Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Tuesday morning in Room Eighteen went better than Monday, if only because Sienna arrived before the kids and was prepared when they walked in from the bus. They made it through morning meeting, math, and half of reading before the meltdowns began.

“I wanted peanut butter!” Billy shrieked at the top of his lungs. He threw himself onto the rug and began to beat his hands and feet against the floor.

Sienna laced both hands over her eyes. They’d been reading the monthly school field trip guide, then the after-school movie list, and then the lunch menu. Today’s cold lunch was ham and cheese on wheat bread. Not peanut butter. Thus the tantrum.

Silas climbed into his chair and rocked so hard the books on the shelf nearby vibrated. Caleb sat at the table, head bent over his math sheets. Bailey watched his brother with wide eyes and red cheeks, probably about to join in the shrieking. Sienna glanced at Dawn, who was chewing at her fingernails and making them bleed.

“Silas, honey, let’s take it down a notch.” She reached for a wooden Jacob’s Ladder toy and handed it to him. “Here.” He clutched it in both hands and looked at her for a moment, confused. Then the rocking slowed as he began to flip the pieces of the toy over and back.

Billy’s cries grew weaker, and she decided to risk letting him wear himself out. She patted Bailey on the back and handed him the alphabet coloring sheets he’d been working on earlier. “Bailey, please sit down here,” she said as she pulled out a chair across from Caleb. Caleb looked up in alarm, but she pointed at his worksheet. “Continue.” He blinked and then looked down without a word.

As Bailey climbed into the chair and took a red crayon in one fist, his brother looked over his shoulder, still prone in the middle of the room. “I wanted peanut butter,” he said in a mournful voice.

“I know, honey,” Sienna said, “but we don’t always get what we want.”
Boy, isn’t that the truth?
“You’ll have peanut butter another day.” She walked over and pulled him onto her lap, cradling him in a hug before smoothing his mussed hair and handing him a tissue. He left tear streaks on her blue shirt and what looked like a black handprint as well.

Without making a sound, Dawn began to pace in a circle around the room, following the pattern of the rug and then the tiles of the floor when the rug ended. She didn’t speak. She didn’t look at anyone else. She pinched her fingers together in a rhythm that matched her footsteps. Sienna didn’t follow her or stop her. Instead, she looked at her watch. Eleven o’clock. Thirty more minutes before Caleb informed her they had to go to lunch.

Sienna slipped her phone from her pocket. No calls or texts from Mike. She wasn’t sure she’d expected any, not after yesterday’s weird-as-hell kiss, but still. Silence was strange too. She put the phone away again.

The clock crawled its way to lunchtime, and she dropped off her class at the cafeteria and found her way to the faculty room. In her former school, the teacher faculty room had always featured some kind of food, either pastries dropped off by appreciative parents or leftover snacks from a fundraiser. She hoped the same held true for Pine Point Elementary. She still hadn’t managed to get to a grocery store, and all she’d had for breakfast was a granola bar and a large cup of coffee from Zeb’s.

“I’m thinking about trying one of those dating sites,” Sienna heard as she walked inside.

“Really? I don’t know if—”

As soon as she saw Sienna, Polly Preston’s mouth snapped shut. She sat next to Harmony Donaldson on one of two couches in the room. Today the teachers both wore long tunic sweaters and corduroys in muted colors.
Do they plan their outfits each day?
Sienna chided herself for the catty thought.
Stop it.
Maybe being best friends from the time you could walk meant you ended up with not only the same job but the same fashion sense. Sienna wouldn’t know.

“Oh, hey, Sienna,” Harmony said. “How’s it going?”

Sienna headed straight for the bagels and cream cheese on the table under the window. A coffee maker and microwave sat beside it, next to a copier and a bulletin board with various flyers pinned to it. “I’m good,” she said after grabbing a bagel and pouring a cup of lukewarm coffee. She leaned against the table. “Little bit of a rough morning, but I think we’re under control now.”

“Think the weather’s getting to everyone,” Polly said. She nibbled at a croissant. “My kids were off the wall this morning too.”

“Glad to hear it wasn’t just mine.”

Harmony crossed one slim leg over the other. “So how many hot guys work out at Springer Fitness?”

A lump of bagel lodged itself in Sienna’s throat. “I’m sorry?”

The brunette ran her fingers through her hair. “I know Mike Springer’s pretty good eye candy. I don’t know about the others though. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth it to go there.”

“I guess it depends on whether you’re going for the guys or the workout.” She tried to ignore the disappointment that crept over her at the memory of last night’s kiss gone wrong.

Harmony winked at Polly. “Can’t it be both?”

“A gym is as good a place as any to meet someone,” Sienna said. Or, apparently, turn off someone. She still didn’t know what she’d done to make Mike turn tail and run. As if on cue, her cell phone buzzed with an incoming call. She glanced down and saw his name on the screen.

“But do professional guys go there, or is it mostly meatheads?” Harmony went on.

This is the first time I’ve ever been in a conversation about husband hunting
. Sienna slid her thumb over her phone to silence the ringer and send Mike’s call to voicemail. “Combination of both, I’d say. Pine Point is pretty blue collar, from what I remember. If you guys live in Silver Valley, why don’t you work out there?”

Polly looked at Harmony and giggled. “Well, the owner isn’t nearly as nice to look at, for one.”

Harmony’s lips curled up. “No, he’s definitely not. Plus, my ex-boyfriend goes to the gym in Silver Valley a lot,” she added. “And he’s the last person I want to see.”

“Oh.” Sienna nodded. “I get that.”

Polly brushed the crumbs from her fingers. “It’s not super easy to meet someone around here.” She played with her bracelets. “I’m getting older by the day.”

Sienna couldn’t imagine either of them to be pushing thirty, but then again, she’d gone to college with a few women who considered it a failure if they didn’t graduate at twenty-two with rings on their fingers.

“I’m sure you’ll meet someone,” she said. She almost added something about online dating sites being a decent option too, but then she bit her tongue.
I don’t think I was supposed to hear that.

“Bye,” Polly said. “Hope your afternoon goes better than your morning did.”

“Me too,” Sienna answered, but they were already gone. She pulled out her phone and listened to Mike’s message.

“Hey, thought I might catch you at your lunch break. Sorry about yesterday. Give me a call when you can.”

She frowned, played the message again and tried to gauge the tone behind his words. He sounded matter-of-fact, polite, and sincere. Nothing else. She sighed and put her phone back in her pocket. A return call would have to wait until after school. Even better, maybe she’d stop by the gym and see Mike in person.

The weather warmed up, so they marched outside for recess. Sienna stood at the edge of the playground and watched the twins chase each other around the swings. Caleb crouched next to the snow gauge, walking back to her every so often to report his measurements, and Silas was content to stand near the bottom of the slide and clap as the other children came down.

The only student she couldn’t keep track of was Dawn. Sienna scanned the playground on a regular basis, but every so often Dawn’s blond braids would vanish, and Sienna would have to hurry over to one of the monitors. “Have you seen her? Red plaid coat, blond hair?” She thought about adding that Dawn didn’t speak, but that wasn’t useful to anyone.

Dawn always turned up. One time she was standing behind a tree, pressing her fingers against the bark and counting the marks it made on her skin. Another time she’d ventured over to the older kids’ side of the playground and was watching a snowball fight. Just before they came back inside, she walked around the corner of the school, where Sienna found her staring up at the fringe of icicles hanging from the roof.

“Honey, you can’t just walk away like that,” she said for the third time. She took Dawn’s mittened hand, but the girl pulled away and ran ahead of her back into the building. By the time three o’clock rolled around, Sienna was exhausted.

“Bye, bye, see you tomorrow,” she called, waving as each of her students walked to their buses at the circular drive in front of the school. Her neck ached, her head spun, and she needed a workout in the worst way. She wasn’t keen on having whatever weird conversation might develop with Mike, but avoiding Springer Fitness was the last thing she wanted to do.

She walked to the office to check her mailbox. Two memos, one about next week’s faculty meeting and one about new field-trip policies. Sienna tucked them under her arm and glanced at Jenny James’s door.

“Is she around?” she asked Hillary, the secretary behind the desk. Hillary, who could’ve been anywhere between forty and seventy years old, wore a flowered dress and a heavy silver cross around her neck. Her gray hair crossed in two braids across the top of her head, and when she spoke, Sienna could hear a faint German accent.

“She is, but she is not to be disturbed.”

Sienna blinked. The door with the
Principal, Mrs. James
placard in the center of it remained securely closed. “Okay. I’ll catch up with her tomorrow. Just had a question about ordering supplies.”

Hillary produced a catalog from the top drawer of her desk. “I have ordering forms. You can return them to me.”

“Oh, thank you.”

She wouldn’t have given any of the conversation a second thought, except when she walked to her car a few minutes later, the blinds in the principal’s office jerked up for a moment. Behind them, looking out into the bleak winter day, Sienna saw Jenny’s face. It looked like she’d been crying.

Chapter Eight

“Hi, stranger.”

For a second, Mike kept his head bent over his spreadsheet. He hadn’t expected her to come to the gym. Part of him hadn’t even expected her to return his call. Sienna’s voice teased everything south of his waist and made him think things damn near unspeakable. He cleared his throat, hit Save, and finally looked up.

“Hi.” Did she ever not look gorgeous? His gaze took in a simple ponytail, minimal makeup and no glamorous outfit today, but that didn’t matter. Her light brown eyes sparkled above a green turtleneck sweater, and her smile grew when he said her name.

“Hi yourself.”

“How’s the teaching going?”

“Up and down. Harder than I thought it would be, but the kids are pretty cute. And smarter than people give ’em credit for.” She paused. “I got your message earlier. Maybe we can talk after I’m done working out?”

“Sure.”

“I’m gonna hit the weights until I can’t stand up.”

“That doesn’t sound too smart.” Except it would allow him to come to her rescue, sling an arm around her waist and help her to a stool at the smoothie bar while he rubbed her shoulders and—

No!
Stop thinking that way.

Mike spent the next hour doing his damnedest not to watch Sienna as she moved between the free weights and the Nautilus machines and finally ended up on the elliptical. She wore sleek black workout pants that ended just below the knee, which meant if he looked—not like he was—he could see every inch of smooth, caramel-colored bare calves.

Her arms and legs pumped back and forth, and her ponytail swung from side to side. She had earbuds in and her iPod clipped to her arm.
Wonder what she listens to?
Mike forced himself to turn away yet again.

“Hey, good-looking.”

For once, he was glad to see Chantell. Today, the forty-something-year-old wore a bright yellow tank top and matching yellow and black patterned tights. “Hello, yourself. Trying out the new kickboxing class later?”

“You know it.” She ran one finger down her water bottle, collected condensation, then popped the finger in her mouth.

Mike pressed his lips together to keep from grinning inappropriately.

“I was wondering if I could get a quick hour in with you first,” she went on. The finger went back to her water bottle, then back to her mouth.

“Ah, let me check my schedule.” He turned to look at the white board calendar on the wall behind him. “I do have a client coming in at five forty-five.”

“That gives us twenty minutes,” she said with a wide smile. “Meet you in the fitness room? I really want to work on my core today.” She patted her ample belly and sauntered off.

Her core. Good Lord.

“She certainly is one of your most faithful clients, isn’t she?” Sienna materialized from the other side of the desk.

“That she is.”

Sienna wiped her face and chest with a towel and then draped it around her neck. “Got a smoothie for me? Extra shot of protein?”

“Coming right up. Strawberry or mango?”

“Surprise me.”

Hell.
Why did everything she say have a double meaning? Mike squatted to dig out the ingredients from his mini fridge behind the counter.

He added ingredients, set the blender to high for thirty seconds, and then poured her smoothie into a tall glass.

“Thanks.” She took a long sip and ended up with foam on her upper lip. She snaked her tongue out to lick it away, and Mike’s groin stirred. “So about yesterday,” she began.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a rush. It always seemed best to apologize to women straight off.

“For what exactly? Kissing me? Or pushing me away like I had the plague?”

He cleared his throat. “Ah, the second part.” Hell, he wasn’t sorry at all for kissing her. He was only sorry he had too much goddamn baggage to enjoy it.

Another sip of smoothie. Another swipe of the tongue over her lip. “Any particular reason for that?”

Mike cracked his knuckles. Bad nervous habit he’d picked up ages ago, but he couldn’t help it. “I’m just thinking it’s better if we don’t go down that road.”

“No?” Her brow crooked as if to say they were
already halfway down it.

“You’re not staying in Pine Point any longer than a few months.” He spread his hands wide. “And I’ve got a lot on my plate with the gym. Seems like commitment isn’t in the cards for either one of us right now.”

She set down her glass and folded her arms on the counter. “Fair enough. So how about dinner as friends?”

“Friends?” He couldn’t recall ever doing that before, not with a woman anyway. “Don’t you, ah, have friends at school?”

Her face darkened. “I don’t really have any friends here at all.” She ran her fingers through her ponytail. “That sounds pathetic. I just mean I didn’t keep in touch with people when I left, and you’re pretty much the only person I’ve had a normal conversation with since I got back into town.”

He cracked his knuckles again. “Gotta be honest, I’m not sure I’ll be any good at that. Friends, I mean.”
Be nice.
His mother’s words echoed in his mind.

“I like you,” she went on. “You’re smart, you’re a workaholic like I am, and I think we get along. You’re right. I’m not planning on staying in town. But there are a lot of months between now and June, and I could really use dinner and a drink every once in a while with someone who can hold his own while boxing.”

He let out a sigh. He’d never had a friend like that, except for maybe Zane. He thought for a long moment. What the hell? He could give it a try. At the very least, it would make his mother happy.

“I close up here at five on Fridays,” he finally said. “How about we meet at six o’clock at Marc’s Grille?”

“Sounds perfect. See you then.”