3. Gavin
THREE
GAVIN
“And then, Daddy, she not only made us all laugh, but even Grayson wasn’t sad anymore. Isn’t that wonderful?”
It was. It was absolutely wonderful. It was so wonderful my ears were close to bleeding from Josie’s nonstop gushing over her new teacher since I picked her up after school.
“And did I mention how pretty she is? So pretty. And her eyes are so blue it’s like I’m looking at the sky, and she looked so beautiful in her skirt.”
Yep. My daughter had mentioned how pretty she was, too. A thousand times, but there was no interrupting her. Not when she was dragging me by the hand straight up the stairs to her classroom where I’d soon meet the pretty teacher with the beautiful skirt and the sky-blue eyes.
I already despised her, and I had no idea what kind of teacher she was or what she looked like, but any woman who so easily entranced Josie like this was a red flag in my book.
Josie was desperate for a mom. Wouldn’t stop talking about it since she hit elementary school and realized she was the only girl in her grade who didn’t have one. Which meant every time we crossed paths with a slightly younger woman in town, or even in the city when I took her on weekend getaway vacations, she started suggesting they could be her mother.
Like I could order one off the internet. Like I wanted to go through the turmoil of trying to trust someone again. Like I wanted the absolutely breath-stalling fear I’d find a woman who would abandon us all over again.
No, thank you.
If only Miss Pesco could have been old with warts on her nose and smelled like mothballs…
But nope. According to Josie, that wasn’t the case. I had no doubt that any more time in Miss Pesco’s presence and Josie would fall in love with her.
It wasn’t that I wanted to keep my daughter from being happy, but the pain that would come after Miss Pesco wasn’t in her life anymore would break Josie’s heart, and I wasn’t nearly ready for heart breaking to start happening.
“I want a flower skirt just like hers. Can I have one, Daddy? Please?”
I was not going to even glance at Miss Pesco’s skirt. “You have dozens at home that you never wear because you don’t like to get them dirty at Grandma’s house.”
“Then I’ll wear them at home and school!”
Sure she would. For a hot minute until she didn’t see anyone else wearing skirts and then it’d get balled and thrown in a corner, only to come out for holidays and the occasional visit to church.
“How about we talk about skirts when spring comes and it gets warmer out?”
“But Miss Pesco wore one today.”
I gritted my teeth and fell into the line of parents shuffling into the classroom. Like usual, Josie was the only kid in attendance, mostly because I was a single parent and while I took my parents’ help when needed, I also liked her with me. I was protective, probably overly so, but frankly, I enjoyed the hell out of my daughter and didn’t like being without her.
Although if she kept talking about all the wonderful things about Miss Pesco and how she saved Grayson from being embarrassed after slipping on water and tripping and falling in the hallway, and saved the day like some sort of superhero, that could change.
My daughter made it virtually impossible for me to say no to her, which not only meant I’d buy her however many flowery skirts she wanted even if she didn’t wear them, I’d probably fall in love with the teacher, too.
Damn it all to hell. Maybe I could have her switch classrooms and save us all.
There were well over a dozen parents in the classroom when we entered, and while Josie tried to push us toward the front so I could see the beautiful Miss Pesco, Josie found herself blockaded by bodies. A small mercy, given the fact I now needed to take a minute to calm myself down.
I would not hate this woman because my daughter liked her. Her being pretty or not had absolutely no relevance in my life. My job was to be Josie’s father, not to start a relationship with her teacher, or hell, any woman at this stage in my life.
Truth be told, I was a monk, reformed the day Monica packed her bags, boarded a bus and fled to California to live with family to become some superstar celebrity. I’d only been attracted and mildly excited about one woman since Monica and that ended almost as soon as it started. There was no way I was ready to go through that all over again.
“Hello. Nice to meet you.”
Her voice filtered through the mass of bodies between us, followed by a laugh that had me grinding my teeth together. Damn it. Josie was right. Her laugh was pretty.
Josie tugged on my hand as the sea in front of us parted and she swerved her little body in between two mothers.
“Manners,” I mumbled to her.
“’Xcuse me, ’xcuse us,” she happily chirped and shot me a look of pride over her shoulder. “Hi, Miss Pesco! This is my dad! His name’s Gavin. I don’t have a mom, but he’s fantastic!”
Oh dear God. Kill me now. Open a hole in the floor and shoot me straight to the basement.
Chatter stopped. A nail falling out of my toolbelt would have sounded like a bomb, and Miss Pesco’s smile wiped away as her brows shot up high on her forehead.
“Oh… well, hi, Josie.”
Josie’s smile went bright enough to power the entire town for a month, and she glanced back at me. “She remembers my name! Isn’t she so smart, Dad?”
“She is,” I gritted, all too aware of the chuckles behind me. The softly muttered oh, that’s so sweet and the hidden laughs covered behind hands. “Thank you, Josie.”
I’d attempted to keep my eyes on Josie, to ignore the beautiful skirt and the blue eyes and the pretty teacher, but doing so any longer would make this entire thing more awkward. I forced my eyes off Josie and immediately cursed the heavens.
The teacher wasn’t beautiful. She was drop dead gorgeous. With thick, curled hair that bounced and fell past her shoulders and eyes so round and large. Josie was right, they were so bright and blue you could get lost in them.
My throat went dry. My mouth suddenly parched. I cleared my throat to say hello and nothing came out except a croaked, “Hi.”
Hi. Yep. Awesome. I pulled my hand out of Josie’s and wiped my suddenly sweat-lined palm on my jeans before offering it to Miss Pesco.
“Gavin Kelley,” I told her and was pretty certain there was a sneer on my face. “Josie’s father.”
“Oh,” she replied and rolled her lips together. “Miss Pesco, Josie’s new teacher. Thanks so much for coming tonight.”
Young. She was young. Maybe even younger than me and I now had to entrust my daughter with her for seven hours a day? At least Mrs. Bonners knew what she was doing. But damn, she was definitely pretty.
Making everything worse, she smelled like springtime, not mothballs.
I stepped back. “Nice to meet you. Come on, Josephine. Let’s let others say hello.”
I didn’t glance back at Miss Pesco before I took Josie’s hand and moved us through the crowd. They were still silent, annoyingly so, and I hadn’t been polite in the least, but what the heck?
My chest was hot, my palms were still sweaty, and I tugged at the collar of my T-shirt to get air flowing to my body to cool me down.
“That wasn’t very friendly,” Josie scolded me when we were near a window. Too bad it was sealed shut. Fresh air would have helped. But this… I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t be attracted to my daughter’s teacher, who so clearly already loved her.
“Stay here,” I told Josie. “Find your desk and I’ll be right back, okay?”
“But, Daddy?—”
“Stay here, Josie.” I turned on my heels and headed out of the classroom. Next door, Faye Parker’s classroom door was open, with her lights on. She was standing at her desk, straightening a stack of papers.
She jumped as I entered and then laughed. “Oh. Gavin. Hi. You meet Penny yet?”
Penny. Of course she had an adorable name to go with the eyes and the smile and all that hair and cuteness.
“I need to switch Josie’s classes. Can you take her?”
“Why?” She jolted, jerking her head back, and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want her teaching Josie.”
Alarm flared in Faye’s features. Around my older brothers Cameron and Caleb’s ages, I’d known Faye and her ex-husband practically my whole life. They’d spent more than one summer night drinking beer out of kegs and making out in my parents’ backyard. At least before the divorce.
“What happened? Did she say something? I’ve talked with her a few times and she’s been sweet, really excited for this opportunity, and she seems like a great teacher with excellent training. A solid awareness of skills and has incredible potential. She’ll be so good with the kids.”
She was sweet. Probably tasted like strawberries and springtime. Probably not the thing to be thinking about regarding my child’s teacher.
“Can you move Josie into this class or not? I’m asking as a favor to a friend.”
Her eyes narrowed and a knock came from the door, making us both jump.
“Everything okay in here?” Principal Reece glanced between the two of us.
“It’s great,” Faye chirped. “Everything’s fine. Are we ready for everything to start?”
“We are…” the principal drawled. “If you’re ready?”
Her eyes stalled on me; an eyebrow arched. Old enough to be my mom, there was a scolding in that arched brow, making me feel like I’d forgotten to clean up the tack room like I was supposed to and then lied to my mom about it.
“All’s good,” I muttered.
It wasn’t. Nothing about this was good. I knew what I was asking, and I doubted it would happen. Was surer of it when the principal turned her back to us and Faye came to my side.
“If something happened, I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t just demand a change of classrooms for Josie. I can promise to keep an eye out and if something doesn’t feel right, we can discuss it again.”
“Never mind. Forget I asked.” I stomped back into Miss Pesco’s classroom and pulled up a chair to sit down next to Josie. Heads swiveled in my direction. Some curious, some friendly. A few filled with pity and judgment.
I knew what the town thought of me. The embarrassment that came from not only being fifteen and a sophomore in high school when I accidentally knocked up my girlfriend after fumbling around in a dark barn but then being abandoned for better things. Many judged. A whole lot pitied me.
Fortunately, a whole lot more jumped in to help.
None of that help was available to me now.
I was going to have to deal with pretty little Penny Pesco all by myself.
“Sleep well, pipsqueak.” I leaned over Josie and kissed her cheek.
“Night, Dad.” She snuggled deeper under her pile of blankets, Squishmallows and stuffed animals, and held her favorite, well-loved, and worn bunny up to my face. “Don’t forget about Jumpers.”
I kissed Jumpers’ nose and since this routine was the same every night, I kissed the remaining stuffed animals she had surrounding her. She had so many that sometimes I couldn’t find her in the morning when I went to wake her.
“Night night. Love you to the moon, Josie.”
I stood and was at her door, flipping off her overhead light switch, leaving on only her daisy flower lamp on her nightstand as she yawned.
“Miss Pesco is really pretty, isn’t she?”
Despite my earlier tantrum, Miss Pesco remained the topic of conversation all night long. “I bet she’ll be a really good teacher.”
I hated to admit it, but after listening to her, and then Faye and the principal describe the plan moving forward to ensure a smooth transition, I was impressed. Miss Pesco, Penny , had to be nervous, standing in front of a room full of strangers, knowing she was being studied and she hadn’t batted at the pressure for a moment.
“Yeah, and really pretty,” Josie murmured. Another yawn hit her, and she snuggled so deep into her covers only the tips of her curls were visible.
She wasn’t pretty. She was otherworldly stunning.
It didn’t even matter that Josie kept talking about her new teacher and how pretty she was, how beautiful and nice and funny. With as pretty as she was, I wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking about her either. Sure, Josie’s rambling didn’t help, but I could still feel that pulse of attraction that was swarming in my gut and my veins.
I felt electrified. Bursting with as much energy as I did anytime Josie performed a miraculous feat—like sleeping through the night for the first time, crawling and then walking, or her first cartwheel. Nothing in my life excited me outside Josie. My job was good. Great, even. I enjoyed the work and running a construction company and building and renovating homes and businesses in my town and in neighboring counties. It was steady work. Hard and honest work and at the end of every project, I felt like I accomplished something important.
It said a lot about our town and the trust they had in someone as young as me to take on such large projects, but my dad often joked I’d been born with a hammer in one hand and a drill in the other. Building came naturally to me, always had, and I’d been designing builds for people in town and helping complete them since before Josie was born.
But I couldn’t remember a time when something had left such a lingering impression on me.
Penny Pesco.
I wandered into my living room and glanced at the television. There had to be a game on. Either hockey or football. Hell, Caleb could be playing, which said a lot about my mental state because I never missed a chance to watch him play, but grabbing a drink and settling in with the television and a sports game like I did every single night of my life had no appeal.
Instead, I headed outside to my front porch. I’d bought the house when it was on the verge of collapsing from the next calm breeze and rebuilt the entire thing from the ground up. I was eighteen when I started working on it, choosing to go my own way instead of staying on my family’s ranch or heading to college. I managed to get most of it done on my own, with my dad and brothers and other men from town helping on things I was uncertain about. The roof tresses and electrical wiring and plumbing being the most important things. I was proud of this small, three-bedroom home I gave to Josie. I was even prouder that at my age, I’d not only started my own business, but made a solid, strong living at it. Sure, it helped that I came from the Kelley family. Everyone in three counties knew us and everyone in the state knew us now due to my brothers both being professional athletes. Hell, we’d even had offers over the years of being a reality TV show family, showing the public all over the world what ranching life was really about.
That all helped my success, and I was grateful for it. But I’d kept and grown that success with my own blood, sweat, and tears. If I’d sucked, I would have flopped.
Thankfully, I didn’t, and tonight, I was damn proud of the life I was able to give my daughter.
The air was crisp and cool, proving winter was quickly on its way, and I hissed in a breath at the sting of cold on my bare arms before I rested my forearms onto the railing.
I’d been a jerk to Josie’s new teacher. Once word got back to my mom, and I had no doubt it would because gossip in New Haven traveled faster than the breeze, she’d have words for me about that.
And I’d even been more distant with Josie because of it. Sure, we’d come home and done our night routine. A bath and then a chapter of her new book, Charlotte’s Web. I still wasn’t sure how to prepare for the end I knew was coming.
But preparing my daughter for the heartbreaking ending of a book was nothing compared to the pain I felt coming.
Penny Pesco was going to make my life difficult, that was for sure, and somehow, I’d have to find a way to suck it up and deal with it like I’d learned to deal with everything else.
Car lights appeared down the street, moving slower than most. It passed me, snagging my attention because it was unfamiliar. In a town the size of ours and on a street where I’d lived for the last five years, I knew everyone. Every vehicle. This was new, and so I pushed to standing until the silver, older model Nissan pulled into a driveway two doors down from me and across the street.
It was the Markhams’ old house, been empty since old man Markham passed away a few months ago. His grandkids had come and packed it up, had a cleaning company come clean it up, and it’d been available to sell or lease ever since. But things didn’t move fast around here, and I’d been so busy the last week, I hadn’t noticed anyone moving in.
I stepped around the pillar on my porch, closer to the stairs, to get a better look at my new neighbor.
The garage door opened, and the car pulled in, giving me nothing.
But that tightness from earlier was back in my chest.
I waited, expected the door to close behind the car, but the garage light stayed on, the door open and soon, a skirt I’d spent all day hearing about appeared, and Penny Pesco, my daughter’s teacher and apparently, my new neighbor, strolled down to the end of the drive toward her mailbox.
The universe was playing a sick joke on me. She was my neighbor ?
I was moving before I planned it, jumping off the stairs of my porch and jogging across the street before I knew what was going to come out of my mouth. I was sensitive to the fact it was night and dark and cleared my throat to give Penny a heads-up someone was near her.
Her head turned in my direction, and her lips parted.
One blink later and she gave me the same wide-eyed, brow raised, surprised look she’d given me earlier.
“Mr. Kelley?”
“Miss Pesco.”
“Please.” She smiled, and I stuttered to a stop at the flash of white teeth and pink lips. “Outside of school, you can call me Penny or Penelope.”
No way in Hades was I going to be on a first-name basis with her. I flashed what was supposed to be a grin but felt more like a flinch. “I wanted to apologize for earlier. I didn’t feel like I was as welcoming as I should have been.”
I’d been downright rude, and it’d had nothing to do with Josie blurting out she didn’t have a mom. She’d been doing that for years.
“Oh. Okay, but really, it’s not necessary.”
“It is. I was raised by a mom who drilled manners into us like my dad drilled the ranching life, and outside of that, I’m also raising a daughter not to tolerate disrespect from men and to know her worth. I’m also raising her to know right from wrong, to do the right thing and that means apologizing if necessary.”
As I said it, that electrified feeling returned tenfold and I rubbed my hands together. The cold air could be blamed for it, but I was anything but cold.
I was energized. Excited.
Penny smiled and tipped her head. “Well, then I appreciate it. And I’m sorry… about Josie’s mom.”
“Don’t be.” My tone flattened, turned downright glacial. “She had the opportunity to stay and didn’t. She left when Josie was six months old and we haven’t seen or heard from her since.”
“That’s horrible. That she’d do that, and for you and Josie.”
It was. Since I didn’t have anything nice to say about Monica, I kept my mouth shut.
“Anyway. I was on my porch, saw you come out of the garage, and wanted to say I’m sorry. I should have been more polite.”
“Well, thank you.”
Right. Apology over. I should leave. Walk away. Go back to my porch and my front door and turn on a game. Only I couldn’t. My shoes were glued to the cement and Penny was watching me like she either had something else to say, or hell, I didn’t know.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” I told her. “It’s a good town.”
“I’m already loving it.”
“Good.”
Crap. I was miserable at this. Small talk and niceties and the like.
“I should get inside,” she said and nodded toward her door.
“Right. Good night then.”
She flashed me another sparkling smile. “Good night, neighbor.”
I stood still as Penny started walking up the driveway before I turned away and headed back home. Much slower this time. Much more reluctant than I should have felt.
“Mr. Kelley?” she called once I reached the neighbor’s driveway.
“Yeah?”
One of her shoulders shrugged. The move bounced her curls, and I tore my gaze off all that hair. “If you ever need help with Josie, remember I’m close.”
Would never happen. “Thanks for the offer.”
It was polite, but it said all I needed to.
I would never ask Penny for help, not even if my life depended on it.
Her smile flattened and she walked into the garage and disappeared from my sight. A second later, her door started closing.
And I, like the idiot I was learning I could be, stayed there until the door closed and an inside light was flipped on.
She was home. Safe.
And I was in a fresh land of living hell living across from the first woman who’d made me feel anything for a very long time.
Screwed.
I was absolutely screwed.