Read Along Came Love for Free Online

writing a few when he was in school.
    "Yeah…so?"
    "So…one of the notes was confiscated."
    "And?" Jake was losing patience.
    "And it would seem your niece sees herself as
some sort of match maker."
    Jake stared at her with a steel edge frown,
"What's your point?"
    "The point is the note itself. She was
writing rumors about certain teachers, and passing it through the
class. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but well…the teacher
she was writing about was Mrs. Douglas, a newly widowed teacher
that took offense to her being paired off with another teacher
after her husband just dying?"
    He still didn't grasp the problem. "So my
niece is in trouble because she sees a teacher interested in
another teacher? Is that some sort of crime, these days?"
    "No, not a crime, but Mrs. Douglas was
embarrassed and the entire classroom knew what was in the
note."
    "And I'm supposed to…."
    Samantha jerked the glasses off her nose and
stood up. Her eyes were big and serious, her face strained. Jake
needed to quit thinking about the way her hair floated over her
shoulders, and the way her eyes narrowed on him.
    "Mr. Travers…"
    "Jake." He quickly corrected her.
    "Jake, your niece is disrupting the class,
not to mention your nephew, Clay. They seem to be in this together.
We need you to bring this to her attention and warn her that this
kind of note passing is not to be tolerated."
    Jake watched Samantha move around the desk,
he wondered about her now like he did when he was a young teenager
with hormones out of control. What would it be like to touch those
lips of ice? Could he melt them?
    "Mr. Travers are you listening?" Samantha
inquired.
    Jake jumped back to reality, "Yes, yes, I
heard every word. But I thought Sammie Jo was having a math
problem."
    Samantha picked up the file on her desk and
handed it to him, "She has the ability to learn anything, judging
from her past grades, but she isn't paying attention. Problems
start when they don't pay attention."
    Jake nodded and took the file, scanning
quickly her A-B average in every subject.
    "Sammie Jo is a very bright young lady. She
has the capacity to do very well in school. However, she isn't
concentrating on her work any longer. And instead of turning her
attention to boys her own age, she has unfortunately turned to
playing cupid for the world."
    Finally she was saying something that made
complete sense to Jake. Although he loved Sammie Jo dearly, he
above everyone in the family knew how she loved to play cupid. Only
this time she had taken it outside the family and gotten herself in
a little hot water, according to the prim and proper Ms.
Courtland.
    "I'll speak to her, of course."
    "Please," Samantha put her hand on top of his
and pleaded, "Please, be gentle."
    It was the first sign Jake had glimpsed of a
soft hearted woman. Maybe the little counselor wasn't such an
ice-maiden after all. Jake glanced at the hand, then cleared his
throat, "Yeah…"
    The woman was a mixture of cold and hot
mixed. He was getting so many mixed signals, he wasn't sure what to
do. Most women didn't puzzle him, he could see right through them,
but this one operated a little differently, putting Jake in a
puzzling state. Why had she kept her identity a secret? He liked
her, he had always liked her. Heck, she was the only woman that
seemed to ring his bell. He reacted to her in every way, always
had. Why didn't she understand that?
    "She's very vulnerable at this age. She's not
quite a woman yet, but she is on the brink of it. You mentioned her
parents are on vacation?"
    Jake nodded, "Yeah, it's like a long overdue
honeymoon."
    "That explains some of it." Samantha quickly
nodded.
    "You know of course, that Sammie Jo was
adopted, don't you?"
    "No," the counselor looked a little rattled.
Checking her file, she looked up at him in surprise. "We didn't
know that. It isn't mentioned in her records."
    "Yeah, well, she was still a baby. My brother
and his wife never took a real honeymoon because she was so