Suddenly by Barbara Delinsky Read Free Book Online Page B

something like Dr. O’Neill’s death happens, we have to learn from it—the lesson being to speak up when we’re upset.”
    “To who?” Sara asked from behind.
    Paige looked back. “A family member or a friend. A teacher, a coach, a doctor.”
    “That’s the support system you mentioned?”
    “That’s it.”
    “What if you can’t talk to people?”
    “Everyone here can talk to people.”
    “I mean, what if you can’t trust people?”
    “There’s always someone you can trust.” But Sara remained doubtful, so Paige added, “If not the people I mentioned, then a minister. There’s always someone. You just have to open your eyes and look around.”
    Sara looked past her, her expression suddenly stony. Everything about her spoke of resentment, though she didn’t say a word.
    There were murmurs from several of the other girls. Paige followed their gaze to the door, through which was striding a man she had never seen before. He was tall and lean, wore gray slacks and a pale blue shirt that was open at the neck and rolled at the sleeves. His skin was tanned, his jaw square. His hair, which was long enough to hit the back of his collar, was the color of sand and either sun-streaked or shot with gray, Paige couldn’t tell which. Round, wire-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his nose.
    He was a spectacular-looking man.
    She glanced at the girls. If they were struck by his looks, they didn’t show it. They were sitting straighter, with nothing remotely akin to the adoration she might have expected to see on their impressionable teenaged faces. Oh, they knew him, no doubt about that, or about the fact that they didn’t like him.
    “Study hall?” he prompted in a way that was at the same time soft-spoken and steely.
    The girls remained silent, but Paige sensed in them defiance rather than meekness. A confrontation was imminent. Given Mara’s death and the upset they were all feeling, she wished to avoid that.
    Leaving the arm of the chair, she approached the man. “We blew it, huh?”
    “Slightly,” he said in that same deceptively soft voice.
    “Study hall?”
    “Seven to nine, Sunday through Thursday.”
    “Something new?”
    “Very.”
    “Ahhhh.” She bowed her head, thinking. When she looked back up, he hadn’t budged. Quietly she said, “The girls are upset over Dr. O’Neill’s death. So am I. I had hoped we could talk it out.”
    “The girls have free times, but this isn’t one. They were supposed to be in study hall ten minutes ago.”
    “Study hall can wait a few more minutes, can’t it?”
    He shook his head slowly.
    She lowered her voice even more. “That’s a rigid stance, given the circumstances.”
    He didn’t blink.
    In little more than a whisper, but one tinged with anger, she said, “Mara O’Neill meant a lot to these girls. They need time to grieve.”
    “What they need,” he said in nearly as low and angry a voice, “is the assurance that there is some sort of order in their lives. They need routine. That’s one of the things the evening study hall is about. The other is about incredibly poor grades.”
    Paige was getting nowhere. The man might be gorgeous, but he was as sensitive as a stone. She could imagine him a math professor or a dorm parent from hell. Mara would be incensed to find such a creature on the Mount Court payroll.
    “What these girls need,” she said with a steeliness of her own, “is understanding. Clearly you aren’t in a position to give it. Hopefully the new Head will be.”
    “I am the new Head.”
    He was Noah Perrine? Paige had trouble believing that. She had known two Heads in the five years that she had affiliated with Mount Court. The first had retired after twenty-three years, which was twenty-two years more than the second had survived. Both had been stuffy, white-haired, and preoccupied in the way ivory-tower minds could be.
    This one was nothing like that. He was too focused to be the new Head. He was too young. He was too