just don’t like knowing my family is going to be disappointed by you.”
He stifled an oath. “Jesus, Sarah. We saw each other for less than a month. Does it occur to you that you might be overreacting?”
Anger wasn’t beyond her, after all. It curled low and deep inside her like a hot ember.
Mirroring his position, she pressed her hands against the edge of the desk and leaned forward. Close enough to see the individual lashes tangling around his green-brown eyes. To see that the faint crow’s-feet beside those eyes had deepened and that an errant strand of silver threaded through his thick, lustrous hair, right above his left temple. “Dumping me was one thing. Lying to me was another.”
“What, exactly, did I lie about?” he asked, his expression suddenly unreadable.
She could hear the roar of kids coming down the hall. Chorus practice was definitely over. “I’m not interested in giving you a list, Max. What would be the point? You know your own lies better than anyone.” She pushed the homework page that Eli had swiped at him. “Talk to your son,” she said evenly, “about his behavior in school. We need to get this straightened out for his sake.”
“Eli never had trouble in a class until now.”
Meaning this was her fault?
She didn’t reply. If she did, she’d lose her temper for certain.
Chrissy Tanner was the first student to round the classroom door, closely followed by several more, and Sarah was heartily glad to see them.
When Eli skidded around the corner, his eyeballs about bulged out of his head at the sight of his father standing there. He gave Sarah a furtive look as he gave his father a “yo” in greeting and headed to his lone table.
Max looked back at Sarah. The radio at his hip was crackling and he reached for it, automatically turning down the volume. “We’ll finish this later.”
It sounded more like a threat than a promise of parental concern.
And the problem was, Sarah didn’t know what they were to finish discussing. The problems with Eli, or the past.
Once Max departed though, Sarah enjoyed one benefit from his unexpected appearance in her classroom. Eli didn’t do one thing to earn a second glance from her for the remainder of the afternoon. He even offered to help clean up the counters after their science experiment.
She handed him the sponge. “Don’t make me regret this,” she murmured.
He gave her an angelic smile that she wanted to trust.
And aside from flicking water at Chrissy when she began telling him that he was sponging all wrong, he behaved.
In the end, as she was driving out to her aunt Emily’s place later that evening, she decided to look on the afternoon as a success.
By the time she arrived at the horse farm that bordered a portion of the Double-C, Sarah was more than ready to put thoughts of both the Scalise men out of her head. And the evening of wedding planning with Leandra would surely provide enough distraction to do just that.
She didn’t bother knocking on the door at the Clay Farm house. She’d grown up running in and out of Leandra’s house just as comfortably as Lee had run in and out of the big house at the Double-C. The kitchen was empty and she headed through to the soaring great room. There, she hit pay dirt.
Leandra was standing on a chair, long folds of delicate fabric flowing around her legs while her fiancé’s mother, Jolie Taggart, crouched around the hem, studying it closely.
“Looks serious,” Sarah said.
Leandra shot her a harried look. “I never should have thought it was a good idea to wear a wedding gown. Who am I kidding? I’ve already done the whole white wedding thing. People are going to think we’re ridiculous.”
“The only thing people are going to think is that they wish they were as lucky as you, getting married to the person you love.”
Leandra had come back to Weaver only a few months ago to shoot a television show featuring their old friend, Evan Taggart, who was the local veterinarian. The show had been a success, but even more successful was the love they’d managed to find along the way.
“And besides, you’re not wearing white,” Sarah pointed out. “You’re wearing yellow.”
“Hint of Buttercup,” Emily Clay corrected blithely. She sat to one side with Sarah’s mother, Jaimie, watching the fitting. “And if you’d wanted to elope with Evan, you’ve had ample time to do so.”
“Well, thanks for the sympathy, Mom.” But Leandra was smiling faintly, even though she was dragging her fingers through her short, wispy hair. She turned her gaze on Sarah. “I’m telling you. When you get married, just pick the shortest route between you and the preacher, and forget all this folderol.”
“I’d need a date with a man first before I could entertain such lofty notions as marriage.” Sarah dropped the box of soft gold bows that she’d picked up in town on the floor beside her mother and aunt. “We just need to attach the flower sprays with hot glue. Glue guns are in the box, too,” she told them, then looked back at Leandra. “And you’re just stressing because you’re trying to do too many things at once. Put together a wedding in about a month’s time and take care of all the details for Fresh Horizons.”
“Speaking of which—” Leandra jumped on the topic “—I wondered if you’d mind helping me look through the resumes of all the therapists that I’ve received.”
Sarah immediately started to nod, only to stop and eye her cousin suspiciously. “How many are there?”
Leandra lifted her shoulders, looking innocent.
Sarah was reminded of Eli’s habit of making that sort of shrug, accompanied by that sort of look. Usually, when she’d pretty much caught him red-handed at something. “That many, huh?”
“Yeah. Nice problem to have, though, right? We figured it would be hard to find a therapist willing to come to Weaver to staff the program. Even though our focus will be the use of hippotherapy—I mean this is a horse farm, and we’ve got the best pick of animals to train for it—there could well be situations when hippo-therapy isn’t the strategy that the therapist will want to use.” Animation lit her cousin’s features as she lifted her arms to her side. “Anyway, we’ve got a huge stack of resumes to go through. It’s great.”
“Keep still, honey,” Jolie said around a mouthful of stickpins.
Leandra lowered her arms. “Sorry.”
“Good thing your future mother-in-law is better with a needle than I am,” Emily observed, grinning. She, like Jaimie, held a margarita glass in her hand.
Jolie carefully placed another pin. “Never fixed a wedding gown that was six inches too long before, though.” She looked up at Leandra, smiling. “And stressful or not, my son will fall in love with you all over again when he sees you in this.”
Sarah sank down in an oversized leather chair and stretched her legs out in front of her. “The sooner you settle on a therapist, the sooner we can get the brochures out to the schools and agencies in the area. I was at a meeting recently and three other teachers had families that they know will be interested in your program.” She glanced around and saw no evidence of a child around. “Where’s Hannah, anyway?” Hannah was Evan’s niece, for whom he had guardianship, and was Leandra’s inspiration for realizing that Weaver and the area surrounding it needed more specialized services available for children with developmental and physical disabilities. She’d felt so strongly about it that she’d even given up her hard-won promotion on the television series.
“With Evan. They went to Braden to see her grandparents for a few hours.”
“I’m glad Sharon stopped fighting Evan on Hannah’s guardianship.” Jolie