The two girls slid into the leather-covered bucket seats and fastened their seat belts. Jennifer threw the car into Reverse and backed toward the street, then stopped abruptly.

Samantha rolled down her window. “Hey, Mom. I forgot to tell you. I’m going to a sleepover at Jennifer’s tonight. Okay? Bye.” She closed the window and Jennifer quickly backed into the street and sped away.

This announcement, coming on top of her daughter’s surprise decision to stop riding to school with her, was more than Aimee could stomach. Her first reaction was anger, but the shock of Samantha’s sudden independence—or was it rebellion?—yielded quickly to concern. Aimee hadn’t suspected her daughter of deceiving her before, but she was convinced now that Samantha had deliberately waited to tell her about the sleepover after she thought it would be too late for her mother to forbid it.

Aimee wiped away the angry tears that threatened to spill from the corners of her eyes as she returned to the house. The pain in her heart was beyond tears. Was she losing her daughter, or was Samantha just growing up?

Glancing at the clock, she knew she didn’t have time to fret about the situation now. She had to be at work in forty-five minutes. She rushed into the bedroom to finish dressing for the day. Feeling in need of an extra boost to her self-confidence, Aimee sprayed on some expensive perfume she’d recently bought as a gift to herself. The aromatic lavender fragrance swirled around her as she left the house. Dreading the workday, Aimee drove out of the cul-de-sac where she’d lived for several years.

With a few minutes to spare, Aimee arrived at Eastside Elementary School where she had worked as a secretary ever since the year Samantha had started kindergarten there. As she parked, Aimee glanced across the street to the high school where her daughter was now a student. Where had the time gone? She saw Jennifer’s car in the parking lot and breathed a sigh of relief that they’d arrived safely.

Aimee glanced in the side mirror as she stepped out of the car, noting that her brows were drawn together and her lips were drawn tight, too. She couldn’t greet her coworkers and the children looking as uptight as she felt, so she forced herself to put on a smile. Her efforts fell a little short, but at least she looked slightly more pleasant as she hurried toward the door.

She slowed her steps when she encountered a tall, muscular, nicely dressed man leading a boy with a backpack toward the building. At the door, the man turned and saw Aimee. His mouth parted in a smile that highlighted the most attractive face Aimee had seen in a long time. His elegant, handsome features hinted at a vital power that attracted her. A swath of curly hair hung casually over his smooth forehead.

“Good morning,” he said, standing aside to let her enter first.

“Thanks, and good morning to you, too,” she answered, hopefully sounding more pleasant than she felt. Aimee thought she knew all the parents, but she was sure she hadn’t seen this man before. He wasn’t the kind of man one would easily forget. She glanced at the boy. She didn’t recognize him either. Judging from the little guy’s anxious expression, Aimee figured he probably was a new student.

“Do you work here?” At Aimee’s nod, the man continued. “Alex needs an entrance permit for being absent several days,” the man said. So the boy was already enrolled. Odd that she’d never seen him. “Where can we get it? He has a doctor’s excuse.”

“I can arrange that for you,” Aimee assured him. “The office is down this hallway.” She motioned to the hall on her right.

“Good,” the man said. “C’mon, Alex.”

The man held the office door for Aimee. She pointed to a row of chairs against the wall of the reception area, saying, “Just take a seat here for a few minutes until I boot up my computer. We’ll have Alex on his way to class soon.”

She went to her desk, laid down her purse and coat, and booted up the computer. She motioned to the pair to come into her office and take the seats in front of her desk.

“What’s your last name, Alex?”

The boy mumbled something, but she didn’t understand what he said. She lifted questioning eyes to the man who watched the boy with a tender, brown-eyed gaze.

He laid his arm on the boy’s shoulder. “This is Alex Putney. Give the lady your doctor’s excuse, Alex.”

Checking her computer records, Aimee noticed that Alex had been a student since the first of the year. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Aimee. The excuse for nine days had been written by a reputable doctor, so Aimee filled in the permit to send the child back to class.

“There you go, Alex,” she said as she handed him the paper. “Sorry you’ve been sick.”

The man Aimee had assumed was Alex’s father reached across the desk to shake her hand. His fingers were warm and firm as they gripped hers, and the friendly smile he gave her suddenly wrapped Aimee in warmth. At the door of her office, he turned toward her, smiled again and said, “Have a nice day.”

Aimee wasn’t anticipating a good day, but it lifted her spirits some just to have someone wish she would.

Throughout the morning as she answered the phone, directed calls and entered report-card information into the computer, she thought of the thick, curly brown hair and dark eyes of the man who’d greeted her so warmly. As she thought about him, her day brightened a bit.

But as her eyes scanned the computer screen and her hands moved automatically across the keyboard, uppermost in Aimee’s mind was the “new” Samantha. Aimee had known the day would come when her daughter would broaden her horizons, but she wasn’t convinced that either of them was ready for it yet. She took her role as a single parent seriously. Too seriously? she wondered. She didn’t think so. At barely fourteen, Samantha still needed a great deal of parental supervision, didn’t she? More than anything, Aimee wanted to be a good mother, and she was worried about the path Samantha might be heading down.