Marie Ferrarella - The Parks Empire - Secrets, Lies and Loves - Romancing the Enemy

“Are you saying I’m fired?” Sara demanded in disbelief. “You can’t fire me without cause. I have a contract.”

The woman hesitated. “There’s a clause in it relating to student enrollment.”

“I have a full class.”

“You’ll receive payment for the semester, of course,” the principal continued as if Sara hadn’t spoken. “The secretary has the check. You may pick it up when you collect your things and sign out.”

Sara started to protest further, but realized from the closed face across the desk that it was useless. Rising, she nodded with what dignity she could muster and went to clear her desk before classes started.

Fortunately she didn’t have much this early in the school year. The supplies fit in one box that she could easily carry the three blocks to her town house.

When she went to the office to collect her check and sign out, Rachel was there, two bright red spots of anger in her cheeks. “I just heard,” she said to Sara. “What is this all about?”

Sara shrugged. The school secretary pretended she couldn’t hear a thing. She handed Sara an envelope and observed while she signed herself out. Under “reason for leaving campus,” Sara put a question mark.

Rachel escorted her from the office to the front sidewalk. “This isn’t right.”

“No, but there’s nothing we can do.” Sara managed a smile. “You’d better go to your class. I don’t want you in trouble because of me.”

Her friend dismissed the thought with a wave. “I thought you and Cade were getting along rather well. Why would he have you fired?”

The question shocked Sara. “He wouldn’t—”

She and Rachel stared at each other.

“Do you think Cade would have done this?” Sara asked after a moment of strained silence.

“Who else? He’s on the board of directors. You know we always need good teachers. The old bat would sign away her soul before letting someone out of a contract, not to mention paying them a whole semester’s salary for nothing.”

Sara touched Rachel’s shoulder, comforted that her friend was angry and indignant on her behalf. “Well, I suppose I’d better go before I get thrown off campus.”

“I’ll see you tonight. Let’s go out to dinner,” Rachel said. “Call your brother and see if he can come. We need to have a strategy meeting.”

“Not tonight. Later this week. I’ll call you,” Sara promised, needing privacy to lick the wounds inflicted by this blow.

When Rachel nodded and retreated to her classroom, Sara started home. Glancing back as she approached the street corner, she saw a stranger standing at her classroom door, smiling and answering questions from the students when they realized Sara wasn’t there.

She would have to return at three o’clock to pick up Stacy. Then…then sometime this evening she would tell Cade Parks exactly what she thought of him and his lying, conniving family. Like Rachel, she was convinced they were the ones who’d arranged this humiliation.

A frigid resolve entered her soul. She’d let herself get distracted by Cade and his charm, had fallen for his daughter and even thought she was falling for him, but she wouldn’t be that foolish again.

Cade smiled at the warm leap of his heart when he pulled into the drive on his side of the duplex at nearly seven o’clock that evening. Home. And his two favorite girls waiting for him. He was eager to see them.

His day had been spent in a wrangle over a property settlement that had gone to civil court. Two brothers had started a business together. Now they’d had a falling-out. Such was the wisdom of doing business with family members.

As soon as the garage door was open, he pulled inside, parked and leaped up the steps leading to the kitchen.

“Hey, anybody home?” he called.

“We’re here,” Stacy responded. “We’re drawing.”

He tossed his suit coat and tie aside, then rolled up the sleeves of his shirt on the way to the deck. One glance at Sara chilled the warm glow inside him.

Although she was smiling, her eyes were as opaque as the cheap jade sold in tourist shops.

After going through the greeting ritual with his daughter, he turned to their neighbor. She held an artist’s sketch book in her lap. On it was a pencil drawing of Stacy sitting on the deck railing, the city behind her and the Golden Gate Bridge beyond that.

“That’s very good,” he said, pausing beside her. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

“I dabble,” she said. “I’m not anywhere as good as your sister. I saw some of her work at a gallery today.”

He tried to put all these pieces together and come up with a coherent picture. “Did you take your class on a field trip?”

She shook her head.

“We had a sub’tute,” Stacy told him. “I didn’t like her as much as Sara. None of us did.”

“Substitute,” he automatically corrected. “Sara is Miss Carlton to you,” he reminded the child.

“She said I could call her by her first name since she isn’t going to be my teacher anymore.”

While his daughter gave Sara a disapproving glance for this latter sin, Cade added this information into the mix and still came up with a jumble. “This isn’t making sense.”

“I’m no longer employed at Lakeside,” Sara informed him, her manner casual, her gaze cold.

The icy surety of knowing what was to come hit him like a flash flood in winter. “Why?”

She shrugged. “Apparently the class size wasn’t big enough to sustain an extra teacher. That was the clause invoked to let me go. The good news is they gave me a check for my salary for the rest of this term. Nice, huh?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, giving his neighbor a pointed perusal to assure her he meant to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Sara nodded, her head bent over the sketch as she went back to shading it with pencil strokes.

Stacy looked from one adult to the other. Cade knew his sharp-minded daughter had picked up on the undertones between him and Sara. It was time for a distraction.

“I’m starved,” he said. “Let’s go out for dinner.”

“Sara and I already ate,” Stacy told him, bridging the tense silence between the other two. “We had ice cream after school, and Sara got to meet Mrs. Ling. When Mrs. Ling held Mrs. Chong up next to Sara, their eyes were almost ’xactly the same. Raymond was there, too. He’s in my class. Then we had Chinese.”

Cade sorted through this information. Raymond was Mrs. Ling’s grandson. Mrs. Chong was her cat, whose eyes indeed were as green as Sara’s. The cat was also as aloof as Sara appeared at the moment.

“We got Chinese take-out,” Sara clarified. “There’s plenty left in the refrigerator for you.” She stood. “I have some work to do. I’ll see you in the morning, Stacy.”

“Okay,” Stacy said.

“Wait a minute.” Cade tried to suppress his frustration while Sara gazed at him as if they were perfect strangers. Aware of his daughter taking every word in, he changed his mind about an interrogation at the moment. “I can drop Stace off on my way to work. There’s no need for you to go to the trouble.”

“As you wish.”

With a nod to each of them, she sailed into her side of the mansion and closed the door.

“Do you think Sara is mad?” Stacy asked.

“I suspect she’s tired. Come on, you can keep me company while I eat. Then it’s bath time for you.”

They went inside. By the time Stacy was in bed and sleeping like the angel children are purported to be, Cade was chomping at the bit to go next door and see what the hell was happening.

Sara thought of staying in her bedroom and not answering the door when she heard Cade’s knock at the back of the house later that night. Reviewing her feelings as she went downstairs, she decided she was fine, all emotion bottled up and locked away.