Page 55 of Ignite

“Hello, this is Rylee.” Luckily, I could answer my phone and have it on speaker using voice commands. It came in handy when I was either under a car or in the middle of sanding.

“Ms. Mettner?”

Crap.No one with good news ever called me that. I stepped away from Ethan’s ute, took off my mask, and found an old cloth to wipe my hands.

“Yes. How can I help you?” Damn, I dropped the cloth over the top of my phone microphone and almost knocked the phone off the bench trying to remove the cloth.

Taking the phone off speaker, I held it to my ear and took a moment to inspect my works in progress. Each vehicle currently looked a mess. But I could see their beauty and my fingers ached to get back to work.

“Ms. Mettner, it’s Susan MacGregor, the new principal at Meringa High School. I have you listed as an emergency contact for Ryan Franklin.”

“He’s my …” Shit, I usually dealt with Flick on anything concerning Ryan. But I hadn’t even gotten a heads-up that something had gone wrong. “It doesn’t matter, I’m glad you called. How can I help.”

Me, I wanted to scream into the phone.I’m glad you called me. But I didn’t, because what was the point? Susan MacGregor had been thrust onto the school and according to all my friends who had crossed the woman’s path, she was determined to make Meringa High School the academic and social equivalent of the snobby Brisbane Hills school where she had come from.

“Mr. Franklin has a lot of energy.” She started slow-playing me but I didn’t have time for her subtlety.

“Is he hurt?”

“What. No.”

“Did he hurt anyone?”Please, no. I hated facilitated mediation sessions with parents who thought that their special little cherub couldn’t have possibly started the fight, cheated in an exam, or have butter melt in their mouth.

“I’d prefer to discuss this in person.” I heard the disdain in her voice and wanted to reach through the phone and slap the bitch. She didn’t know Ryan. She didn’t know about our situation. “So you’ll be here within the hour?” She’d kept talking even when I’d been lost in a panic of how to deal. “Good, then.”

The phone went dead.

I rushed home, had a three-minute shower, and found the same dress I’d worn for my engagement. It was a boringly simple navy-blue dress with a sweetheart neckline that hugged my curves. I liked to think that my four-inch nude sandals made my legs look good and that I rocked the hell out of a sensible school mum ensemble.

My confident, fake smile turned real when I came to the end of a hallway. Two voices I recognized were just around the corner.

I knew they were there, but I doubted they knew I was even on my way.

“Bro, if you’re gonna bounce the ball in the hallway, you need a legit excuse.”

“Why?”

“Because …” I heard Ethan pause, “Any moment now a teacher is gonna hear it and come out. They’ll give you one chance to plead your case before they take your ball and start issuing a punishment.”

“It’s only a tennis ball.” I heard Ryan’s defiance and it might as well have been my father. “If they steal it, I’ll get another one. There are always lost balls behind the tennis courts.”

“I like your entrepreneurial spirit,” Ethan said as the bouncing ball slowed. Typical Ryan; he wouldn’t stop because he had been told to, but he was smart and would come to the idea in his own time. “You could collect them and sell them back to the players.”

“Why?”

“Because the first thing a businessman does is identify a person’s need and charge them to fulfill it. They lose their tennis balls. Sell them back for a third of the cost of new balls. You could do the same for golf balls.”

“That’s cool. I need to paint my bike, but Rylee wants me to pay for the paint before she shows me how to use her spray gun.”

“Rylee, hey,” Ethan whistled. “Smart woman who is as hot as fuck.”

“I didn’t need to hear that,” Ryan said and I could almost see him covering his ears. “If you’ve got a boner for Rylee, I don’t need to hear it.”

“And if you ever talk about any guy having abonerfor Rylee Mettner, you’ll have more issues than a pissed-off principal.”

“She really that mad?”

“How about you sell me your pitch.”

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