Fringe Benefits Read Online Free PDF Page A

landing against one of the shelves. Several boxes of discipline slips tumbled to the ground. Bending down to pick them up, her head collided with Nate’s so hard she saw stars.
    He rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead and groaned.
    “Weren’t bored in here, were you?” The custodian laughed, making Dani wish she could find her “teacher voice” to give him a good scolding. But she was too rattled to say a word. Then again, she was honest enough to admit, if only to herself, that she’d be laughing, too, had she caught a couple of teachers kissing in the locked supply closet.
    The reason they were in that closet came rushing back. “We got locked in.”
    Nate was picking up packages of staples. “It was my fault.”
    “No, it was mine,” she countered. “I should’ve warned you.”
    “Good thing I saw the light on in here or I wouldn’t have caught, er,
found
you.” The janitor shook his head as he chuckled his way out of the teachers’ lounge. “Turn out the lights when you’re done,” he called as he disappeared down the dark hallway.
    “Where’s the toner?” Dani shouted.
    “Behind the copier.”
    Nate put the last box of staples back on the shelf and stepped out of the closet as she hurried to look behind the machine. A single box labeled
toner
waited there.
    “Son of a bitch,” she mumbled under her breath. After changing the toner, she closed the door and the copier began spitting out papers again as though nothing had ever happened.
    Nate leaned his hip against the machine, appearing totally unaffected by the night’s events.
    How could he be so damned calm?
    Her heart was hammering, and sweat trickled between her breasts and down her spine. Her face was so hot she wondered why she didn’t spontaneously combust. There was no way she could get out of this without some kind of explanation to him.
    Or could she?
    Nate grabbed the last of his papers, picked up the stack he’d set aside earlier, and said, “If all the excitement’s over, I’m leaving.” His gaze settled on her. “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning.” On that, he strode out of the room.
    Dani stood alone, wondering when her life had become an episode of
Candid Camera.
    When she finally made her way home and to bed, she dreamed a foolish, girlish dream of a maiden stuck in a tower—only in this version, a knight in shining armor was trapped in there with her.
    Funny, when the knight lifted his visor, he looked an awful lot like Nate Ryan…

Chapter Four
    “I miss this so much.” Dani sealed her now-empty plastic container and shoved it in her purple nylon lunchbox. “Sure we can’t talk you into coming back to teaching, Jules?”
    Juliana Wilson let out a loud laugh. “Hell, no. I miss lunch with all of you, but come back to a classroom? Never. I’ve found a new calling selling houses.”
    “Besides,” Mallory Carpenter added, “her husband would never allow it.” She gave her friends one of her impish smiles. “He’d be lost without Jules—both at work and at home.”
    “How’s that ‘manny’ working out?” Dani asked.
    The Wilsons’ twin boys were close to three years old now and only stopped moving when they fell asleep. The frazzled parents had recently lost their nanny to an out-of-town college and had hired a male au pair.
    “Stefan is great,” Juliana replied. “Beth drops Emma off every morning, and Stefan takes care of her, too.”
    That news came as no surprise. The Ladies always supported each other. Through thick and thin. Through cancer and childbirth. Through despair and elation. They were closer than most sisters.
    When Beth lost her younger sister and became her niece’s adoptive mother, Jules had been the one to help Beth cope with instant parenthood. Of course she would let her “manny” babysit Emma. Beth had agonized over whether she could keep teaching and worried about finding good child care. Jules had taken away that concern by offering her manny, so Beth