Dream On (Stories of Serendipity #2) (26 page)

Interrupting his reverie, Mary said, “Have your kids fished much, Alyssa?”

“Not much, no.  I think their father took them once, but nobody caught anything.”

“Well, today should be fun, then.
 We have a tank on the property that Dalton’s dad kept stocked with Crappie and Catfish.  It’s pretty easy pickin’s.”  She patted Alyssa’s knee affectionately

“We’re here," h
e said, parking the truck under a stand of huge pine trees, and escaped the truck. 

Mary grabbed the fishing gear, while Dalton
 got the chairs and the cooler with the drinks Mary had packed, and Alyssa helped the kids out of the truck.  They scrambled to the shore of the small lake, chattering the entire way about the turtles they saw, and the fish they would catch.  Dalton smiled at their eagerness.  He could remember being excited like that when his dad had brought him out here.  A sharp pang of regret knotted his stomach.

As he walked to one of the benches his dad had built and set up on the side of the tank, Alyssa came up and sat down next to him.

“You’re mom is so refreshing.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s so...”  She paused.  “Mobile.”

Dalton was confused.
 He looked at Alyssa questioningly.  

“My mother is handicapped
and doesn’t get around well at all.  I have to help her a lot.  She’s very independent and doesn’t really want people to see how little she can do, physically.  So I have to go to her house to help her.”  She sighed.  “I feel guilty about it, but it’s hard to take care of myself, my kids, and her, too.  Mentally, she’s sharp as a tack, and she knows exactly what she wants.  She just can’t do everything on her own.”

He put his hand on her shoulder massaging the tension that had appeared when she started talking about her mom.
 “You do a great job, Alyssa.  I wish my mom was as strong emotionally as she is physically.  This whole thing with Dad getting sick has really taken its toll on her.  I’m afraid her physical strength will fade as her emotional strength has.”

“She seems fine right now.”
 Alyssa was looking at the woman, who was laughing at the kids, while she baited the cane fishing poles for them.

She leaned back against the bench, and Dalton watched her long body stretch out.
 “You want me to bait a pole for you?”

“No, I’m just enjoying the scenery.”
 She looked him up and down, making a rare flush crawl up his cheeks.  He baited a pole for himself, and tossed it out onto the water, then stretched out next to Alyssa.

The afternoon passed, children’s laughter ringing through the air.
 Alyssa and Dalton cheered when they caught fish, and  Mary continued to play with them and bait their hooks with the worms she and Cayden dug up.

“How is your sister handling your dad’s death?
 Is she doing okay?”

Dalton sighed.
 “I don’t know.  She keeps things pretty close to her chest.  She seems to be okay, and I won’t know any different until she has a complete break down.  Then she’ll let me know.”

“Is she divorced?”

“Widowed.  Kelly’s dad died when she was a baby.  Drunk driving accident.”

“Oh.”
 Alyssa relaxed back against Dalton, and he ran his fingers through her hair as he listened to the wind rustle through the grass and watched the grasshoppers fly through the air.  

Too soon
it was dusk and time to go.  As they rode back to the house in comfortable silence, Dalton’s thoughts continued to play around the woman sitting next to him.  She did so much for other people, and he really wanted to do something for her.  Something meaningful, but he couldn’t think of what.

When they got back to the house, Dalton wal
ked her and the kids to the car after Mary had said her goodbyes.  Once the children were buckled in, Dalton hugged Alyssa close to him and whispered in her ear, “I can’t wait for tomorrow night.  I want to finish what we started today.”  

She looked up at him, the desire plain in her eyes, making his groin tighten.
 “Me too, Dalton.”  She said it huskily, with a promise that made his stomach flutter.  Geez...What had gotten into him?

Chapter 20

In a distracted haze, Alyssa spent the next day trying to get the kids ready for the week with their dad.
 She couldn’t stop thinking about Dalton’s final words last night, though, and the deliciously inviting images they conjured.

She was at the sink, finishing dishes from lunch, picturing entwined limbs and pulsating bodies when a knock at the front door announced Steven’s arrival.
 Wiping her hand on a dishtowel, she answered the door.

“I’m seeing my lawyer tomorrow.
 I called him yesterday, and I’ve got a case against you and that man.”  He said after she invited him inside.

“What?”
 Alyssa gaped at him, not sure she heard him correctly.

“You two and your ungodly sex are warping my children.”

“Steven, you’re wrong.  We haven’t...” She really didn’t want to tell him about her sex life, but he was talking about taking away her kids.

“It doesn’t matter what you say to me, Alyssa.
 I’ve seen the way he looks at you, like you’re something to eat.  I don’t want my children exposed to that. My lawyer is taking care of the technicalities tomorrow, and a judge will sign off on it with no problem.”

“You can’t do that, Steven.
 We have to have a trial to change the custody stuff.”  She hoped so, anyway.  He couldn’t just take her kids away from her.

“Oh, I can get a temporary injunction against your rights, as they are compromising my children.
 I’ll call CPS if I have to.”

“No...”
 CPS was a threat she couldn’t fathom.  Calling CPS meant the burden of proof would be on her.  The children would be interviewed, prodded, and emotionally tampered with.  If her parenting skills were called into question, her career would suffer.  CPS would start investigating her at school, too.

“You can’t keep seeing that guy, Alyssa.
 He’s bad news, and I won’t have him around my children.”

“So, I can’t date, Steven?
 Is that what you’re saying?”  She was almost in tears, and she hated it.  She hated that Steven could bring her to tears so quickly.

“You can’t date him, Alyssa.”
 With that, he had the children out the door slamming it behind him, leaving Alyssa sobbing in his wake.

Dalton was on cloud nine, driving to Alyssa’s house.
 He had been looking forward to tonight all day.  Hell, he’d been looking forward to it since his first dream about this intriguing woman.  He planned to ravish her.  He knew how to take her to heights of pleasure she had never imagined, and he planned to use every one of his tricks to make it happen.  He knew he was being arrogant, but he also knew what he was good at, and pleasuring women was one of his talents.  He hadn’t slept last night.  He’d been too busy torturing himself with images of her coming undone underneath his body.

Knocking on her door, he went over his plan.
 Hiding the roses behind his back, he pasted a sexy grin on his face, in anticipation of her opening the door.

What he hadn’t expected to see was her red, swollen eyes over tear-streaked cheeks.

“What happened, Alyssa?  Is it the kids?”  Flowers forgotten, he had her in his arms in a heartbeat.

She pushed him away.
 “No.  Dalton, we need to talk.”

Oh no...Never good.
 He followed her into the house, dread sending his heart plummeting to his stomach.  She perched herself in the chair across from the couch, forcing him to sit apart from her.

“Steven’s threatening to take my children away, permanently, if I keep seeing you.”

“He can’t do that, Alyssa.”  Disappointment was replaced with rage in a heartbeat.

“I’m not so sure, Dalton.
 I think he can, and more importantly, he thinks he can.  His lawyer has the paperwork ready for a judge to sign tomorrow, if I don’t call it off.  I can’t risk it.”  Tears spilled down her cheeks again, while Dalton’s heart broke into a million pieces.

“I have a buddy who’s a lawyer downtown.
 He can fix this, Alyssa.”  Dalton was trying to sound reassuring, but his stomach clenched painfully.

Her shoulders slumped with the tension Dalton knew she was feeling.  He longed to rub thm.  “I’m tired of fighting him, Dalton.
 I can’t do this to my kids.  Please understand.”  Her eyes, when they looked at him, brimmed with tears, and tore a hole in his heart.

“So that
’s it?  Your ex doesn’t like me and we’re done?  Please tell me that’s not how it is.”  Dalton could easily kill Steven if he saw the man right now.  

“Dalton, my children are my first priority.
 They have to come first.  I told you that in the beginning.”

“Your kids are important to me, too Alyssa.
 I would never hurt them.”  A desperation he was unaccustomed to feeling crept into his voice.

“Then, please leave us alone.
 I’m sorry.”

“I can’t.”
 Panic was turning to resignation.

“Yes, you can.
 And you will.  Please leave.”

Slowly, Dalton rose to leave, still clutching the roses he had brought for her.
 Awkwardly, he held them out to her.  “I got these for you.  I guess you don’t want them, you can toss them, if you want.  Take them, and think about what you’re throwing away here.”  Fighting back tears of his own, he left.  He would give her time to think about it.  To think about them. If she felt half of what he felt, she couldn’t throw it away.  Could she?  

As he started his car, he realized he had just been dumped by Alyssa Fuller.

Chapter 21

When the flowers were delivered to Alyssa’s school’s front office, for all the student and teacher population to see, a teacher’s aide came to her classroom.

“Dr. Cahan told me to come watch your class.  He wants you to come down to his office, now.”  The aide had a slightly haughty tone to her voice, and Alyssa was a bit confused.

“Okay.”  She turned and made sure her students were reading quietly before going to see Dr. Cahan.

She kn
ocked politely on his doorframe before entering.  His head was in his hands, and he was doing that nervous thing with his fingertips.  She couldn’t tell if he was upset or thinking deeply.

“You needed to see me, Sir?”  She sat in the chair opposite him at the desk.  Noticing the giant bouquet of flowers, she said, “The flowers are lovely, Sir.  From your wife?”

Not opening his eyes, he replied, “No, Ms. Fuller.  They’re yours.”

“Oh.”  She sat back in her chair, knowing who they were from, but afraid to read the card in front of her boss.  Alyssa decided to wait until Dr. Cahan finished gathering whatever thoug
hts were going through his head before speaking.  It took a while.

Finally, Dr. Cahan spoke.  Not looking at her, he pushed a large white envelope across his desk to Alyssa.  “This came to the Superintendent’s office this morning, and he sent them to me.  A school board member delivered them to him.  Now everybody knows about this relationship, Ms. Fuller.”

A haze of uncertainty gripped her, as she reached over for the envelope.  Opening it, she looked at everything inside, her heart pounding.

They were pictures.  There was a picture of Dalton kissing her thoroughly and completely inappropriately in front of the Crisis Center Booth at the Hot Pepper Festival.  There were pictures of his car, license plate clearly shown in front of the nightclub in Dallas, The Church, which people walked out of dressed in skimpy goth attire.  There was a blurb about the club, depicting it as a hangout for druggies and prostitution.  There were pictures of Dalton’s motorcycle parked in front of Alyssa’s house at night. 
The kicker, though was a letter written to the school board from a concerned parent.

Alyssa took a deep breath.  “Sir…”

He finally looked up at her.  “Please don’t try to explain to me.  This is not something I typically do, Ms. Fuller.  I firmly believe a teacher’s personal life is their own.  But since the school board member delivered this personally to the Superintendent, I have to get involved.  Unfortunately, you have been deemed guilty by association.  You are aware of the morality clause in your contract?”

“Yes, sir, but…”

“Then I suggest you do something about this…”  He waved his hand over the documents and the flowers on his desk.

“We’ve broken up, sir.  That’s why he sent the flowers.”

“Well, that’s a start.  You may go back to class.”

“Thank you, sir.”  She said quietly, as she got up to leave.  “Sir?  May I have these?”

“No.  They are to go in your file.  I can have copies made for you to pick up seventh period.”