Warm Winter Love
Authors: Constance Walker
ALSO BY CONSTANCE WALKER:
WHEN THE HEART REMEMBERS
ONE PERFECT SPRINGTIME
LOST ROSES OF GANYMEDE
THE SHIMMERING STONES OF GLENDOWER HALL
C
ONSTANCE
W
ALKER
A Winter’s Eve Book
First published by Avalon Books in 1988
This edition published in 2013 by Winter’s Eve Books
Copyright © 2012 by Constance Walker
All rights reserved. This Book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the United States Copyright Law, and except limited excerpts by reviewer for the public press), without written permission from Constance Walker. For information, please contact Winter’s Eve Books via email at [email protected].
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental. We assume no liability for errors, inaccuracies, omissions or any inconsistency therein.
Published by Winter’s Eve Books
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012951101
ISBN 978-0-9884307-0-9 Digital Edition
0-9884307-0-3
Printed in the United States of America
Produced by Pedernales Publishing, LLC.
Cover Design by Sherry Wachter
For Ben...always
Chapter One
The students weren’t the only ones who needed a vacation. After four solid months of work, the teachers at Southern High were feeling the pressure of teaching pupils who would sometimes have preferred to be outside in the cold winter air. More and more Katie Jarvis had had to abandon her class and go out to intimidate students who had decided that lunch hour or study hall had come early and continued late. She would be standing in her classroom, teaching the difference between poetry and prose, look out the window and see the kids huddled together on the football field. She’d leave her class, walk out coatless in the cold weather, herd the errant students back into their classroom and hope she hadn’t caught the flu.
This Wednesday, in the week before winter break, after the last bell of the day, Katie sat down at her desk with packets of travel folders spread out among the English lit books and stacks of students’ essays. She hunched over the desk, rested her chin on her hands and stared at the four-color brochures praising the snow and slopes of Pennsylvania, and took a deep breath.
Three more days
, she said to herself.
Three more days and I’ll be there.
She closed her eyes, lost in the reverie of a week of skiing, a week with her favorite books and poems and immersing herself in the haunting poems of Coleridge and Frost without the school bell of her mind reminding her to prepare lesson plans or grade papers.
It was going to be wonderful even though she was going alone. Jason had declared early in their relationship that snow and mountain slopes weren’t for him.
“Just never will happen, Katie. Trust me, it never will.”
Oh, Jason! If only he would try skiing just once. Just once even going down the beginning slopes or on a trail across a snow-covered field and she knew he would love it. But Jason was insistent—
“no skiing, no snow, no cold weather. I have enough here,”
he would say whenever she brought up the subject.
“No, Katie, you go by yourself. It’s your vacation. I might as well get used to it. I can’t expect you to stop skiing when we get married. You enjoy it too much. I’ll just stay here and do my own thing.”
He’d pick up her hand, stroke it, and smile, and Katie would know that that was the end of the conversation. So be it!
“Are you dreaming of skis, straps, boots, and all the other paraphernalia?” Irene, Katie’s best friend and Southern High’s algebra teacher, said as she came through the door.
Katie put the brochures into her briefcase. “I wish you’d come with me.”
“No way, Girlfriend. You know me. I’m heading for warmer climates this time around. That’s the only thing your Jason and I have in common. The hotter the sun, the better.” She pointed to the wall clock. “Come on, let’s go.”
They were almost the last ones to leave the school and as they walked through the deserted halls Katie mused silently about her own years as a student.
“They’ve changed,” she said.
“Who?” Irene pushed the door open.
“The kids. They’re so involved with the internet and computer games and blogs—I wonder if they have as much fun as we used to when we were their age.”
“I think they do. I hope they do.” Irene looked at her friend. “Haven’t you changed too? More things to think about. More things to worry about. It’s called getting older.”
“I guess so.” Katie smiled. “I think I really need that break!” She got into her car and lowered the window. “Jason and I are going out to dinner this evening. Want to come with us?”
Irene shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got a stack of papers that have to be graded.” She looked back at the grey stone school building. “Sometimes I do wish we were still students without a care in the world. Without having to make any other decisions than what to wear to school or…”
“Or who you were going to go out with on Saturday night.”
“Yeah, that, too, although I never had any guys standing in line to ask me.”
“Oh, no? I remember it differently.” Katie waved, rolled up the window, slowly backed her car out of its parking space and eased carefully onto the road. She glanced into the rearview mirror to make sure no car was coming, saw her reflection, frowned and pushed back the dark hair that had fallen across her brow. Another glance in the mirror told her that she was the only one on the highway, and after another critical glimpse at herself, rubbed her pale cheeks to redden them. At a stoplight she reached into her handbag, pulled out a tube of lip gloss, and applied it to her lips without taking her eyes off the road. Then another quick glance into the mirror just as the green light appeared. Not good, not bad but at least she wouldn’t look so washed out… so plain.
Not that Jason would mind, or even notice. No, he wasn’t the kind of guy who cared about externals. That’s why she was first attracted to him. Jason was solid, the type of man every mother wanted her daughter to bring home and marry, and even though her mother now lived in a senior retirement complex in Maryland, Katie was sure that her mother would absolutely approve of Jason. After all, what was there not to like about him? He was kind, generous, smart, good-looking and honest. Oh yes, Katie assured herself, she was a lucky woman. She had a good job, good friends, and she was engaged to Jason.
She pulled into the driveway of her apartment house, parked her car and looked once more at her reflection in the mirror. Yes, ma’am, she was a lucky person. She had everything she had ever dreamed of when she was younger. Absolutely everything.
She closed and locked her apartment door, put her handbag on the table by the wall, saw an opened bag of cookies on the kitchen counter, thought about eating one and quickly decided against it; Jason was coming soon and the “only one cookie,” she knew, would have easily turned into four or five and spoiled her dinner. No, best she started working on grading papers—it would be better for her students and her figure.
Jason arrived a few minutes later. It was a standing date; every Wednesday they would go to The Country Cottage for their usual soup and salad dinner, spend an hour and a half eating and talking, and then go back to her place. She would make coffee, they would trade stories about their students—Jason was a science teacher and part-time baseball coach—and somewhere around ten-thirty or eleven he would go home after giving her a very brief kiss. All was perfectly safe and all had been perfectly repeated for the last five months.
“Jason, do you sometimes want things to be different? To change?” She toyed with her salad, pushing the green olives around her plate, not looking at him.
“No, I never thought about that. I’m happy with the way things are, aren’t you?” Jason had a habit of always answering a question with a question.
She bit into an olive. “Yes, but sometimes I just get… oh, I don’t know. I just get a little…”
“What you need is that vacation, Katie. We’re all tired. We’re all on edge. You’ll see, when you get back you’ll be ready to go again.” He pointed his fork at her. “Take my word for it—we all need the time off.”
“I suppose so.” She watched as Jason paid the bill. “I wish you would let me pay my half.”
“Some other time.” He put his wallet into his pocket.
“You always say that.”
He smiled and put his hand on her shoulder and guided her out of the restaurant.
Katie studied Jason’s profile as they drove home in the dark. He was really rather handsome, she thought. Certainly the women teachers at school thought so, and she knew that the waitresses at The Country Cottage thought so too, judging by the way they always fussed over him. Even the girls in his class flirted with him.
“An occupational hazard,”
he had said when she teased him about it.
“I read that almost all high-school students have a crush on some teacher at one time or another. I’m sure there’s someone right now in your class who dreams about taking you out.”
He smiled and hugged her.
“But you know as well as I do, Katie, that you just make sure you’re not alone with that student and the crush will fade in a few weeks.”
He was right, of course, but still, it was nice to know that other people liked your choice of the man you were going to marry even though most of them were either too old or too young.