Bayview Heights Trilogy (14 page)

Grinning, she finished the sentence for him.
“I was a brat. I had a real chip on my shoulder that nobody could
budge.”

“Someone must have.”

“Yeah.” She glanced around the room, her eyes
finally focusing on the rows of books by the fireplace. “Seth
Taylor did.” She swallowed. “He was my English teacher.”

Mitch tracked her gaze. “He taught you to
love literature?”

“He taught me to love myself.” It just
slipped out, past defenses that she hadn’t known she was tired of
erecting until this one crumbled a little.

“It’s hard for an adult to keep a kid
straight.”

“Well, after he helped get me on the right
track, a very popular student befriended me. She was a real prom
queen type, and at first I didn’t trust her, didn’t believe she
wanted to be my friend.”

“Why did she?”

“Lacey had a brother who was always in
trouble. None of the so-called good kids wanted anything to do with
him. I guess she felt that was unfair.” Cassie smiled at the
memory. “And she said I added color to her life. But it was mostly
Seth who got me on the right track. I’ll never forget it.”

“That explains some things.”

“Like?

“There’s a special bond between you two.”

Cassie smiled again. “There is.”

“It also explains your single-mindedness
about the kids.”

“I guess it does. Seth helped me change my
life. I want to help my students change theirs.” Shadows, dark and
deep, crossed Mitch’s face. Cassie said, “What is it?”

He shook his head.

“Mitch?”

“Helping kids...doesn’t always work.”

“Something happened to you, didn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Want to talk about it?”

“I can’t.”

She was sitting about five feet away from
him, leaning against a chair. Rising to her knees, she inched over
to him, then sat back on her legs. “I want to know you better. Talk
to me.”

This close to him, she could see his throat
convulse. He was scared of talking; she recognized the signs. He
finally said, “Can we, ah, start with something easier than
this?”

“Sure.” She touched his arm, squeezed and
started to remove her hand. He grabbed it and held it tightly.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked.

“In the city.”

“In New York?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“On the Upper East Side.”

Her brows arched.

“My father was a doctor.”

“Wow.”

“We had money, advantages.”

“Are your parents still alive?”

“No, they died five years ago. Within six
months of each other.”

“That must have been hard.”

“It was.”

“You and Kurt are close.”

Mitch nodded. “You don’t have any brothers or
sisters?”

“No, there was just me and my mother.”

“Is she alive?”

Cassie shook her head. “She died when I was
in college.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Geneseo. In Upstate New York. What about
you?”

His face shuttered. “Once I decided I wanted
to rise in the ranks of the police force, I went to John Jay for
criminal justice.”

“You didn’t go right after high school?”
Cassie asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

He took in a deep breath. “A lot of reasons.”
Glancing at the clock on the opposite wall, he said, “Look, it’s
getting late. School’s godawful early. I don’t know how you—”

Gently, she placed her fingers over his
mouth. “Shh. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. Just
say so. I know what it’s like to need to keep things inside. Under
control.”

“It’s hard for me to open up.”

Right at that moment, she felt like his soul
mate. “I know. Me, too.”

He just stared at her. She didn’t look away;
she felt his hand squeeze hers tightly. Suddenly, the mood shifted.
It had been tense with emotional disclosure. Now it was charged
with a different kind of tension. He reached up and grasped the
stubborn strand of hair that had escaped from her braid again.
“This piece of hair is just like you.” He rubbed it between his
fingers.

Cassie swallowed but didn’t respond. Couldn’t
respond.

“It’s rebellious. It won’t stay in its
place.” He slid his hand around to the back of her head. She felt a
tug, then his fingers were loosening her braid. His hands moved
rhythmically through her hair until it fell around her shoulders
and face. “I like your hair down.”

“You do?”

“Mmm.” He studied it, caressed it. “It’s
luscious.”

“Luscious. That’s quite a word.”

“Mmm. A new vocabulary word.” His eyes
sparkled with mischief. And seduction. “I can think of lots of
vocabulary words that apply to you.”

Cassie cleared her throat, wanting to prolong
the flirting. “Tell me.”

He stared into her eyes for interminable
seconds, then his hand left her hair and trailed around to her
mouth. “Sensuous,” he said as he brushed her lips with the pad of
his thumb. “Soft,” he told her as his knuckles swept over her
cheek. The calloused tips of his fingers moved to her neck and
glided up and down. “Sexy...” he whispered.

Tilting her head back, Cassie savored the
caress. His grip tightened in her hair; his breath speeded up. His
hand followed the zipper of her sweat suit down her chest. She held
her breath as he moved his fingers to the left and closed them over
her breast. “Supple,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “So, so
supple.”

“Oh, God.” She closed her eyes and leaned
into his touch.

“Look at me, Cassandra.”

She did. He flexed his hand, gently squeezed
her, massaged her. “Your eyes...they’re glowing.”

Caught, intoxicated by the things he was
saying and doing, she leaned into him further. “More” was all she
said.

He lowered his head. His mouth brushed hers,
the touch sending currents through her whole body. Back and forth.
Slowly. Too slowly. She moaned against his lips.

“More?” he asked.

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

Rational thought was slipping away from him.
Control, always so important, was fading. The feel of her, full and
hot in his hand, was stripping him of the iron will he’d carefully
honed over the years.

And right now, he didn’t care. All he wanted
was to fill his senses with her.

When she swayed toward him, he took advantage
of the movement. Grasping her shoulders with both hands, he tugged
and she came up to her knees and onto his lap. Settling there, she
angled her body to him. One of his arms cradled her back while his
other went around her waist. She angled her chin. Again, the clear
invitation was impossible to resist. He lowered his mouth.

He took her lips as gently as he could. But
when she reached up and circled his neck with her hand, he deepened
the kiss. Coaxing her lips open, he tasted her and the last vestige
of control snapped. He consumed her, took what she offered with her
mouth, her tongue, her teeth. She strained against him. His hand
came up to cup her breast again. He heard himself groan. Against
her mouth, he said, “Cass, you feel so good.”

She squirmed on his lap. “You, too.” Inching
into him, as if she needed to be closer, she said, “Mitch...” Her
mouth left his and went to his neck. Her teeth scraped against his
skin and his whole body bucked.

After a few more moments of bliss, he
encircled her with both arms and held her close. They stayed that
way for a long time, then she drew back. Her eyes were cloudy with
desire, her mouth a little swollen. Her cheek was red from his
beard, and he frowned when he saw it. The evidence of his lack of
control sobered him.

“I should go,” he said gruffly.

“Why?”

Tenderly, he brushed the hair out of her
eyes. “I knew if I ever touched you, I’d have trouble controlling
myself.”

Some women would have been angry. Some would
have taken his confession as a challenge. It didn’t help his raging
libido a bit when he saw understanding in Cassie’s eyes. “It’s hard
for you, isn’t it?”

He swallowed and nodded.

“All right. You should go.”

“Cassie?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m not sorry.”

She smiled. “Oh, good. I wouldn’t want you to
be sorry.”

o0o

ON TUESDAY MORNING, Mitch walked into
Cassie’s classroom twenty minutes early. He hoped to find her
alone, anxious to see her. She looked up from her desk when he
knocked lightly. Her smile was like the sunrise after a night
filled with terrible dreams.

“Hi,” he said from the doorway.

“Hi.”

“Sleep well?”

She smiled. “As well as can be expected.
You?”

“About the same.”

“I feel good today, though.”

“Mmm, you felt good last—” He broke off the
innuendo when Zoe came to the door.

“Cassie?” Zoe glanced at Mitch. “Oh, hi,
Mitch. I was wondering which day is your lesson on juvenile crime?”
She faced Cassie. “My tenth-graders are coming, right?”

“Tomorrow,” Cassie said, her voice husky.
“And yes, they’re coming.”

Then the kids began to straggle in for
homeroom, and that was the end of their talk for the day.

It was during class that Mitch noticed Joe
DeFazio’s outfit. Black and red. There was some kind of patch on
his T-shirt. Mitch wasn’t sure why, but the colors and the
odd-looking decal bothered him. Halfway through class, he realized
it was because DeFazio had been wearing black and red for days now.
He filed the information away.

On Wednesday, Mitch taught the lesson on
juvenile crime. The sobering statistics had the students hanging on
to his words. Having prepared it with Cassie the week before, he
was ready for the kids’ questions. What he wasn’t ready for was
Battaglia’s support.

“Shut up, you guys,” Johnny said when DeFazio
and Youngblood made a wisecrack about the information Mitch put on
the board.

Mitch listened to see if there was any
sarcasm in Battaglia’s voice. He heard none,

“Since when you like the cop’s lessons?”
DeFazio’s voice grated on Mitch’s nerves.

“You moron,” Johnny said. “You’re going to be
one of those statistics if you don’t shape up.”

Carefully, Mitch quelled any further
hostility by resuming his talk. Afterward, he caught Battaglia by
the arm as the kids were moving on to their next class. “How’s the
job going?” he asked Johnny.

“Great. Your brother—he’s really cool.”
Johnny stuck his hands in his jacket pockets self-consciously. “He
teaches us things, you know. He doesn’t just have us emptying
bedpans.”

Mitch smiled at the actions of his altruistic
brother. “Is that so?”

Johnny watched Mitch. “I, uh, I never thanked
you for setting this up for me.”

“You can thank me by doing a good job, there
and in school,” Mitch said gruffly, more moved by Battaglia’s
gratitude than he wanted to admit.

“Yeah, right,” the kid said, and left.

Mitch turned to find Cassie standing behind
him. “What?” he asked, but didn’t really need an answer. There was
admiration on her face that made him feel so good he wanted to
shout with joy. Damn, she was getting to him. They all were.

When he was leaving school that day for the
station, he caught sight of Joe DeFazio coming out of the bathroom
with two boys. One Mitch didn’t recognize. One was Mike Youngblood.
A sharp sound startled DeFazio, then he whipped a small square
black object out of his coat pocket. A beeper. Mitch stepped behind
a post, watched DeFazio walk to a nearby pay phone and make a call.
He smiled silkily as he answered the page.

When he was done, he turned back to the two
boys. Mitch left his concealed position and approached them. “Good
stuff.” He heard the comment just before Youngblood spotted Mitch
and kicked DeFazio in warning.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Mitch said to them.

Three pairs of anxious eyes looked up at
him.

“Hand it over, Mr. DeFazio.”

“What?”

“The pager. They’re banned in school.”

Defiance burned in the boy’s eyes. “You got a
search warrant?”

“I don’t need one. Not with probable cause. I
saw it and heard it go off. Now, hand it over. You can pick it up
in Mr. Taylor’s office after school.”

DeFazio yanked out the pager, slapped it into
Mitch’s hand and stalked off. As he stomped down the hall,
something about the way he looked raised the hair on the back of
Mitch’s neck. He stared after DeFazio and the two kids who followed
him.

It was their hair. Though there was no set
fashion in schools today—football players shaved their heads, the
volleyball team dyed theirs blond and several computer hacks had
theirs styled in Mohawks—there was something about the way these
kids had their hair shaved on the side that set off Mitch’s trouble
detector.

On Thursday, he stayed at school to have
lunch with Cassie. In her room, they shared sandwiches from the
cafeteria. “Thanks for inviting me,” he said as he bit into ham and
cheese.

“I wanted some time with you.”

“Any particular reason?”

She smiled. “It’s a little awkward, isn’t it?
Seeing each other after Monday.”

He chewed slowly, then said, “A little.”

“Still no regrets?”

He shook his head. “You?”

“None.”

He thought for a minute, then said, “You busy
Friday night?”

“No.”

“Cassie, how come there’s no man in your
life?” The uncensored question surprised them both.

She waited a minute before she answered.
“After my marriage ended, I wasn’t so anxious to jump back into the
fray. I’ve dated, but nothing serious.”

Jealousy snaked inside of him, shocking him
with its vehemence. “You were married?”

“Yes. I’ve been divorced for six years.”

“That’s a long time to be alone.”

She nodded. “As I said, I’ve dated, but I
just haven’t been interested much since then.” She blushed like a
virgin. “What did you have in mind for Friday?”