Chapter Four
Friday was a good day at school for Stacey. The assessment from one of her newest students, Rick Blake, had come through from the speech and language specialist, and the boy seemed relieved that finally he had a label to explain why he was as he was. “So I’m not just dumb?”
“You’re absolutely not dumb,” she reassured him, her heart aching for him. She knew exactly how he felt: been there, done that, and her father had bought her the T-shirt. “But you must’ve spent so long feeling frustrated and angry that you couldn’t do the same things as everyone else.”
“It’s why I acted up at my old school,” he confessed. “But you’re not like them, here. They just said I was naughty and stupid, and I hated the way they made me feel.”
“You’re neither naughty nor stupid,” she said. “And none of the teachers here in Marietta think you are. We’re on your side, Rick. And so are your mom and dad.” Thankfully the Blakes had recognized that their boy wasn’t lazy or defiant or stupid—that there was a reason why he was struggling at school and getting frustrated. They’d been happy to work with the elementary school to get the best for their son. “We can do a whole lot of things to help you. But I need you to promise me you’ll come and talk to me if you feel things aren’t going right, OK?”
He nodded. “I promise.”
And Tara was there at lunchtime in the teachers’ lounge with a ready smile. “How are the baking lessons going?”
“OK.” Stacey wasn’t ready yet to talk about the other project. Not until she’d really discussed it with Tyler.
“I’ve talked to the other teaching assistants, and we’re all coming to the Bake-Off with you,” Tara said.
“Great. It’s $10 a ticket, and the first round’s at Marietta High on February 4,” Stacey said. “They have stalls, refreshments, and a raffle, and the cookies are being auctioned off in lots of a dozen afterward.”
“Sounds good. And all the bakers are bachelors, I hear?”
“You’d have to ask Jane McCullough,” Stacey said with a smile. “All I know is what Tyler told me.”
“Hunky bachelors baking cookies. Works for me,” Tara said with a grin. “If I collect the money from everyone and get it to you on Monday, can you organize the tickets for us?”
“Absolutely,” Stacey promised.
But her day took a dip after school when she went to pick up a prescription for her aunt Joanie from the pharmacy on Main Street.
Carol Bingley, the pharmacy owner, was at the counter. Stacey tried to avoid Carol whenever she could because Carol always seemed to think the worst of people and was very forthright with her opinions. Today, Stacey had no choice so she simply smiled and said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Bingley. I’ve come to collect my aunt Joanie’s prescription. How are you?”
She was horrified when, instead of replying with a similar pleasantry, Carol said, “So you’re seeing Tyler Carter, then?”
“I…” Stacey was too shocked by Carol’s accusatory tone to deny it quickly enough.
“His last girlfriend really didn’t work out. She’d had enough of him and hightailed it out of Marietta.”
This was the kind of gossip Stacey really didn’t want to hear.
Carol handed over the prescription. “Just you be careful. Word to the wise.” She tapped the side of her nose. “That’s all I’m saying.”
Something about Carol’s tone reminded Stacey of her father at his most unkind and she just saw red. She knew nothing about Tyler’s last relationship and it was none of her business, but the man she was getting to know was a decent man, kind and thoughtful, and she didn’t like the way Carol was insinuating that Tyler had driven off his last girlfriend. Sure, Tara had warned her off, but she’d been very clear that Tyler was one of the good guys—he just didn’t want commitment.
“I’m n-not his girlfriend,” she said. “I’m his neighbor. He’s a good man. He’s trying to do something nice to support Harry’s House and I’m h-helping him.”
Carol looked taken aback. “But you had dinner with him in Grey’s last night.”
How on earth did the woman know that? Did she have a spy network covering the whole town? But Stacey was too angry to be upset at the invasion of her privacy. “Actually, we were t-talking about what he’s going to cook in the B-bake-Off,” Stacey said. “So as I’ve raised the subject, maybe you’d like to give a donation or b-buy a ticket to the event. B-better still, both.”
Carol blustered, “Well, I’m sure…”
“Good,” Stacey cut in, not giving Carol a chance to wriggle off the hook. “I’ll ask Tyler to tell Jane McCullough to come and see you for a donation and to sell you a t-ticket. Thank you for my aunt’s prescription. I look forward to seeing you there.”
She was still fuming by the time she’d reached her aunt’s.
“What’s happened?” Joanie asked. “Have you had a fight with your dad?”
“I haven’t spoken to Dad for a month.” Stacey had wriggled out of making phone calls recently by simply sending brief, cheerful texts to stay in touch with her parents. That way, all communication stayed amicable and her father didn’t have a chance to put her down or make her feel bad. “It’s Carol Bingley. She’s so mean-spirited.”
“Take whatever she says with a pinch of salt, honey. Everyone else does,” Joanie advised. “Sorry. I feel bad now. If I hadn’t asked you to pick up my prescription, you wouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine,” Stacey said, “and I don’t mind picking up your prescription. It’s the least I can do, after what you did for me.”
“Now, Stacey, honey. I just did what anyone would’ve done.”
More like what her own parents should’ve done, but hadn’t. “You made a difference for me,” Stacey said, “and now it’s my turn to do something for you. Your knee’s worse in this weather and I don’t want you slipping over in the snow and hurting yourself.”
“You’re a good girl,” Joanie said. “You know, I always wish you’d been mine.”
So do I, Stacey thought, and patted her aunt’s shoulder. “Hey. Now let me make you that cup of hot chocolate.”
*
When Tyler came round to her apartment with cookies later that afternoon, this time the dough wasn’t quite cooked.
“Some people like their cookies super-soft, but I think the judges would tell you that these ones needed a couple minutes more in the stove,” she said.
“Ah—I forgot you said either turn the temperature down or cook them a couple minutes less.”
“And you did both?” she guessed.
“Yes.” He looked at her. “You look a bit upset—is everything OK?”
“Just a stupid run-in with Carol Bingley in the pharmacy this afternoon when I picked up my aunt’s prescription.” But seeing Tyler reminded her of how angry she’d felt on his behalf. “You know, I think I’d rather drive to Livingston or thirty miles over mountain roads to Bozeman than b-buy anything from her again.”
“Ah, Carol Bingley.” He wrinkled his nose. “Don’t take her too much to heart. Let whatever she says just roll over you.”
Pretty much what her aunt had said. But Stacey couldn’t understand the pharmacy owner’s mindset. “Why does she always seem to see the worst in people?”
“I think because she’s a bit lonely and unhappy, and in her situation sometimes it’s harder to see the good in life at all, let alone in people,” he said.
“I guess.” As his words struck home, guilt flooded through Stacey. Hadn’t she just done the very thing she hated people doing with her special-needs children and judged Carol without knowing the full circumstances? “Maybe I was a bit harsh with her.”
“What did she say?”
Stacey shook her head. “Never mind, but she implied I was your g-girlfriend, just because we had dinner at Grey’s. She jumped to conclusions and started spreading it round.”
“Is it the gossip that’s the problem,” he asked mildly, “or the idea of being my girlfriend?”
Oh, help. If she said it was the idea of being his girlfriend that bothered her, it would sound rude and obnoxious—and it also wasn’t true. But if she said it was the gossip that bothered her most, he’d guess there was more to it than what she’d said—and she didn’t want him thinking that she was prying into his past. Plus she didn’t want him thinking she was getting ideas about him. This was getting complicated.
“I just don’t like people making judgments,” she prevaricated.
“Was she judging you?” he asked.
She grimaced. “Can we talk about something else?”
“She was judging me, then.”
She frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“Because if she’d judged you, you would’ve said so when I asked you straight out. Which means, logically, she must’ve said something about me.”
Stacey wasn’t going to tell an outright lie. She sighed. “She told me to be careful about you.”
“Uh-huh. Well, there are people outside the gym who can vouch for me. Try the fire crew. They might tell you my circuit classes are nasty, and sometimes they hate me the next day when they discover muscles they’ve forgotten about. But that’s why they come and train with me in the first place, because they know I’ll push them.” He grinned. “One of them’ll give me a character reference.”
“I don’t need a character reference. I think I’m a reasonable judge of character.”
He inclined his head. “Thank you.” He paused. “Carol probably thinks that at thirty-two I ought to have settled down and married and started producing children, but that’s not for everyone.” He blew out a breath. “And it doesn’t mean I date a string of women and leave a trail of broken hearts behind me, either.”
“I wasn’t f-fishing.”
“I know you weren’t.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I’ve got a pretty good idea what kind of things she said. Just so you know, my ex loathed living in Marietta and Carol epitomizes everything Janine hated about a small town—you can’t move without people knowing your business and speculating. Half the time they know more about your life than you do, and the other half the time they get it wrong.”
So it wasn’t Tyler his ex had had enough of—it was Marietta. Carol had got it completely wrong. Funny how that made her feel so relieved.
“But most people in Marietta are nice,” she said. “And it’s good having people smile at you in the street and knowing who you are, instead of being anonymous in a big city. To have people sharing the good times with you, and being there to help if you’re struggling—and to know you can be there for other people when they’re struggling.”
“That’s what I like about Marietta,” he said softly. “It’s a real community and people care.”
“And that’s what you’re doing right now. Helping people at your gym, helping Harry’s House with the Bachelor Bake-Off fundraiser, and starting your new project at the school.”
“Trying to.” He looked at her. “I’m not working tomorrow. I thought maybe, if you’re not busy, we could go for a walk in River Bend Park and talk about the after-school project.”
She wondered: was he asking her out on a proper date, this time, or did he really just want to discuss his project? His words and the expression in his eyes were telling her two different things, and she wasn’t quite sure enough of herself to know which one was uppermost. Plus there was Tara’s warning to take into account. Tyler Carter didn’t want commitment, and she wasn’t looking for a casual fling.
So she’d take it at face value and assume that he really wanted to talk about the project. “I… A walk would be nice.”
“OK. I’ll call for you at ten.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“Good.” He smiled at her. “See you tomorrow, then.”
Stacey thought about it a bit more that evening. So why was Tyler so shy of commitment? Was that because he was still broken-hearted after his ex had left, even though he hadn’t been the actual reason why Janine had left? They’d wanted different things; his ex had hated small-town life, and Tyler had said himself that he didn’t enjoy living in a city. Then again, he’d also said straight out that marriage and having kids wasn’t for everyone.
Or maybe she was just overthinking things.
It was none of her business anyway.
And they were becoming friends. That would have to be enough.
*
It snowed heavily overnight; Tyler loved snow, but he remembered that Stacey was used to living in a city. He wasn’t sure how long she’d actually lived in Marietta, or how she felt about snow. The tiniest sprinkle on the ground had been enough to make Janine refuse to go out anywhere. Would Stacey be the same? He didn’t think she was as high-maintenance as his ex, but his past experience made him wary.
“Morning, Tyler. Um, given the weather, do you still want to go for that walk?” she asked when he knocked on her door.
Meaning that she didn’t? “If you don’t mind going out in snow, that’s fine with me. It just means we might need to wrap up a little more.” And then it occurred to Tyler that even if she didn’t mind the snow, a city girl might not be prepared for a winter in small-town Montana. Especially if she hadn’t experienced it before. “Do you have a hat, scarves, gloves, and rubber boots?”
She smiled. “If I didn’t, I’d get pretty cold walking to school every morning.”
So she didn’t mind snow, then. Good. “Let’s go,” he said.
He drove them to the other side of town and parked in the parking lot at River Bend Park.
“I never really think to come this side of town,” Stacey said, “at least, not for the park. I tend to stick to the park near school if I want to go for a walk.”
“River Bend’s pretty,” he said. “Especially in the snow.”
He could see the delight on her face as they walked through the park. “It’s like a real winter wonderland,” she said. “All the snow on the trees, the river running through the middle, and that huge expanse of white snow. It’s gorgeous.”
Exactly how he felt about Marietta; and he liked the fact that she could share his joy in the place.
Part of him was tempted to take her hand; but yesterday Carol Bingley had assumed that Stacey was his girlfriend, and she’d been upset about it. He still wasn’t sure whether it was Carol gossiping or the idea of being his girlfriend that had upset her most, so he suppressed the urge—even though walking hand in hand with Stacey through River Bend Park in the snow was something he really wanted to do right now.
Instead, he said, “Maybe we could make snow angels.”
“Snow angels?” She looked puzzled, as if she’d never heard of them before.
“You’ve never made snow angels, even as a kid?” he asked.
She looked away. “Mom didn’t like me getting m-messy.”
In that case, how did she know about mud pies? Unless it had been a one-off that had got her into trouble.
And just what kind of miserable, buttoned-up childhood must she have had, not being allowed to get messy? Every kid got messy at some point, whether it was from doing crafts at kindergarten or running round the park or a garden in the summer. His own mother had never minded. Or maybe he’d just been super-lucky with his parents.
“You’re never too old to make a snow angel,” he said, and fell backward onto the thick snow with his arms outstretched.
He moved his arms up and down to make the wings, then drew his legs together and pushed them out again to make the angel’s “tunic”, then carefully stood up so he didn’t spoil the outline.
“One snow angel,” he said laconically.
“I’ve never seen that before,” she said. “The kids don’t do that at school—they make a snowman and play snowballs, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“Want to try making one?”
She looked nervous.
“You’re not going to hurt yourself falling backward,” he said, guessing at her fears. A child who hadn’t been allowed to get messy had no doubt not been allowed to do anything where she’d fall over and risk scraping her knee, either—and he’d just bet her parents’ main concern had been clearing up the mess rather than worrying that their daughter might get hurt. “The snow’s thick and will cushion your fall.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hey. It’s not compulsory,” he said, and this time he gave in to the impulse to take her hand. “I used to make these with my sister. I never quite grew out of them.”
“Just fall backward,” she said, and took a deep breath. “OK. I’ll do it.”
He could see in her eyes that she was trying to be brave. And how he wanted to lean forward and kiss her and tell her everything would be OK.
Which was crazy.
Instead, still holding her hand, he led her over to a thick pile of snow. “After three,” he said. “We’ll do the snow angel together.”
“One. T-two,” she said.
“Three,” he finished, and he noticed that she closed her eyes as she fell backward.
“OK?” he asked.
“Y-yes.”
She didn’t sound too sure. He sat up so he could see her face. “Really OK?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Yeah. I suppose it’s like those things you have to do on team-building courses, when you fall backward and have to trust your team will catch you.” And then she gave him a brave, brave smile that almost broke his heart, and moved her legs and arms to make the snow angel.
He followed suit, then stood up and reached down to help her to her feet.
“My first snow angel,” she said softly.
“It’s good. Stand behind it and I’ll take your photograph.” He took a snap on his phone—and then he couldn’t resist a close-up of her smiling. How had he never noticed until now just how pretty his neighbor was?
“Shall we walk a bit more?” he asked.
“I’d like that,” she said.
Somehow it felt natural to take her hand. Even though there were two layers of gloves between them—hers and his own—his skin tingled as if she were actually touching him. And he held her hand all the way over to the river and then back to his car.
“Would you like to come in for hot chocolate?” he asked in the corridor between his front door and hers.
“That’d be nice,” she said. “And thanks for taking me to River Bend Park. I really enjoyed the walk.”
“It’s the endorphins,” he said. “Fresh air and snow. That’s what we need for the kids.”
“You’re probably right. In winter, at least,” she said.
He heated the milk and made two mugs of hot chocolate. “I would offer you a cookie,” he said with a grin, “except I haven’t baked any yet today.”
“Are you confident with them now?” she asked.
“I think so. But I still need to make a pie and a cake. I looked things up on the Internet—but the Internet’s a scary place.”
“I’ll have a think about recipes,” she said.
“Thank you.” He handed her one of the mugs. “Let’s go through to the living room.” When she perched on the end of the sofa, he said, “You know what we said the other day about sports? I’ve been thinking. Maybe I could show you what I meant.”
“Teach me, you mean?” She shook her head, looking awkward. “Thanks—it’s really k-kind of you to think of that, but I can’t ever see myself going to a gym.”
If you weren’t sporty, the gym could seem really intimidating—full of people who knew what they were doing when you didn’t have a clue. No wonder his suggestion had made her tense up and brought her stutter back, Tyler thought. “You don’t have to go to the gym if you don’t want to. We could run through a routine at my place. Or yours, if you’d rather,” he added, wanting her to feel relaxed with him again.
“I…”
“There’s no pressure. But it could be fun.”
She shook her head. “I’m not good at sports. Sports aren’t f-fun for me.”
“Not even playing ball with your parents in the park when you were little?”
“Dad played baseball in minor league. I…” She grimaced. “Maybe if I’d been a boy and I’d been good at sports, we might have connected better.”
He frowned. “I don’t see the difference between having a son and having a daughter.” His own father hadn’t made any distinction between Tyler and Lynnie, treating them both the same. “Whether your kids are girls or boys, you still play ball with them, and teach them to swim and ride a bike.”
“I wasn’t very good at following my father’s directions.”
In other words, Stacey’s dad hadn’t been patient enough to play ball with her at the park. Tyler would just bet that Mr. Allman hadn’t had the patience to teach his daughter to swim or to ride a bike, either.
She looked away. “Not because I was being deliberately difficult. I didn’t hear what he said, most of the time.”
He stared at her in surprise. “You’re hearing-impaired? Sorry. I had no idea.”
“My hearing aids are the in-the-ear sort so you don’t see them,” she explained.
“Right. So in a noisy environment I need to make sure you can see my face when I talk, and my face is in the light?”
It was her turn to look surprised. “In those situations it helps if I can lip-read, yes. But how…?”
“Did I know? A couple of my clients are hearing-impaired,” he said. “I warn them when I’m going to add a new routine at classes, so they can stand in the front row and see what I do.”
“That’s thoughtful.”
“It’s what any decent trainer would do. You check if your client has any old injuries or medical problems before you do anything at all with them, and you bear any problems in mind when you work out their training plans,” he said. “Just the same way that you assess your kids at school.”
“I guess.”
“So were you born hearing-impaired,” he asked, “or did it happen when you were older—an accident or something?”
“I had tonsillitis a lot as a child,” she explained. “The antibiotics affected my hearing but we didn’t realize until a long time afterward that the antibiotics had damaged my hearing as well as fixing my strep throat. My dad just thought I was d-dumb or being d-difficult.”
Tyler narrowed his eyes at her. “He didn’t think there might’ve been something wrong?”
“No, and I was a bit clumsy when I was little,” she confessed, “so I was a bit of a nuisance and he didn’t have a lot of patience with me.”
He remembered what she’d said the other day about children not getting a diagnosis until late and their self-esteem getting lower and lower. Clearly that was what had happened to her.
“You,” he said, “are one of the least dumb people I know. You’re a qualified teacher. And you deal with special needs, so that means you’ve done extra training and you have to work with all kinds of experts as well as kids who need especially gentle handling—and with parents who might not be willing to admit that anything’s wrong.”
She shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
“Your dad,” he said, “sounds like one of those parents who refuse to see what’s in front of their noses.”
She shrugged again.
“I take it he realizes now that he was completely wrong about you?”
She winced. “My dad’s not very good at changing his mind.”
Stacey’s dad, Tyler thought, really needed someone to sit down with him, take off his blinkers, and make him see how amazing his daughter was.
“What about your mom?” he asked.
“She’s traditional. What Dad says goes.”
That, he thought, explained a lot. Stacey had clearly had no support at all from home—except maybe from one person. “And your aunt Joanie?”
“She was a teacher before she retired. She was the one who picked up my hearing problem and got Mom to take me to the doctor,” Stacey said.
“I don’t remember her at school here.”
“She didn’t teach here. She moved here with my uncle Peter when they took early retirement,” Stacey explained. “She’s ten years younger than my mom, and my mom had me quite late.”
“So you’ve got older brothers and sisters?”
She shook her head. “There’s just me.”
So instead of being delighted at finally having a daughter late in life, her father had been disappointed that his little girl was less than perfect in his eyes—and he’d made her really aware of that disappointment. No wonder she was shy, and that attitude couldn’t have helped with her stutter. It was probably the root cause of it, Tyler thought.
And it was something he knew he could help with.
But at the same time he didn’t want to patronize Stacey, or make her think that he had a low opinion of her. “Boxing,” he said. “That’s what I want to do with you. To show you how it could make the kids feel.” And how it could make her feel. He knew she was bright enough to work that out for herself. But hopefully she’d take the offer at face value and not think he was trying to patronize her.
“Boxing.”
“I’m on the early shift at the gym tomorrow, but we could do the session after work—say at three, if you’re not busy?”
“I can do three.” She paused. “Do I need to buy boxing gloves or anything?”
“No, I have gloves and pads. Just turn up in clothes that are comfortable to move in, and sneakers if you have them—if you don’t, comfortable flat shoes will do. Or even bare feet, as we’re going to be indoors.” Given she’d said that she hated sports, he doubted she had any kind of special gym clothing, and he didn’t want her to feel that she had to go out and buy stuff specially.
“I’ve got sneakers. Though they’ve not really been used for a while,” she said.
“As long as they fit and they’re comfortable, it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“OK.” She finished her drink. “I guess I’ll see you at three tomorrow. Thank you for the walk and the hot chocolate.”
“Pleasure. See you tomorrow.”