by Kathy Love
“I got twenty-eight kids out there, and I can’t do it alone.”
Jo nodded, knowing full well that was the truth. She was amazed Cherise could do as well as she had been.
“I’ll be right out to help,” Jo said, sliding her glasses up and turning back to her computer to save her latest entries. Entries that revealed they were further away from getting another full-time daycare teacher than she’d hoped.
She clicked Save, and the ancient computer hummed and rattled and did this pausing thing that 50 percent of the time resulted in a total freeze-up.
“Mmm, girl, you can’t take on director of this place and my assistant. That’s two full-time jobs, and this place isn’t ever gonna get ahead without you trying to get us some funding and finding volunteers and setting up better programs.” Cherise raised an eyebrow after she was finished, as if daring Jo to deny those facts.
“I know,” Jo agreed with a sigh. “But for now, we have to do what we have to do.” She rose, a wave of lightheadedness making her catch herself on the edge of the desk.
“You all right?” Cherise took a step toward her, but Jo raised a hand to stop her.
“I’m fine. Just not getting enough sleep.”
Cherise crossed her arms across her plentiful bosom and made a tsking sound. “Not eatin’ enough, either, if you ask me.”
Jo laughed. “I eat.”
Cherise raised that dark eyebrow that spoke as loudly as the woman herself.
“But I’ll eat more,” Jo said dutifully.
She followed Cherise to the large room they used as the daycare “classroom.” The walls were decorated with flowers and butterflies and bees that Cherise had made herself, probably three or four years ago. The edges were curled, the colors faded, but they were better than nothing. And Jo chose to see the curling as more of a 3-D effect than the signs of age.
She grimaced. Well, she tried to see it that way.
At several worn wooden tables, kids between the ages of two and five sat eating their snacks. Well, «sat» made the state of affairs sound orderly and peaceful, when in fact most of the kids squirmed and pushed and chattered away. Very little snack eating seemed to be involved.
Lettie, a woman who had to be eighty-five if she was a day and who was nearly totally deaf stood sentry over the wild scene. Occasionally she’d point to one of the children with a long, bony finger and gesture for them to sit down. The child would obey, for about a half a second, then he or she would be again wiggling off the bench, giggling and ignoring the old lady. Which, half the time, Lettie didn’t notice anyway, because she was darned near blind, too.
But she showed up almost every day, and beggars couldn’t be choosers. Which Jo repeated yet again to Cherise, when her full-time teacher muttered, “Damned, Lettie. The old bat is practically a mummy.”
“Can’t even leave to use the bathroom without all hell breakin’ loose,” Cherise said, then headed toward the two tables, clapping her hands loudly as she approached the kids. “Everyone find your places!”
As their drill sergeant had returned, the children found their seats and snacks, although there was still plenty of fidgeting and giggling.
Jo moved forward to pitch in. She wrestled with a couple juice boxes and drink straws. She opened a yogurt. She wiped a runny nose or two. As she moved around helping where she could, frustration replaced any sense of satisfaction in giving her assistance.
All Cherise managed to do with these kids was glorified babysitting. She just didn’t have the time or the help to do projects with them. They colored and played in the courtyard. They had some puzzles and some games, but these kids needed and deserved a daycare that would get them ready for school.
Jo set the yogurt she’d just opened down in front of Damon, a particularly cheeky little four-year-old.
“I can’t eat that,” he informed her adamantly.
“Yes, you can,” Jo said. She knew that Damon’s mother was alone and every cent she had was precious to her. No food could go wasted, just because Damon was feeling contrary. She pushed the yogurt toward him and waited while he reluctantly picked up his spoon and dipped the very tip into the pink custard, then put it in his mouth with a horrendous twist of his face.
“Jo?”
Jo straightened, her heart grinding to a complete stop as she recognized the voice, even as she told herself she couldn’t. Slowly she turned.
Maksim stood in the midst of the curled, faded flowers and bees, sporting designer slacks and a perfectly tailored shirt that showed off his flawless physique to a tee.
A slow smile unfurled over his equally perfect lips as he saw her shock.
“Hi.”
Jo blinked. Was that all he could say? What the hell was he doing here? Her first impulse was to shove him out of the shabby classroom that just managed to further showcase his utter perfection.
Instead she pushed at the edge of her glasses and scowled at him.
“What are you doing here?”
Maksim’s smiled deepened as if she’d greeted him with warmth rather than shocked disdain.
“I was in the neighborhood.”
Jo’s scowl creased into a frown. Was he serious?
“Well,” she said slowly since it was clear he’d lost his mind, and might have trouble comprehending. “I’m at work, so I really don’t have time to chat at the moment.” She jerked her head toward the children. For the first time since they’d arrived this morning, all their little attentions were focused on Jo and her unexpected visitor.
Leave it to children to pay attention when you don’t want them to, Jo thought, praying they’d lose interest quickly. Of course, they wouldn’t.
“Actually,” Maksim said clearly undaunted by the miniature audience, “I really didn’t just stop by for a visit.” He smiled again, and held out his hand. For the first time, Jo noticed he held several papers.
She stared at them for a moment, then reached out to take the pages. Carefully, she studied them, flipping through one page then another then another.
She knew her eyes must have been the size of one of the flowers on the wall when she finally looked up at him.
He didn’t wait for her to speak, or maybe he realized she couldn’t.
“As you can see, I have plenty of experience working with—” he smiled at the kids, who still watched him as if he was a superhero come to life, “these little—fellas.”
He reached out to scruff the boy closest to him on the head. He smiled broadly at the child, but Jo noticed this time it seemed a little more strained.
She continued to gape at him. He wasn’t really saying he wanted to volunteer? He didn’t really have experience? He couldn’t. He just—couldn’t.
“Let me see this?” Cherise appeared at her side, snatching the résumé out of Jo’s numb fingers.
After a few seconds, she let out a low whistle. “Gorgeous and experienced.” Her chatty little eyebrow rose. “You must have dropped right out of heaven.”
Maksim grinned and extended a hand. “Something like that.”
Cherise readily seized his hand, grinning back at him with moony, dark eyes as if she was half in love with him already.
The image of her no-nonsense daycare director practically deifying this man was the thing that snapped Jo out of her daze.
“Excuse me,” she bit out to Maksim, roughly extracting Cherise’s hand from his. She dragged the much larger woman out of the room, discovering strength she wouldn’t have thought she had.
“What are you doing, girl?” Cherise said as soon as they were in the hallway.
“We are not hiring this guy,” Jo stated.
“I know that.”
Intense relief flooded Jo’s body to the point she almost sagged against the wall.
“But we are sure as hell going to get him to volunteer until we can afford to hire him.” Cherise leaned back to sneak a peek in the doorway. “Mmm, mmm, mmm.” Her chatty eyebrow rose, again speaking volumes about what she thought of the m
an.
Jo couldn’t help peeping around the corner herself, just in time for Maksim to notice her. He waved and she jerked back out of sight, this time allowing herself to lean against the wall.
“No,” she said to Cherise. “No, no, no.”
“Why ever not?” Cherise asked, which was a fair question. And one that Jo couldn’t answer honestly. She couldn’t tell her daycare director that he couldn’t work with her, because Jo was worried she was too attracted to him. How professional was that? Not professional in that least, that’s how.
Cherise held up the list of places he’d worked and volunteered. Big Brother/Big Sister, a basketball coach for mentally handicapped children, a counselor at a camp for kids who were terminally ill.
“How are we going to find anyone better?”
Jo stared at the sheets. They weren’t. He was a dream. He was.
“He isn’t what he seems,” Jo finally said.
“You know him?” Cherise’s eyebrow said she was willing to listen if Jo had some facts about the guy.
“I’ve met him a few times before,” she said, realizing that hardly sounded incriminating enough. Especially for the virtually perfect volunteer.
“So do you think these things are made up?” Cherise waved the paper slightly.
“Maybe,” Jo said, grabbing onto that suggestion, although she again didn’t sound as convincing as she thought she should.
“Well, they’d be easy enough establishments to contact.”
Cherise was right. Of course. Her and her always accurate eyebrow.
Jo nodded, then took the résumé from her. She would tell him that she needed to contact a few of his past employers and then let him know. That was a reasonable way to get him to leave, and then, once she wasn’t so completely discombobulated by his presence, she’d come up with a believable reason to reject his offer to volunteer.
Walking back into the room on legs that she hoped looked steadier than they felt, she crossed directly to him.
She forced a smile. “Maksim, this résumé is very impressive.”
He nodded, and she noted his humble expression didn’t quite meet his eyes. See, he was up to something.
“So—” She paused as she felt a tug on her arm. She glanced down to see Damon at her elbow.
“Wait just a moment, Damon,” she told the boy.
She returned her attention to Maksim. “So, as I was saying—”
Again there was a tug on her sleeve, this time more insistent.
“Damon,” she said, but stopped when she saw the boy’s pallor and the expression on his face. Out of instinct, Jo stepped aside, just as the boy heaved. Vomit spewed from the boy’s mouth in a flying spray, all of the chunky, foul-smelling stuff landing directly on Maksim’s shirt and pants.
Jo stared, stunned, absently noting that at least Maksim’s polished black Kenneth Cole shoes had remained unscathed.
Jo started to open her mouth to say…Well, she didn’t know what, when nausea swelled in her own stomach. Then his expensive Kenneth Coles weren’t so unscathed anymore.
She retched again.
CHAPTER 3
“I told you I couldn’t eat the yogurt,” the nasty little creature who’d just covered him in vile, slimy stench said almost smugly before the large woman, who Maksim was really beginning to like, whisked him away.
Couldn’t eat yogurt was an understatement. The dreadful little beast had puked in Exorcist-sized proportions—all over one of his favorite shirts, no less. But Maksim’s attention was drawn away from his soiled clothing to the woman who’d added to the disgusting mess.
Jo still stood in front of him. Well, stood implied that she was on her feet; it was more like she leaned heavily on the table where the children squealed and gagged and pointed at the disaster clinging to his $200 hand-tailored shirt from Milan and his $300 Armani trousers.
But he disregarded both his destroyed clothes and the creatures surrounding them, who sounded like a flock of agitated farmyard birds. Instead he stared Jo, a strange sensation he didn’t quite understand making him feel—like he needed to help her.
Shake it off, man, he told himself. No piece of ass was worth this.
But instead of leaving, he reached forward to balance her. She jerked away, nearly slipping off the edge of her precarious perch. Even though she was stubbornly and stupidly avoiding his touch, he wasn’t willing to let her fall.
Instead he pulled her to his side, keeping her away from the side Damon had covered, with more than just yogurt, he might add.
“Where’s the bathroom?” he asked.
She gestured, with a weak wave of her hand toward the hallway. Maksim walked her in that direction, supporting most of her slight weight. His instinct was to carry her, but he suspected she’d really be irritated by that, and not just because she’d be unavoidably covered in what he was.
When he reached the hallway, he looked both ways, then spotted the door labeled GIRLS. He headed toward it, expecting to find the large woman in there with the little puke machine. But instead, the gray-tiled room was empty. He led Jo to the sink and held her until she seemed to have herself braced against the edge.
She stood there for a moment, her fingers gripping the white porcelain so tightly, they were nearly the same color.
“Can I get you anything?”
She shook her head, then winced as if the gesture caused her pain. If possible, her skin drained even further of color until she seemed to blend in with the gray and white of the lavatory.
“I just need a minute.” For a brief moment, her dark eyes met his in the mirror. He saw embarrassment there, but also a flash of something else. Something that looked remarkably like despair. Then they dropped again, her focus returning to the sink that seemed to be the only thing holding her upright.
Maksim watched her for a second longer, making sure she was truly steady on her feet. Then he began unbuttoning his shirt, easing the ruined mess away from himself.
“What are you doing?”
Maksim paused, the garment off one shoulder, meeting her eyes again. “I’m getting out of this thing.” He finished slipping out of the shirt and dropped it in the trash can near the sink.
When he looked back to Jo, she was still staring at him in the mirror. He considered pretending not to notice, but he couldn’t pass up seeing her expression.
But he didn’t see in her eyes what he thought he would. Instead of surprise, or interest, or even disapproval, her gaze was flat, emotionless.
“You’re not planning to take off your pants too, are you?”
“Not unless you want me to,” he said, wagging his eyebrows, then added once she didn’t react—yet again, “No, my pants aren’t too bad. My shoes, however…”
That gained him a pained wince. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “Vomit happens.” Had he really said that? Normally he’d be very, very unhappy about something like this, and an unhappy Maksim was a bad thing. But right now, all the could seem to care about was Jo.
Her eyes lingered on him a moment longer, then she realized he was watching her watching him. A slight flush of pink tinged her pale cheeks and she looked down.
Again, moving her head seemed to disorient her and her knuckles whitened as she held fast to the sink. He stepped closer, just in case.
She lifted one of her hands to the faucet, her fingers pausing there as if the act of just turning on the water was too much for her at the moment.
Maksim leaned forward, his bare chest brushing against her shoulder and arm as he placed a hand over hers and twisted the water on. The rush of water echoed through the stark room.
Her eyes moved back up to find his in the mirror. They locked for several moments, and he began to wonder if the loud rush reverberating through the room wasn’t the swell of his own longing coursing through him like churning white water. His yearning and the look in her eyes, finally a spark of something, some response, left him coiled and breathless. And filled with a need to…
Immediately he dropped his hand from hers and backed away as if she’d scalded him.
“I’ll let you freshen up,” he mumbled and continued to walk backward away from her. Her dark eyes followed him, that despair there again. Calling to him. Pulling at an emotion in him he didn’t understand, but he knew he didn’t like.
He turned and left the room.
Maksim didn’t stop until he was outside the community center, standing on the cracked, uneven sidewalk, his breathing irregular, his thoughts jumbled. He’d finally gotten a reaction from her, but it wasn’t the lust he wanted. It had been heartbreak, desperation, fear—and maybe lost somewhere in those emotions was a hint of attraction. So why in the world had that reached out to him, made him want to protect her? To make those feelings disappear? Help her?
A man in a dirty sleeveless undershirt and denim shorts tottered down the street. He grimaced at Maksim as he passed, revealing missing teeth and grime accenting his frown lines.
Maksim narrowed a look back, the vagrant’s disdainful reaction snapping him back into his normal frame of mind. When was he ever the object of someone else’s derision? He knew he was a superior species to these lowly mortals, and most mortals instinctively knew it too. How dare some filthy transient look at him as if he was beneath him?
Then he glanced down at himself. No shirt, vomit-spattered pants and shoes, and a look of complete bewilderment in his eyes.
What the hell? He was standing here, on the sidewalk, covered in stench, musing over a mortal woman like some uncertain teenage boy. And, damn, he was never uncertain—not when it came to his wants. Not about anything. And he’d sure as hell never been a teenager. So what the hell was wrong with him?
He made a disgusted noise deep in his throat as he glanced down at himself again. No piece of ass in Hell or on Earth was worth this.
He should just leave. But instead, he found himself striding to the side of the building and ducking into an alley that ran the length of the community center and the building next door.
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. No one was around. Remaining very still, he closed his eyes and concentrated. He knew if anyone were to watch him, he’d look like an image in a camera going in and out of focus. An effect they’d most likely blame on their own vision. But there was no point in taking unnecessary risks.
