don’t you ever do anything to my sons’ hair again.” Her voice screeched higher.
I absorbed the words. Used to the verbal weapons Amie Jo and people like her employed.
“A human Pinterest fail? I feel like that’s uncalled for.”
“Admit it. You’re jealous of me.” Amie Jo was turning an unnatural shade of red, and I worried about her blood pressure. She was like one of those Instant Pots. You didn’t want that bursting open.
“Whoa. Let’s hang on there a second,” Jake was back at my side. “Amie Jo, I don’t know what you were told, but Marley couldn’t have had anything to do with that prank.”
“It was her! I know it was,” Amie Jo insisted. “If she didn’t tamper with the sprinklers yesterday, she did it the night before.”
“She was with me the night before. All night. Speaking of,” Jake said, sliding his arm around my waist. It was an incredibly inappropriate time for my nipples to go hard. “Do you mind if we do dinner at my house tonight. Last I heard, dining naked is frowned upon at Cashews.” He leaned in and nibbled at my ear.
I could hear him. He was speaking English. But my brain was inserting word salad for what he must actually be saying. Jake Weston was not telling Amie Jo that he wanted to get me naked for dinner. Was he?
I looked at her. She had an expression of horror, revulsion.
Okay, maybe he actually said it. “Baby?” he asked. He pinched me, hard.
I made a yelping noise and then recovered. “Uh. Yeah. Fine. Naked dinner at your place is…fine.”
Amie Jo’s perfect pink lips worked their way through what looked like several four-letter words before any noise came out.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you correctly. Are you two—”
“Dating,” Jake filled in. “Yeah. One look at Marley here during preseason, and I remembered all of those high school feelings that never went away.”
Amie Jo looked like she was trying to say a word that started with “f.” Her front teeth were wearing off all that sparkly lipstick.
“I’ll make your favorite,” Jake said leaning down to give me a peck on my cheek before hurrying off.
The bell rang, and I decided it was just smarter to leave Amie Jo standing there eating her own lipstick. I ducked into the locker room and, as a precaution, threw the deadbolt. What in the holy hell had just happened?
One kiss and…and what? He’d swooped in, riding to the rescue with first Vince and then Amie Jo.
“Yo, Cicero!” Floyd the Coward called through the gym door.
I yanked it open. “I didn’t know you could run that fast, Floyd.”
“No shame, man. That woman terrifies me.”
“Why’s she so mad anyway?” I asked.
Floyd pointed over his shoulder into the gym. There was a velvet backdrop set up.
“It’s Picture Day.”
24
Jake
“Principal Eccles,” I said, stepping into her office. “How goes the molding of young minds?” I was pouring on the charm. It was a leftover from my youthful indiscretions. Trips to the principal’s office still made me a bit uneasy.
“Jake, I never thought I’d see the day,” she said with a small smile.
“What day?” Okay, I was definitely nervous.
She held up a neat stack of papers and waved it at me. “This day.”
“Sorry, I’m late.” Marley barreled in the door out of breath and pink-cheeked in a way that made me immediately envision her naked on rumpled sheets. My rumpled sheets. “One of the freshmen put their combination lock on backwards, and well…” Her torrent of words slowed when she spotted me making myself at home in the chair.
“This will just take a quick minute out of both your days,” Principal Eccles said, sliding matching paperwork toward us both. “I heard the news that you two have entered into a personal relationship.”
Marley’s face went an even brighter shade of pink, and her brown eyes widened. “Oh, uh, that isn’t exactly—”
“Have a seat, Mars,” I insisted, tugging her into the chair next to mine and kept her hand in mine once she was settled. She looked at me as if I’d gone and lost my damn mind. Maybe I had.
“As I was saying to Jake here,” Principal Eccles continued. “I never thought I’d see the day when he’d be signing one of these contracts. But I guess we all grow up eventually.”
“Contracts?” Marley repeated. She yanked her hand out of my grip.
Oh, this was going to be good.
“Here in the Culpepper School District, we don’t like to do things like forbid staff from dating,” Principal Eccles