Trusting His Kiss

  Trusting His Kiss

  A Paradox Lake Sweet Romance

  Jean C. Gordon

  Upstate NY Romance

  Contents

  Welcome to Paradox Lake

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Trusting Her Heart Excerpt

  About the Author

  Also by Jean C. Gordon

  Copyright ©2020 by Jean Chelikowsky Gordon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, places, and dialog are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real, Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Trusting His Kiss is dedicated to all the men and women in our armed forces and their families. Thank you for your service.

  And as always, much thanks to my critique group BFS (Chris, Colleen, and Thomasine) and my editor Jena O’Connor.

  Welcome to Paradox Lake

  Any fan of sweet romance will love the stories of small-town love in the Paradox Lake Sweet Romance series. Grab your tea or coffee, settle into your favorite chair, and be swept away into the cozy Adirondack town where complex characters navigate challenging situations as they find their way to love. Whether it’s love at first blush, old flames reuniting, or second chance romance, you’ll find pure reading enjoyment and satisfy your craving for sweet, wholesome romance.

  Part of an ongoing series full of familiar faces, each story will stand on its own. With novel and novella lengths available, there’s something for everyone. Paradox Lake is written by USA Today Bestselling sweet romance author, Jean C. Gordon, who’s penned stories for the No Brides Clubs Series, Indigo Bay Series, and Harlequin Love Inspired, as well as for multiple sweet romance collections.

  Chapter 1

  Not again.

  Not when she’d finally gotten her family through the worst. It had been a rough 18 months. But Kari Hazard thought her son, Myles, was on track and life was back to normal.

  She pulled her SUV into the school parking lot and steeled herself to meet the new guidance counselor. His curt voicemail summons had put her on edge almost as much as imagining what Myles had done to prompt the call.

  “Kari,” Thelma Wood, the ageless office manager, greeted her as she entered the school’s main office. The older woman’s cool tone clearly said she hadn’t gotten over Kari giving up her position as school nurse to join the staff at the clinic in Ticonderoga.

  “Thelma.” Kari signed in on the clipboard on the counter separating Thelma’s business domain from students, parents, and the rest of the general public.

  “I expect you’re here to see our Mr. Evans.”

  Our Mr. Evans. The new guidance counselor must be really something to have Mrs. Woods claiming him as her own after being on the job only a month.

  “He and Myles are in the guidance office.”

  Myles? The phone message hadn’t said anything about keeping Myles after school. That meant he wouldn’t be there with the girls when the bus dropped them off.

  Kari left the office and pulled out her cell phone.

  “Hello.” Her friend and cousin-in-law Emily Hazard answered.

  “Hi.” Kari hesitated for a moment. With the kids and working full-time, Kari hadn’t seen much of Emily lately. But Emily was the only person she could think of who would be home. “Any chance you could run over and meet the girls’ bus?”

  “Sure. Is everything okay?”

  “Myles is in trouble—again—after doing so well this semester. So he won’t be at the house when they get off the bus. And, apparently, I’m late for a meeting that no one told me about until an hour ago.”

  “Can I bring them over here? I have a deadline looming for the ad campaign I’m working on. Autumn should be getting home about the same time. She can watch them.”

  “Not at all,” Kari said. “The girls love Autumn. I’ll come get them as soon as I can.”

  “Whenever. We’ll be here.”

  Kari hung up and headed down the familiar hall. The knot in her stomach tightened with each step. She slowed her pace as she neared the guidance office, postponing the meeting as long as she could.

  The guidance office door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open to see Myles sitting in front of the guidance counselor’s desk with his back to her.

  “Mrs. Hazard?” The man seated at the desk didn’t wait for her to answer. “Please come in and sit down.”

  She shot Myles a look before turning her attention to the counselor. His strong-featured masculine good looks partly explained fussy Mrs. Woods’s warming to him so quickly.

  “I’m Eli Evans.” He rose in a smooth, controlled manner and offered her his hand.

  Something in the way Eli moved and spoke—his brisk handshake and curt phone message—reminded Kari of her late husband, John. She gave Eli a quick once-over. The high and tight hair. The way his off-the-rack suit hung on his fit figure as if it were tailored especially for him. His clean, neat desktop devoid of any unnecessary personal items. After a spark of attraction, bile burned the back of her throat.

  Eli Evans was a soldier, a career soldier. Someone who wasn’t used to being around military personnel might not see it, but Kari did.

  So why was he working as a high school guidance counselor?

  Kari pulled her hand back as soon as he released it. She stepped around the chair next to Myles, sensing Eli’s eyes on her. What was she doing? She didn’t know he was former military. And if he were, that wasn’t a good reason to dislike him.

  As she turned back toward him and took her seat, Eli glanced at the clock. Kari rechanneled her irritation. It wasn’t her fault that it was well after the close of classes. She wasn’t the one who’d called the meeting. If he had somewhere to be, he could have asked her to come in tomorrow morning.

  She planted her feet firmly on the floor, her white Crocs squeaking as she pressed them to the polished tiles. No matter how many times he checked the clock, he wasn’t going to make her feel that she was in the wrong because she’d been doing her job and hadn’t gotten his phone message until after she and the midwife had finished the delivery. Except she did feel uneasy, and his dismissive perusal of her hospital scrubs didn’t help. It wasn’t as if she’d had time to go home and change.

  “As you know from the incident notice Myles brought home for you to sign—”

  Kari pinned her gaze on her son who had evidently found something riveting on the floor between his chair and the guidance counselor’s desk. “What incident notice?”

  Eli raised an eyebrow and pushed an all-too-familiar yellow form across the desk to her. She read down to her signature. Except it wasn’t her signature.

  “I didn’t see or sign this.” She pushed the paper a few inches away.

  “So I gather,” Eli said with a wry smile that would have normally appealed to her sense of humor. There was nothing humorous about this situation.

  “Myles. Seriously? What were you thinking?”

  “Aw, Mom. It isn’t a big deal.”

  “Stealing exam answers and selling them isn’t a big deal? Since when?” Kari tried to keep the screech out of her voice.


  “I didn’t steal the answers. I went back into Mrs. Norton’s room to get my cell phone.” He waved his hand at her. “I know. I’m not supposed to take it out at school. When I was leaving, there was this paper on the floor.”

  “The exam answer key was on the floor?” Eli’s voice had an edge to it that Kari wouldn’t want used on her.

  “No, it was just a paper. I crumpled it up and shot it across the room at the trash can.” Myles grimaced. “I missed, so I went over to toss it in the can, I saw the test in there. It wasn’t the final test. It didn’t have the answers. I told you I didn’t steal the answers.”

  “The answers, the test. Not a lot of difference.” Kari glared at her son.

  “I took the test and looked up the answers myself and sold them,” Myles finished as if his providing the answers somehow made it right.

  At one time Kari had thought she and John had parenting down pat, even with him gone so often. John’s death in Afghanistan had corrected that misconception.

  “What do you think the consequence of your action should be?” Eli asked.

  “A week’s suspension?” Myles’s voice rose at the end of the last word.

  Eli nodded. “Sounds fair.”

  Kari’s temperature ticked up. He was going to punish Myles by letting him stay home for a week? “I don’t think. . .” A spark in Eli’s steel-blue eyes and twitch of his mouth cooled her temper, if not her temperature.

  “In-school suspension. Here in the guidance office with me.” Eli focused on Myles. “You’ll do all of your class work and write Mrs. Norton a letter of apology. I’m certain she put a lot of work into developing that test, and she’ll need to create a replacement one.”

  “I guess. Can we go now?”

  “Yes. Report to me on Monday.”

  “Thank you,” Kari said.

  “Doing my job.”

  Kari knew better. Babysitting her wayward child was going above and beyond a guidance counselor’s duties. For a fleeting moment, she let herself imagine what it would be like to have a commanding man like Eli Evans in Myles’s life. In her life.

  “Feel free to call me any time you want to check on Myles. I saw from the notes in Myles’s file that you worked closely with my predecessor, Erin Ryder.”

  “Sure.” Kari had been sorry to see Erin leave her position at the school last month when her baby had been born. “Thanks again,” Kari said as she rose and walked to the door. She had an unsettling feeling working closely with Eli Evans would have a completely different dimension from working with Erin.

  Eli tapped the spine of the file folder against the palm of his hand. Myles Hazard and his mother were another example of what an absent father did to a family. He wasn’t faulting Myles’s father for serving his country and making the supreme sacrifice. But too often, he’d seen what consecutive deployments did to families, to his closest friends’ families. What Eli’s father’s job as a long-haul trucker had done to his mother and him and his sister. He opened his file cabinet and shoved the folder in.

  The memories of his father’s frequent absences from their Paradox Lake home and seeing how hard it was for service families had convinced Eli to put off starting a family until he’d left the military. Something he and his ex-fiancée had disagreed about. Family was important. Parents needed to make it a priority.

  He’d meant what he’d said about working with Mrs. Hazard to get Myles on the straight and narrow. It would be no hardship for him. Myles reminded him of himself at that age before he’d gotten into more serious trouble. And with her curly dark hair framing her heart-shaped face, Myles’s mother was pretty in a fresh, girl-next-door way.

  Eli pushed the cabinet drawer closed. Myles seemed like a good kid who needed a little guidance. The teen group he worked with could give Myles direction. He’d touch base with Kari after Myles’s suspension was over and mention the group to her.

  Eli lifted his jacket from the coat tree by the door and switched off the lights. Maybe if someone had given his mother a hand, helped her organize her own and their family’s life…His thought trailed off unfinished. He could do that for Kari and Myles. Eli smiled as he pictured the way Kari had bit her bottom lip when she’d thought he was going to let Myles get off with a week out of school. Yes, he could give her a hand and enjoy every minute of it.

  Chapter 2

  Kari pushed the shopping cart across the Tops parking lot and clicked the key remote to open her SUV. One good thing about her sometimes-erratic hours at the clinic was that she often had time during the day for errands, like grocery shopping, which left her evenings free to be with the kids.

  “Hey, Kari.”

  Kari glanced over her shoulder. Clare Thomas waved from across the parking lot and walked over.

  “Hi,” she said as the woman stopped beside her shopping cart.

  “I wanted to tell you how glad I was when Myles said you’d given him permission to go to the trivia team meeting with Tanner on Sunday.”

  Kari lifted a bag from the cart to hide her anger. She hadn’t done any such thing, and Myles shouldn’t have lied and said she had.

  When she’d been called into work Sunday afternoon, Kari had asked Clare if Myles could come over and hang out with Tanner. The girls had been at a friend’s house, and Kari wasn’t sure she trusted Myles not to break his grounding. And he’d managed to do it anyway.

  “I hope you didn’t mind Eli driving Myles home. He’s renting a place at the lake and had to go right by your house.”

  Eli. So he was behind this. His way of helping was to encourage Myles to do things behind her back? Kari counted to five. She’d deal with him later.

  “No, that was fine.” She’d hadn’t told Clare Myles couldn’t go with Tanner.

  “I’d better let you go,” Clare said.

  “See you.” Kari waved goodbye. She slammed the hatch door of the vehicle shut and climbed in the driver’s seat to head to her next, unplanned stop—the school. More specifically, Eli Evans’s office.

  Eli hadn’t been able to get Kari Hazard off his mind all week. And the daily one-on-one with Myles hadn’t helped. He glanced at the teen, his dark head bent over the history book he was reading. While Eli was sure Myles wouldn’t appreciate the observation, he looked a lot like his mother. Granted, a masculine version of his mother.

  “All done.” Myles slammed the book shut and started drumming his fingers on the student desk Eli had asked maintenance to move into his office. The teen’s dark-lashed eyes—his mother’s eyes—fixed on the clock slowly ticking away the hour remaining in the school day.

  “Stop.” Eli shot Myles The Look, the one he had honed training airmen at Maxwell Air Force Base.

  The teen’s fingers stilled.

  “Good. I won’t have to make you drop and give me 20.”

  “You can’t do that.” Myles’s voice wasn’t anywhere near as strong as his words.

  “Try me.” The teen was right. In the months since he’d returned to Paradox Lake, Eli had found—often, the hard way—that the mindset and actions that had served him well in the Air Force didn’t always translate well to civilian life.

  The guidance office door swung open, and Kari strode in. “Myles, go to the main office and wait for me.”

  Despite the menace in his mother’s voice, Myles turned to Eli for confirmation before he left.

  Kari pinched her lips together. Eli could sympathize with her frustration, but she should have established control over her son long before he hit high school.

  Kari placed her hands palms down on the other side of his desk and leaned across. “Where do you get off undermining my authority? I didn’t tell him he could go to the trivia team meeting, whatever that is. And I certainly didn’t give you permission to drive him home.”

  “Whoa! Please sit and lower your voice. Classes are still in session.”

  She sat and grasped her purse in her lap. The flush of her anger accented her cheekbones in an attractive, natural way no a
mount of makeup, no matter how carefully applied, could have.

  Eli had to walk a fine line. Although the teen trivia team—dubbed the 3Ts—had been formed by him and some of his colleagues, it was sponsored by a few community organizations and local churches. Not by the school. “I didn’t intentionally undermine you,” he said. “Mrs. Thomas accepted my offer to drive Myles home. I was dropping off a couple of other kids, too. Since she’d brought Myles, I assumed her okay was enough.”

  Kari’s grip on her purse relaxed. “Are you telling me you didn’t mention the team to him on Friday, invite him to the meeting on Sunday?”

  “I did tell him about the Paradox Lake 3Ts—that’s our team name—and told him to talk to you about it. I think it could do him a lot of good to get involved. We’re planning to do more than trivia meets.”

  Her dark-lashed eyes widened.

  “He’s looking for direction, guidance, and I think he could find it with the 3Ts or other organized activities.”

  “Guidance I’m not providing him.” She gripped her purse again until her knuckles were white.

  That was exactly what he thought, but he knew better as a man and an educator than to say that outright. “We’ve been talking this week, and Myles said all he does is go to school and watch his sisters after school and on weekends when you work. I’m sure—”

  “He watches Piper and Mady the two afternoons I’m scheduled in the practice’s office and if there’s a delivery, not every day after school and on weekends.”

  “If you’d let me finish, I was going to say I knew Myles was exaggerating. But you see the inconsistency in your work schedule might affect Myles. He needs consistency, time to chill, to hang out with the guys and not be on constant call.”