Page 3 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

“Are you sure?” Suzie asked. “We barely had any time together.”

“Because I was late,” I reminded her. “Sure, I’m sure. I’ll go home and take a hot bubble bath and read a book. It’s perfect.”

We were hugging goodbye when my phone buzzed. Mom, again. No surprise. Frowning, I waved my friends to go ahead without me. Mom wouldn’t let up until we talked, so I might as well do it now, when there was plenty of alcohol available to help me cope.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, tucking the phone between my shoulder and ear while I signaled to Luke that I needed a refill. “What’s up?”

“You know what’s up, Katharine Rose. That’s why you’ve been dodging my calls.” Mom’s voice was crisp and exasperated. “We need to talk about George. It’s the tenth anniversary of his death in September. We need to commemorate that.”

“Mom—” My drink arrived and I took a long, grateful swallow. “Mom, the thing is—”

“Listen, Kate, I know you don’t like to think about sad things.”

I blinked. Did anyone like thinking about sad things? This didn’t sound like a uniquely me thing. “That’s not why—”

Mom bulldozed ahead. “The town needs this. George meant so much to everyone. So let’s discuss the venue. The country club in Piedmont? It’s such a lovely vista.”

“But George didn’t—”

A man slid into my booth across from me. I looked up, startled. No, not just a man. The man. Mr. Hot Nerd.

“You’re back,” I said stupidly.

He smiled slowly, knowingly, and my face heated up. He knew I had noticed him.

“Tell her you can’t talk. Hang up.”

Hang up? On my mother? Because a strange, dangerously hot man told me to? What a terrible idea.

And it was exactly what I wanted to do.

“I can’t talk, Mom,” I said.

“Ka—”

I hung up.

Damn, that felt good. I grinned.

“Hi. I’m—” I swallowed my name and cleared my throat. “I’m Rose.” I offered my middle name instead.

“I’m Max.”

Breathe.

I was not drunk, but I wished I was. Not enough to be sloppy, but enough to make alcohol a convenient scapegoat. Because right now, I had only myself to blame for being here.

Here being in Max’s rented room behind Goat’s Tavern, eyeball-to-eyeball with my own wary reflection, trying to talk myself out of—or maybe into—a one-night stand. Of course, I had snapped a quick photo of his license and texted it to Emma, knowing she would be asleep and wouldn’t see it until tomorrow morning, along with the message that If I’m dead, he did it.

Okay. I could do this. Because the alternative was to not do this and, having lived that alternative for the last, oh, ten years, I was done with that, thank you very much. Even if only for a night. I wanted sex, dammit. It had been so long, I barely remembered what it felt like. For a moment, my resolve wavered. A hymen couldn’t grow back, could it? Because I remembered that, and it had not felt good.

I really, really wanted to feel good. Just this once. Just for tonight. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

I opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the bedroom.

Max was still fully clothed, and despite the fact that the bed was the only place to sit, he wasn’t on it. Instead, he leaned against the pine-paneled wall, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, head lowered to contemplate his boots.

“Hey,” he said as I took a tentative step closer.

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