Ms. Miller and the Midas Man Read online

  He laughed quietly and went on. “The whole school could help with the play, for maximum exposure. This would give them a chance to experience acting, to sing if we do a musical. Art work on props, stage work, costuming, promotion, public speaking...a little bit of everything that was cut from the curriculum.”

  “But together? All night?”

  “Just the seniors, with chaperons. And with their parents’ permission. All of them months short of going to college and being off on their own anyway.”

  As he’d suspected, there was more resistance to the students’ sleeping together than to putting on a play. When he made it clear that he’d be coordinating the project and that the campout could just as easily be a day at an amusement park, the friction shriveled to a feeble rub. Deciding to do the play and leaving the other matter up in the air—for further discussion at a later time—brought their meeting to a rapid close and left him with plenty of time to set step two into motion.

  The teachers’ conference room at Tylerville Elementary School was as warm and stuffy two weeks before the new school year as it had been two weeks before the end of the last—a short eleven weeks earlier.

  It had been a short summer for Gus. Finally being able to afford some changes in her little house had been so exciting in June. By the end of July, her energy was lagging but things were shaping up. The house was beginning to take on a personality of its own—warm, cheerful, comforting—and it was rubbing off on her.

  She’d wake to sunshine soaking into and shining off the muted yellow of her bedroom walls; she’d stretch lazily, secure in her sense of belonging, and reflect on the fact that she was truly happy.

  Had she ever actually known she was happy before? She must have, because she hadn’t always been completely miserable, but...well, maybe she’d just been too busy to notice it before.

  Taking the time to notice your happiness sounded ridiculous, but—

  “Why, Scotty! Mr. Hammond,” stammered the principal, her dry droning of the school board’s objections to the present health insurance policy ending abruptly when he sneaked, bold and noisy, into the room.

  Gus’s heart rate slipped automatically into panic overdrive. A vacuum sucked the air from the room and the temperature soared.

  Like everyone else she turned her head to look at the interruption. A cool breeze in tan slacks, his white cotton shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up to his elbows—he tickled goose bumps across her warm flesh. His smile was as refreshing and exhilarating as a dip in a mountain lake. God, he was annoying.

  “Mrs. Pennyfeather. Please, don’t let me interrupt,” he said, trying his best to appear repentant. Ha! Gus almost laughed. “We...we’ve had a bit of a brainstorm over at the high school this morning and I wanted to come over and get your input—since it would involve some of your students as well. But I guess it can wait till you’re done here.”

  “Oh,” she said, startled, confused, and curious. “Well, we were just finishing up. I must say, I can’t imagine what all this is about. Did you want to speak in private?”

  It was then that he looked about at the gathering, as if he’d just suddenly realized what he’d walked in on. His open, friendly gaze barely grazed Gus, still she felt targeted and pierced through and through. The fool winked at her.

  “No no. No need for privacy. We were so excited about it at our meeting that it’ll be all over town before lunchtime,” he said, walking to the front of the room. He beamed that smile of his like a beacon in a dense fog, from one side of the room to the other, pulling every eye in his direction. “I confess, I was completely blown over by my staff’s enthusiasm. A spark of an idea, and it caught on like wildfire.”

  “Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Beverly Johns, the perky first-grade teacher, said. She giggled like a six-year-old and stared up at him adoringly. “Scotty, you’re terrible to tease us like this.”

  Gus rolled her eyes toward heaven and prayed for strength. Well, she wasn’t going to get sucked into whatever he was up to. No way. She wouldn’t even look at him, she decided, tracing a heat circle in the veneer of the big wooden table with her right index finger, her left hand under the table rotating round and round and round—then back in the opposite direction.

  “You always were fun to tease, Bev,” he said.

  She glanced up, caught off guard by the affectionate tone in his voice. He was grinning at Beverly as he slipped his hands halfway into his pockets. He looked very much at ease—as he did everywhere—and Gus wanted to loathe him for it. He quickly explained the situation at the high school and the plan devised to temporarily fill the need. Gus tried not to hear him, but he had a nice voice. Deep and low, infectious and entrancing, it had a tendency to vibrate with whatever emotion he happened to be feeling. It was a voice that was hard to ignore. Harder to forget.

  Her thoughts strayed to that night, dark and intimate, mysterious and magical. Him, standing close and concerned, his hands on her shoulders, warm and gentle. His scent in her nostrils. Her heart racing. His words, “What happened to you? Who hurt you?” rang in her ears.

  How would you tell someone like Scott Hammond—Mr. Damn Midas Man—that not everyone had the gift of turning everything they touched to gold? That the touch of some people turned things to dust? That it didn’t matter if, in the wee hours of the night, his warmth and concern might have been a comfort to her soul, the risk of reaching out to him was too great?

  How would you tell someone like Scott Hammond that some people were simply meant to be alone? That they hadn’t the vaguest idea how to keep a man content and satisfied? That the future wasn’t something they looked forward to? That it frightened them? That they couldn’t be trusted with someone else’s hopes and dreams?

  Draw him a picture? Pencil a failure graph along her life line? Tell him the truth?

  “...working closely with your music director.”

  Gus looked up to find him staring down at her, his dark eyes twinkling happily. She frowned in confusion. “What?”

  “Well, we did consider A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but when The Wizard of Oz came up, it just seemed like the best vehicle for our purpose. Singing, dancing, acting, plenty of scenery and costumes...and with the addition of Munchkins, a bigger mandatory audience.”

  He chuckled with everyone else who knew that no mother, father, grandparent, uncle, aunt, cousin, or neighbor would miss the chance to see their favorite first- or second-grader dressed up as a Munchkin. At the same time, he studied her.

  “Of course, if you think this is too big a project for you to handle along with your other responsibilities here at the school,” he said, a calculating light coming to his eyes. “Well, I’m sure we could come up with a less challenging project for our first attempt at a senior class play. We’d probably also lose a lot of the enthusiasm and the momentum required to get something like this firmly rooted in the community, but...” He shrugged helplessly.

  Slowly, she turned her head and then her eyes to the left to find everyone watching her expectantly. As this was only her second school year among them, she was still something of a newcomer, and an oddity, considering her background. She could see the uncertainty and hope in their expressions.

  “I think I can manage to teach the children the songs,” she said finally, refusing to look his way again.

  Well, she intended to refuse, but was unable to help herself when he spoke again.

  “Thank you, Ms. Miller,” he said. “I was hoping I could count on you.”

  He wasn’t teasing her. Their eyes met, exchanged suspicion and appreciation, then finally settled somewhere near the understanding that ultimately they were benefiting the children of Tylerville.

  Of course, his first priority had to be the children. And it was. Truly. But that didn’t mean it had to be to the exclusion of his own desires, did it?

  No, he decided firmly, hammering in the last of the shingles he’d gotten to patch the hole in the roof directly above Chloe’s bedroom. He’d left
the elementary school feeling galvanized with energy. Not a common experience in the heat of the summer. He felt it would be best to tackle this project before he wasted the sensation on other things—like daydreaming or a long nap in the shade—and before it rained again and ruined the newly painted ceiling below.

  With no effort at all he could think of a million reasons to engage Ms. Miller in a little tête-à-tête, using the play as his best excuse. The possibilities were endless. He was a genius. And if he was careful, very careful, he could draw her out a little. Make her laugh. Trick her somehow into talking to him, really talking to him. And maybe, if he was careful, just maybe he’d get close enough to touch her again.

  He laid the hammer sideways along the steep pitch of the roof to consider the prospects, to let his imagination run with them, then noticed another patch of rotten shingles over the eave a few feet away.

  “Damn. What I need is a new roof,” he said aloud, scooting closer to the edge. The house was old and the angle of the roof was sharp and treacherous. He’d used his last shingle, and a return trip back down to fix this new hole wasn’t on his agenda. The top of a two-story building was not a place he’d choose to be if indeed he’d had a choice. However, if he didn’t actually stand up, and if he kept his eyes focused on the shingles, it was almost tolerable. “What I really need is to win the lottery and buy a new house. Right, Bert?”

  Bert lay on a shady spot in the grass below and barely quivered an eyebrow at the notion. The man was a dreamer.

  Inadvertently, Scotty glanced down at Ms. Miller’s roof, the gray-black shingles neat and orderly. He chuckled. There was a sparrow’s nest in the gutter, he noted with a smile. She’ll be wanting that removed when the leaves start to fall and the rainy season begins, he calculated, reaching blindly for the hammer.

  He reached a little farther and a little farther until he finally had to look for it.

  He leaned slightly to touch it with the tips of his fingers, to inch it toward him. He almost had it when the heavy end met gravity and slipped downward, parallel with the pitch of the roof. For the briefest of seconds it lay there, then he watched as it slid slowly down each row of shingles and dropped into his own rain gutter.

  With a sigh and a weary stream of expletives, he rolled over onto his back, defeated. He looked into the thick, leafy canopy above him. Shade and bright sunshine crossed his vision in a rhythmic pattern as the wind rustled gently through the treetops. He was no handyman, he lamented, content to stay as he was a few minutes longer and ponder nature’s beauty.

  He could feel the warm shingles at his back through his shirt. He folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. It wasn’t so bad on the roof.

  And Ms. Miller had the sweetest mouth he’d ever seen—a shapely top with a chubby lower lip that he could spend the rest of his life sucking and nibbling on. He lowered one leg and left the other bent.

  She’d kept her head bent low that morning, away from him, and the nape of her neck had almost driven him insane, he recalled with a chuckle. When he finally got his hands on her—and he knew he would eventually—he’d never voluntarily let go. Someone would have to pry them apart. He sighed deeply and crossed one leg over the other.

  “Awwww,” he screamed, sliding toward the edge of the roof like a log in a chute, his legs flailing in his attempts to prop his feet flat beneath him to stop himself. He heard leaves swooshing, limbs cracking, and incoherent gibbering as his life flashed before his eyes and death—if not a lifetime of excruciating pain in full body cast—rushed to meet him.

  Panting and whimpering, he slowly came to the realization that everything had come to a stop. Time. Movement. His heart. It quivered in his chest uncomfortably, thumped out a beat, then another. When he had enough blood in his head to think straight, he gradually raised it to look down at his feet. The heels of his soft-soled shoes were wedged against the rim of the rain gutter...his backyard sprawled portentously miles below.

  His head fell back against the roof. He sucked in long, deep breaths, and, when he could, he looked again to see how far away the ladder was.

  Too far, he saw almost immediately. Squinting, he could see the ladder had fallen away from the house to rest in the branches of the old oak tree. In his fearless youth it had been part of his escape route from his bedroom window—now it seemed to have mature limbs no bigger around than number 2 lead pencils.

  Again, his head fell to the roof with a thudding noise, and angry frustration churned in his belly. Was the principal of Tylerville High School allowed to cry? Then more constructively, he wondered if breaking through the roof into the attic was feasible. Did he dare lift his heels from the gutter? Or should he try to roll over onto his stomach?

  That’s when he heard the car pulling into the drive between the two houses. He sighed heavily and closed his eyes. It would be too much to hope that it would be one of his sisters. The car door opened and closed. He had to make a quick decision.

  Gus was exhausted. She’d forgotten how tiring being “on” for other people could get for someone with a solitary nature. Raised in a strict, regimented environment, she was more of a social caterpillar—slow, prickly, eager to cocoon herself—than a friendly butterfly like Lydia.

  She was hot too. The August heat was humid and cloying, she could feel the air passing in and out of her lungs as she breathed. A cool shower and some uninterrupted, air-conditioned “down” time would put her day in perspective.

  She got out of her car and slammed the door. That idiot neighbor of hers had ruined her whole day. She glared at his house as she walked up the drive. If he was sincere about this business with the senior class play, all right. But did he have to confuse the issue with winks and innuendo? Did he have to make her skin tingle with the idea that he had ulterior motives in involving her?

  “Ms. Miller?” came a croaky whisper. Scotty cleared his throat. “Ms. Miller?”

  No response.

  “Ms. Miller? Is that you?” Nothing. “If you’re not Ms. Miller, but you can hear me, please answer. I need help,” he said as calmly and with as much dignity as he could muster. He listened but heard nothing but the birds in the old oak tree. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  She stood still and slowly scanned the area. She frowned, narrowed her eyes, and scanned it again.

  Finally, he heard footsteps on the concrete drive.

  “Hello? Mary? Beth? Elaine? Chrissy?” he called, listing his sisters first, and then, as a last resort, adding, “Ms. Miller?”

  “What are you up to now?” she asked, the irritation in her voice causing him to cringe. “If this is another one of your stupid tricks to get my attention...”

  “No. No.”

  “...I’ll tell you right now it’s not going to work.”

  “No. Wait. Please.”

  “I cannot bee-lieve the people of this town hired someone like you to set a good example for their children. You’re more of a child than all of them put together, I swear. Where are you?”

  “Never mind,” he muttered softly, closing his eyes. “Just let me die here.”

  “I mean it, Scotty Hammond. We’re going to have this out here and now. Show yourself or I’m going inside.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? Come out this instant. I want to know what all that business was at school this morning. Is nothing sacred to you? I’ve had time to think about it, and if you dreamed this whole scheme up just to get to me, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  He was taking his life in his hands, he knew, but there was a principle involved here. He wasn’t totally devious.

  “That’s pretty bigheaded of you, don’t you think?” he called to her. “It just so happens that the idea for the senior class play came to me long before I ever saw you. I admit, I was leaning heavily toward A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but all things considered, The Wizard of Oz is a much better idea.”

  Your involvement notwithstanding, he failed to add.


  “Then why did you wink at me this morning? You did that on purpose, just so I’d think you were up to something, didn’t you? Just to annoy me.”

  He wondered how long it would be before buzzards found him.

  “Yes. I did it to annoy you. I enjoy annoying you.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t think I want you to know anymore. I’m beginning to like it here.”

  “What?”

  “I’m on the roof.”

  “What?”

  He took a deep breath then clipped out each word, clear and concise. “I’m on the roof of my house. I was patching a leak. I’ve lost my ladder.”

  “You’ve what?”

  He thought a moment, then decided he’d rather swallow shredded glass than repeat himself. He folded his arms stubbornly across his chest and listened as the squeaky gate to his backyard opened and closed.

  Bert barked once. He’d intended it as a gracious greeting, but he could see the woman took it as an intruder alert. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why the woman was so afraid of him. He always wore his best, most friendly face when she was around. Still, some humans were a little more standoffish than others—so it fell to him to bridge the gap. Perhaps she’d enjoy a good joke today, he thought, standing and pointing to the man with his nose.

  Gus approached the giant dog slowly, only half-sure he wouldn’t eat her. She kept turning her head to get a good look at the roof, but could see nothing until she was standing next to Bert.

  “Oh my,” she said, laughter gurgling in her throat but not crossing her lips. Bert heard it and knew he deserved a reward for making her happy. He slipped his big head under her hand and scratched an itchy spot on his left hip by rubbing it against her leg.

  Scotty raised his head to scowl down at her. His heart twisted and sank in his chest. She was completely beautiful. Standing there in the shade of the old oak, a sunbeam filtering through the leaves to dance light in her dark hair, to sparkle in her eyes. She was smiling, happier than he’d ever dreamed of seeing her. So incredibly beautiful, she took his breath away.