A Mom for Tim by Lori Handeland

Author:Lori Handeland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE the following week. Stella shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. She’d thought nothing ever happened at Gainsville Elementary. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Strangely, right in the middle of every scuffle, there was Tim Luchetti. What had gotten into the boy?

On Monday morning there was an argument in gym class about the Bears and the Packers. Someone called Aaron Rodgers a name that shall not be repeated, and Tim kicked the offending cretin in the shin.

Monday lunch was the scene of a food fight, with Tim bearing the brunt and needing to be reclothed in donated items from head to toe.

Tuesday morning Tim couldn’t sit still in math class and was sent to the office for walking around and around, disturbing others.

Wednesday he got distracted after going to the bathroom, and his teacher found him, an hour later, playing basketball alone on the playground.

By Thursday, when he “accidentally” tangled the hair of the girl who sat at the desk in front of him into the spokes of her chair so badly the ends had to be cut free, Tim was spending at least an hour a day in Stella’s office. Laura began to refer to the cherry-wood ladder-back in the corner as Tim’s Chair.

“I think he might have a crush on you,” she said, before letting him in again.

Too bad Stella couldn’t say “like father, like son.”

Tim didn’t appear contrite, but then he never did. In truth, his crimes were minor. There were just so many of them.

“Tim...” she began.

“I know. Keep my hands to myself. But she always flips her hair on my desk. Hits me in the face, slides all over my paper. It’s annoying.”

“I bet,” Stella agreed.

Tim looked surprised.

“But that doesn’t mean you can wrap Jenny’s hair around the chair eight hundred times.”

“’Kay.”

Stella stifled a smile. If only all her problem children could be half as cute and just as agreeable.

“You gonna call my dad?” he asked.

Each time he’d come in here this week he’d asked the same question. And every time she’d said the same thing.

“Not yet.”

Tim shrugged and sat on his chair.

Stella probably should have called Dean when they reached basketball-on-the-playground day, but she hadn’t been able to. She didn’t want to see him. She wasn’t sure she could look into his eyes and not remember the sight of him with another woman.

Stupid, but true. However, if Tim continued to act up, she’d have to swallow her unease and call Dean.

“You need to behave, Tim.”

“I know.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Not sure.”

“Mmm,” she said, and went back to work.

Her intercom buzzed. “Stella?”

Laura had given up calling her Ms. O’Connell after two days, for which Stella was grateful. Since they’d shared crackers and girl talk, Stella would have felt foolish being addressed that way by a friend.

“Ms. Hornbe is sending down two boys. One called the other gay, then that one punched the other’s lights out to prove he wasn’t.”

“All right.” Stella sighed. “What is it with all this gay

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