Perfect Summer (3 page)

If Clint was going to represent World Wide, he needed the general public to forget some pretty disturbing photos and to work on his speaking skills.

Clint yawned and stretched before shifting lower in his seat. It had to be getting close to lunchtime. This cellblock of a room was closing in on him. Looking around, he found a clock above the whiteboards. Ten fifty-four…it couldn’t be. With his right hand, he brushed back his left cuff and glanced at the Breitling Bentley. Yep, ten fifty-four.

Unbuttoning his suit coat, he relaxed back in his chair, propped his chin on his hand, and zeroed in on Ms. Ames’s full mouth. His eyelids drooped as his mind painted her pouty lips maraschino cherry red. He would only close his eyes for a minute.

She grinned up at him, the dark blue cotton sheets of his king-sized bed rumpled around her. Tracing her top lip with her index finger, she slid it in her mouth and sucked lightly. One corner of her mouth curled up. Her eyes started at his face, wandered down his chest, and fastened on the front of his pants. One eyebrow arched, suggesting she’d like to fill her mouth with something other than her finger.

Off in the distance, a door slammed. Her image melted into hazy darkness, only to coalesce into a big, white square… a book… a thick textbook… with some blocky, maroon letters down the spine. Where was the teacher with the naughty mouth?

Clint rubbed his eyes and then looked around. His gaze landed on a boxy, black figure. He blinked. Summer Ames stared down at him, arms folded and those sexy lips in a straight line.

She was here. Where was the bed?

“Red lip gloss?” He yawned, closed his eyes, and rested his head on the desktop. “It tasted like cherries.”

“Mr. Grayson, may I see you in the hallway?” A strong hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Clint shot bolt upright. Fluorescent light bounced off gawking teenaged faces and one pissed-off teacher. Why was everyone staring at him?

Holy Christ, had he fallen asleep?

“Hallway.” Ms. Ames’s voice never rose above an angry whisper, but her eyes narrowed to tiny, reptilian slits. Her hand released its vice grip, she shoved her upturned nose in the air, and she pointed toward the door. “Now.”

She turned on her heel and stomped to the door.

Ms. Ames turned to the class as she opened the door. “Please take out your Texas History books and turn to chapter seventeen.” The words were ground out more than spoken.

Clint sighed long and hard. Angry female—not his favorite version of the species, but once he poured on the charm, she’d be eating out of his hand. It wasn’t ego talking, just experience. He’d never purposely broken hearts, but he’d more than perfected the mind-fuck. Knowing a lady’s strengths and using them against her before she figured out he wasn’t as shallow as he’d like the world to believe was the best offense. Men took him for a self-centered jock, but women weren’t that easily fooled. They wanted to talk to him, draw him out, and find out what he really thought about things. He had opinions, but expressing them to someone he didn’t know was torture.

Clint buttoned his coat and walked as casually to the door as possible considering the dozen or so lead anvils knocking around in his stomach. Confrontation was fine when it was on his terms and when he was in the right. They both knew he’d screwed up. He deserved an ass chewing, but he wasn’t about to take one from anyone, justified or not. No one ran over Clint Grayson. That was the motto his father had beat into him the summer after kindergarten when Joey Carnes had stolen Clint’s Millennium Falcon and refused to give it back. Big Billy had marched Clint over to Joey’s house and egged Clint on until he’d punched his best friend and gotten his toy back.

She threw open the door with enough force the shockwave would have knocked down a slighter person, but her solid form didn’t budge.

Clint stepped into the hallway and looked around. No reporters. Thank God.

The door clicked shut, and she rounded on him. “In my seven years of teaching, I have never had anyone fall asleep—”

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” From a relationship therapist he’d dated once or twice, Clint had learned that taking responsibility up front left nowhere for the argument to go.

She was tall—only an inch shorter than his six-foot-two—and solidly built. “Then mainline caffeine like the rest of the world. Since it doesn’t look like I can return you, I guess I’m stuck with—”

“Did you know your top lip curls up when you’re angry?” He shot her the boyish smile that his publicist had said was popular with women over twenty-five and blue-collar baby boomers who owned livestock.

“First of all, interrupting people—”

“Great class. You relate really well to your students. How do you do it?” He made sure interest sparkled in his eyes. People reacted to him—liked him—especially women.

Her eyes went huge, and her hands fisted at her sides. He got the distinct impression that she wanted to wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze until he turned the same shade of denim blue as her eyes.

Time out—flag on the play. This wasn’t going well. He needed to make peace and fast. “Tell you what. Let’s start over.” He extended his hand. “I’m Clint Grayson, nice to meet you.”

Clint upped the wattage of his smile.

Ms. Ames ignored his hand.

“Last year’s Teacher of the Year got a Prius, and I get you.” She shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

“Not really. I do lots of charity work.”

The corners of her sex-kitten mouth turned up, and laughter—low and sultry—rumbled out. If rich dark chocolate had a sound, that would be it. “Honestly, I don’t know what to say.”

He returned her smile, his genuine this time. “I’m used to it. Loss of speech happens around celebrities.”

“I’m not speechless, it’s just—there are
no words
.” She massaged the muscles at the back of her neck.

“The longer you know me, the easier it’ll be.”

“I can’t wait.” Her tone suggested she’d be happy to wait until the rest of the world came to their senses and stopped calling soccer football. “Most people don’t work so hard at being shallow. Usually, it’s the other way around.”

Clint flinched. Charm and humor were his two finest—only—defenses. Humor time.

“What can I say? I’m a trend setter.”

“I must have been Jack the Ripper in a former life for this level of bad Karma to kick me in the butt. How come I couldn’t win Tony Romo? I bet he’d have stayed awake.”

Clint was a tolerant man, but any mention of that team from up the road in Dallas was below the belt. “Now, that’s just mean.”

Ms. Ames thunked herself on the forehead.

“How could I have been so stupid? This is one of those you’ve-been-punked TV shows. I get it now.” She looked around. “Where’s the camera?”

He almost felt bad. She looked so hopeful.

“I can assure you that all the cameras are gone.” He hadn’t had this much trouble communicating with a woman since the first grade when Megan Lutz had punched him in the arm and told him she was his girlfriend. “I don’t know how to break it to you, but having me as your mentor is your prize.”

“Okay.” Her cheeks turned red. Some women blushed prettily—Ms. Ames looked like she’d been shot in the face with two red paintballs. “I don’t suppose you’d walk away now. I’ll settle for a plaque, and we’ll call it even.”

The lady had spunk, which caught him by surprise. People either worshipped him or feared him, but surprised him? Never.

He shook his head and smiled, for real this time. “No can do. And don’t ask for a certificate or a keychain or a
Honk If I’m Teacher of the Year
bumper sticker. You get me, one day a week for the rest of the school year.”

On a long, put-upon sigh, she pulled an iPhone out of her back pocket. After sliding her finger across the screen, she looked up at him. “What day is good for you?”

Clint pulled out his own iPhone and opened the calendar. It was empty. Damn, he’d forgotten to sync his phone with his new laptop. In a gadget-obsessed world, he’d proudly mastered his espresso machine—more evolved technology required the assistance of paid professionals. “Would it be possible for me to get back to you?”

He saw her whole body tense like a puppet master pulling a string.

“Sure. I bet you’re very busy. Any time you can give us would be greatly appreciated.” Somewhere in that sentence she’d shot past sarcasm and gone directly to disdain.

“I forgot to sync my phone.” He was admitting fault, which didn’t happen often.

“Yeah, because it doesn’t automatically sync through iCloud.”

iCloud? What did weather have to do with this?

“Tell you what…” She grabbed his phone, and her fingers whizzed over the screen. “Here’s my cell. Unless I hear from you, I’ll assume this was a one-time deal.”

She smacked the phone into his palm, backed into the classroom, and slammed the door.

He glanced down. The screen of his phone was upside down. In the phone number slot, she’d entered BIGG-EGO. He shook the screen. It turned right side up and the BIGG-EGO morphed into 063-6618. Clint laughed. She was good.

Under “contact name,” she’d written
Good-bye
. Laughter stuck in his throat.

She’d dismissed him.

It took a second or two to sink in.

Holy shit. His mouth went dry. He, Clint Grayson, quarterback of the youngest NFL franchise to win the Super Bowl, had just been tossed from the game. He could see the headlines now—
Teacher of the Year Benches QB in the First Quarter
.

This was not good.

***

Summer made it to the lunch break on sheer willpower. In the space of four hours, she’d gone from Teacher of the Year to The Human Ambien.

It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out that all Grayson wanted was good PR. The spark of humanity she’d thought she’d seen in him must have been a trick of the fluorescent lighting. It wasn’t often that a sports idol reached out to teens, but she wouldn’t sacrifice her kiddos just so the quarterback could make a buck.

Summer opened the door at the back of her classroom. Most people would have called the five-by-fifteen rectangle a closet, but she’d turned it into her office. A small couch, a table, a TV on a rolling cart, a rust-spotted, gray metal filing cabinet, and a full-sized avocado-green refrigerator all lined up against the back wall while a long, skinny metal desk she’d haggled ferociously for at a garage sale held up the wall across from the sofa. She plopped down on the sofa, propped her feet up on the desk across from it, leaned down, and pulled her laptop out of her backpack.

Thanks to the unwitting beneficence of Coach Atan and his unprotected wireless router, she fired up Safari on her Mac Book and entered “Clint Grayson” into the Google search window. Two million four hundred ninety-seven thousand and five hits—this could take a while.

The words “assault and battery” caught her attention. As she double clicked on the story, she leaned closer to the screen. Pictures of a bruised blonde wearing sunglasses that didn’t hide anything popped up.

Today, charges against Clint Grayson, Quarterback for the Austin Lone Stars, were dropped by his once-girlfriend Cornelia Stanhope. Ms. Stanhope first alleged her then-boyfriend, Grayson, flew off into a rage and beat her after she broke up with him. Now, she states that she can’t remember exactly what happened
.

Summer sat back. Grayson was a self-centered ass, but he wasn’t violent. Surely, AISD wouldn’t have let a batterer into her classroom. Nope, she made up her mind Clint Grayson was innocent. Having worked with kids who were victims of domestic abuse and their abusers, she knew violent, and Clint wasn’t it.

She clicked on the next story.

Clint was the son of some famous quarterback and a supermodel. She clicked on the picture, enlarging it. Yep, two beautiful people smiled back—the woman, a green-eyed stunner just like her son and the man a dark-haired, chocolate-eyed god. What had she expected…a couple of trolls? Pretty people gave birth to pretty children…most of the time. She was the exception to the rule.

Summer was the slumping Clydesdale born into her mother’s dainty, My-Little-Pony world.

Clint’s early years through high school were a blur of sports achievement. College at OU. Her eyes were drawn to the words “Summa Cum Laude.”

Wasn’t it enough that Clint was handsome and a talented athlete? He had to be smart too? That life’s-not-fair thing skyrocketed to a new level. Some people took more than their fair share of the good genes, leaving the rest of the world to scrabble over what was left.

On a sigh, she moved down to his professional career. After a couple of paragraphs with lots of statistics on stuff that no one in their right mind would care about, she skimmed down to the section on his personal life. In his thirty-three years, he’d dated supermodels, actresses, pop princesses, and the occasional heiress. There wasn’t an amazon-tall, chubby, homely schoolteacher to be found. She shrugged. It made sense. The universe didn’t allow for inequitable pairings. If one occurred, bad things happened—planets imploded, famines ran rampant, pantyhose were inflicted upon unsuspecting women, and God only knew what other crimes against nature would result.

Clicking the back arrow, she returned to the original search screen. After skimming all the football websites, she finally came across www.clintwatch.com. She clicked on a tab called “Clint-telligence,” which turned out to be an hour-by-hour and sometimes minute-by-minute report of his day posted by people who claimed to have seen him in public. Why did anyone care that he’d eaten cheddar mashed potatoes with his bacon-wrapped filet at Flemings last night? The tab called “Clint-fidences” appeared to be a message board where past and present girlfriends reported “confidences” about their relationship with the quarterback. That required a login. Giving out her email address invited “Clint-spam,” and she was already “Clint-nauseated,” so she closed her laptop.

Her kids needed a strong, male role model, and she wasn’t sure Grayson was man enough.