LITMIR.BIZ

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in their baggy pants, and took pleasure in the simple fact of being able to bustle—an act that had been purely beyond her for a long time. It was still a little shock to zip up a pair of size-twelve slacks, but the best part of losing eighty-five pounds was this: being able to move lightly and without trouble through a crowd.

      Just like a normal person.

      The rest room was blessedly empty. Marissa tended to nature, readjusted her belt and peered at it in the mirror. All day long she’d felt odd about this belt. She knew she’d fiddled with it, touching it with her hand every so often to make sure the belly beneath it wasn’t sticking out a mile. But the mirror insisted the belly looked exactly the same as it had this morning—a little rounder than some, maybe, but ordinarily so. And there were no gobs of back fat pushing out her blouse in the rear.

      It had taken eighteen months to lose the weight, and she still had a good fifteen or twenty pounds to go. They had been long, long months at times, sometimes very discouraging, and even now it seemed that a kind of ghost of her former self clung to her.

      But there were moments like this one, when she saw herself in a mirror, with a shirt tucked into a pair of trousers, that she realized anew it had all been worth it. After fifteen years of being the fattest kid, then the fattest woman in any room, of ducking mirrors and dreading shopping malls, she took extraordinary pleasure in the simple act of not wincing when she bent to put a little fresh lipstick on her mouth.

      Feeling much better, she went back to her room in the clearing halls and found Crystal already seated in her usual place, third seat in the fifth row, by the windows. And as she often did, the girl stared out that window as if some rescue was imminent—or at least, she wished it was. Kids this age were often a mass of tangled hungers and skewed logic, and pregnancy only made all of that about twenty times worse.

      One of the reasons Marissa had chosen to teach this age group was because her own adolescence had been very difficult. To her surprise, she was very good at it. Her heart and soul were engaged by the delicate, topsy-turvy, exuberant and exasperating world of teens. Every so often, a particular child captured her—last year it had been a boy with such brilliance for math that she’d been challenged every single day to stay ahead of him.

      Something about Crystal Avila had snagged Marissa hard. She found herself worrying about the girl at odd moments, just before she fell asleep, or in the shower. It wasn’t just that she was pregnant. Sadly, Crystal was far from the first pregnant teen to sit in this classroom.

      No, it was deeper than that. There was such a depth of yearning, such sorrow in those dark eyes that it was sometimes hard to look at her. She’d lost something big in her old life, something more than her innocence. It plucked at Marissa in some odd way she couldn’t shake.

      Dropping her purse back into the desk drawer, Marissa said casually, “Hey, kiddo. You can come sit up here if you like.”

      She just shook her head, the long strands of straight black hair sticking on the coat she wore every minute, probably to hide her belly. She was a pretty little thing, small and delicate, her face adamantly Native American with broad cheekbones and narrow chin.

      Marissa started the process of tidying her desk. “How was your day?”

      Crystal made a grunting, you-are-so-stupid noise, and rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”

      “I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

      “It sucked, as usual.” She bent her head, ran her thumbnail along the pencil holder carved into the desk. “I hate this place.”

      It was a good opening. Marissa carefully focused on gathering scattered writing utensils and putting them in a square container another student had made for her in woodshop. “Did you like your old school better?”

      “No.” A singularly surly word. “I hated it, too, but my mom didn’t make me go.”

      “And you’re mad at your uncle because he makes you?”

      She shrugged, probably not quite willing to be that disloyal with an outsider.

      “Well, you know—” Marissa kept her body moving, unfocused and therefore unthreatening “—if you weren’t as smart as you are, I might think there were better ways for you to spend your time.” She erased calculations from the blackboard and turned around. “But anyone with a brain like yours really needs an education.”

      “Oh, yeah,” she said, snorting, “I’m so smart. Can’t you see how smart I am?” She gestured with anger to her belly.

      “Getting pregnant is a mistake, but it has nothing to do with brains.” When the girl only lowered her head, Marissa went on. “Lots of really smart women get pregnant by accident—even women who are trying to be careful, so you aren’t alone.”

      Crystal began wiggling her foot, but she still didn’t have the blinders up. A surprise, but Marissa wasn’t about to waste a chance. “You really are smart, Crystal. I’d really like to help you see that, if you’ll give me a chance.”

      The great dark eyes flickered up, flared briefly with hope, then lowered quickly again.

      Oh, babe! Marissa thought, that familiar ache in her chest.

      “None of my other teachers ever told me I was smart. What if you’re wrong?”

      Marissa laughed softly. “I’m never wrong,” she said. “And I’m really smart myself. I know what I’m talking about.”

      A knock sounded at the door, and Marissa straightened, turning to welcome the girl’s uncle into the room. But halfway to her feet, her heart slammed hard into her ribs and then settled into a painful thudding.

      Red Dog.

      That was what they called him, anyway, an army nickname. Marissa knew him through her association with the Forrest family—he was Jake Forrest’s best friend.

      And one of the most intensely sexy men Marissa had ever seen. It was less a particular feature or even combination of features that made it so—it was the essence of him, a dangerous combination of brooding darkness and an appreciation of women that was like some devilish cologne seeping from his pores.

      Marissa quickly turned and snatched a paper off her desk, seeking his real name. “Mr. Martinez?” With a degree of smoothness she would have thought beyond her at just that moment, she crossed the room and extended her hand, smiling warmly. “Come in. I’m so glad you could make it.”

      “Please call me Robert.” Not a single flicker of recognition crossed his face as he clasped her hand with a firm, honest kind of grip. “Thanks for asking me here. Sorry I’m such a mess—I had to come right from work.”

      “Not a problem.” And it wasn’t. His chambray shirt and jeans were dusty with a long day’s work in construction, but his long, graceful hands were clean. His hair, thick and inky, was pulled back into a long braid, highlighting the hard, high cheekbones and wide mouth. His eyes were serious, very dark, but she knew from watching him at various gatherings that they crinkled up when he laughed.

      She struggled back into a professional demeanor. As they moved toward the middle of the room, Marissa liked the way his attention honed in on Crystal.

      “Hi, honey,” he said, and raised a hand in a gesture of inclusion. “Why don’t you come on over here with us?”

      The girl reluctantly slid out of her seat and shuffled over, dwarfed by her coat and baggy pants and all that hair sliding forward to hide her face. Her uncle slid an arm around her shoulders and embraced her quickly before he let her go.

      They settled into chairs Marissa kept close to her desk for unruly kids. “Mr. Martinez—”

      “Robert,” he corrected.

      “Right. Robert, I was just telling Crystal that I think she’s very bright, and I’m worried about her.”

      Robert glanced at Crystal, then back to Marissa, and she saw his concern in the darkness of those

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