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“Since when?”
“Since last night. Men are noncommittal jerks, and I’m swearing them off forever.”
“Not all men are noncommittal jerks.” Jen stands and walks over to the microwave to retrieve her EasyMac.
“In my experience, they are.”
“No offense, but I could have told you Zak was going to break your heart just by looking at him. He’s kind of a tool.”
I give her a tight smile. “Information like that would have been helpful three years ago when we started dating.”
“I didn’t know you three years ago.”
“I bet Diane Carter’s son-in-law is ready to settle down,” Charlene says. “He was already married.”
“We don’t know thatMr. Dixonis ready to settle down.” I add his name to try to keep this insane conversation as professional as I can. “We don’t know anything about him.”
“We know he’s McSteamy.”
“That’s the exact opposite of what I need. I need an average guy who isn’t puffed up by his good looks. Just a nice guy. Someone who is so happy to be with me, he’s willing to get down on one knee and propose after three dates.”
“Maybe Mr. Dixon is a nice guy.” Jen bounces her spoonful of noodles at me as she talks. “We know he’s sad, that he brings flowers to his dead wife, and that he smells her pillow. That sounds like nice guy stuff.”
I shake my head. “It’s against school policy to date a parent of one of the students. You all know that—you signed the same contract I did. And I certainly wouldn’t want to break that contract with my boss’s son-in-law.”
Their expressions drop because they know I’m right.
Dating a parent at our school is prohibited. And it has been for the last two years, since a mom from one of the upper grades fraternized with a male teacher, tradingfavorsso that her child’s grades could go from C’s to all A’s. The student got kicked out of the school, and the teacher got fired. American Education Academy almost lost their accreditation. It was all over the local news. Now, no dating parents is a rule if you want to work at this school. It had its very own bullet point on the contract, and it was bolded.
Bolded.
I’m not about to give up my dream job over a man, even if he does look like McSteamy and is ready to commit.
I’m not that desperate…or that stupid.
CHAPTER8
TYLER
“Do we need butter?” I ask Krew after school as I push around my cart at the grocery store.
He looks at the shopping list, taking his sweet time reading every item.
I point to where it’s written out on the paper. “There it is.Butter.”
“Stop telling me. I can read.”
The problem is it takes forever for him to find things on the list, and I’m getting impatient. Kristen was much better at stuff like this than me. I just want to get our groceries and get out of here so we can go home and go to bed.
Luckily I made the list, so I know what’s on there. I reach for the yogurt and throw it in the cart.
Krew frowns. “I didn’t tell you yogurt.”
“I know, but I remembered we need it. It’s on the list.”
He stops walking and throws the paper down.
“Come on,” I say, slowly walking forward. “Pick it up. We don’t have time for this. It’s getting late, and we still haven’t eaten dinner.”
