Courting Greta (Thorndike Press Large Print Core Series)

The relationship between former computer programmer Samuel Cooke and tough-as-nails gym coach Greta Cassamajor has a chance of succeeding, but only if the two of them can stop keeping the past secret and finally be honest with each other. (romance).

Courting Greta 1

SAMUEL WATCHED HIS BROTHER’S big hands walk over the steering wheel, turning the pickup into the campus parking lot. He should have driven himself. Nobody who saw his prematurely graying hair would mistake him for a teenager, even as small as he was, but being dropped off still felt juvenile. The stupid things he did to make his brother feel useful. Samuel shifted, adjusting his seat belt, and double-checked to make sure the bus schedule was in his pocket.

Chris glanced at him. “You okay?”

Sometimes it seemed like that was all anyone ever asked. Samuel leaned forward, peering through the windshield as the main building came into view. The high school was a single-story building branching off in several directions, barely salvaged from eyesore status by the redwoods towering around it. The hallways looked dark and empty from across the parking lot. “Where is everyone?”

Chris stepped on the clutch and checked his watch. “Maybe class is out?”

“Dammit.” Samuel grabbed his brother’s wrist, reading the analog upside down before thrusting the muscular arm away: 3:27. “My appointment’s in three minutes!”

“Yeah? We’re here, aren’t we?”

“And what, I’m going to jog across campus and get there in the nick of time?” He twisted, reaching into the extended cab for his elbow crutches. The first one caught and he swore, jerking it free.

“Bro.” Chris put one hand on Samuel’s shoulder, quieting him, and used the other to free the second aluminum pole. “Relax. It’ll be fine, okay? You’ll do good.”

“Well. And I doubt it.” Briefly, Samuel wrestled with the temptation to shove his crutch into his brother’s washboard abs; he mastered himself by redirecting the urge into the stubborn cab door. “How long has this stupid handle been broken?”

Chris reached over and shoved the door open.

Samuel closed his eyes. Chris was not a bad person. Yes, he possessed a small lump of lead in lieu of a brain, but he wasn’t trying to be a douchebag. Samuel was just nervous. They weren’t going to fire him for being a few minutes late. Still, as he swung his legs out of the cab and shouldered his backpack, he couldn’t help muttering, “You always make me late.”

Chris gave Samuel’s arm a rough pat. “I know. Sorry.”

Now he felt like a jerk. Probably because he was being one.

“You gonna be all right? Getting home and everything? I can stay another night if you want.”

As if he hadn’t been living on his own for a decade. “I’ll be fine. You should get on the road.” Samuel slipped his arms through the cuffs and planted both crutches on the ground before sliding out of the cab. “Thanks for coming up to help.” Not that he’d asked.

“No problem. Keep in touch, huh?”

“Sure, sure.” They always went through this routine before getting back to the business of ignoring each other. He cleared his throat. “Drive safely.”

Chris’s reply was interrupted by an eight-bit rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” “Must be Tammy.” He dug through the garbage-littered dash and came up with a cell phone. “Oh, it’s Dad. Here, you can say hi.” He punched a button. “Hey, Dad. Sam and I are—”

Samuel slammed the door. Chris quirked an eyebrow, then shrugged and waved.

In spite of the time, Samuel forced himself to stand on the curb and watch as the battered Ranger pulled away. A gust of autumn wind hit him in the face, and the smell of freshly cut grass slid up his nostrils, sharp as a knife. He drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

When the truck disappeared around the end of the block, Samuel turned away from the curb and started toward the nearest doorway. He frowned, glanced over one shoulder, and realized where he was. “Shit.” Chris had dropped him off in the wrong lot.

Then a bell shrilled, and eight hundred students came pouring out of fifty-odd rooms.

IT TOOK SAMUEL fifteen minutes to hike across campus and all of his upper-body strength to squeeze through the spring-loaded door of the portable office building, but it wasn’t until he’d stepped into his own classroom that he wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into.

The secretary had been nice enough, reassuring him when he showed up breathless, perspiring, and twenty minutes late that “Vince” was still out with the track team. Though the petite brunette was college-age at best, she invited him to “take a seat, dear” and fetched him a paper cup of water from the cooler. Two decades past puberty and every woman on the planet still felt compelled to mother him.

Vince Irving had entered a couple of minutes later, along with a heavy whiff of cologne. He looked more like a football coach than a principal, barrel-chested and clean-shaven, with a windbreaker sporting the school logo over a crisply ironed shirt. “Mr. Cooke!” he’d said, too loudly, and shoved a hand forward.

Oh, look, a walking cliché. Samuel took the proffered hand briefly. “My pleasure, Mr. Irving.” He grabbed his crutches and pushed himself to his feet. “Please, just Samuel.”

“Sam. Vince.”

No, not Sam. Samuel. He clamped his mouth shut on the correction. “Apparently I’ve got a ream of paperwork to fill out?”

Irving shrugged it aside. “Come see Joyce in the next week or two and she’ll get you squared away. Thought you’d be more interested in your classroom, eh?”

A glance at the secretary confirmed she was Joyce. “Sounds good.”

“Toss ’em.” Irving held up a palm and Joyce pitched a ring of keys. “That’s my girl. Back in a few.” He shouldered the door open for Samuel.

Samuel shuffled down the ramp and squeezed to one side, making room for Irving to pass. “Why don’t you go first?” They weren’t going to fit side by side on the narrow sidewalk, and the grass bordering it was a muddy mess. It hadn’t rained that much overnight; they were probably still dousing the area with sprinklers.

As the principal ambled toward the main building, he dug a bag of sunflower seeds out of a pocket and dumped a handful in his mouth. Samuel counted the shells that fell to the ground as he trailed behind.

Indoors, the halls were white-tiled and vacant, bearing enough similarity to hospital corridors to be disconcerting, save for the smell of stale sweat and rain. Irving fell back now that there was room, but he left the kind of wide, anxious gap between them that always made Samuel want to say, “Relax; I’m not going to break if you trip me.”

“You know,” Irving said, “we have full inclusion here.”

Wow. “Fascinating.” Obviously he was dying to hear about everyone else who happened to have some god-awful condition.

“Yessir.” Irving missed the sarcasm completely. “Started in the early nineties.” He had switched to spitting the shells into his hand, and he paused to shake the soggy handful into a big gray garbage can. “We’re considered very progressive, even by California standards.”

Was that why the nearest handicapped spot was half a mile from the office? Samuel needed to change the subject before he said something he couldn’t take back. “So . . . she’s your daughter, then?”

Irving’s bushy white eyebrows went up. “Who?”

Crap. “Um, Joyce?”

He burst into laughter. “Joyce? My daughter?”

“I thought . . .” Samuel had assumed they were related, because otherwise—well, if Rashid, CEO of the software firm Samuel had worked for in L.A., ever addressed any of his female employees as “my girl,” he’d have angry lawyers lined up around the block. Maybe Irving and Joyce had worked together a long time, although Joyce was pretty young. Maybe things were just different here.

Irving pulled a wallet out of his back pocket. “These,” he announced, “are my girls.”

Samuel offered the obligatory murmur of admiration and saw that Irving’s family really was quite attractive. He had two cheerful blondes in their twenties, and although his wife was showing her age, she was a dignified, handsome woman. “Nice.”

“My pride and joy. Ah, here’s your room.” Irving jammed the key into the lock, jiggled it, then grabbed the knob and threw his shoulder into lifting the door. “Damn keys have been copied so many times,” he explained, stepping inside.

Four rows of outdated computer banks stretched from the front of the room to the back, paired so students sat facing left or right. The right wall was composed entirely of windows, looking out over a concrete courtyard that had been painted by students. The only problem Samuel could see, initially, was the teacher’s desk, positioned on the far side of the room. He didn’t relish the thought of threading through the mess of chairs and naked cables, but he needed the lesson plans for tomorrow.

He made it to the back of the room without performing a face-plant in front of his new boss and found the promised binder centered neatly on the desk. It bore a sticky note with his name. He lifted the cover—and found a single piece of college-ruled paper. It said, in loopy red handwriting:

Keyboarding, Mon.–Thurs.: Students use typing prog. to improve.

Fri.: Print out stats and give awards (in desk).

Programming: Students researching history of programming. Presentations due next month.

Underneath was a bell schedule and a roll sheet for each class.

“Mrs. Phelps said she’d leave her lesson plans,” he said weakly. They’d spoken on the phone three times before he’d accepted the position, and she’d promised—promised—to leave everything he needed to run the class until Christmas.

Samuel opened the desk drawers one by one, but there were only a few overphotocopied awards with blanks for names and typing speed.

He looked at Irving, willing him to recall that Mrs. Phelps had left a box of supplies in the office. Irving shrugged. “You know how women get when they’re pregnant.”

“I don’t, actually.” Samuel looked out the window, biting the inside of his cheek. Was this some kind of sick joke? What the hell was he going to do? Phelps had said it was easy. Said his programming expertise more than compensated for his expired credential and almost total lack of classroom experience. Clearly the school board had agreed; they’d been thrilled to have someone with his “distinguished résumé.” And he’d believed her. Them. The truth was, he had no clue what he was doing. He’d been depending on those lesson plans to carry him until he figured it out.

And in sixteen hours, he would be standing here in front of thirty-two kids who expected him to be in control.

Irving shifted. “You want some time to . . . ?”

“Nope. I’m done.” Or screwed. One of those. Samuel flipped the binder shut and picked his way back around the edge of the room. He guessed from Irving’s thoughtful frown that the man was wondering why anyone in his right mind would abandon a lucrative career in software design for a low-paying interim position at a public institution. Samuel was beginning to wonder that himself.

Then Irving said, “So what happened? Car accident or something?”

“Excuse me?”

He gestured to Samuel’s lower half—the aluminum elbow crutches and the ankle braces outlined against his pants. “How’d you get hurt?”

Right. Because it simply wasn’t possible to mind one’s own fucking business. It didn’t bother him much if it was a kid asking, or someone with an obvious mental impairment. But any thinking adult ought to understand this wasn’t an appropriate topic for casual chitchat. Granted, Irving reminded him of Chris: about two hitters short of a lineup.

Still, this was his new boss, so he swallowed the sarcastic comeback and gritted his teeth. “Occult spinal dysraphism.” See if Irving could remember that long enough to Google it. “It’s a congenital birth defect. Disappointing, I know.” That was half the story, but it was all Irving would get. Samuel stumped past him into the hall. Though he had half a mind to keep going, he had known this job wouldn’t be easy. He wasn’t about to throw in the towel over this dumbass. Or lesson plans.

Irving locked up and handed Samuel the key, which he took to mean that the orientation was over. Thank God. His thighs ached from the trek across campus, and all he wanted to do was spend the evening with the most surreal novel he could find in his to-be-read pile. Unfortunately, what he’d actually be doing tonight was poring over the Internet for lesson plans. At least the fiber-optic line had kicked in yesterday; dial-up would have turned this disaster into an emergency of epic proportions.

Irving rubbed his hands together. “How d’you like sports, Sam?” He grinned, revealing a row of broad white incisors so perfect they had to be dentures.

Samuel had a fleeting, irrational vision of his body stretched unconscious across the hall tiles, Irving bending over him, rubbing his hands furiously and yelling, “Clear!”

“Honestly? I make a lousy shortstop.” Samuel shouldn’t have said it, but he was tired and annoyed, and he really, really didn’t like to be called Sam.

He expected Irving to go red and apologize, but the principal just looked puzzled. And then he guffawed. “No, no, I mean watching.” The laugh descended into a chuckle.

Samuel revised his opinion of Irving from “affable cliché” to “unbearable ass.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard we’re famous for our girls’ basketball.”

Samuel hadn’t. Or he’d forgotten. “How could I not?” So long as it brought the conversation to an end.

“Great! We’ve got a home game in twenty minutes. I’ll show you the gym.”

“Um. Yeah. I’d love to, but my brother dropped me off on the way out of town and the last bus on my route comes at five.” Actually six, but he was betting Irving didn’t know that.

“The bus?” Irving gave him a look that said he might be a little daft. “You’re in town, aren’t you? I’ll give you a lift.” He reached out and gripped Samuel’s shoulder with one big hand. “Come on, make your first day at Healdsburg High complete.”

He shrugged out of Irving’s grasp. “Like I said, I’d love to, but seeing as Mrs. Phelps failed to fulfill her obligations, I need the time to plan.”

“Oh.” Irving’s face fell. “Sure, I understand. Gotta make your first day a good one, eh?” He flashed another big smile, but there was something forced in it. As if he was genuinely disappointed by Samuel’s refusal.

Oh, God. He was going to regret saying this. “Some other time?”

Thankfully, an alternate date and time didn’t pop out of Irving’s mouth. “Sure,” he said. “Another time. Take care, hm?”

Samuel nodded and busied himself tucking the key into a pocket, allowing Irving a head start. Now all he had to do was locate the bus stop and he’d be home free. He’d taken a good long look at the map, and now that he had a moment to think, he oriented himself easily. The stop should be out the doors behind him and across the parking lot. It was nice not to have his thoughts interrupted every two seconds.

Nice. To be alone.

Samuel closed his eyes. He was already retreating. Just like his father had said he would.

No.

Irving was annoying, but he wouldn’t be the only person at the game. Basketball wasn’t Samuel’s cup of tea, but so what? At least it wasn’t baseball. And how much time did he really need to plan for a subject he could deconstruct in his sleep?

Samuel opened his eyes. Irving hadn’t quite reached the doors at the end of the empty hall. He could still fix this.

“Hey, Vince?”

Irving turned.

“Wait up.”

THE GYM SMELLED like t...