AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Now he just needed to get his head back in the game and find a woman to drag back to his lair.
“Mr. Nixon!”
Kyle suppressed a grin as the eager ten-year-old hopped up and down in front of him. “Yes, Michaela?”
“Andrew’s going to be late, but he has a good reason.”
“Yeah?” He hovered his pen over the attendance sheet. “Did you see him this morning?”
She nodded, dancing back and forth on her feet. It was four days before the Christmas break. They were all a little antsy. “His mom is taking him to the grocery store to get some canned goods for the food drive.”
And the hidden grin fell away. Shit. Andrew’s mother worked two jobs and the last thing she needed to do was buy food to keep up with the Joneses. He hated the messages that the school sent home. Yes, it was important to collect donations for the food bank. But promising the kids that the class with the biggest donation pile would get a pizza lunch on the last day of school before the break…
He gritted his teeth and gave Michaela a smile. “Thanks. I’ll hold off for ten minutes before sending this down.” Andrew didn’t need another late recorded on his file, either.
Kyle cleared his throat and lifted his voice. “Does everyone have their planner out? Good. As soon as the announcements and anthem are over, please write down these three notes for your parents to read.” He pointed at the smart board. “And once you’ve got that done, find your free reading book for the week. I want everyone to have at least one chapter read before we move on to the science lesson.”
As the intercom squawked to life, the door flung open and Andrew hurried through. Kyle gave him a welcoming wave and marked him as present. “And who wants to take the attendance down to the office?”
At the end of the day, he straightened up his classroom and finished his notes on the reading assessments he’d done on two students that day. One was just fine, but the other was falling behind. He’d bring it up with the reading resource teacher the next day, but tonight he had something just as important to do.
He drove the few blocks from the school to Wardham’s main drag and parked in front of his sister-in-law Carrie’s bakery. He’d grab some coffee and muffins once he’d done this one little good deed.
At least he hoped it was a good idea.
Karen Miller wouldn’t hesitate to tell him if he was on the wrong track. And she’d keep his secret if it was a good plan.
He found her in the back office at Wardham Grocery, and knocked on the open door. She glanced up from her computer. “Hey.”
Karen had been a year between Ian and Kyle at school, and he’d always liked her. Date this one, his brain said. She was pretty and smart and kind, and just as much a homebody as Kyle was. Karen would never leave Wardham. She wasn’t destined for Harvard and a big-city career as a surgeon.
But his heart didn’t leap at the warm, welcoming smile on the other side of the desk. And in the thirty years they’d known each other, not once had she ever shown any interest in him beyond board game nights and trading library book recommendations back and forth.
“Earth to Kyle…”
He laughed and shook his head. “Sorry. Long day.”
She tilted her head to the side. “What’s up?”
“I need a favour, and I’m treading close to the line in even talking about this with you, so I don’t want you to ask me why and this has to stay between us.”
Her eyebrows hit the roof. “Okay.”
“For real.”
“I only gossip about your dating life. Mum’s the word if it’s anything else.”
“No worries on that front.” He took a deep breath. “You pay pretty close attention to who’s in the shop, right? Work the front cash sometimes, that kind of thing?”
She nodded. “Of course. For the gossip.” She winked. “And other reasons.”
“One of my students…I’d like his mother to win a gift card that I’ll pay for. Tell her it’s the person who shopped just before her, or she’s the random hundredth shopper of the day, something like that.”
“We rarely get a hundred shoppers in a single day.”
“Week, then. You know what I mean.”
Her eyes went soft and she dropped the teasing tone. “I do. Who’s the student?”
