Page 13 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

He studied me for a moment and then abruptly stood, went to his briefcase, and pulled out a pack of playing cards, which he set on the desk between them before taking his seat.

“Ten minutes,” he said. “If you have more cards than me when the timer rings, we’ll find someone else. If I have more cards, you’ll coach the team until we can find a replacement. Deal?”

And here it was again. He might not know my well-earned reputation of saying yes to any and all pleas for help, but after only one night with me, he knew I wouldn’t turn down a challenge. He didn’t even wait for my response before dividing the deck at the slip of paper and handing me the part that was slightly less than half with an unrepentant grin.

Oh.

We were picking up where we left off.

Why did that make the stakes seem higher somehow?

My stomach flipped as I raised my gaze to meet his. He cocked an eyebrow in question, waiting.

“Set the timer,” I said. “I’m in.”

Chapter 6

Max

I didn’t believe in fate. I didn’t believe in a god or a higher power or what-have-you, ushering some people safely through life and letting others flail. I couldn’t. I had seen too many terrible things, and the only thing worse than believing in nothing was believing in something that would let that all happen.

So, no, I did not believe in an omnipotent universe.

But it occurred to me now, sitting across from Kate—not Rose—the deck of cards split to our first unfortunate encounter, that maybe there was a higher power after all.

And it was laughing at me.

“It’s not that I don’t want to help, because I do,” Kate said as she flipped over the first card. “I’m sure you get this a lot when you ask for volunteers, but this isn’t a great time. I’m pretty busy.”

I gave a noncommittal grunt. Everyone was busy. If busyness was a valid excuse, Piedmont wouldn’t have volunteers at all.

“Being a single mom, running a business, and of course, I already give my time to the school as PTA treasurer. It would be hard to fit something else into that.” Her big brown eyes widened slightly. “But I suppose it wouldn’t be very nice of me to make the new principal get on his knees and beg, no matter how hard it is.”

I wasn’t going to say that’s what she said in the principal’s office. I wasn’t. Because I was an expert at compartmentalizing my life, and I kept each one of those life compartments neat and tidy. From seven a.m. to four p.m., I belonged to Piedmont Latin, and sex and dirty jokes had no place here, what with all the teenagers running around. So, no, I wasn’t going to say it.

But goddammit, she made me want to. Made me want to say it and then make good on it, right here in the principal’s office. Kate had taken my neat and orderly compartments and mixed them all up.

Sweetheart, they had called her. I couldn’t deny that she looked the part, sitting there with her hands folded demurely on the desk between us, like she wasn’t preparing to ruthlessly slap, her golden-brown hair falling to her shoulders in gentle waves and her eyes as big and brown and thickly lashed as a cow’s.

The picture of innocence. It was what had attracted me in the first place. Like nothing bad had ever touched her, I had thought then, listening to her at Goat’s Tavern.

But I had been wrong about that. About her. A teen mom, widowed while most of her friends were probably still in college, going to parties and staying up too late? That was rough. No doubt about it.

I suspected that Patricia and all the other people who had weighed in had it right. Kate Gonzales was sweet. She was kind. But beneath that candy-coated exterior was a woman who enjoyed hitting hard and dirty. And right now, she was deliberately fucking with me, throwing temptation in my path for the pleasure of watching me squirm.

It was a game to her. What worried me was how badly I wanted to play.

But I couldn’t. I knew that. It didn’t matter that every single cell of my body was screaming that’s what she said. It didn’t matter that the idea of getting on my knees in the most inappropriate place I could think of did, in fact, make me a little hard.

Growing up in the foster care system had trained me to keep my mind focused and not let anyone or anything knock me off course. I had handled homelessness, beatings, and nearly starving to death and still graduated valedictorian of my high school class. I could absolutely handle the woman sitting across from me.

That’s what she said, my inner demon whispered.

Dammit.

I grimaced. “Why are you doing this to me?”

She grinned and took a pair of eights. I admired that she didn’t ask for clarification to what this meant. We both knew what was happening here.

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