Falling for the Teacher. Tracy Kelleher

in his voice, a sexy, mellifluous baritone of a voice.

      Katarina told herself not to take any notice, that whatever she was sensing was more probably an aftershock from envisioning what might have been. “Wet but otherwise fine,” she said in answer to his question. At least the wet part was accurate.

      “Well, if you’re sure…?” He fidgeted with the handlebars. “Listen, I don’t mean to, to…ah…splash and run, but if you’re really okay, I have a small family crisis I need to deal with. It’s really urgent.” He worked his lower lip.

      Katarina couldn’t help noticing how full it was. Aftershock, aftershock, she told herself and swallowed. “Not, not to worry,” she said.

      “I can give you my phone number to let me know about dry cleaning expenses or something?”

      “No, really, I’m fine. And everything will be fine once it dries out.”

      He reached for his visor.

      Katarina held out her hand. “Just one thing. My umbrella?”

      “Oh, right. Sorry about that.” He seemed to hesitate, then thrust it at her. “If you’ll excuse me then.” He nodded goodbye, flipped down his visor and thundered off into the night. The heavy strumming of the rain muffled the sound of the engine until it vanished into oblivion.

      “‘Splash and run.’ I like that,” Lena said. “But careless, much too careless.” She turned and inspected her granddaughter. “Katarina? What do you think?”

      “Yes, Babička?” Katarina pulled her gaze away from the disappearing figure, half hearing what her grandmother said and having less than half an interest in responding. She sucked in the insides of her cheeks and forced herself to concentrate on the essential here and now. “Listen, I think we need to hurry if we’re not going to be late to class.”

      Lena stood unmoving with her eyes focused on the receding figure. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear what I said.”

      “I didn’t,” Katarina said.

      Lena held up her hand to thwart any protests. “Waddayaknow! Look!” She pointed down the road. “He’s stopping at the high school! All I can say is, if he turns out to be the defensive driving instructor, I’m going to have to call Iris again and let her know. We can’t have that.”

      Katarina pointed her umbrella triumphantly in the air. “Ah, hah!” she said. “See, I was right! You did call Iris Phox about me teaching! Now you can’t deny it.”

      Lena turned back to her granddaughter. “So sue me. As your grandmother, I only had your best interests at heart.” Then she nodded and smiled what could only be described as a very ungrandmotherly-like smile. “He was something, wasn’t he?”

      “Babička!”

      Lena shrugged. “I may be no spring chicken, but I still know a rooster when I see one.” She sniffed loudly. “Unlike some people, I might add.”

      “I’m not immune to the opposite sex, you know,” Katarina protested.

      “What I know would fill a book, a very large book. Come, I hate being late. And, you, brush your hair and wipe your face when you get inside. You never know what might happen.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      KATARINA GAZED AT THE brass knob, its surface marred by the sweaty palms of generations of eager young minds, and realized that the whole problem was she could imagine what might happen. Not with the mysterious biker. That was out of the realm of imagination. But with the class.

      They’d hate her. She would bore them. They’d ask her questions she couldn’t answer. She’d run out of things to say. People would get up and leave early. And on and on.

      And the really frustrating part about it all? She had absolutely no experience when it came to dealing with these kinds of anxieties. Up until the shooting, she had been fearless, some coworkers at Curtis Worldwide Home Products Inc., would have said even reckless, especially those she had passed by in her rapid rise to senior vice president for finance. But then, she had never had a reason to doubt herself.

      From an early age, Katarina’s single mother had taught her to be independent. This was the same single mother whose own independent streak now took her to Antarctica to carry out geological research. And why should Katarina have doubted her word? After all, Katarina had been blessed with the two best qualities a single child could have: the ability to amuse herself with long hours of reading, and the self-confidence to believe she could do anything if she set her mind to it. She had succeeded in school, college and business school, graduating at the top of her class and sailing into a dream job out on the West Coast. If someone needed a report by midnight, she could produce it. A partner to climb Kilimanjaro? No problem.

      But ever since a bullet had ripped though her right knee, that kind of fortitude, some might even say bravado, seemed to have vanished.

      Still, the mantra “Zemanova women are tough” had been needlepointed into every pillow in the house in a figurative sense, and Katarina hadn’t dared tell her mother and grandmother about her anxieties. Instead, she had assured them that there was no need for either to fly out during her long convalescence. And it went without saying that she’d thrown herself into her postoperative physical therapy with the same overachieving ardor that had propelled her to accomplish so much already.

      Despite the tedium and the pain, she had been all smiles for her doctors and therapists. Over the phone to her family, she had conveyed nothing but upbeat sentiments. When her company said, “Take as much time as you need before you come back,” she had said that she was sure she wouldn’t be long. Yet, deep down she knew it was a lie.

      She was already drifting, unable to make decisions, even the simplest like whether to wear brown pants or black, to have coffee or tea, to do the crossword puzzle in pen or in pencil, or not to do it at all.

      So after four months of physical recovery, she had gravitated back to the one place that had always felt safe no matter where life had taken her—Babička’s house in Grantham. Lena had never challenged her, didn’t ask her about her short or long-term plans, and didn’t question her feelings. Until this matter of the Adult School, that is.

      So Katarina mustered the same family backbone that had gotten her grandmother through early widowhood as a recently arrived immigrant. It had also gotten her mother through college and graduate school raising a young child alone. Alone because she had insisted from the moment she’d discovered she was pregnant that the father was out of the picture, and refused to reveal his name. Likewise Katarina now took a deep breath and reached out, adding her own sweaty palm to those that had come before her. What was Franklin Roosevelt’s adage: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?”

      She pushed the heavy wooden door with so much conviction that it swung wildly and banged into the inside wall. Well, that got everyone’s attention, she thought before saying out loud in a forthright manner, “Good evening, everyone.”

      She crossed the floor to the desk at the front of the classroom, listening to the distinctive squishing sound made by the crepe soles of her shoes. She unpeeled her raincoat, dropped it over the back of the chair and wiped aside her wet hair. Finally looking up—she could delay the inevitable no longer—she offered a tight-lipped smile to the students in her night school class. Why wasn’t she surprised at what she saw?

      Clearly, Babička’s maneuverings had gone beyond securing her this part-time post. Among the eager faces looking to her for guidance and inspiration were several of her grandmother’s friends and aquaintances.

      Katarina nodded hello, first to Carl Bedecker who sat front and center. Carl’s wine-colored V-neck sweater had a Kiawa Island logo stitched on the upper left, above his prominent bulging stomach that stretched the knit fabric below. He greeted her with a beaming smile showing somewhat yellowed teeth. The twinkle in his rheumy eyes brought to mind a kindhearted Norman Rockwell figure on a Saturday Evening Post cover until…

      Until