Page 29 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

“Mr. Darlington. Of course.” Mom smiled. “My husband is on the board of directors. He was very impressed with your interview and résumé.”

“Thank you.” He shook hands with my mother. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The look he shot me was inscrutable, but I knew this had to be as awkward for him as it was for me. This wasn’t how I wanted Mom to meet Max—heck, I would have preferred it to never happen—but here we were. I might as well rip the bandage off.

I cleared my throat. “And tomorrow, we have a date.”

Chapter 11

Max

Messy .

I hated messy. Messy was what had kept me up long hours into the night, doing extra credit to keep my GPA on top. Messy was what ruined lives. Kate was supposed to be my temporary girlfriend. Training wheels. She wasn’t supposed to get all tangled up in other aspects of my life.

Turned out the joke was on me because she had been in my life before I even knew she existed, our lives woven together by a cobweb of invisible string.

It wasn’t too late. I could walk away, right now. Tell Kate thanks but no thanks, I wasn’t ready for a relationship after all. Not even the practice kind. I could end this thing before it really began.

“So that happened.” Kate watched her mother through the window as she gracefully slid into her midnight-blue Audi.

With a sigh, she dipped a finger into the whipped cream that topped her coffee, scooped up a plump dollop, and sucked it off her finger. “Mmm.”

I shifted, my gaze riveted to her pink mouth.

Then again, maybe I was being too hasty. Life was messy. That’s what Josh was always telling me, and who was I to spurn the advice of a trained professional? That would be hubris. I prided myself on my humility.

It had nothing to do with the way Kate’s lips gliding down her finger brought to mind other appendages that would enjoy the same service. This was about growth. This was about healing. I owed it to myself. To Josh. To the whole psychology profession, dammit. Maybe Josh would write a journal paper on me someday. A success story.

“Sorry about putting you on the spot like that,” Kate said. “I figured, no matter what we do or where we go, someone is going to see us. We’ll have maybe fifteen minutes before her phone blows up with all the gossip. It’s better that she hears it from me first. Trust me.”

“I get it.” I did. Hart’s Ridge was a small town. Gossip traveled faster than the speed of light. “What I don’t get is why you didn’t tell me your dad is on the board of directors at Piedmont.”

“Oh.” She blinked, then frowned as the implications set in. Her dad had power over my career. That probably wasn’t a great thing. “Honestly? It didn’t even occur to me. You already have the job, and I had nothing to do with that. The only thing I was worried about was Jessica. Is it a problem?”

“There’s no rule against the principal dating a parent. I checked. Whether it’s a problem regardless of that depends on your dad. So, you tell me. Is your dad going to have a problem with the principal of his granddaughter’s school dating his daughter?”

Kate tilted her head, considering. I appreciated that she took the time to think it through, like my concerns mattered. Like she had no intention of screwing me over or holding me back.

“What’s the worst he can do? Make you choose between me and your job?” She shrugged. “Okay, then. So you choose your job, and I guilt him into paying for a remodel of Sweet Things as payback. Win-win.”

“A remodel?”

“Yeah. A fair trade for making my boyfriend dump me, don’t you think?” She grinned, then reached over and gave my hand a reassuring pat. “That’s how it works with my parents. Cash is emotional currency.”

It didn’t seem like the healthiest family dynamic, but who was I to judge? I was pathetically lacking in emotional currency, cash or otherwise.

Anyway, she had a point. There was no rule against the principal dating a parent. If her dad chose to raise a fuss anyway, well, that still wasn’t a problem. Not really. Because we were temporary. Just for practice. It’s not like I would be forced to choose between two things that both mattered.

She dragged her thumb over the rim of her coffee cup, not meeting my eyes. “We don’t have to do this, you know. If it’s too complicated.”

No, we didn’t have to do this.

But I was surprised by how much I wanted to.

Because it was complicated, and we hadn’t even started yet, not really. Normally, that would have me running in the opposite direction at a flat-out sprint. But for the first time in forever, I wanted to stay. Not because there was the promise of sex. Well, not only that, anyway. And not even because this practice relationship was a stepping-stone to the real thing.

I still wanted the real thing, someday. A wife. Kids.

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