They pulled up outside Levon’s house—or rather, the rental they had come to share. Levon cut the engine, but didn’t move. Neither did she. Eventually, she settled her hand on her stomach, and summoned the truth. “Because those are people’s babies, Levon. I get it now—the sense of responsibility that comes with being a parent. I see it more clearly than I ever did when I was just a teacher living a simple, single life. And now that I get it, how can I ever go back? How can I ever see anyone’s child endangered ever again?”
“You can because you have to,” Levon ground out. “Olive, I don’t like this any more than you do, but there are protocols we have to follow. And if you’re worried about child endangerment, then I’m begging you...”
The hand nearest to her lifted off the steering wheel and reached out to her. He wanted to touch her stomach, she realized, but something held him back. She took his hand and pulled it the rest of the way to her. Levon released a shuddering breath.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. She didn’t know why she suddenly felt the need to reassure him. She wasn’t even sure it was the right thing to say.
“It will be,” he promised. “But not yet.” He withdrew his hand, and Olive was certain she wasn’t the only one who felt the loss of his touch. She knew the baby did, too, with a deep instinct she couldn’t put a name to. “And your good intentions may have set us back. I need to know exactly who you spoke to and what was said. And I’d like you to call in for a sub tomorrow.”
Olive’s eyebrows pulled together at this last request. She wanted to protest, but maybe she needed to pick and choose her battles here... at the very least she would wait until they got out of the car.
The realization that they might not agree on how to handle this didn’t sit well.
15
“Are you going to be all right here alone for a while?” He couldn’t ever remember a more hateful question coming out of his mouth, but there was no help for it. As he held the door for Olive to come inside, Levon knew he wouldn’t be able to stay long.
No matter how much he might want to.
His responsibilities pulled him in every direction, but nothing mattered more than keeping Olive safe. Unfortunately, the best way to ensure that right now wasn’t to stay by her side, but to get to the bottom of who was behind that threatening note. He wasn’t willing to wait around now to find out what they were really capable of.
“Okay.” Olive’s face pulled together in a miserable expression, and Levon knew he had disappointed her. Damn it. Could he ever get it right? He had thought she might want this time alone, especially after having him constantly restricting her activities and breathing down her neck all the time—could it be he had gotten it wrong? “I’m tired, anyway,” she continued. “I think I’ll go lie down.”
“Olive.”
She turned back to him as he said her name, and Levon pulled her into his arms. She buried her face in his shoulder, and he cupped the silky back of her head; he breathed in the perfume of his own shampoo, which she had been using. Why did it smell sweeter on her? Why was he suddenly unable to get enough of it?
Their lips were on a collision course before he even knew he was kissing her. It was gravity that pulled him down to her. It was a force that he couldn’t put a name to, even though the startling shape of it was welling up inside him. If he hadn’t known how he felt about Olive—or if he had avoided acknowledging it—there was no more skirting around it now. Not after he had found her on the floor of her classroom; had seen the blood; had experienced a stark vision of what it would be to lose her...
“What’s wrong?” he rasped. She was pulling back, and pulling away from him. Those warm brown eyes of hers held a strange curiosity; they seemed to be brimming with an unasked, and consequently unanswered, question. She must have sensed his mind was elsewhere.
He tried to pull her in again, but Olive stopped him. “I’m tired, Levon,” she repeated. The sting of rejection flared in his chest, but he took her hand—her bandaged hand—and the reality of her long day came crashing back over him. He was being selfish.
“Go lie down,” he told her. “I’m going to head back to the school, then to the police.”
Olive nodded. He hated seeing her looking so numb, but felt helpless to come up with a resolution at the moment. He watched her break away from him, and shuffle slowly into the bedroom. He waited until the door was closed.
Then he went to the kitchen island where Olive graded her quizzes, and he took them. She said she hadn’t recognized the handwriting, but he wondered if it was more that she didn’t want to recognize it—didn’t want to acknowledge that the person who wrecked her classroom could be one of her students.
He didn’t head back to the school straightaway. He sat in the armchair beneath the golden glow of the lamp and read. He pulled the piece of paper from his pocket, the one containing the threat against Olive, and read it again. And again. He compared handwriting until it seemed like the words would wriggle free of their sentences and leap off the page, but he fought back against his inability to concentrate. He made the words sit still—just long enough for him to find what he was looking for.
“Franklin.”
He should have known. Of course the villain responsible
