DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(66)

“I guess you don’t approve. But I’ve learned that you sometimes have to bend the rules a little to get him to follow them at all.”

“No. I get it.”

“He really is a good kid. He’s just…”

“A teenager.”

She nodded. “A teenager who’s been through an awful lot these last few years. The night our parents died, he was at home alone when the police came to make the notification. And I couldn’t get a direct flight, so he was pretty much on his own for forty-eight hours afterward. That’s a lot to ask a twelve year old to deal with. Then the funeral and everything that came after…I tried to protect him from the reality of our situation as best as I could, but he is pretty intuitive.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“It’s been hard. So if sleeping in class is the worst of it, I think that’s pretty good.”

I nodded. “You’re right.”

Surprise lit her eyes. She studied me in the bright stadium lights, emotions dancing in her eyes with such intensity I could almost read her thoughts. She didn’t know if she could trust me, didn’t know if I was being honest or just placating her until I could…what? Get evidence to take JT from her? Was that what I was doing? In reality, it probably was. And that didn’t sit well all of a sudden.

I turned away, using the excuse of our school band coming on to the field. As I watched the students, quite a few of whom were in my classes, march across the field in their heavy uniforms with their instruments in their hands, I found myself having second thoughts for the first time since Julia told me that she had my child fifteen years ago. I knew that he would have a family, that someone out there had wanted a child bad enough that they would take my son—the son who was taken from me without my knowledge. I knew they brought him into their lives, loved him, and experienced all the things that I should have experienced with him. I knew all this, but I was so focused on what I lost that I forgot that someone would lose when I took him back.

Did I really want to hurt Penelope? Did I really want to destroy the relationship she had with JT? Did I really want to hurt JT by taking Penelope away from him?

There had to be a better way. I just wasn’t sure I knew what that better way was.

~~~

It felt kind of odd to be back in a suit. I stood in the front of the conference table, gesturing to an electronic white board, feeling so much like I was back in the classroom that the expensive Italian suit I was wearing felt wrong. Thank God the meeting was just wrapping up.

“Very smooth, Mr. James,” Libby said to me a few minutes later as we walked out of the room behind the lumber executives who’d just signed a very lucrative deal for both them and us.

“It’s Mr. Philips to you.”

She smiled. “Are you enjoying teaching?”

I moved the files I was carrying from one hand to the other so that I could slip my arm around her shoulders.

“Nothing like I thought it would be.”

“I bet.”

“But it’s been interesting. The kids are…a challenge.”

“Any super stars? Like me?”

I laughed, remembering how we used to tease Libby for being a goody two shoes. There were actually several kids in my classes that reminded me of her. But not necessarily for that reason.

“There is no one in the world quite like you.”

We walked into my office then. She stepped away, all business as she took the files out of my hands and handed them to my assistant, Tamera, with instructions on how many copies had to be made and where they had to be sent or filed. I only half listened, my thoughts back in Texas even as I stood at the wall to ceiling windows at the back of my office and looked down over the small community of Ashland.

“Tell me about him,” Libby said a moment later, coming to stand behind me.

“I’ve already told you everything.”

“Not really. You’ve sent me pictures of a dark haired boy in a football uniform and talked with frustration about a student who sleeps through your class. But you haven’t really talked to me about your son.”

I turned and leaned back against the window. “It’s all so surreal, you know? Even when he walks into my classroom and I can see the resemblance…it’s just so hard to wrap my mind around the reality of it all.”

“What are you going to do?”

I rolled my head back and stared up at the ceiling, a heavy sigh slipping from between my lips. “I thought that it would be simple. I’d pretend to be his teacher for a few months, then I’d pull him aside and tell him the truth. And he’d be so grateful that he’d give up everything to come back to Oregon to live with me. Then I saw him in school, watched him with his friends, and I guess I went looking for an excuse to take him away. He acts out, he does things he probably shouldn’t do and…it seemed easy to convince myself that his current situation isn’t good. That he’d be better off with me.”

I closed my eyes and I could see Penelope sitting there, the exhaustion written all over her face. I’d wanted to wrap my arm around her last night, wanted to reassure her and help her. I was starting to feel sorry for her, and I really didn’t want that.

“But you don’t feel that way now?”

I focused on Libby, took in her familiar features—her dark hair, dark eyes, and oh, so familiar compassion in her expression—and shrugged.