Valentine's Crush

By Diana Dawn

Beverly doesn't much care for Valentine's. She doesn't like the reminder of her 'singleness'. But when a new coach and teacher start at the school, they hit it off famously, working together to set up the student Valentine's dance. However, when Beverly's safety is threatened by what appears to be a student's crush on her, Beverly and Rich must follow the clues that will lead them to the truth about what is really going on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diana Dawn
• Release date: Feb 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201682422

Diana Dawn

Finally, I want to thank you the reader, for coming along on this ride. I hope you had as much fun as I did, and enjoyed getting to know the heroes and heroines of Whispering Willows. If so, please take a moment to post a review and tell a friend.  I would love to read your review!         The adventures are just beginning, so if you'd like to follow along, and get notifications of new releases, freebies and special offers on my books, please join my email list by going to www.DianaDawnBooks.com or drop me a line at [e-mail].  I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you and happy reading!

Book preview

Chapter One

Insta-Cram

Y ep, that oughta do it! said Beverly as she looked at her phone, viewing the last selfie from her funny teacher photo shoot. Of course, she made the exclamation with her mouth full of popcorn. This was the first week back to school after the Christmas break and Beverly was planning her sophomore English bulletin board for January ... Insta-Cram: Study Tips from Ms. Smithfield. On the board along with a large clip-art picture of a camera were to be eleven study tips. Next to each of them would be a funny selfie of Beverly to match that tip. So next to her tip of Take breaks, she would put a selfie of her with a mouth crammed full of popcorn. She knew that funny bulletin boards always got more attention from the high school students than the boring or cheesy ones. And she didn’t have too much pride to throw herself into some silly selfies for the task. Thankfully, she had just gotten a new photo printer from her family for Christmas, so she could even print out the pictures herself. Creating bulletin boards for her students was one of her favorite things about teaching.

At twenty-six, Beverly had been teaching English at Westdale High School for the last two years. She loved it. Westdale was in a Texas school district and offered a decent salary compared to other states she had inquired about. She preferred teaching high school over elementary or junior high for the simple reason that she related well to the high school age group. She wasn’t sure why, but she got along with all of her students and was well-liked. The only drawback was that on rare occasions ... and lately not so rare ... a student would get a crush on her. To be in this type of situation was always treading on dangerous waters. And this time was no different. She liked Brent as a student. He was smart and well-behaved in her class and was good in English. But it was hard to know how to handle that type of situation. How did you turn them down gently? Did you even bother to turn them down at all, or did you just ignore the elephant in the room? Beverly didn’t want to be the source of a teenager’s broken heart, possibly causing them to spiral into a deep depression, and ... well, she didn’t want to even think about it. So she chose option two... to ignore the elephant in the room. She was nice to Brent while maintaining the largest distance she could. The last young man who’d had a crush on her began doing poorly in class on purpose, so that he had an excuse to ask for private tutoring from her. Beverly finally took the situation to the principal, and they transferred the student to another teacher’s class. The excuse was that the other teacher had more tutoring options. Beverly still felt terrible about it. She hoped that Brent wouldn’t go to those extremes.

It was early morning before school on the first day back after the break, and Beverly had just finished her new bulletin board when her phone rang. It was Mrs. Pruett, the sophomore history teacher who had just