to retrieve his coffee. He should have waited for Tracy to answer. Things always went better when they spoke in person.
A loud buzz from the doorbell made him jump.
Who the hell could that be at this time? Jeff’s stomach suddenly lurched. Surely not even Dean Klinnsman could have tracked him down that quickly. Or maybe he could. Someone at the club could have given him my address. It would only take a phone call.
Jeff darted into his bedroom, unlocked the drawer on his bedside table and pulled out a handgun. Keeping his back to the walls, he edged towards the front door of the flat and peeped nervously through the spy hole.
“Jesus,” he exhaled, opening the door. “You scared the crap out of me.”
Lianna stood alone in the hallway, wrapped up in a dark gray cashmere coat and winter boots.
“I thought it was your fiancée. Or one of his henchmen. Come to finish me off.”
“No,” Lianna smiled lasciviously. “Just me.”
Undoing the belt of her coat she opened it slowly, her eyes never leaving Jeff’s. Other than the boots, she was completely, gloriously naked.
“Where were we?” she asked, advancing towards Jeff like an Amazon goddess, her pupils dilating with lust.
For the tiniest fraction of a second, Jeff thought about how very, very foolish he would be to sleep with Dean Klinnsman’s girlfriend. Then he grabbed Lianna around the waist with both hands and pulled her into the apartment.
As long as Tracy Whitney was alive, Jeff Stevens’s heart was spoken for.
The rest of his body, however, was quite another matter.
TRACY LOOKED AROUND THE FAMILIAR WALLS of David Hargreaves’s office. Christmas cards from staff and grateful former pupils covered every available surface. School would be out in a few days.
If only Nick could have controlled himself a little longer, Tracy thought desperately
She’d gotten to know the principal of Nick’s middle school almost as well as she’d known his elementary school head, Mrs. Jensen. Poor Mrs. Jensen. It was a wonder the woman wasn’t in a sanitarium somewhere, banging her head quietly against a padded wall, after everything Nicholas had put her through.
“The thing is, Mrs. Schmidt, it’s not simply a question of money. What Nicholas did was a blatant act of disrespect.”
Tracy nodded seriously and tried to rid her mind of the image of Mr. Hargreaves farting loudly into what he believed to be an empty corridor.
Nick, seated beside his mother, adopted a hurt look.
“What about artistic expression? Our teacher told us only last week that art knows no boundaries.”
“Be quiet!” Tracy and Principal Hargreaves said in unison.
Nick’s decision to break into the faculty recreation room after school hours and paint a series of cartoons on the walls, depicting various teachers in caricature, was likely to mark the end of his career at John Dee Middle School. He and an unnamed accomplice had painted the teachers engaging in different “humorous” situations (the mean, overweight math teacher, Mrs. Finch was re-imagined by Nick as a hot dog, lying in a bun and being squirted with ketchup by the football coach). As a piece of art it actually wasn’t bad. But as Principal Hargreaves said, that wasn’t the point.
“I’ll talk to the board over the weekend,” the principal told Tracy. “But to be frank, I don’t see that we have much wiggle room here. Nicholas has had a lot of chances.”
Principal Hargreaves didn’t want to lose the beautiful Mrs. Schmidt as a parent. Tracy’s son might be a tearaway, but she was a lovely woman. More importantly she’d donated very generously to the school over the years, and was offering to “more than compensate” for the damage Nick had caused to school property this time. But his hands were tied.
Tracy said, “I know. And I appreciate your even discussing it. Please let the board know that I’m grateful.”
After the meeting, Tracy waited till they were in the car and safely off campus before turning furiously on Nick.
“I don’t understand you. You have to go to school, Nicholas. It’s the law. If they kick you out of here, you’ll just have to go somewhere else. Somewhere farther away, and stricter, where you don’t have any friends.”
“You could homeschool me,” Nick suggested guilelessly. “That would be cool.”
“Oh no.” Tracy shook her head. “There is zero chance of that happening, mister. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.”
Homeschooling Nicholas would be like trying to teach deportment to a newly captured chimpanzee.
“I could send you to boarding school,” Tracy countered. “How about that?”
Nick looked aghast. “You wouldn’t!”
No, Tracy thought. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t live without you for one day.
“I might.”
“If you did I’d run away. Why do I need school anyway? Uncle Jeff left school at twelve. He learned all he needed to know on his Uncle Willie’s carnival.”
“Uncle Jeff is not a good role model.”
“Why not? He’s rich. He’s happy. He has a great business, traveling the world.”
“That’s … not the point,” said Tracy, increasingly desperately. She didn’t want to talk about Jeff and his “great business.”
“Well what about Blake?” said Nick. “He’s a good role model, isn’t he?”
“Of course.”
“Well he went to work on his daddy’s ranch when he was my age. Full-time.”
They’d reached home now. It was still only lunchtime. Tracy debated sending Nick to his bedroom—minus his computer, phone and any other means of escape—but the thought of him stuck indoors all day, brooding, didn’t seem right. Instead, she sent him out with two of the hands to go and clear the snow drifts that had built up on the high pastures.
“You want to work on a ranch full-time?” she told a stricken-looking Nick as she pushed him into the back of the truck. “You may as well get started now.”
With any luck a few days of backache and chilblains would cure of him of that romantic notion at least. Still, Tracy wasn’t looking forward to explaining Nicholas’s latest shenanigans to Blake Carter. She could already hear the old cowboy’s “I told you so” ringing in her ears.
“I TOLD YOU SO,” SAID BLAKE. “I’m sorry to say it, Tracy, but I did.”
“You don’t look sorry to say it,” Tracy complained, handing him a bowl of steaming beef and vegetable soup. On stressful days, Tracy liked to destroy things in blenders. “I didn’t tell him to go in there and do those paintings, you know. He’s not a toy that I control.”
“No,” agreed Blake. “He’s a boy that you influence. And you keep encouraging him to act out.”
“I do not!” Tracy said furiously. “How did I encourage this?”
“You told him the artwork was good.”
“It was good.”
“Tracy.” Blake frowned. “When Principal Hargreaves showed you the math lady in the hot dog bun, you laughed! Right in front of Nick! You told me that yourself.”
Tracy shrugged helplessly. “I know. I shouldn’t