Free The Teacher by Meg Gray Page B

helping me last night and for the umbrella.”
    He looked down at her hand still on his
arm and then at her.
    “Let’s go girl,” her friend shouted
dramatically as she threw her hands up in the air and landed them on her hips.
“I’ve got the men lining up in there for you.”
    “You’re welcome,” Marcus answered and
weaved his way back through the restaurant to the crowded bar.
    Chapter
Eight
    There was a knock at Marcus’s office
door.
    “Come in,” he called, expecting Gretta
with an updated list of their accounts payable. The year was coming to a close
and whatever loose ends he didn’t tie up by the end of today he’d have to
handle remotely from Seattle. He and Brayden were leaving first thing tomorrow
morning.
    It was Abigail.
    “Quick question,” she said, slinking
into his office with a pad of paper and pen in her hand. She wore her long
blond hair down today. Marcus hated it when she did that, it reminded him of
Vanessa. But it didn’t stop there, everything about her reminded him of
Vanessa—the musky smell of her perfume, the way she dressed, and the way she
could be so charming and engaging with clients. None of these were bad
qualities and if the circumstances were different Marcus may have admired her
more than he loathed her. He found it difficult to be in the same room with her
for more than thirty seconds and hardly ever worked with her alone.
    “What is it?” he asked with heavy
impatience.
    “On the Crosby matter,” she began.
    Marcus rubbed his hand across his upper
lip, annoyed. He thought this matter was quiet. The real estate acquisition
wasn’t scheduled to close until the middle of next year. What could the issue
be now?
    “I just received a call from the title
company, and they asked me to send them a draft deed for review. Can I draft
and send this without your review?”
    Can she draft and send this, was she serious? She walked all the way down the hall and knocked on his door
to ask if she could draft and send a deed. In her time at the firm, she’d
drafted at least a dozen deeds and still , he thought, she needed his
go-ahead ?
    “Yes,” he told her and then the alarm on
his cell phone buzzed. “I’ve got to go pick up Brayden now. If you have any
other question just ask Dennis or call my cell.”
    “Okay,” she said, obviously irritated.
    Marcus knew he favored Dennis who started
at the firm a year after Abigail, but the man caught on quickly, needed less
reassurance, and didn’t resemble Vanessa in the slightest. It was unfair, but he
couldn’t help it.
    “Well, Happy Holidays,” she added,
shaking away her irritation. “Have a wonderful vacation. I’ll see you next year.”
    “Yes, Happy Holidays,” he grumbled as
she left his office. Marcus closed down his computer and gathered his
briefcase. His holiday would be far from happy, bearable if he was lucky, and
this jaunt to Seattle would never qualify as a vacation.
    Christmas lights wrapped the lampposts
downtown and twinkled in the store windows catching Marcus’s eye as he drove to
the school—more reminders that the year was ending. He had survived another
year without Vanessa, in this new and unimagined life. It pained him to visit
Seattle for the holidays. In the past, he’d kept his visits short, arriving on
Christmas Eve and leaving the day after Christmas. This year was different. His
grandfather’s eighty-fifth birthday, being celebrated tomorrow night, and the
50th Anniversary Party for Lewis and Sons Law Firm on January 2nd had roped him
into a full two week stay at his parents’ house on Mercer Island.
    The school building, which was usually a
ghost town by this hour of the day, was aglow with blazing lights in many of the
first floor windows. Parked cars lined both sides of the street and Marcus was
surprised to see someone in the school’s office when he walked inside.
    Brayden sat on a bench outside the
gymnasium with the after-school program teacher, waiting to be picked