Page 4 of Cowboy Bear's Hope

The man had a way of making my skin crawl, always teetering on the edge of inappropriate with his overly familiar tone and invasive demeanor.

I’d done everything in my power to steer clear of our new assistant principal, but avoiding Mr. Dryden felt like trying to dodge a heat-seeking missile.

Somehow, he always managed to track me down whenever I was at work.

“Nurse Brown, there you are!” he exclaimed, his voice carried across the hallway like nails on a chalkboard. “I was hoping we could take a coffee break together.”

His grin spread wide, revealing teeth that were yellowed and streaked with tobacco stains.

The truth was, he stunk like an old ashtray, the kind my Paw Paw used to have overflowing in his old Buick.

Ew.

I resisted the urge to visibly recoil, though my stomach twisted in protest. Why was it always the ones with no sense of boundaries who had the audacity to act like we were in some office rom com?

Seriously. No, thank you.

Casey shot me a look that said, Good luck, Av, you’re on your own with this one.

I never wanted to scream more. But I was a professional, and if little kids with bleeding boo-boos, snotty noses, and toilet accidents didn’t scare me, then neither did this creep.

I glanced at Casey one last time, to see if she might help, but nope. She busied herself with the files on the desk, leaving me to fend for myself.

Forcing a polite but strained smile, I responded, “Thank you, Mr. Dryden, but I’ve already had my coffee.”

And if he kept this up, I was going to need something a lot stronger.

“Oh, drat. That’s a shame. Well, tell me, how is little Rosalind?” he asked, and I refrained from rolling my eyes.

“Rosalie,” I corrected, “is fine.”

“No more incidents, I presume. We had a nice little chat she and I,” he said, eyes gleaming.

“What? When?”

“I had Miss Dembeck bring her to my office after the morning snack for a talk about how to play nice with our friends,” he said, smiling at me as if he was some sort of hero.

Alarm bells went off inside my brain and it was all I could do not to punch him right in his stupid throat. I was barely resisting the urge, keeping the fact I needed a job to pay the bills firmly in my mind.

Most importantly, I had to pay the mechanic who just informed me I needed a new transmission on my piece of shit car. It broke down this morning on my way to school with Rosie and both of us had been late.

It was the third time this year that stupid hunk of metal had crapped out on me and transmissions were not cheap. Luckily, Rosie and I could catch a ride with Penny after school, since she was usually at the bakery around that time.

The mornings would suck since that was when it was coldest, but we’d get by. We always did.

First, I had to deal with this dickwad.

“Excuse me? You did what?” I asked, hoping I’d heard him wrong.

He was new to town and to this position, but ever since he’d arrived less than two weeks ago, I’d had the worst feeling about him. Like something was off with the tall, skinny man.

Big time off.

But since I tended to be uptight about new people, I tried to ignore it. My defenses were always on high alert. I mean, I was a single mom.

Once bitten, twice shy. Wasn’t that a song?

“I would think you’d be happy Rosalind, and I were becoming such good friends,” he said, still saying her name wrong.

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