose when he first showed up They’ve been chronicling his adventures. Were you aware he’s been sending them progress reports?”
“No,” Ty bit out, “I wasn’t.”
“Wait a minute!” Cassidy’s hands started fluttering again—always a bad sign. He shifted a few inches to the left. Mr. Peters and Mrs. Lopez followed suit. “I want to know what you’re talking about. What bad publicity? What has any of this got to do with the Yellow Rose?”
Ty gave it one last shot “I’ll tell you later.”
“No, you’ll tell me right now.”
“Okay, fine. It’s no big deal. A magazine reporter discovered that one of my grandmother’s employees—Wanda—wasn’t using the computer to make her matches.’ He fought to control his fury—with limited success. “I may interest you to know that her success rate outstripped the machines. But because we’re billed as a computer dating service, certain individuals suggested fraud was in volved. When it all hit the fan, my grandmother ran every last questionable profile through the computer, and whad-daya know? The computer confirmed Wanda’s matches. End of story.”
“Well, not quite,” Mrs. Lopez retorted. “You fail to mention the follow-up article and its importance to Yellow Rose’s future. You need them to give you a positive write-up, don’t you?”
For the first time since he’d known Cassidy, Ty saw her look completely devastated. Her arms folded around her waist like a drooping flower blossom. Worst of all, she didn’t move. Not a twitch, not a fidget, not a knee or elbow or finger out of place.
“That’s why you were so annoyed when the computer matched us,” she whispered. “With the reporters watching, you didn’t have any choice but to date me.”
Ty thrust a hand through his hair. “Yeah, okay. You’re right. I had no choice at that point. But then something happened and you know it.”
She bowed her head. “Hutch started manipulating us.”
“No, damn it all!” he roared. “We kissed. Remember that kiss? I sure do. It had one hell of an impact on me, even if it didn’t on you.”
“Mr. Merrick, please! This is a school.”
He fought his frustration. “Where’s the kid? Get him now. We’re leaving before you screw up my life any further.”
“Yes, please,” Cassidy agreed.
“Will wonders never cease?” he muttered. “She finally agrees with me about something. I knew that ninety-nine percent had to kick in eventually.”
“I do agree, Ty. Leaving is a good idea. Actually, it’s an excellent idea.” A travesty of a smile crept across her mouth. “I’m sorry about the science project, Mrs. Lopez. I’ll have Hutch come up with a new one during our move to Georgia.”
She said it so sweetly. So brightly. In fact, everything about her was bright. The hot blush glowing across the full sweep of her cheekbones. Her perky, Southern-syrup voice. The tremulous smile pasted on the mouth he’d kissed with such passion a few short hours ago. But brightest of all were her tear-laden eyes. It took every ounce of self-restraint to keep from sweeping her into his arms and carrying her out of the place.
“You are not moving back to Georgia,” he informed her through gritted teeth. “We’re engaged, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I hardly think this is the place to discuss—”
“You’re right.” He turned to the principal again. “But just so you know...just so there’s not a single, solitary question in your minds, I not only approve of Hutch’s experiment, I’m proud of him.” He climbed to his feet, sweeping Cassidy up with him. “He wanted a father. What could be a more worthy goal
than that? In this crazy world, if that isn’t the smartest, most practical scientific endeavor a boy could work toward, I don’t know what is. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m gonna make sure his experiment succeeds.” He slammed his Stetson down on his head. “In fact, I’m gonna make sure he gets a friggin’ A+ on it.”
If Cassidy had clipped him with a single finger, elbow or knee in protest, he’d have tossed her over his shoulder and been done with it. Perhaps she didn’t because she was expending all her energy in keeping her tears from falling. He grimaced. For a woman who never cried, she sure as hell was the cryingest female he’d ever come across.
Just as they exited the conference room, Hutch scurried up. He took one look at their faces and slipped his arms through the straps of his backpack. “I guess we’re going, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re going.” He caught Mr. Peters’s eye. “But we’ll be back.”
Hutch approached the principal and held out a large envelope. “Here.”
“What’s this?” Mr. Peters asked.
“It’s my other science project. You and Mrs. Lopez should like it okay. It’s about irrigation and erosion and how to make sure we have enough water to grow all the food we need. It’s not the one I wanted to do because right now I don’t care about anything but my mom.” His mouth curved downward. “I was just trying to make her happy, you know. And maybe get a dad.”
“But, Hutch,” Mrs. Lopez protested, “someone could have been hurt. What about your seventh experiment? I gather you were going to put that snake in your mother’s room. I realize you weren’t aware it was a coral, but—”
“Hutch?” Ty growled.
“I wasn’t! Honest. I was really just looking at it. Snakes scare Mom. I wouldn’t have taken it anywhere near her. I even tried to hide it behind my back until Ty threw a fit.”
“Then what was your seventh experiment?” the teacher asked.
Hutch shrugged, a hint of color brightening his cheeks. “I was going to put some of Mom’s bubble bath in the pool. I thought it would be romantic.”
Mrs. Lopez released a long, drawn-out sigh. “Give us a day to discuss this a little further, Mr. Merrick. There may be some value to what you’ve said.”
