Free Ms. Miller and the Midas Man by Mary Kay McComas

finally, refusing to look his way again.
    Well, she intended to refuse, but was unable to help herself when he spoke again.
    “Thank you, Ms. Miller,” he said. “I was hoping I could count on you.”
    He wasn’t teasing her. Their eyes met, exchanged suspicion and appreciation, then finally settled somewhere near the understanding that ultimately they were benefiting the children of Tylerville.
    Of course, his first priority had to be the children. And it was. Truly. But that didn’t mean it had to be to the exclusion of his own desires, did it?
    No, he decided firmly, hammering in the last of the shingles he’d gotten to patch the hole in the roof directly above Chloe’s bedroom. He’d left the elementary school feeling galvanized with energy. Not a common experience in the heat of the summer. He felt it would be best to tackle this project before he wasted the sensation on other things—like daydreaming or a long nap in the shade—and before it rained again and ruined the newly painted ceiling below.
    With no effort at all he could think of a million reasons to engage Ms. Miller in a little tête-à-tête, using the play as his best excuse. The possibilities were endless. He was a genius. And if he was careful, very careful, he could draw her out a little. Make her laugh. Trick her somehow into talking to him, really talking to him. And maybe, if he was careful, just maybe he’d get close enough to touch her again.
    He laid the hammer sideways along the steep pitch of the roof to consider the prospects, to let his imagination run with them, then noticed another patch of rotten shingles over the eave a few feet away.
    “Damn. What I need is a new roof,” he said aloud, scooting closer to the edge. The house was old and the angle of the roof was sharp and treacherous. He’d used his last shingle, and a return trip back down to fix this new hole wasn’t on his agenda. The top of a two-story building was not a place he’d choose to be if indeed he’d had a choice. However, if he didn’t actually stand up, and if he kept his eyes focused on the shingles, it was almost tolerable. “What I really need is to win the lottery and buy a new house. Right, Bert?”
    Bert lay on a shady spot in the grass below and barely quivered an eyebrow at the notion. The man was a dreamer.
    Inadvertently, Scotty glanced down at Ms. Miller’s roof, the gray-black shingles neat and orderly. He chuckled. There was a sparrow’s nest in the gutter, he noted with a smile. She’ll be wanting that removed when the leaves start to fall and the rainy season begins, he calculated, reaching blindly for the hammer.
    He reached a little farther and a little farther until he finally had to look for it.
    He leaned slightly to touch it with the tips of his fingers, to inch it toward him. He almost had it when the heavy end met gravity and slipped downward, parallel with the pitch of the roof. For the briefest of seconds it lay there, then he watched as it slid slowly down each row of shingles and dropped into his own rain gutter.
    With a sigh and a weary stream of expletives, he rolled over onto his back, defeated. He looked into the thick, leafy canopy above him. Shade and bright sunshine crossed his vision in a rhythmic pattern as the wind rustled gently through the treetops. He was no handyman, he lamented, content to stay as he was a few minutes longer and ponder nature’s beauty.
    He could feel the warm shingles at his back through his shirt. He folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. It wasn’t so bad on the roof.
    And Ms. Miller had the sweetest mouth he’d ever seen—a shapely top with a chubby lower lip that he could spend the rest of his life sucking and nibbling on. He lowered one leg and left the other bent.
    She’d kept her head bent low that morning, away from him, and the nape of her neck had almost driven him insane, he recalled with a chuckle. When he finally got his hands on her—and he knew he would