Page 2 of Off the Naughty List

He tilted his head toward them and whispered, “Are they our target?”

Maya sighed. “That’s Vera. She’s a daddy’s girl.” Maya’s grimace was almost comical.

Especially considering the fact that she, too, was a total daddy’s girl.

Maya and Piper were a unit, one symbiotic force no one could ever break. Bennet hadn’t tried to break them apart. He’d taken his natural place: around them, hugging them both, caring for his favorite girls.

“What other sin has she committed to warrant assassination? Not that I object, but I’m curious.”

Maya was back to looking down at her hands and not talking.

“You know you can tell me anything.”

She nodded, but then she erupted into a fit of tears, freezing him in place.

Ben had never seen her cry like this. Maya wasn’t a crier at all, if one didn’t count the few instances at the end of movies. She didn’t cry when she fell, when she was hurt, when she was sick. She was his little trooper, and she was breaking down in front of him.

Something terrible had happened, and hewouldget to the bottom of it.

Maya

Once upon a time, there was a lucky girl with the best parents in the world, and her name was Maya Stone. Her father, Bennet, let her have candy late, and her mama, Piper, was the most beautiful, kind, sweet mother in the entire world.

Except that story was a lie, because Maya’s father was a man named John Kennedy, and he didn’t care about her at all. He had a new family now. A little boy he took to parties. She knew, because she’d attended one and he’d been there. He hadn’t even looked at her once.

Maya was happy. Shewas. She couldn’t have been luckier. But when that spoiled brat, Vera, told her that she didn’t have a dad, all of the pain and resentment broke out all at once, and she couldn’t help it; she’d hit her square in the chest with her lacrosse stick.

Vera retaliated by hitting her in the face, and then they abandoned the sticks and started pulling each other’s hair.

She’d never been so humiliated. She couldn’t tell Bennet what happened. She just couldn’t. No matter how much she wanted to when he stroked the top of her head and hugged her close.

Vera glared at her from the other side of the room, but Maya ignored her, throwing her arms around Bennet. She could say whatever she wanted. Bennet was here, and Vera’s dad wasn’t. She'd won this round.

Maybe, just maybe, Maya had lied to her principal, telling him her mom wasn’t available, so that he called Bennet.

It wasn’t that big of a lie. Her mom was busy helping her friend Anna pick a wedding dress today, but she would have dropped everything and come if the school had called her.

“All right, do you have all your stuff? We need to go to the principal’s office, and then we'll get you home.”

She nodded, taking her bag from the floor and following Bennet out the door with a parting scowl toward Vera.

It was her first time in the principal’s office, and she hoped it’d be her last, because Ms. Laurier was scary when she was angry at her.

“Fighting isn’t tolerated in this school, you understand? Your academic performance and, until now, your behavior have been exemplary, Miss Stone, but if that changes, there will be no place for you at Heartgrove.”

Maya’s eyes started to prickle again.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself. Until today, Maya’s behavior has been exemplary. She’s never started a fight in her life. Now, I’ve had to pick her up with a bloody nose, and your reaction is to scold her rather than ask what happened? Think very carefully about how you treat my daughter, Ms. Laurier. If something like this happens again, and you have no explanation, we will pull her out of your school. And don’t think we’ll go quietly.”

Ms. Laurier’s eyes widened, taking in Bennet. Maya gasped. His hand felt so very warm in hers.

Those words. He’d said those words.

My daughter.

My daughter.

My daughter.

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