Chapter 4

After the closet incident, as Gavin had dubbed it, Emma seemed to bounce back to her mostly normal self. She’d admitted to Gavin that she’d been afraid that “the people were coming to get her.” When he’d pressed her to explain, she’d clammed up and refused to say any more. She hadn’t said anything more about what had happened, and although part of him wanted to understand his daughter, another part was hopeful she could get past this and they could somehow make a normal life for themselves in Heron’s Landing.

Now, a few weeks after the closet incident, Gavin sat in Emma’s second-grade classroom for the semester’s parent-teacher conference. Emma’s teacher, Mrs. Gentry, was a woman in her late thirties who looked more like she was fifty, mostly because she wore her hair in the tightest bun Gavin had ever seen and wore clothes that were probably older than Gavin himself. Mrs. Gentry had recently divorced, and sometimes Gavin wondered if she hated him on sight for being male.

Really, he couldn’t blame her. Apparently her husband had cheated on her with his much-younger secretary and subsequently run off to Hawaii, secretary and divorce papers in tow. Mrs. Gentry hadn’t changed her name back, though, and it created an odd contrast with the woman sitting in front of him: uptight and stiff and prickly, yet with the salutation of a woman who wanted everyone to acknowledge that she was, in fact, connected to a man.

“Mr. Danvers,” she said, shuffling through her papers. “Thank you for coming in. I know a lot of parents don’t love these conferences, but I find them hugely beneficial to make certain we are all on the same page as educators and parents. First off, do you have any questions or concerns for me?”

He wanted to ask if this woman understood that Emma was a child to be treated with both delicacy and care, and he wanted to know if she could be that person for his daughter. He wanted to ask how the school had managed to lose his daughter, only for her to be discovered in a closet by a teacher who was only passing by. He wanted to know if he’d ever get his daughter back from wherever she’d disappeared to.

“How is Emma doing?” he asked instead.

Mrs. Gentry pursed her thin lips. “Let me assure you that Emma is a bright child, and she’s at the level she should be in all subjects, although she seems to excel most at reading and the language arts. I will say, I’ve had to tell her to put a book away during class. I applaud her interest in reading, but she needs to understand there’s a time and a place for reading, as well.”

He almost smiled at this. Emma reminded him of himself in that regard: always cracking open a book instead of listening to a teacher drone on and on. He’d gotten so many demerits and detentions when he’d been caught with a book during class hours; he’d always wanted to say that if teachers didn’t want students reading, they shouldn’t make class so painfully boring.

“I’ll let Emma know that reading shouldn’t be done when the teacher is talking. That being said,” he couldn’t help but add, “I don’t want to discourage her from reading in general.”

Mrs. Gentry scribbled a note on the paper in front of her. “Certainly not. I know how much of a struggle it can be to get kids to read these days, especially with phones and the Internet and TV distracting them. Books are boring, they tell me. It’s a pleasure to see Emma remaining interested in reading.”

Gavin sensed a but to that sentence. He glanced up to look at the banner above the whiteboard, which read Celebrate each other! in bold font. There were other art projects pinned to the walls, from self-portraits to various other kinds of drawings of animals, people, and—was that a tractor? Mrs. Gentry’s classroom was decorated in bright primary colors, at odds with the neutral-colored clothes she wore, her hair a similarly neutral ash brown.

But all that dissipated when she tapped her pen against the desk, like she was trying to figure out how to give him some kind of bad news. He almost sighed. Why was it always bad news? For once, he wanted to talk to someone and have them only say, “Everything’s great! Don’t worry about anything.”

“As I’ve mentioned, Emma is clearly an intelligent child. But her shyness means she has few, if any, friends. I rarely see her playing with other children; on the playground, she’s usually by herself reading a book. I hoped that as the school year continued, she would warm up to her classmates, but nothing much has changed. I conferred with Ms. McMurry, and she confirms that Emma acted similarly when she was in her class. And now the incident a few weeks ago, and her behavior lately…” Mrs. Gentry pushed her glasses up her long, thin nose. “I must admit that, overall, I find Emma to be a rather odd child.”

Gavin gritted his teeth so hard that his jaw ached. He knew Emma had issues, but Jesus Christ, did her own teacher have to single her out like this?

“She’s shy,” he replied, his voice surprisingly calm despite his desire to throttle the woman in front of him. “She’s had a difficult year. We both have. I think that gives you a reason to have sympathy for her instead of insulting her.”

Mrs. Gentry raised meticulously plucked eyebrows. “I apologize if I gave any offense. I merely meant that she’s unlike most other children. I wonder if you might consider outside assistance with her?”

“Which means what, exactly?”

“A counselor or therapist. Perhaps someone who could unravel why she’s acting like this. I’m a teacher, Mr. Danvers, but I don’t have the answers to everything. I’m just afraid that if she isn’t able to form friendships now, she’ll struggle even more as she gets older. It’s hard to be friendless when you’re young.”

Gavin clenched his fists next to his thigh, trying to rein in his angry responses. He wanted to punch a hole in the wall, or maybe tell Mrs. Gentry to go to hell. He wanted to wrap Emma in cotton and carry her away and keep her from people who thought it would be easier to dismiss a child as odd than try to understand why she preferred to spend time by herself.

“I appreciate your concern, but I’ve already taken Emma to more than one therapist. It only made the situation worse.” He swallowed, his throat dry. “I’ve found that keeping her home with me is the best solution right now.”

His conversation with Mrs. Gentry continued until finally she requested that he ask the next set of parents to enter. She’d asked about Emma’s mother, which Gavin wanted to talk even less about than he wanted to talk about his daughter being odd, and all in all, he rather wished he’d skipped this meeting entirely. But maybe Mrs. Gentry had a point. Maybe Emma was too strange for her age, too out of sorts. What did he know? Sometimes he felt like he didn’t know what was up and what was down anymore.

He’d dropped Emma off at his parents’ place for the evening. Luckily, his sister Grace planned to be there and could keep Emma company. Emma liked Grace more than she liked most people, and for that, Gavin was infinitely thankful.

A door opened down the hallway, and Kat Williamson stepped out. He froze. He hadn’t seen her since she’d told him about Emma hiding in the closet, and for some reason, he felt embarrassed at seeing her again.

Maybe it was because his family seemed bent on making her life more difficult. Kat and Gavin’s sister Grace had gotten close a year ago when Kat had helped Grace exonerate her boyfriend Jaime, after he’d been falsely accused of stealing from River’s Bend. Now, Kat was the one to discover his daughter hiding in school supply closets.

“Gavin,” she said as she approached. “How are you?”

“Fine. Well, not really. But it will be fine, eventually.” He knew he was babbling. He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to keep dumping my problems on you, though. You don’t deserve it.”

She smiled a little. “It’s not dumping if I want to know, though.”

“Still.”

They stared at each other, and eventually she gestured to go outside to the parking lot. “I was about to leave anyway. I don’t have much in the way of conferences since I’m not a teacher-teacher. If you know what I mean,” she said.

“So you’re a fake teacher?”

“Ha, something like that. Since I only do one subject, I’m kind of considered to be on the sidelines most days. At any rate, it means I don’t have to get yelled at by parents every semester, so I’m not complaining.” She stopped in front of a green compact car.

“I want to yell at Emma’s teacher,” Gavin admitted. He leaned up against her car, and she did the same. She waited. He knew he probably shouldn’t talk about one of her colleagues like this, but he was tired and at this point, he didn’t care. “She basically said that Emma was odd and needed to see a therapist.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Did she really use the word odd?”

“Yes.”

“Damn. That’s unfortunate.”

“It seems like such a stupid thing to get angry over. But I keep hearing that word and my blood boils. Like Emma’s too odd to understand. Who calls a student odd?” He looked at Kat. “Am I overreacting? Please tell me if I am.”

Kat hesitated. “I’m not a parent,” she finally said slowly, measuring her words. “So I can’t say what is and isn’t overreacting. That being said, she could’ve phrased things much better than she did.”

He closed his eyes, sighing. “Okay, enough about me. Tell me about your problems.”

She let out a sudden laugh. “My problems? You don’t want to hear about my problems.”

“Yes, I do. If you want to tell me. Mostly I don’t want to make this always so uneven between us: me complaining and you having to stand there and listen.”

“Didn’t I already say that I asked for it?”

“Sure, but sometimes we do things that aren’t good for us.” She gave him a look, which made him smile for the first time in a while. “Come on, spill it, Williamson.”

She stared at him for a moment, like she wasn’t sure how to take this request. But before she could speak, her phone rang in her purse. “One sec…” she said as she pulled out her phone. As she read whatever had come in, she made a face before swearing underneath her breath.

Now it was Gavin’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Okay, what was that about?”

“Nothing.”

She said it too quickly. He turned so he was facing her and folded his arms. “Nothing means you look at the text and don’t make a face like that. Come on, spill.”

She worried her plump lower lip with her teeth, and just like that, desire spilled through him. He wanted to touch that lip himself and capture her mouth with his own. Instead, he reached for her arm, trying to pluck her phone from her grasp. “Come on,” he cajoled as she laughed, trying to keep the phone from him. “Tell me, otherwise I’ll just keep bugging you.”

She tried to pull away, but he only snaked an arm around her waist. Now pressed up against him, he gazed down into her eyes, his heart beating fast. He wondered if he should kiss her. His entire body thrilled at the thought.

But then a car horn sounded, and they jumped apart like two teenagers caught necking in the back of a car.

Gavin took a deep breath. What the hell was he doing?

“It wasn’t a text message,” she blurted.

He just looked at her.

“It was an email, from online. Um, I’m not explaining this well.” She rubbed her arms, like she was cold. “Anyway, I keep getting stupid comments on something I put up online, that’s all. This was just another one. I need to turn off notifications.”

“I don’t understand.”

She sighed. “Did you know I’m a computer programmer? No? Well, I am. I also recently started making video games. Just for fun. Anyway, I launched a new game and there are some people who aren’t happy about it.”

Gavin waited for her to explain further, but she didn’t seem like she wanted to. “Okay, so what kind of comments? ‘This game sucks’? Like that?”

“I wish.”

Her voice seemed so sad that his heart clenched. “Kat,” he said in a soft voice, “tell me.”

To his surprise, she plucked her phone from her purse and, after unlocking it, launched the email in question. “Here, read them yourself.”

He wasn’t really sure he should be reading her email, but when she gestured at him to take her phone, he gave in. Glancing at the screen, he scrolled through one comment after another, his blood boiling higher with each one.

Girls should be seen and not heard, preferably sitting on my dick, said the first one. Another one read, Take this down, you fucking copycat. The comments went on and on, each one worse than the last. By the time he got to the end of the email, he wanted to murder someone.

“These are comments directed at you?” he demanded.

She shrugged. “Yeah, or at least the game I made.”

“What the hell kind of game is it? Wait, don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter.” He returned her phone. “Can you report these creeps?”

“I do, but they just keep coming back. Anyway, I’ll probably just delete the game.” She made a face at the suggestion. “Although I hate the thought that they managed to run me off. That almost pisses me off more than the comments themselves.”

Gavin marveled at that, both at how Kat managed to stay calm after reading something so insulting, and at how absurd it was that she’d stick it to the man simply to prove that people weren’t getting to her. He didn’t know whether he wanted to shake her hand or take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her.

“This isn’t right,” he told her, trying to make her see that. “I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but any man who makes those kinds of comments about women should be drawn and quartered by his balls.” His earlier anger about Mrs. Gentry’s comments regarding Emma only added fuel to his rage now. Could he just find one of these guys and pound them into oblivion? Surely no one would be upset if he did.

Kat smiled. “Thanks, but I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it.”

Too late, he thought. I can’t help but worry about you.

Gazing at her, he thought again how pretty she was. It was rather shallow of him, but he couldn’t help it. Everything about her called to some primitive part of him—okay, it was the part of him that wanted to get laid—but there was something else about her that made him want to protect her. Not exactly the way he wanted to protect Emma, but perhaps it was similar. He wanted to carry her away to his tower, keep her safe from everything, and then kiss her until she melted and he could make her his.

But Kat Williamson was convinced she wasn’t the type of girl guys needed to save. Gavin rather wanted to prove her wrong anyway.

“I should get going,” he said into the night air. “You okay driving home?”

“Why, because some guy will jump me?” At his expression, she patted him on the chest. “Relax. Nothing’s going to happen. People are assholes on the Internet all the time. You would know that if you ever used a computer.”

The imprint of her hand on his chest made his heart pound. He wanted to curl his hand around her fingers and pull her close. He wished he’d kissed her earlier.

“I use computers, enough to know that you’re a smart-ass.”

She grinned. “You didn’t need a computer to know that.”

He growled, her hand still on his chest, and he covered it with his own, pressing her hand against his heart. Can you feel how fast it beats for you? he wanted to ask her.

Her eyes widened at the gesture. “Gavin,” she whispered.

He wished he’d kissed her earlier? Well, he’d rectify that now. Leaning toward her, he kissed her, and for a moment, she didn’t respond. Anxiety filled him. He was about to pull away and apologize when she finally clutched at his shirtfront and kissed him back, and he groaned. He groaned at how soft her lips were and how she tasted like fruit—strawberries? Cherries? He didn’t know and he didn’t care. The kiss quickly transformed into something desperate, and when he tangled his tongue with hers, she listed toward him, like she couldn’t keep her balance.

Even though she tasted as sweet as could be, he knew he couldn’t let this happen again. He was too damaged, too messed up from his divorce to enter into a relationship right now. Kat deserved a guy who could be there for her, not just in spurts and starts. He reluctantly broke the kiss, stroking her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“I should go,” he murmured.

She blinked. “Okay.”

He touched her one last time because he just couldn’t help himself, and then he left, telling himself that was the last time he’d touch Kat Williamson like that ever again.