Rock Me Gently (5 page)

The anger on his young face gave Jason the impression that Henry was invested in the situation somehow. 

“But I think Jill’s old enough to make her own decisions and she wanted to stay here and she told the judge that,” Henry surmised.

The bastard wanted to leave Lainey with nothing, nowhere to live, no job or livelihood, no daughter.

“The media hounding them got so bad that at one point there was actually a cop staying with them. Overnight and everything just to keep the press away.” Henry leaned against the desk. 

“But then Markham accused his wife of sleeping with the guy. So, Jill’s mom made the officer leave and when that didn’t get that fucker Markham the results he wanted, he accused the cop of messin’ with Jill when Lainey wasn’t home. Jill wouldn’t go along with her father’s slander, but that didn’t keep the cop from losing his job. His reputation was already fucked—the department really had no choice but to let him go. The damage was already done. Once those kinds of accusations are out there, people always have doubt.” Henry threw his hands in the air. “He had to leave town. Anyway, after that, one night Markham showed up and Jill’s mom went ballistic and no one seems to know what she did or said to Jill’s old man but he finally stopped accusing her and things kind of settled down for a while. After, that’s when he pulled this selling the house and taking the business bullshit out of his ass, like he wanted to punish her.”

“How do you know all this, Henry?”

“Well, Jill and I, we were kinda, I don’t know, in the early stages of maybe hooking up when this all blew up. I was walkin’ around like a big goof, feeling all quivery in my gut every time I thought about her. I was sayin’ stupid things like ‘breast the British’, just like you were this morning. It’s pretty bad when a guy’s blood flow can only go up to the brain or down… Well, you know. You got it bad, Teach, I can sympathize with ya. Anyway, for a while Jill kinda confided in me but then all of a sudden she pulled back and things haven’t been the same since. I’ve tried to ask her but she just says nothing’s wrong. She doesn’t want to talk to me let alone keep seeing me.”

Jason noted the football jersey that Henry was wearing. “You on the team, Henry?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you just recently make the team?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Do you think maybe subconsciously Jill is associating you being on the football team with her father?”

“What do you mean?

“Maybe she’s afraid that you might do the same thing to her that her father did to her mother. Guys on the football team kind of have a reputation of being players and I don’t mean on the turf. I’m not saying you are, Henry, I’m sure you’d never hurt Jill like that, but she might not know that. I’m sure she trusted her father too and, well, look how that turned out. She’s young. You both are. She’s just had reality slap her in the face. And she probably just came to grips with the fact that the guy she grew up thinking was some kinda hero isn’t. Give her some time.”

“Huh, I never thought of that. Ya think I should quit the team?”

“Well no, I wouldn’t go do anything that drastic. Just don’t give up on her. She probably needs as many friends around her right now as she can get.”

Staring at the ground, Henry rubbed the back of his neck. “Ya know, I thought he was some kinda hero too. I used to think I was a somebody because I knew the guy. He, like, taught me some stuff and I really think it was why I got picked for the team this year. Now I just think he sucks, as a dad, as a human being. I even threw out my Jaguars jersey.”

“I’m sorry, Henry. Sometimes finding out celebrities are just human beings can be tough.”

“Look at you. All teacher-like, all mature. You grew up, why couldn’t he? At least you never hurt anybody but yourself. You didn’t cheat on a wife or leave your kid.”

Jason shrugged. He hadn’t evolved that much. Any of those things could have been Jase, but Henry was right, he’d never been married to any of the women he’d fucked around on. At the time, he hadn’t considered it cheating.

“I better get goin’, I’m not going to have enough time to eat lunch,” Henry said heading toward the door again. “Thanks, Mr Westlake.”

“No problem, Henry. Whenever you need to talk, I’m here.”

He nodded.

“Hey, you know what?
You
should meet Jill’s Mom. You’d be perfect for her. And she’s freakin’ hot, man, for a mom. I mean, all the guys think so.”

Jason smiled. “I’ve met her, Henry.”

“You have?”

“Parent-teacher interviews.”

“Right. Well, then you know. Hot, right?”

“Well, I’m not sure that I’m supposed to think a student’s mom is hot…”

“Why not? You’re a teacher, not a robot.”

Jason lifted his shoulder again.

“Well, keep it in mind. If this babe you’re workin’ on doesn’t pan out, that is.”

“Yeah, I’ll keep her in mind.”

“Have a good weekend, Mr Westlake.”

“Thanks. You too, Henry.”

Sighing, Jason turned back to his laptop and examined the picture of Thad Markham. He was a good-looking guy. He could see what had attracted Lainey to him in the first place. Jason flipped through some of the articles, reading the captions and gossip. 

“Geez, what a sleaze ball.” There were tabloid pictures of him doing anything and everything with all kinds of women, except his wife. Alongside they’d thrown in pictures of Lainey crying or shooing the press away from her front lawn. They called her a gold digger and a cold fish.

Jason typed in his old band name and clicked images. Similar pictures turned up on his page too. He closed his laptop and took a deep breath. If she caught wind of who he really was and that he’d led the same kind of life at one time, she wouldn’t give him the time of day.

This wasn’t going to be easy. Lainey and Jill had been through a lot. But he couldn’t wait around and take his time. He needed to make Lainey feel even just a little of what he already was, before she found out about his past. Then it would be too late for her to just walk away. He’d prove to her that he’d changed. One small problem—Jill knew all about his past. All of his students did. The first day of school, he’d laid it all out for them before they had time to hear the rumors or look on the Internet or hear from their parents all about his sordid past.

After hurrying back to the office, he put Jill’s file where it belonged.

Chapter Three

Lainey was just about to close the shop for the day when the bell on the door chimed. 
Please be a paying customer
. A measly seventy dollars in sales for the day would not pay the rent again this month. But then again, if Thad got his way, there wouldn’t be a shop by the end of the month.

A man stood with his back to her perusing the shelves behind the cash register. Strange, she didn’t get many men in the shop outside of Valentine’s Day and Christmas.

“May I help you?” As the gentleman turned to face her, her stomach flipped in pleasure. “Jason!” A slow simmer of need began deep in her belly, replacing the cold emptiness that had taken up residence since Thad’s betrayal. She was wrong. Jason Westlake made her want again. He was dangerous but God did he look good in a suit. “What a surprise.”

“Hi, I uh,” he shrugged. “I was just over at the coffee shop and I saw the lights were still on over here and I guess I was just being sort of nosy. I wanted to see where you worked.”

Jason had lied smoothly—he was getting good at it, he thought. “This is nice. Is it just you here?” He wondered how much she would confide in him.

“Yes, for now. The economy, you know. I had to let my staff go.” That could be true, he’d give her the benefit of the doubt, but thought it was more than likely she couldn’t afford to pay them because of the pending lawsuit. He’d read up on that after school. But then again, he knew first-hand that most of what was on the Internet was complete and utter bullshit. The only information he believed to be true was what Henry had divulged.

“Are you almost done for the night?”

“Yes, I was just going to close up when I heard the bell.”

“Well, go ahead, do what you need to do. I’ll wait and walk you out.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

Steadily, watching her, he said, “I want to.” He saw the pulse in her neck quicken. He grinned in satisfaction. Yeah, she was feeling the same zing of sexual chemistry that he was. But would she allow herself to go with it or would she be too gun-shy to give him a shot?

She slid behind the counter and began to count the cash.

“Not many sales today?”

“No,” she said downheartedly. “It was a slow day.”

“Well, maybe tomorrow will be better.”

Graciously, she smiled as she stuffed the few twenties into the overnight bank deposit bag. After closing the register, she then turned off all the lights except for the one in the display window. She retrieved her purse from underneath the counter and slung it over her shoulder.

Jason followed her out of the door. She locked it then dropped the keys into her bag.

“It almost doesn’t seem worth taking to the bank, does it?” She held the green bank bag in her hand but when she looked up at him another pang of pure lust shot straight to his gut. He thrust his hands into his pockets, knowing what would happen next. The kid was right—either the brain or the cock got the blood flow, never at the same time.

“You doing that right now?”

“Yes, it’s on the way to my car anyway. The bank is just down there.” She pointed to the neon sign down the street. He didn’t like the thought of her walking all that way alone with any amount of cash on her.

He looked up at the sky. “It’s a nice night, mind if I walk with you?”

“No. Sure.” As she put one sexy foot in front of the other, he dropped in beside her. “So how was
your
day?” 

An unbidden image of Lainey standing in his kitchen, asking him that very same question as he came home from work, popped into his mind. He shook his head.

“It was good, I guess. It’s hard to keep their attention on a Friday and it gets worse later in the day. Their minds are on parties and dances and shopping, and friends, and God knows what else. They couldn’t care less what comes out of my mouth an hour before the bell rings.”

“Teaching is a noble profession. I think you are a very brave man to take up the challenge as your ‘calling’ as you referred to it. I couldn’t do it. I guess that’s why I only ever had one child. I couldn’t imagine having more than one at a time to see after and discipline, let alone being responsible for all those budding minds.”

She
may have only had one child but Jason was willing to bet money that Jill had half-brothers and sisters running around out there. It seemed like good ole Thad shared his seed all over the country. Jason berated himself. He shouldn’t have been thinking like that, but he couldn’t help it.

“Yeah, but you’ve got a good kid. Why mess with perfection?”

Laughing in a proud kind of way, she said, “She is pretty terrific, isn’t she? I guess it was a good thing Jilly had history first thing this morning. She got the benefit of your instruction before she started thinking of parties and shopping and friends and such.”

It was more than evident how much she loved her daughter. The kid was her world. And for the first time in his life, Jason wondered what it would be like to have a kid of his own. He shuddered.

“You okay?” She glanced over, sideways.

“Yeah… Just caught a chill there for a second.”

“It is a little cool tonight,” she agreed kindly.

“I’m not really sure that anybody benefited much from my morning classes today. I was a little off and they called me out on it.”

“Oh? Does that happen often?”

“That I’m a little off or that they call me out?”

“Um, both I guess.”

“Well, this is the first time I’ve read the same paragraph four times through and didn’t pick up on it myself. And because it’s Friday, they just let me go on and on because I was wasting their time, for a change. But no, they call me out whenever I mess up. They live for it. Breakin’ in the new teacher bit by bit.”

They reached the bank. She opened up the slot and slid the bag inside.

Lainey turned back and smiled up at him. “So what did you have your mind on that was so distracting on your Friday morning, Professor? Parties, friends or shopping?” She grinned, her eyes twinkling under the street lamps.

“You,” he said, before he had thought better of it.

Her expression dropped. “Me?” She squeaked as if she were appalled by the very idea. She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

Well, screw it
. “You don’t understand why a guy might not be able to get you out of his head? You’re kinda beautiful, Lainey. I haven’t been able to think of much else since you walked into my classroom.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” she defended.

“No, no,” he rushed. “You didn’t do anything. You didn’t have to. I just really liked talking to you. And I’d like to talk to you some more. I’d like to get to know you.”

Blinking, she continued to stare up at him.

“Say something, Lainey, I’m putting myself out there and you’re leaving me hanging.”