Page 66 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

“Now, don’t be all high and mighty about it,” Mr. Locklear protested. “I admire that you’re an honest sort of man. I respect that. Integrity, that’s one reason we hired you. But you don’t have children, do you, son? The thing about having a child is that they never outgrow the urge to spurn parental advice.” He shook his head sadly.

I paused. I might not have kids of my own, but I knew kids. I was around them all day. I understood them. And I couldn’t say Mr. Locklear was entirely off base here.

Clearly perceiving he had found an opening, Mr. Locklear pressed his case. “Now, if you were to tell her you didn’t think it was appropriate to attend the commemoration, she likely would agree with you. But if you tell her the idea came from me or her mother, she’d toss it right in the garbage without a second thought.”

Maybe the garbage is where it belonged.

Probably not a great idea to share that thought with the man who held my job in the palm of my hand. A job, it turned out, I very much wanted to keep for the foreseeable future, to my great surprise.

I had known dating a student’s mom, whose father happened to be on the board of directors for the school, was a messy proposition. But I had also figured the stakes were pretty low. What’s the worst that could happen? Kate had asked. He tells you to choose between me and your job? Okay then, so we break up. We’re going to do that anyway.

Funny how now, a short two months later, the stakes were the same, yet they felt so much higher.

Maybe because while the stakes hadn’t changed, I had changed. What I wanted had changed.

Back then, what I had wanted was generic. Vague. I had wanted a home. I had wanted a wife. But those things had lacked specificity. Now those wants had honed in and sharpened. I wanted a home, in Hart’s Ridge. I wanted a wife—someday. More than that, I wanted Kate now. I wanted Kate today and tomorrow and all the days after.

Specifically.

I puzzled through that revelation as we completed the final hole and tallied the scores—putting me in last place, because I didn’t cheat, and I was fine with that.

I didn’t know what this feeling was. I had never felt anything like it. It overrode logic, swept away my common sense. Because I was going to lay my job on the line. It wasn’t even a question. If it came down to Kate or my job, I was choosing Kate. Every time, but especially in this. Like hell would I lie to her.

“This way.” Mr. Locklear led me away from the green to the main clubhouse.

I followed silently, wrestling with the dilemma I found myself in. Should I have it out with Mr. Locklear right now and tell him in no uncertain terms where I stood? Or should I talk to Kate first?

My mind was so full of Kate that when I found myself suddenly face-to-face with her, I had to blink several times to make sure she wasn’t my imagination. “Kate?”

“Max. What are you…” Her brown eyes widened as she looked from me to her father and back again. She licked her lips nervously. “What are you doing here?”

“The Piedmont Board of Directors invited me.” I glanced behind her, taking in the fact that she wasn’t alone. Her mother stood nearby, with another man and woman I didn’t recognize.

But I knew who they were just the same. Without being told, I knew. George’s parents. Kate’s in-laws, once upon a time. The moment was so thick with tension they couldn’t be anyone else.

The dark-haired woman looked at me, her gaze narrowing from curiosity to something sharper and more prickly.

“Who is this?”

Kate

Once, when I was seventeen, I snuck out my window to meet George at eleven o’clock on a school night. I had gotten caught sneaking back in at midnight. The looks of disappointment on my parents’ faces had left me mortified, but that was nothing compared to when I told them I was pregnant before I had even graduated high school.

The look Maria was sending me now was worse than both those events put together.

“Kate, who is this?” Maria repeated.

I couldn’t force my tongue to form the words, so it was my mother who answered. “This is Mr. Darlington. He’s the new principal of Piedmont Latin.”

“Yes,” Max said. “I’m the new principal of Piedmont Latin. Where Jessica is a student.”

I could feel his eyes on me, searching my face for clues as to what to say, but I couldn’t meet his gaze. George’s parents probably saw right through his babbling. And it didn’t help matters anyway, because if the whole town knew I was dating the principal, Juan and Maria knew it too.

But his over explanation seemed to soothe them. Maria smiled. “Of course. Kate is very active in our grandchild’s education.”

I realized, in a moment of crystallized horror, that they didn’t know. Somehow, the biggest piece of gossip to circulate Hart’s Ridge since Eli and Emma made up after he arrested her dad for cooking meth hadn’t found them yet. Juan and Maria had no idea Max was my boyfriend.

I should tell them. Immediately.

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