Linda Jones - One Major Distraction

“Got it.”

“I’d drive straight through,” Sadie said, exasperation in her voice, “but Truman won’t allow it. He says I need my rest. For the baby,” she added, a touch of wonder and joy in her voice.

Flynn’s heart did a sick flip. “I can’t believe you’re letting any man besides me tell you what to do, but in this case McCain is right. Get your rest. Cal wouldn’t want you to make yourself sick.”

“Don’t mention sick to me,” Sadie said with a groan. “I’d heard about morning sickness, but—”

“I gotta go,” Flynn said abruptly, interrupting his one and only female agent. “I left a class of whiny little girls alone, and I hear ’em getting out of hand. Wanna trade jobs?”

Sadie laughed. “No thanks. Have fun.”

Flynn ended the call and dropped his cell phone into his pocket. He opened the door on a classroom full of well-behaved students, who waited for him with an unnatural patience. A few of them whispered to friends, but they weren’t anywhere near getting out of hand.

But that excuse was better than telling Sadie, or anyone else, that pregnant women were as tough for him to take as little girls.

Flynn Benning had obviously taken her abrupt flight from the walking trail as a rejection of some sort. He hadn’t done more than nod and say hello for the past four days. In a way Tess was relieved. In another way, she kinda missed talking to him.

Maybe she should make more of an effort to get to know the other teachers. It was possible that Flynn was right, and what she really needed was a friend. After all, if Laura was here next year, odds were Tess would be here, too. Might as well make things as pleasant as possible.

Tess carried a plate of brownies and clean mugs into the middle school teachers’ lounge. There was only one teacher present, Stephanie McCabe. That was a disappointment, since Tess was pretty sure she and the English teacher had nothing in common. Nothing at all.

But she might as well give it a shot.

“Hi,” Tess said as she laid out the brownies and arranged the coffee mugs. She turned around and leaned against the counter. “I love your skirt. It’s so…colorful.”

Stephanie smiled widely. “Thanks. I made it myself.”

“You did?” On purpose?

“I make a lot of my own clothes. It’s so hard to find just what I want in just the right size.” The English teacher wagged a finger. “You know, when you’re off duty you should wear more color. I know Dr. Barber probably insists that you wear that godawful uniform when you’re working, but even when you’re not you wear such dull colors. Hot pink. You should definitely wear lots of hot pink.”

“I like blues and greens,” Tess said, wondering if this wasn’t a really, really big mistake.

Stephanie pursed her lips in disapproval. “Turquoise, then.”

“Next time I go shopping, I’ll look for some.”

The woman smiled, as if she’d accomplished something great in convincing Tess to try a new color. Then she leaned slightly forward and lowered her voice. “Have you heard about Serena Loomis and the new janitor?”

She hadn’t heard anything, but she’d seen those two together enough to know that something was going on. “No, not really.”

“It’s shocking. Surely Dr. Barber has heard what’s going on. I’m surprised she hasn’t fired them both. If the students ever find out what they’re up to, she will.”

“They’re adults,” Tess said, trying not to sound too defensive. “As long as what they do after hours doesn’t interfere with their jobs here…”

“I suppose,” Stephanie said sharply, her smile gone.

Tess grabbed a couple of dirty mugs and headed for the door. Strike one. Not that she was surprised that she and Stephanie McCabe hadn’t hit it off right away.

But the awkward conversation had only made her miss Flynn more—and she’d never expected that.

Flynn backed off for a few days, because he knew if he didn’t Tess was likely to bolt. He’d scared her, somehow. So he smiled, and he complimented her on her cooking, but he didn’t go out of his way to spend time with her. He didn’t ask for seconds, and he didn’t hang around the dining hall after everyone else had left.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t keeping a close eye on her.

Lucky had her checked out, and from all appearances she was clean as a whistle. He’d lifted her prints last week, from a glass she’d left sitting on a dining hall table. They didn’t match Austin’s. He hadn’t taken a hair to check for a match to the one blond hair that had been found, but she had the coloring of a natural redhead, and he’d checked very closely for pale roots.

Social Security number was legit. Her real name was Teresa, but Tess was a common enough nickname. Stafford was her married name. A few years back she’d been married, for less than two years, to one Peter Stafford. Irreconcilable differences didn’t tell him squat as to why the marriage hadn’t worked. Didn’t matter. It just so happened that she’d been on her honeymoon in Florida when Austin had committed the crime in Texas.

Tess was hiding something, but she was exactly who she said she was…and she definitely wasn’t the killer he’d come here to catch.

They were making progress with the others, too, if you could call finding squat progress. Toller’s prints weren’t a match to Austin’s, and neither were Loomis’s. A dozen other teachers had also come out clean. They hadn’t gotten McCabe’s fingerprints—yet—and they hadn’t been able to get their hands on one of her blond hairs, either, which were always sprayed into submission and didn’t dare to fall out. The next step was to break into her room and have a go at her hairbrush.

Even though he no longer thought Tess might be Austin, something about the woman stunk to high heaven. Not literally. Literally she smelled amazingly sweet. Not perfumy, like some of the other teachers who apparently swam in cologne, but lightly fragrant, like woman combined with whatever she’d been baking that day.

Like he had time to notice how any woman smelled.

It was her college degree in computer science that stunk the most, figuratively speaking. Why was she working in the cafeteria, when she was as well educated as any employee in this school? Sure, the market for computer nerds had shrunk some in the past few years, but there was still plenty of work out there where she could use her skills, like teaching.

Flynn had survived more than a week of teaching history to girls who couldn’t care less about what had happened last year, much less hundreds of years ago. Some were studious and did the work in order to earn a good grade, others did what they had to in order to get by. Still others all but dared him to fail them. They did half the work, they didn’t study, their papers were sloppy and incomplete.

If he could’ve gotten away with it, he would have had half of them running laps after class, but he supposed that was Cal’s job, for now. Maybe he could have them do push-ups when they misbehaved. Girls or not, they needed discipline. And as far as he was concerned, they still didn’t get it where the American Revolution was concerned.

Since Tess had seemed more than happy to have him at a distance, he was surprised when, as she handed him a plate full of meatloaf and scalloped potatoes—it was Thursday evening, after all—she looked him in the eye and asked, “What are you doing after dinner?”

“Nothing,” he said as he placed his plate on the tray that already sported a small bowl of salad. Next would be the apple pie, laid out at the end of the line for the diners to snag as they passed, just like last Thursday. Dr. Barber insisted on structure, even in the dining hall. “Why do you ask?”