Abiding Love Read Free Page A

She’d seen him at the wedding and earlier that morning with his father in the studies office arranging a class schedule. The teen’s long, sun-kissed, golden-brown hair stirred in the breeze and framed a face that was going to take the female population of the school by storm, if it hadn’t already. He’d gotten his looks from his father, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the older version wasn’t already making the same impact on the women of the area.
    Mark’s eyes, she noticed, were the same startling green as Elizabeth’s, but what surprised her was the pain and anger she read in them. There was something else too in those oh-so-green eyes and that was gentleness. Oh, it was all gone in the split second it took him to paste on a devil-may-care mask, but it had been there.
    Great. Just what she needed. Another troubled teen, and this one from the Boyer family. Xandra and Elizabeth had made their peace and were friends now. Not so the rest of the Lexington and Boyer houses. Adam Boyer had been gone a long time, but when he learned that Xandra’s brother, Jason, had raped Elizabeth, his anger would be just as fresh as if it had happened yesterday instead of fifteen years ago. Xandra sighed at the thought of all the anguish and hate her late brother had caused and prayed for an end to it.
    “And you shouldn’t litter,” she collected her thoughts enough to tell young Mr. Boyer.
    He shrugged and turned away to walk toward the school.
    “Hold on a minute. I don’t know how they handle cutting class in New Mexico or California, but here there are consequences, Mark. You may have escaped a health-class lecture this afternoon, but now I ownsome of your time for the next few days.” She took out a pad of paper that produced copies in triplicate and filled in the blanks of the form as she spoke. “Smoking on school grounds earns you a detention. Cutting class the first time means a meeting between me and your father plus the added bonus of a one-day in-school suspension for you. A second skip would earn another meeting for your dad and a whole Saturday working on the grounds, planned for you by our custodial staff. Hopefully you’ll have learned your lesson with this first offense. Have your father in my office at nine tomorrow morning.”
    She reached forward, took his hand, and slapped two of the three slips in the middle of his square palm. “Take this to the principal’s office, then head back to class. And if you know what’s good for you, when I check with the office, I’ll find you got there.” She paused to look at her watch. “Within, say, three minutes.”
    Xandra could see it coming when he opened his mouth to protest. She held up her hand. “Save the my-father-is-too-busy-for-a-meeting speech. I’ve heard it at least a thousand times in the last year. Both of you, Mark. Nine a.m. sharp.”
    She didn’t wait for more protest, but pivoted and walked away. She found herself fighting a smile seconds later as she strode toward her car to the tune of his footsteps pelting toward the building. Three minutes was cutting it pretty tight from that part of the campus. Mark wasn’t as rebellious as he’d been trying to look.
    Xandra sobered quickly as she slid into her car. The visit with an abused woman named Annie Kline was still ahead, and she prayed even more fervently that she’d find the right words. The woman was in the same sort of trouble she’d been in when she’d struck out a year and a half earlier on the long road that had led to New Life Inn.
     
    Xandra checked her watch again as she hung up the phone. Leaning her head against the wall behind her desk, she closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to fight off a blossoming headache. She couldn’t believe her mother had done this to her. Just one more day and her scheduled meeting with Adam Boyer about his son, Mark, would have been about the smoking and class-cutting incident, and only that. Now, thanks to Mitzy