Angel Falls (Angel Falls Series, #1), Babette Jongh [books for 6 year olds to read themselves .TXT] 📗

Ben had asked me to cook supper for him and the kids, and I knew Ian wouldn’t show up there. I could take refuge with Ben until Ian got the message.

I’d been half afraid things would be strained between Ben and me after the Saturday kiss, but they weren’t. Ben leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping wine and pretending to be interested in learning how to cook. Canned laughter spilled from the living room where the kids lounged on the couch in front of the TV.

I handed Ben a bag of rice. “Make yourself useful. Follow the directions.”

While he measured rice and water into a boiler, I battered the chicken. We worked in companionable silence, like a long-married couple. I knew without a doubt Ben and I could be happy together. But would we ever again feel that magnetic pull of pulse-pounding, overwhelming lust? Had Ian ruined me, even for this?

“Shit!” Ben’s voice blended with the hiss of water boiling over onto the stove. He plucked the lid off the rice pot and dropped it onto the counter with a clatter, then shook his fingers to dissipate the heat. “Why’d it do that?”

I turned the burner to low and used a potholder to replace the lid askew, leaving space for the steam to vent. “Didn’t the directions say to turn it down once it started boiling?” I picked up a battered chicken breast. “Watch and learn.” I showed him how to slide it gently into the pan of hot oil.

He snorted. “You’re so talented. That must have been really difficult.”

I wiped my hands on a kitchen towel and moved aside. “Let’s see you do it.”

He picked up a drumstick and lowered its butt end into the boiling oil. The sizzling sound made him jump—he dropped the drumstick into the pan, splattering hot oil. “Damn!”

“Not as easy as it looks?” I demonstrated again how to slide a battered chicken wing into the pan. “Do the rest, and I’ll show you how to make biscuits and gravy.”

As we stood at the stove, he put an arm around me and rested his hand casually on my hip. He took it away after a moment and commandeered the spatula, scraping the pan to keep the gravy from sticking. A calm certainty settled over me. Whatever happened, Ben and I would always be there for each other.

I came home that night half expecting to find Ian waiting on my doorstep, but he wasn’t. He hadn’t left a message. He hadn’t called, at all. More disappointed than relieved, I supposed he’d given up.

*

Early Tuesday morning, Ben called. “Did I wake you?”

I cradled the phone between shoulder and ear, poured coffee into a mug, doctored it with sugar and milk. “No.” I cleared my throat and sat down at my kitchen table. “I just haven’t had my coffee yet. What’s up?”

“Amy’s sick. She started throwing up in the middle of the night.”

“Poor baby. You want me to come take care of her?”

“No. We’re doing okay. She’s asleep now. I’m going to try to get some work done in a minute.”

“Okay.” I stroked Chester, who’d settled into my lap like a huge, puffy pancake. “What do you need me to do?”

“Could you pick up Jake and Maryann after school and keep them with you? If there’s any hope of keeping them from getting what Amy’s got...”

“Sure. No problem. Tell Amy I hope she feels better soon.”

“Thanks, Casey. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Good thing you won’t have to find out.” I hung up the phone, feeling a small glimmer of hope, and a slightly larger glimmer of determination. I loved Ben, and I loved his kids. Maybe it would be best for everyone if we wound up together.

But no matter what happened, or what didn’t happen, between Ben and me, I couldn’t continue teaching in such close proximity to Ian. Every time I passed his office, I would want to rush in, throw my heart at his feet, and apologize for not answering his calls. If I asked my mother’s opinion, she’d say I should stay put, wait it out, and allow time to work its healing magic. But I didn’t ask my mother’s opinion, because I didn’t want to wait that long.

I took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and called the realty office. Thirty minutes later, I parked my car outside the vacant building that had once been the scene of my high school romance with Ben.

In fact, until my junior year, it had been the scene of every high school romance in Angel Falls. A new high school had been built that year, and the old high school—this old building—had been abandoned. Empty and alone, it stood on a hard foundation of cracked red dirt, its vacant eyes put out by hooligans with slingshots and too much time on their hands.

I got out of my car and walked up the smooth-worn concrete steps to the padlocked double doors. Chipped brick walls served as billboards for graffiti artists, making the place look more like an inner-city ruin than the cultural art center the city wanted to turn it into. And so far, no one in town had shown any interest. But if the project had a chance in hell, I was more than willing to take the first leap.

Something moved in my peripheral vision. My heart lurched in desperate hope. Then I realized the car coming toward mine wasn’t Ian’s black sedan. Murphy Realty’s big maroon land yacht bumped over the curb and tore into the beaten dirt surrounding the old building, sending a plume of dirt into the air—a giant orange exclamation point rising up behind the car.

Joan Murphy got out and slammed the driver door. “Hey, Hon.” The noontime sun shone directly down on her, lighting up the short spikes of her red hair. It was an impossible shade I’d have thought fake if her kids’ hair hadn’t been exactly the same color,