Dalton's Undoing excerpt

Dalton's Undoing

SSE #1764

She was late. As usual.

In one motion, Jenny Boyer shoved on slingbacks and shrugged into her favorite brocade jacket.

''Listen to Grandpa while I'm gone, okay?” she said, head tilted while she thrust a pair of conservative gold hoops into her ears.

''I always do.” Morgan, her nine-year-old going on fifty, sniffed just like a society matron finding something undesirable in her tea. ''Cole is the one who doesn't like authority figures.”

Didn't she just know it? Jenny sighed. ''Well, make sure he listens to Grandpa too.”

Morgan folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. ''I'll try, but I don't think he'll pay attention to either me or grandpa.”

Probably not, she conceded. Nobody seemed to be able to get through to Cole. She thought moving to Idaho to live with her father would help stabilize her son, at least get him away from the undesirable elements in Seattle who were leading him into all kinds of trouble.

She had hoped his grandfather would give the boy the male role model he had lost with his own father's desertion. So much for that. Though Jason tried, Cole was so angry and bitter at the world -- more furious with her now for uprooting him from his friends and moving him to this backwater than he was with his father for moving to another continent.

She glanced at her watch and groaned. The school board meeting started in ten minutes and she was scheduled to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining her efforts to raise the elementary school's performance on standardized testing. This was her first big meeting with the school board and she couldn't afford to blow it.

The therapist she went to after the divorce suggested Jenny's chronic tardiness indicated some form of passive aggression, her way of governing a life that often felt beyond her control.

Jenny just figured she too busy chasing after her hundreds of constantly spinning plates.

''I've got to run, baby. I'll be home before you go to sleep, I promise.” She kissed her on the forehead, wondering as she headed out of her room if she had time to hurry down to the basement to say good-bye to Cole. No, she decided. Besides her time crunch, any conversation between them these days ended in a fight and she wasn't sure she was up for another one tonight.

''Bye Dad,” she called down the hall as she grabbed her laptop case and her purse. ''Thanks for watching them!”

''Don't worry about a thing.” Jason Chambers appeared in the doorway, wearing his favorite Ducks Unlimited sweater and jeans that made him look far younger than his sixty-five years. ''Give 'em hell.”

Juggling her bags and her keys, she yanked open the door and rushed out, then gave a shriek when she collided with a solid, warm male.

With a little gasp, Jenny righted herself, registering the muscles in that hard frame that seemed as immovable as the Tetons. ''I'm sorry! I didn't see you.”

She knew who he was, of course. What woman in Pine Gulch didn't? With that slow, sexy smile and those brilliant blue eyes that seemed to see right into a woman's psyche to all her deepest desires, Seth Dalton was a difficult man to overlook.

Not that she didn't try her best. The youngest Dalton was exactly the kind of man she tried to avoid at all cost. She'd had more than enough, thank you very much, of smooth charmers who swept a woman off her feet with flowers and champagne only to leave her dangling there, hanging by her fingernails when they decide young French pastries were more to their taste.

What earthly reason would Dalton have for showing up at her doorstep? He had no children at her school, he was years past his own education and somehow she couldn't picture him as the type to bake cookies for the PTA fundraiser.

She couldn't think of anything else that would bring him to her door and the clock was ticking.

''May I help you, Mr. Dalton?”

Surprise flickered in those eyes for just a moment, as if he hadn't expected her to know his name. ''Just making a delivery.”

She frowned, impatient and confused, as he reached around the door out of her view, tugging something forward. Nothing something, someone -- someone with a sullen scowl, a baggy sweatshirt and a chip the size of Idaho on his narrow shoulders. Someone who looked suspiciously like her son.

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