He glanced around, seeing nothing but moonlight on snowcapped mountains, an empty road in front, with a pasture and a crumbling log cabin on the far side. Somewhere behind the schoolhouse was the river. “Because there is nobody anywhere.”
“That’s why they’re talking about closing the school. Fifteen years ago kids from six or seven families attended this school, and they were big families so there were enough children to make it worthwhile, but today it’s just four small families, which is why it’s no longer economical.”
“So they’d bus the kids into Marietta?”
She nodded, leading the way up the small porch and unlocking the front door. “But bus service up into the mountains is treacherous in winter, which is why they left the school open as long as they have.” She turned on the lights and stepped aside to let him enter the school.
Shane closed the door behind him. They were in a little enclosed entry lined with hooks and wooden cubbies on the ground. “This is where the kids keep their lunches, snow boots, and coats,” she said, before heading through a wide opening into the main room. “And this is where I teach.”
“It’s like a freezer in here.”
She nodded. “It’s cold.”
“Where is your heater?”
“We have an old furnace in the back and then I’ll plug in a space heater on really cold days.”
“I’d plug in more than one.”
“If you do that, you’ll blow a fuse. Electrical is old, too. That’s why I can only have a mini refrigerator and a low watt microwave.”
His gaze swept the tidy rows of desks. There were about twenty desks. “You have twenty students?”
“We had thirteen. That family’s gone as of last week, so we’re down to twelve.”
“What happened to that student?”
“The Hainsleys decided to try a new Christian academy in Livingston.”
“Is there a bus to that school?”
“No, the parents are going to drive Jamie each way. They thought it would be better for her. I think they hoped a Christian curriculum would be preferable.”
He shot her a narrowed glance. “Why?”
“They don’t believe in evolution, or sex education.”
“Ah.” His brow wrinkled. “Do you teach sex ed?”
“To the older ones, yes.”
“And what do the younger ones do while you teach the birds and the bees?”
“Work at their desks.”
“Wouldn’t they be listening in?”
“I teach the health stuff in a very quiet voice.” Her cheeks turned pink.
“How I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that,” he answered.
She made a face; cheeks still rosy and blue eyes impossibly bright. “Thank goodness you’re not. It takes a lot of work for me to be really calm and matter of fact.”
“But as a farm girl, I’m sure you’re comfortable with…the mechanics.”
She choked on a smothered laugh and then shook her head. “That’s terrible, but you’re not far off. These are all children of ranchers. They’ve grown up hunting and fishing and helping out on the property. Sometimes I feel like they know more about the real world than I do.”
“I know you’ve only been here for a little over a month, but do you feel like you’ve gotten a sense of the importance of this school? Is it an archaic way to teach, or is there a value to keeping the school open…beyond the obvious that it’s historically significant?”
“I love that question because I wondered that, too, and while I haven’t been here for any of the big events, I’ve been told that the Christmas play and spring picnic and eighth grade graduation are all huge events, drawing people for miles. Apparently everyone in the valley comes, not just the students’ families, but the entire community because this school is the heart of the community, and it keeps everyone connected.”
“I would think the local churches serve that purpose.”
“But the churches are divided into denominations, and this isn’t about a denomination, but the families that live here and call Paradise Valley home. Nearly every student here has a parent who attended this school, and those parents’ parents came here, and so it goes, stretching back four and five generations.”
He watched her face as she talked. She was pretty and fresh and animated and he could imagine how her students must hang onto her every word.
At least he hung on to every word.
He liked listening to her, and watching her. When she was excited about something her eyes lit up and her expression was bright and light. But then, Jet radiated light. It was a special magic inside of her, the thing that made her irresistible, the thing that warmed him and made him want to pull her close and wrap his arms around her and keep her safe. She deserved to be protected. Cherished. Not that he was the one to do it. God knew he wasn’t the relationship sort. He was good at paying for things, whipping out a credit card and picking up expensive dinners and buying pretty trinkets, but connecting…loving? Not his forte.
She was so different from who he’d expected her to be, so much more in every way, and she had the sweet, bubbly side he’d seen while watching her these past few weeks, but she had another side—smart, thoughtful, inquisitive—and he liked talking to her, liked that she wanted to discuss ideas and not just things.
In the past few years, he’d met far too many beautiful women who were more concerned with Instagram and Snapchat than what was happening in the world, and while he appreciated beauty, he was bored by the shallow, superficiality of a social media driven culture. A year ago he’d sat across from a woman on a flight who’d spent easily—no exaggeration—ten minutes flipping her hair, adjusting her sunglasses on top of her head, taking the sunglasses off, pouting, pursing lips, making duck lips all to get a perfect shot of herself, which she then spent another five to ten minutes doctoring with filters, and her intense self-absorption had fascinated and repelled him at the same time.
How exquisitely, painfully narcissistic…
He’d vowed then to nix dates with Instagram accounts filled with nothing but images of themselves.
When he first left school and started out on his career, the pretty young self-absorbed things hadn’t bothered him so much. As a loner, he hadn’t wanted a woman for conversation. He was happy to just look at her, and if the physical was satisfying, he was satisfied. But he was almost thirty-five and the shallow and empty left him feeling shallow and empty. Better to be alone, than with someone that left him cold inside.
And he’d been cold, for so long now he’d begun to wonder if the issue wasn’t others, but himself. He’d wondered if perhaps he’d been a loner so long that he didn’t know how to form real attachments. Perhaps the years of being shuffled around had damaged him completely…
But standing here in this freezing school, he wasn’t cold. If anything, he felt warm, surprisingly warm.
And even more surprising…happy.
“I’m definitely coming one day to see you teach,” he said. “Not so I can yap, but I want to sit in the back and just watch you and the kids.”
“Why?”
“I think it’d be interesting. You’re interesting.” He smiled at her. “Maybe a little too interesting because I’d rather be with you than working on my book.”
“But you’re close to the end, right?”
He thought of his desk, and the piles of notes, and the months of research that had ground to a halt as he’d hit one dead end after another. “Not as much as I need,” he confessed.
“But you’ll get it. You will,” she said.
He looked down into her upturned face, her pale brow knitting, her wide, blue eyes narrowing with concern. Her worry made something inside him tighten and ache. He did not want to disappoint her. She believed in him. He couldn’t let her down.
“I’m missing key pieces that I need to move forward, and that happens in every book, but not usually at this point—” He broke off, unable to continue, hating to hear himself share his failure ye
t again, out loud, twice in one day. He was never so open, not at all comfortable revealing chinks in his armor.
“And?” she prompted after a moment.
“It’s stressful. The book is due in a couple months and I hate feeling as if I am running out of time.”
A deep crease formed between her eyebrows. “Is there anything I can do? Any way I can help? Something I can type for you, or research? I’m pretty good with research.”
He smiled, touched by the offer, as well as her sincerity. She meant it. She wasn’t trying to make points or placate him. “I don’t think your family would approve,” he reminded her gently. “But thank you. I appreciate your support more than you know.”
And then he kissed her, lightly, sweetly, just because she was lightness and sweetness and everything he liked best. “We should go check on your car,” he said gruffly, sweeping his thumb across her warm, pink cheek because he didn’t want to let her go, but she wasn’t his, and couldn’t be his and so he forced himself to step away. “Make sure it’s still out there, running.”
Driving home, Jet thought about the kiss and Shane’s book and his worry about the deadline and she wanted to turn her car around and drive back to Paradise Valley and do something for him, do something to help him, even if it was just to make him dinner while he settled back at his desk.
She wasn’t a great cook, either, so it’d have to be pasta or maybe a simple broiled steak and baked potato, but he could eat and she could maybe get on the Internet and look up stuff, or go to the library and research…