The Fixer Upper by Judith Arnold Read Free Book Online Page A

bubble bath, I could use it.”
    “I was thinking I’d send it to a nursing home, along with some of the flowers.”
    “If no nursing home wants it, send it my way.” Taraclosed the door, leaving Ned and the director of admissions alone in the stately office.
    Something was clearly going on that Ned didn’t get. Flowers. Chocolates. Loofahs, whatever the hell they were.
    He refused to be intimidated. He’d come to the Hudson School on a mission, his favorite, most important mission: Eric. Getting him into this school and finding the funding to pay for it. If loofahs were part of the deal, so be it.
    He straightened in his chair and his gaze collided with Ms. Kimmelman’s. For a brief, weird moment, he forgot his mission. She had amazing eyes.
    He should have worn cologne.
    Shit, Donovan—get it together, he ordered himself. The right time would come to meet women, socialize, have a sex life and all that kind of thing—but the right time wasn’t now. And this lioness guarding the majestic gates of the Hudson School wasn’t a woman he ought to be thinking about in the context of his sex life.
    “What can I do for you, Mr. Donovan?” she asked pleasantly.
    Let my son into your school . He cleared his throat and shifted in the chair, which was surprisingly comfortable, upholstered in burgundy leather that had grown smooth and hard with age. For some perverse reason, the chair irked him. Maybe because it was so classy. Like Libby Kimmelman, with her gold-button earrings and her tasteful apparel. Like the Hudson School itself. Ned wasn’t used to feeling outclassed, but this office was classy, no question about it.
    He cleared his throat again. “My son applied to the Hudson School. He sent in the application before I even saw it.”
    “Are there parts of it you’d like to amend?” she asked, rummaging through one of the piles on her desk.
    “He saved to disk what he sent you, and it looked okay to me, as far as it went.” Ned wished he had a pencil orsomething to hold. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. They sat inert on his knees, his fingers hot and itching to move. “He didn’t…Look.” Ned took another deep breath and went for broke. “He really wants to attend this school, and if that’s what he wants, that’s what I want for him. He’d do well here. He’s a terrific kid. And I just—I don’t know the ins and outs of this thing. I’ve never had any dealings with private schools before. I didn’t know about the flowers and chocolates and the…whatever they are. The loofahs.”
    Her smile was reassuring. “Flowers and all the other gifts do applicants no good at all. I get rid of them. The Hudson School doesn’t accept students based on the presents their parents send me.”
    Okay, then. “So, how do kids get in?”
    “I have a committee. We review the applications. We interview the children, and sometimes their parents. Then we sit around a table and discuss each applicant. We try to figure out who will contribute the most to the school and who will benefit the most from it. It’s not an exact science, Mr. Donovan, but we work hard and we usually wind up with an excellent group of children. Now, your son, Eric—” she rummaged through the pile again and pulled out a folder “—is applying as a transfer student. I don’t know how many openings we’ll have in his grade for next year. We usually have a few.”
    “A few?” Anger and skepticism flared inside Ned, but he tamped it back down. “How many kids apply for those few openings?”
    “It varies. We accept applications through the end of October, and the number of openings—”
    “In other words, my son’s got as much chance of getting into this school as a cow has of swimming to France.”
    She smiled again, all dark eyes and white teeth. “Can cows swim?”
    Ned wished he could share her grin, but he was too annoyed. A few openings? Hell.
    “There are always openings for transfers, Mr. Donovan,” she assured