Andrea wondered how Mark kissed.
“You mean he doesn’t know anybody who’s going to watch his boys for an entire weekend?”
Gloria had the decency to blush.
“Okay, Ma. You win. I’ll go.”
* * *
THE BOY WAS THERE again, hanging outside his apartment. He was there every morning, watching Doug from his world-weary, bitter, eleven-year-old eyes. Doug called out to him, but the boy didn’t seem to hear. He just stared, daring Doug to make something of it. Doug put his briefcase down and started back toward him. He watched the boy, willing him to stay put, to trust him, but just as he was getting close, the boy vanished into thin air. He didn’t run away, didn’t go anywhere, he just ceased to exist....
Doug sat up in his bed, pulling a corner of his tangled sheet up to wipe the sweat from his chest. He’d had it again. The dream had been visiting him on and off for weeks.
The damnable thing was that he knew who the boy was: Jeremy Schwartz. He was the boy Doug had seen coming out from behind that bush his first day as a DARE officer. He was the boy in class who refused to sit with the rest of them on the floor, who refused to participate in the DARE program at all. Doug had done his best for the kid. He’d tried to include him. There was nothing more he could do.
But he didn’t go back to sleep. No matter how sure Doug was that he’d done all that could be expected of him, the boy continued to haunt his dreams. And if Jeremy didn’t figure in his dreams, Andrea probably would. The two seemed to take turns monopolizing his nights, until he thought he’d lose his mind.
Doug figured he’d tasted every inch of Andrea’s body so many times these past weeks that he should no longer be hungry for her. But he was tasting something in his dreams that he’d never seen in real life. And he wanted to see her. To see her, to touch her, to make love to her until neither one of them could possibly ever have a need again.
Instead, he satisfied himself with being close to her every day, with soaking up her smile when she greeted him, with remembering the soft, full feel of her breasts the one and only time he’d ever been close enough to touch them.
Letting out a long sigh, Doug headed for another cold shower.
* * *
DURING THE FIFTH WEEK of the semester, Doug started talking to the kids about ways to say no. It was an easy week for him because he had the kids role-playing, matching types of peer pressure with the most effective ways to resist it. Other than offering a little guidance, his job mainly consisted of being an audience.
He and Andrea were sitting on opposite sides of a classroom on Wednesday afternoon, listening to a boy trying to use a short-term excuse to solve a long-term problem, when the loudspeaker above the door started to crackle.
Doug looked up, startled. Ordinarily the system was used only for morning announcements and the daily Pledge of Allegiance.
“Teachers, boys and girls? This is Mrs. Menlo. I want you all to listen very carefully to me and follow my directions as quickly and quietly as possible. There’s been a tornado sighted nearby and it’s heading in our direction. I want everyone to line up, single file, and walk, don’t run, out into the hallway. You’re to remain seated along the nearest north wall until further notice.”
Pandemonium broke out in the classroom and Doug knew a moment of sheer panic as he realized that, for the moment, he was the teacher. It was up to him to calm down twenty-six frightened children and get them safely out into the hall.
He headed for the door with the thought that he wasn’t going to lose anyone and watched as the children scrambled for belongings, for escape, for each other.
And then an ear-splitting whistle cut through the tension. Everybody in the room froze, their eyes on Andrea.
“Mrs. Menlo said quietly,” she said. “Now I want everybody to find a hand to hold and line up behind Officer Avery.”
Doug was amazed at the effect her calm words had on the kids. Not one of them complained about having to hold hands—they actually seemed to welcome the contact. Andrea’s understanding of what the children needed, her ability to give it to them, was something Doug still had a hard time grasping, even after seeing her in action for more than a month. What was even harder for him to believe was that her words had a calming effect on him as well.
He saw her grab his DARE bear on her way to the end of the line.
The children filed out into the hallway and walked, still holding hands, to the nearest north wall. They ended up in a little corridor near the janitor’s closet. They were the only ones there.
“Okay, everybody sit.”
“Officer Parker? Are we going to die?”
Andrea sat down at one end of the line, Doug at the other.
“It’s not likely that anyone will be hurt, Mary—even if the tornado hits, which it probably won’t,” Andrea said.
Doug noticed that she hadn’t actually answered the girl’s question.
“How long are we going to have to sit here?” A boy in the middle of the line asked.
“Probably not long, but we’ll stay here as long as it takes,” Doug said, taking the easy question for himself.
“I have to go to the bathroom. I feel like I’m gonna throw up.”
“Come here, Sara, sit by me,” Andrea said, drawing the girl beneath her arm. She handed Doug’s bear to the frightened girl. “Try not to think about it. You don’t really want to be in the bathroom with all those windows right now, do you?”
Doug heard a soft “uh-uh” and breathed a sigh of relief. He wished he had a few more of the little DARE mascots. A tornado he could handle, kids out of control he wasn’t so sure.
The children sat quietly for a while, but they soon grew bored with the forced inactivity. In spite of his and Andrea’s instructions, their voices rose higher and higher, competing with their neighbors’, until Doug wanted to gag a kid or two.
“How about a game of I spy?” Andrea’s voice rose above the din.
“I’ll go first.”
“No way! You always wanna be first.”
“We’ll start at Officer Avery’s end of the line and work our way down,” Andrea said. She had the patience of a saint.
Doug was relieved to have the problem solved, until he realized that they were all waiting for him to begin. He had no idea what to do. He’d never even heard of the game. But he didn’t want the kids to know that. He didn’t want them thinking he was strange.
He saw comprehension dawn on Andrea’s face as she looked at him, and knew that she was going to rescue him, just like she’d rescued the children.
“Officer Avery and I will be referees. Jimmy, you start.”
The skinny boy next to Doug rattled off the famous verse ending with the color gray. Doug waited to see what was going to happen next. So far, the game didn’t sound like much.
It didn’t take long for him to realize that he was wrong. The kids all got into the spirit of the game, trying hard to be the first to guess what Jimmy had spied. They gave as much energy to their guessing as they had to their earlier panic. Doug started to relax.
Half an hour later they were playing another game, and this time Andrea and Doug joined in. They were going down the line saying words, and each person had five seconds to think of a word that started with the last letter of the previous word. Doug’s turn came. He had to think of a new word that started with an X.
He never had a chance. Just as everybody’s eyes turned toward him, their little hallway was filled with a frightening rumble. Several children screamed, a couple of them started to cry.
It all happened so fast that Doug never had a chance to think, only to react. He laid his body out across as many kids as he could cover, urging the others to stay as close to the wall but also as close to him as possible.
“Lie flat, and no matter what, keep your heads covered,” he hollered. He knew he was frightening them, but there was no time for niceties anymore. The next few seconds could mean their lives.
He didn’t know
where Andrea was. He hoped to God she was doing as he’d instructed. He didn’t know what he’d do if anything happened to her.
The rumbling started again, like a heavy wind was blowing things against the building or onto the roof above them. It got louder, then even louder. And just when the crescendo became deafening, Kyle Winslow darted away from the wall and took off down the hall.
Doug was after him in a flash, catching the boy just as he would have turned the corner and run for the side exit. Kyle flailed at Doug, landing a couple of good ones on his jaw and nose, and coming dangerously close to emasculating him with a wildly kicking foot. Doug finally calmed the boy by flattening him and lying on top of him.
“Stay put, you fool. Do you want to kill us both?”
He felt Kyle go limp beneath him, but he didn’t dare let the boy get up.
The cacophony continued until plaster gave way someplace nearby and Doug heard the horrifying sounds of the building falling around him. He covered the boy as best he could, knowing that he and Kyle were in a dangerous area at the hallway intersection, but not daring to move.
He thought of Andrea, of the time he’d wasted in not trusting her to see in him the man he was becoming. And then he thought nothing at all as a piece of drywall came loose above him and splintered across his upper body.
CHAPTER TEN
THE DEAFENING ROAR lasted only a couple of minutes. But it was followed by a deathly silence that was almost as frightening. Andrea lay at her end of the hall feeling the heartbeats of the children plastered beneath her, listening for the breathing of those she couldn’t reach.
Was it safe to get up? The children were going to need attention. Many of them were crying quietly. Some were probably in shock. From somewhere off in the distance Andrea heard a louder cry. It sounded like someone in another hallway was hurt. No one moved, too afraid of what might yet lie ahead.
Andrea heard sirens in the distance. Help was on its way. Which probably meant that the immediate danger was past. It was now just a matter of assessing the damage and getting the kids safely out of the building. She thanked God that their little hallway had remained intact. They had all come through safely.
“Stay put for a few more minutes,” she told the kids at her end of the line. “I’m going to see how bad it is and then I’ll be back to get you out of here.”
She got up, releasing the children beneath her, and reached out to brush Sara’s hair off her tear-stained cheeks.
“Try and relax, guys. I think the worst is over.”
She walked down the line, repeating her instructions to the children as she went, all the while looking ahead for Doug. She couldn’t see him anywhere. Had he already gone on ahead to assess the situation?
“Officer Parker?” The words were muffled by a pair of skinny arms.
“Yes, Jimmy?”
The boy looked up at her with worried eyes.
“Do you see Officer Avery, ma’am? I don’t think he ever came back.”
Andrea felt light-headed as the boy’s words sank in.
“Came back?” she asked, forcing herself to remain calm. The children were watching her.
“Yes, ma’am. Kyle freaked. He ran off. Officer Avery went after him.”
“I’ll find him, Jimmy. You kids stay put.” Andrea’s words were said on the run. If anything had happened to Doug, or to Kyle, either, for that matter...
She rounded the corner into what used to be a main thoroughfare of the school and stopped dead in her tracks. The entire hallway was a mass of plaster and dust. The ceiling was nonexistent. Only the brick walls and roof were still intact.
Her throat was dry, her heart pounding so heavily it was practically choking her. She didn’t see how anyone could be alive in that mess. She hoped Doug had made it far enough to get past it. There were no north walls here, so hopefully there hadn’t been anyone in the area when it had been hit.
She was debating the advisability of picking her way through the rubbish when she heard a moan. It was very faint at first, but as she moved toward the biggest pile of drywall scraps, it grew stronger.
“Help!” She heard the word again, coming from the middle of the thoroughfare. She continued to pick her way toward the pile.
“Please, someone, help me!” The words were growing stronger by the second as Andrea neared the pile of plaster. She fought down panic. It was Kyle’s voice. But where was Doug?
“Kyle?” she called.
“Over here!” The boy didn’t sound as if he were too badly hurt.
“Keep talking, Kyle, until I find you. Have you seen Officer Avery?”
“He’s here, ma’am, but I think he’s hurt bad. I can’t get him to move. He’s crushing my right leg.”
Andrea had pinpointed Kyle’s position in the pile, and as she drew closer, she saw a patch of dark blue—the exact color of the standard-issue police uniform she was wearing.
“Are you hurt at all, Kyle?” she asked, the officer in her taking over as she realized the woman in her could no longer face what she might find.
“I don’t think so. Except I can’t feel my right leg anymore. I think it went to sleep.”
Andrea kept Kyle talking while she pulled pieces of drywall from the pile covering them. She wanted so badly to ask if Kyle could tell whether or not Doug was breathing, if he could feel his heartbeat, but she didn’t want to alarm the boy.
Andrea couldn’t even contemplate the possibility that Doug might be dead. As she pulled and lifted, slowly uncovering his limp body, she could no longer deny that she cared for him—deeply, personally, as a woman cares for a man. At that moment, with Doug’s life resting in the balance, the fact that she couldn’t get involved didn’t occur to her at all.
Sweat was trickling down her back and between her breasts. Her arms ached from lugging the heavy plaster, her throat was clogged with dust and unshed tears, but still she kept plowing through the rubbish.
After she’d lifted a particularly large piece of ceiling panel, Doug’s back came into full view. He was frighteningly still. Not moving herself, she stared at him, waiting for any sign of life, willing it to be there. After what seemed an eternity, she was rewarded. There was an ever-so-slight movement. Doug was breathing.
“Officer Parker? Could you hurry? It’s getting really stuffy down here.”
“I’m almost there, Kyle. Just hold on a couple of seconds longer. Try to put your nose in Officer Avery’s shirt. That should help block some of the dust.”
She pulled away part of a two-by-four, and then a piece of what looked to be a heating duct. The duct had been resting against Doug’s upper body, and by the looks of it, might have protected his head from being crushed by the board.
Andrea found herself noting every little detail with a detachment she would never have believed. She wondered if she was in shock, but kept on working as if she were someone else looking down on the scene, registering every sensation.
“Is everyone else okay?” Kyle’s voice was starting to wobble.
“We’re all fine, Kyle. The hallway’s still completely intact. I can’t tell about the rest of the school. We seem to be cut off from everyone else by this cave-in. Hopefully it’s the only one.”
Gathering her strength, Andrea removed the last piece of constricting rubbish. Doug still didn’t move. He didn’t even groan. She reached for his pulse, and was reassured to feel it beating strongly against her fingers.
“I have to check him over a little bit before I move him, Kyle. If he’s broken anything we could make it much worse if we don’t move him properly.” She was running her hands up and down Doug’s body as she spoke, neglecting to tell the boy that she was looking for signs of a broken neck or back. To move Doug under those conditions could be fatal.
“Please hurry.”
“His legs seem to be all right,” she said, trying to keep Kyle’s mind off his own discomfort. She’d seen something she didn’t want the boy to know.
And as soon as Doug was moved, K
yle wouldn’t be able to miss the fact that his own leg was twisted grotesquely beneath him. His right leg had not gone to sleep. It was severely broken. She thanked God that Kyle was too numb to feel the pain.
“Officer Parker? Are you there?” The voice came from along the corridor, where she’d left the rest of the class.
“I’m here, Jimmy. I think the danger’s over, but we need a paramedic here. Do you think you can get out that side entrance and try to go around the front to get help?”
“Sure thing, ma’am.”
“Jimmy?”
“Yeah?” His voice already sounded farther away.
“Take someone with you and be careful,” she yelled.
“Is...is something wrong?” Kyle was starting to cry. Andrea wondered if he was feeling more of his leg than he’d led her to believe.
“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” she said, hoping she was right. She didn’t think Doug’s back or neck were broken, but his stillness was frightening. She didn’t even want to consider the internal injuries he might have suffered. She just knew that with Kyle’s leg the way it was, she couldn’t do anything more on her own.
It was only a matter of minutes before she heard someone coming in the side entrance of the building, but they were the longest minutes Andrea had ever lived through. Kyle was sobbing, and Doug remained as still as ever.
“Okay, what’ve we got here?”
Tears flooded Andrea’s eyes when she turned and saw a paramedic crawling across the rubbish toward her.
“Officer Avery’s unconscious. The boy beneath him is not.”
She saw the paramedic take a quick scan of Kyle’s leg. He lifted a handset from his belt and called for a splint.
“Has he moved? Moaned? Anything?” he asked, motioning to Doug.
“No.”
“How long has he been here?”
“I don’t know for sure. Twenty minutes, maybe.”
The paramedic had taken Doug’s pulse and blood pressure within seconds. And then his hands flew over his body, probably to determine whether it was advisable to move him.
Dare to Love Page 12
