JOSS: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security)

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Of course.”

  “Okay.”

  JT burst into a huge grin that reminded me of the one I often flashed when I got what I wanted at his age. He leaned close and kissed Penelope on the cheek.

  “Thanks!”

  He ran off without acknowledging my presence, calling out to one of the cheerleaders as he headed back to the dressing room where the rest of the team was hanging out during halftime. Penelope and I both watched him go, likely both lost in very different thoughts. Then she glanced at me, a guarded look in her eyes.

  “I guess you don’t approve. But I’ve learned that you sometimes have to bend the rules a little to get him to follow them at all.”

  “No. I get it.”

  “He really is a good kid. He’s just…”

  “A teenager.”

  She nodded. “A teenager who’s been through an awful lot these last few years. The night our parents died, he was at home alone when the police came to make the notification. And I couldn’t get a direct flight, so he was pretty much on his own for forty-eight hours afterward. That’s a lot to ask a twelve year old to deal with. Then the funeral and everything that came after…I tried to protect him from the reality of our situation as best as I could, but he is pretty intuitive.”

  “I’m sure he is.”

  “It’s been hard. So if sleeping in class is the worst of it, I think that’s pretty good.”

  I nodded. “You’re right.”

  Surprise lit her eyes. She studied me in the bright stadium lights, emotions dancing in her eyes with such intensity I could almost read her thoughts. She didn’t know if she could trust me, didn’t know if I was being honest or just placating her until I could…what? Get evidence to take JT from her? Was that what I was doing? In reality, it probably was. And that didn’t sit well all of a sudden.

  I turned away, using the excuse of our school band coming on to the field. As I watched the students, quite a few of whom were in my classes, march across the field in their heavy uniforms with their instruments in their hands, I found myself having second thoughts for the first time since Julia told me that she had my child fifteen years ago. I knew that he would have a family, that someone out there had wanted a child bad enough that they would take my son—the son who was taken from me without my knowledge. I knew they brought him into their lives, loved him, and experienced all the things that I should have experienced with him. I knew all this, but I was so focused on what I lost that I forgot that someone would lose when I took him back.

  Did I really want to hurt Penelope? Did I really want to destroy the relationship she had with JT? Did I really want to hurt JT by taking Penelope away from him?

  There had to be a better way. I just wasn’t sure I knew what that better way was.

  ~~~

  It felt kind of odd to be back in a suit. I stood in the front of the conference table, gesturing to an electronic white board, feeling so much like I was back in the classroom that the expensive Italian suit I was wearing felt wrong. Thank God the meeting was just wrapping up.

  “Very smooth, Mr. James,” Libby said to me a few minutes later as we walked out of the room behind the lumber executives who’d just signed a very lucrative deal for both them and us.

  “It’s Mr. Philips to you.”

  She smiled. “Are you enjoying teaching?”

  I moved the files I was carrying from one hand to the other so that I could slip my arm around her shoulders.

  “Nothing like I thought it would be.”

  “I bet.”

  “But it’s been interesting. The kids are…a challenge.”

  “Any super stars? Like me?”

  I laughed, remembering how we used to tease Libby for being a goody two shoes. There were actually several kids in my classes that reminded me of her. But not necessarily for that reason.

  “There is no one in the world quite like you.”

  We walked into my office then. She stepped away, all business as she took the files out of my hands and handed them to my assistant, Tamera, with instructions on how many copies had to be made and where they had to be sent or filed. I only half listened, my thoughts back in Texas even as I stood at the wall to ceiling windows at the back of my office and looked down over the small community of Ashland.

  “Tell me about him,” Libby said a moment later, coming to stand behind me.

  “I’ve already told you everything.”

  “Not really. You’ve sent me pictures of a dark haired boy in a football uniform and talked with frustration about a student who sleeps through your class. But you haven’t really talked to me about your son.”

  I turned and leaned back against the window. “It’s all so surreal, you know? Even when he walks into my classroom and I can see the resemblance…it’s just so hard to wrap my mind around the reality of it all.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I rolled my head back and stared up at the ceiling, a heavy sigh slipping from between my lips. “I thought that it would be simple. I’d pretend to be his teacher for a few months, then I’d pull him aside and tell him the truth. And he’d be so grateful that he’d give up everything to come back to Oregon to live with me. Then I saw him in school, watched him with his friends, and I guess I went looking for an excuse to take him away. He acts out, he does things he probably shouldn’t do and…it seemed easy to convince myself that his current situation isn’t good. That he’d be better off with me.”

  I closed my eyes and I could see Penelope sitting there, the exhaustion written all over her face. I’d wanted to wrap my arm around her last night, wanted to reassure her and help her. I was starting to feel sorry for her, and I really didn’t want that.

  “But you don’t feel that way now?”

  I focused on Libby, took in her familiar features—her dark hair, dark eyes, and oh, so familiar compassion in her expression—and shrugged.

  “The situation isn’t good. The sister works long hours and she’s barely making ends meet. My investigator tells me that the parents left them with huge debts that she had to mortgage both the business and the family home to pay off. But now she’s got these huge debts on top of the expense of running the business and their daily expenses. So she’s never home and JT is left to run wild. He stays up late at night, apparently eats whatever he wants, and hangs out with these kids whose parents are less than interested in their extracurricular activities. It’s not a good situation and I can’t see it ending well.”

  “Then do something.”

  “But what do I do that doesn’t cause JT to resent me for the rest of his life?”

  “There’s the question.” Libby took my hand and held it gently between both hands. “You aren’t dad. You’re not a bishop in your church embarrassed by your wild sons. You’re just a guy trying to do the right thing. JT will see that.”

  “And if he doesn’t? If he resents me for taking him away from the only home, the only friends, he’s ever known? For taking him away from his sister?”

  “He will.”

  I groaned. “You’re supposed to be reassuring me, here, remember?”

  “Do you want me to lie? Or do you want the truth?”

  I thought about it for a minute, then sighed. “The truth.”

  “He will resent you. Especially if you aren’t careful with the way you present the whole thing to him. But if you do it right, he’ll come around sooner rather than later.”

  “And how do you know?”

  She stood and pressed a soft kiss to my jaw. “Because I know you. You are a good man, and both JT and his sister will see it sooner rather than later.”

  ~~~

  I flew back to Texas the next afternoon, holding on to my sister’s words and hoping that she was right in her statements. Maybe if I went to Penelope first, if I told her the truth, maybe she could help me find a solution that would work for all three of us. Maybe she would even help me explain the situation to JT. If I had her on my side…but then I walked into my f
irst period class Monday morning.

  “Gentlemen!” I called as I walked to my desk, dropping my leather case on the top of the desk as I gestured to three boys standing at the back of the room. “Please take a seat.”

  The boys quickly sat as the bell rang, the last student rushing through the door as I walked over to close it. I turned again and surveyed the room, silently counting heads as I walked back to my desk. There should have been fifteen kids in the room. There were only fourteen.

  “Where’s JT?”

  It was more a rhetorical question than one I expected an answer to. But one of the boys who’d been standing at the back of the room when I walked in immediately answered.

  “He’s in the principal’s office. He got in trouble over the weekend.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Fourteen pairs of eyes widened as they stared at me. And then the room erupted with chatter, everyone trying to explain all at once. I held up a hand, gesturing for silence.

  “One person only, please.”

  The first boy—Charlie, a football player JT usually sat beside—knelt in his seat like he was giving a presentation on Shakespeare rather than spreading gossip.

  “He went to Sean Wallace’s party Friday night and got smashed. Then he wandered around the town square—apparently singing “Stitches” at the top of his lungs as he went. The cops hauled him in and his sister had to go pick him up at the county jail Saturday morning.”

  Anger had begun to burn deep in my chest with Charlie’s first words and it just grew as I listened to the story and heard the other kids titter with laughter. I wanted to smack every one of them, Charlie for spreading gossip and the others for thinking it was funny. But I knew what I really wanted was to find Penelope and get a proper explanation from her lips.

  I held up my hand again and silenced the class.

  “Enough gossip. Get out your books. I want you to read the first chapter of ‘Of Mice and Men.’”

  The students groaned, but they did as they were told. I waited long enough to make sure each of them had their books out. I stepped out of the classroom and crossed the hall to Mrs. Needham’s history class.

  “Would you mind keeping an eye on my class? I need to step out for a few minutes.”

  “Of course,” she said, clearly happy to do it. Maybe she was relieved to finally be able to repay me for all the times I’d done the same for her over the last month or so.

  I didn’t stop to ask. I rushed out of the building, jumping into my second hand pickup, the rev of the engine satisfying as I jerked it into reverse and sped toward the town square. I pulled out my cellphone as I drove, punching in a quick text that I sent to my lawyer:

  Put it in motion.

  To hell with diplomacy. To hell with being nice. If she was going to let my son run around drinking and getting himself arrested, she better believe I was going to march in and take control. I wasn’t going to sit back and watch JT ruin his future just because I didn’t want to hurt some pretty girl’s feelings. Penelope’s custody of JT was a fucking joke and I wasn’t going to let this go on a minute longer than I had to.

  I pulled to a sliding stop outside the bakery and burst through the front doors, ready battle.

  Chapter 5

  Penelope

  I was kneading bread dough with all the energy I could conjure, exhaustion sitting so heavy on my shoulders that I could have just laid on the worktable and gone to sleep right there. I have never been so angry in all my life. And anger is a very exhausting emotion. To pace the floors half the night only to find out JT had been arrested and was being held down at the county jail was bad enough, but fighting with him all weekend, trying to get him to talk to me about what had led to his behavior, was even worse. It was almost a relief to drop him off at school this morning.

  And then he was standing in front of me and I knew just by glancing at his face that I was in trouble.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  I stood back from the table, an irrational part of me convinced that Mr. James was about to jump over it to pummel me with his very capable looking hands.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You let him go to a party where there was alcohol?”

  “I didn’t know there would be alcohol. I assumed Sean’s parents…” I stopped myself, suddenly realizing that I had no reason to defend myself to this man. What happened when JT was off campus was really none of his business.

  “Why do you care what happens to my brother when he’s not in your classroom?”

  Mr. James’ eyes narrowed. “What kind of guardian allows an underage child to drink?”

  “He wasn’t drinking at my house. And he’s being punished, believe me.”

  “He could have been injured. He could have gotten behind the wheel—“

  “He doesn’t even have his driver’s permit yet.”

  “But, still, he could have been hurt.”

  “And that’s my problem. Not yours.” I moved around the table, glancing through the door that separated the front counter from the kitchens before I shut it. Then I turned back to Mr. James. “You sure seem to spend an awful lot of time obsessing over my little brother. Is there something going on there that I should know about?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Are you accusing me or inappropriate behavior?”

  “Why are you here? Don’t you have a class you should be teaching?”

  “I want to know what happened Friday night.”

  I turned my back to him, sticking my hands under the facet to wash the sticky dough off of them. “It’s really none of your business.”

  “He wasn’t in class this morning.”

  “That’s probably because Susan wanted to talk to him about his behavior. He was still wearing his football jersey when he was arrested, so she felt that he should suffer the consequences of acting disrespectfully while representing the school.”

  I don’t know why I explained that to him. It really wasn’t any of his business.

  I had gone to Susan and asked her to speak to JT. I thought that if the school got involved, perhaps it would get through to JT in a way that I hadn’t succeeded at just yet. But I hadn’t expected a visit from his English teacher.

  “Did Susan speak to you?”

  He didn’t answer me. I glanced at him. He was staring down at the table where my mound of dough was resting before the next round of kneading. I watched him, noted the anger that seemed to roll off of him in waves. But I also noted the wide set of his shoulders, the way his sports coat fit him almost perfectly, the way his jeans…I shook my head and turned back to the sink, shaking my hands a little before I grabbed a paper towel to dry them.

  “He’s ruining his future with this behavior.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “Going to juvenile detention—“

  “He’s not. The cop who picked him up is a friend of the family. He didn’t book him. He just held him in the county jail overnight in an attempt to scare him.”

  “So he doesn’t have to go to court?”

  “Not this time.”

  Again the silence.

  “Why does it matter so much to you? Surely you’ve had other students who were bigger trouble makers than JT. Why are you so interested in him?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I think I have a right to know what’s going on. It’s not normal for a teacher to take so much interest in one student like this.”

  “I’m not a pedophile, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  The thought hadn’t actually entered my thoughts, but now that he’d put it there…I shuddered, my skin crawling as images I didn’t want to entertain shot through my mind.

  “Maybe you should go.”

  “Look, Penelope, I just want what’s best for JT. And you…you seem to be struggling so much.”

  “I have this under control, thank you very much.”

  “I don’t think y
ou do.”

  There was naked honesty in his words that cut through the fog of confusion that had settled over me. I was still working on why he would care so much about one student. And he was accusing me of failing to live up to my responsibilities. He might as well have told me I was incompetent, that I was the failure I’d told myself for three years that I wasn’t. It was like he was giving voice to all the self-doubts that had been swirling around me from the moment I stepped out of the haze of grief and into the paralyzing world of my new reality.

  “How dare you?” I said, each word clipped. “You know absolutely nothing about me.”

  “I know enough. And I can see that you need help.”

  “Not from the likes of you.”

  He came toward me, his hands held out in front of him like he was trying to show me he came in peace. But when he reached for my hands, I swatted him away, a little squeal slipping from between my lips as I stepped back and found myself quickly trapped between the sink and him.

  “I want to help, Penny,” he said, grabbing my wrists as I tried to push him away. “I want to fix this, make it so that we can all work together to figure this thing out.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  I tried to push him again, but he had my wrists. He yanked them back behind me, forcing my body up against his. And suddenly I was enveloped in him, in his scent and his heat, in the force that was his masculinity. I looked up, determined to tell him exactly what I thought of him. But his lips were right there and then they were on mine. I pulled back slightly, but he followed, asking for entrance, asking to taste me the way I’d wanted to taste him from the first moment we met. I told myself I wasn’t attracted to him. Told myself that the fantasies that filled my mind in the weakest moments of the day were just an overactive imagination filling the space left by my lack of romantic life. But as he pulled me even closer to him, as the pounding of his heart made itself known against my chest, as his taste filled my senses, I knew there was no denying the attraction I had felt from that first meeting.

  Despite myself, I felt the tension leave my shoulders, felt my body curve into his as my mouth answered his request by throwing the doors wide open. His grip on my wrists loosened and I reached up, my hand molding itself around his jaw as I enjoyed the feel of his tendons moving with the eagerness of his kiss.