Ham looked visibly shaken by his declaration. “You saying you intend to marry Maddie?”
“We haven’t discussed it,” Cal said. “Despite what you’ve read in the paper and heard around town, we’re still finding our way with each other. There is no affair, Ham. I give you my word on that. What there is, is a strong friendship I don’t intend to lose, and maybe a whole lot more.”
“Then you’d ignore me if I advised you that the smart thing would be to stop seeing her?” Ham said.
“Yes.”
Ham’s gaze remained steady. “She’s that important to you? You’d give up your job, if it came to that?”
“Without a single hesitation,” Cal told him.
For the first time since he’d sat down beside Cal, Ham’s expression softened. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Is it going to come to that?” Cal asked him. “Are you going to fire me?”
“I don’t have that power,” Ham said. “It’s up to the school board.”
Cal gave him a wry look. “I may not have been in Serenity all that long, but even I know that they follow wherever you lead.”
“You’re giving me more credit than I deserve, especially in a situation like this,” Ham said. “Some parents are riled up. I’d say the next school board meeting could get ugly. And there are at least some on the board who don’t like to go against public opinion. They don’t need to have the law on their side. They’ll just act and worry about any legal consequences later.”
“Come on, Ham. Lay it on the line. Which way is this going to go?”
“I can’t say for sure,” the older man insisted. “But you come into that meeting and tell them what you told me, and I’ll fight to keep you on staff.” He shrugged. “Have to say you’re right about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
Ham grinned. “I don’t lose many battles I set out to win.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Ham cautioned. “Thanks to all this commotion, a special meeting’s been called for tomorrow night at eight. If I were you I’d come in there prepared for a fight. Think of it as game seven of the World Series, ninth inning, with everything on the line.”
“Not that there’s any pressure,” Cal said, laughing.
“You can handle it, son. I’ve seen you in plenty of tough spots.”
Cal thought back to the day Hamilton Reynolds had walked into the rehab center where he’d been hiding out as much as recovering from his injury. The old man hadn’t shown him an ounce of pity, just said he’d heard that Cal had his teaching credentials and they could use a man like him back in Serenity to coach their high-school team. He’d thrown Cal a lifeline and it appeared he was doing it again.
“No matter how it goes, I want you to know I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Cal told him.
Ham clamped a firm hand on his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “You’ve never let this team or this town down. I intend to see that folks remember that. There’s not going to be some ridiculous witch hunt on my watch.” He stood up and glanced toward the field, where Ty was throwing one strike after another. “That boy as good as I think he is?”
Cal grinned. “Even better.”
“Wouldn’t be, if you hadn’t been here to guide him. Remember that, you hear me?”
Cal watched the old man go, then turned around to face the team, all of whom were pretending they hadn’t noticed the visit from the chairman of the school board.
Ty left the mound and walked over to him. “Was that about you and my mom?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Cal said.
Ty looked disappointed. “You promised you’d be straight with me.”
“You’re right,” Cal said. “Okay, there’s going to be a special meeting of the school board tomorrow night to discuss all the talk that’s been stirred up.”
Ty’s expression turned worried. “Are you in trouble? Are they gonna fire you?”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Cal said, praying that he wasn’t placing too much confidence in Ham Reynolds’s powers of persuasion.
“Does Mom know?”
“Not yet,” Cal admitted. “And I’m thinking maybe she doesn’t need to know. It will only upset her.”
Ty gave him a knowing look. “Do you really want to be around when she finds out later?”
Cal chuckled. “You’re a very smart kid. I’ll talk to her after practice.”
He’d just have to find some way to make sure she didn’t hold herself responsible for putting his career in jeopardy, not when the truth was that he’d gone after her with his eyes wide open.
Maddie spent Monday afternoon in her office processing the handful of new memberships that had come in. Helen had been right. The curiosity seekers had started arriving in midafternoon and had almost made up for the women who’d canceled their memberships first thing in the morning.
Even so, Maddie was still in a foul mood when the door to her office flew open.
“I hope you’re satisfied!” Peggy Martin declared. “Thanks to you, Cal’s going to be fired.”
Maddie’s heart stopped, then raced. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s going to be a special school board meeting tomorrow night to consider whether or not to fire him. They’ll probably ride him out of town on a rail just because you had to get even with Bill for dumping you.”
There were so many things wrong with that statement Maddie didn’t know where to begin.
“I don’t suppose you stopped to consider your role in this,” she said finally.
Peggy stared at her blankly. “Me? What did I do?”
“You were so desperate to get even with me, you just had to twist every little rumor you’d heard into something ugly, then put it in the paper,” Maddie accused. “If anyone’s to blame for this mess, it’s you.”
Peggy stared at her with pure venom. “Don’t you dare try to turn this around on me. All I did was report the facts.”
“Oh, please, you spun a bunch of gossip into something tawdry.”
“There wouldn’t have been any gossip if you’d stayed away from him,” Peggy snapped.
“And let you have him?”
“At least I’m not ten years older than he is and the mother of one of his players,” Peggy said. “I know this was about Bill. It killed you that he left you for a younger woman, so you set out to get even in the most public way possible.”
Maddie knew that denying the accusation would be a waste of time. “What time is the meeting tomorrow?”
“You’re not planning to be there, are you?” Peggy demanded incredulously. “That would pretty much seal Cal’s fate.”
“What time is the meeting?” she repeated.
“Eight,” Peggy said finally. “But if you care even a little bit about Cal, you’ll stay away.”
She whirled around and left, nearly running into Cal as she did so. She scowled at him, then kept on going.
Cal heaved a sigh. “Messenger of doom, no doubt.”
“Something like that.”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to let you know about the meeting before someone else did.”
“I wish you had. Maybe I could have thought of a quick comeback when Peggy started accusing me of ruining your life.”
He sat on a corner of her desk, his thigh pressed against hers. “You’re not ruining my life,” he assured her. “You’re the best thing in it.”
“You still going to feel that way if the board fires you?”
“I’m not worried about it,” he said, and a hard look in his eyes suggested he wasn’t lying. “Neither should you.”
She stared at him with amazement. “How can you be so calm?”
“I’m putting my faith in the system and in Hamilton Reynolds.”
Maddie sat back. “You’ve talked to Ham?”
“At length.”
“And he’s on your side?”
Cal nodded. “It’s going
to be okay, Maddie. This is all much ado about nothing. The board has to at least listen to the parents. That’s their obligation, but saner minds will prevail. I believe that.”
“Ham has a lot of influence in this town, that’s true,” she conceded. “But it won’t hurt to have a few more people there in your corner.”
“You going to be one of them?”
She studied him intently. “Unless you think me being there will make things worse.”
“I told you, I’m not worried,” he said. “And I want you there. I have a couple of things I intend to say that you need to hear.”
“Such as?”
He shook his head. “I’ve already run it by Ham. He thinks I’ll be persuasive.”
“You don’t care about my opinion?” she asked, miffed.
“Of course I do, but this is one time I want to call the shots. Just let me do this my way, Maddie.”
“But I’ve lived in Serenity my whole life,” she protested. “I know how these people think.”
“Remember what I told you about thinking too much? Sometimes it’s better to go with your gut. I want the people of this town to listen with their hearts, not their minds.” He smiled. “And that’s all I intend to say on the subject for now.”
“But—”
He leaned down. “Hush, Maddie.”
Apparently not content to see if she’d keep silent on her own, he covered her mouth with his. He had a very persuasive mouth. In no time at all she couldn’t have formed a coherent thought if she’d wanted to.
He pulled her up and into the V between his legs, surrounding her with heat and filling her with longing. She rested her hands on the hard muscles of his thighs and let him have his way with her mouth, his tongue tangling with hers. Every part of her turned into molten liquid, so hot and needy that she would have dragged him down to the floor in another instant, but he ended the kiss on a ragged sigh.
“This is the kind of thing that got us into this fix in the first place,” he murmured, his hands still cupping her face, his eyes still filled with heat.
Dazed, Maddie reached for him. “Don’t care,” she whispered as she managed to steal another kiss.
She felt his lips curve into a smile against hers.
“Told you thinking was highly overrated,” he said.
Maddie was the one who pulled back slightly this time. “Okay, buster, now that you’ve proved your point, what are you going to do about it?”
Cal laughed. “Is that a challenge?”
She gazed into his eyes and, to her astonishment, saw love shining back at her. It made her knees weak, but also steadied her resolve. “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Yes, it is.”
“Then I think we’ve got places to go and things to do,” he said, latching on to her hand.
“Go where?”
“My place,” he said at once.
“What’s wrong with here?” she demanded impatiently.
“Nothing if you don’t care about the photographers I saw lurking in the bushes when I came in.”
Snapped back to reality, Maddie groaned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“And spoil all this fun? Besides, there are no windows in this room and the doors are locked. I made sure of that. Come on, darlin’, let’s get out of here.”
“We can’t leave together,” she told him. “And we can’t go to your place. They’ll just follow us. I’m sure at least one of them reports to Peggy, and she’s determined to turn this into the scandal of the year.”
Cal sighed. “Rain check, then?”
“You’ve got it,” Maddie said.
It seemed that somewhere along the way, he’d also gotten her heart.
20
The high-school auditorium was packed. Built years ago, the stage had oak floors polished to a shine and heavy velvet curtains with gold fringe. Long tables sat center stage with nameplates in front of the places for each of the five school board members, most of whom were standing to the side in a small cluster, whispering among themselves. They waved off anyone else who approached, perhaps in an attempt to demonstrate that they were going into this meeting with their objectivity intact.
It was evident to Maddie, though, that everyone else in town had already taken sides. The tension in the room was palpable with neighbor pitted against neighbor. While most of the hastily made, hand-lettered signs in the room supported Cal with a Save Our Coach slogan, there were more than a dozen individuals vocally demanding he be fired. They could be heard lobbying Cal’s supporters.
Though the air-conditioning was on, it labored to fight the heat in the packed room. Maddie could feel a trickle of perspiration running down her back as she faced down Cal’s detractors with her chin held high.
“I still think you should let me represent you,” Helen told Cal.
“I don’t need representation,” he said. “I’m going to tell them how I feel about Maddie. If they want to fire me for that, so be it.”
“They don’t even have a right to ask questions about your personal life,” Helen said. “At least not the kind of questions some of them are going to ask. You haven’t broken any laws. You haven’t even broken that ridiculous morals clause in your contract, which by the way, I will negotiate out of there before you ever sign another contract with this school district.”
“They’re just trying to protect the kids,” he said.
“From what?” Dana Sue demanded. “Seeing two people together who genuinely care about each other?” Her gaze narrowed. “You do care about Maddie, right?”
Cal exchanged a glance with Maddie that reminded her of the heat between them the night before.
“I care,” he said quietly.
Helen continued to regard him with dismay. “I still think it’s risky for you to stand up there without an attorney. If they’re going to attack with lies and innuendos, you’ll need me to object strenuously for the record. That’s the best way to keep them in line.”
“I appreciate your concern,” he told her. “I really do. If you think I’m about to leap off a bridge and land in a legal quagmire, feel free to jump in and stop me. Anything short of that, leave this in my hands.”
Helen nodded, but she didn’t look happy.
The grim-looking board members took their places. The school board secretary, who doubled as Betty’s secretary at the high school, sat down to record the meeting. Hamilton Reynolds called the special meeting to order. “Now, then,” he began, “I guess we all know why we’re here tonight. I wish even half you folks would show up when the education of your children is on the agenda.”
Maddie heard Cal’s sigh and saw him relax. She turned to him. “You’re right. He’s definitely on your side. He’s only that cranky when he’s out of patience with folks who are wasting his time.”
Can nodded. “I know. He told me he was, but a part of me wondered if the pressure might not change that by tonight.”
“If there’s one thing I know about Ham, it’s that he’s a man of his word,” Maddie said, feeling marginally better herself.
“I suppose the first thing we need to do is hear from Betty Donovan, since it’s one of her teachers we’re discussing,” Ham said. “Betty, you want to summarize the issues as you see them?”
Betty walked stiffly to the microphone down front. Even though Cal and Maddie were right in the front row, she was careful not to glance their way.
“This is a disciplinary action against Cal Maddox,” she began. “One of the most important things that any teacher in this system does is to set an example for our students.” She waved a copy of Saturday’s paper. “Right here is the proof that Coach Maddox is not setting the right kind of example. He’s been a good teacher and an outstanding coach, but that’s not enough, at least here in Serenity where we live by a high moral code. I recommend that he be fired, with cause, for carrying on with the mother of one of our students.”
She was about to walk away when Ham held up his hand.
“Hold on a minu
te, Betty. That paper you’re waving around down there is the Serenity Times, am I right?”
“Well, of course it is.”
“You didn’t write that article yourself, did you?”
She stared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not moonlighting as a reporter.”
“Of course you’re not,” Ham agreed. “Which brings me to my point. Did you see any of these alleged misdeeds yourself?”
“No, but they’re right here in black and white.”
“So are the comics, but that doesn’t make ’em fact,” Ham said, drawing chuckles, though mostly from Cal’s supporters.
“Well, I saw enough with my own two eyes,” Betty huffed. “I saw the two of them all cozy over at Rosalina’s on two different occasions.”
“Following baseball games, am I right?” Ham asked.
“Yes.”
“And the entire team and a few other parents were there?”
“Well, yes.”
“Did they do anything inappropriate? Any kissing, for instance? Holding hands, for that matter?”
“No,” she admitted with a pained expression.
“Thank you, Betty. That will be all.”
“But—”
“That’s enough,” Ham said. “Anybody else want to speak? And before you say yes and walk up to that microphone, I want you to consider whether you’ve ever actually witnessed any of this so-called inappropriate behavior everyone’s all worked up over. If all you have is hearsay, then I request that you keep your opinion to yourselves. We don’t condemn people in this town based on gossip, at least not as long as I have anything to say about it.”
There was a lot of grumbling among those clustered on the right side of the auditorium, but no one stood up, not even Peggy Martin, who was so red-faced over Ham’s implied criticism of her reporting she looked as if her head might explode.
“Okay, then,” Ham said, looking satisfied with himself. “I’d vote on this right now, but we need to balance things out before we do. Anyone here feel inclined to speak on Coach Maddox’s behalf?”
Stealing Home Page 27
