Skin in the Game (9 page)

For several seconds, she didn’t say anything, and he could swear he caught a glimmer of tears in her eyes. He really didn’t get it. She still had her job, and she’d have it when Harvey got back. What possible difference could it make if he was acting head coach for three weeks?

“Fine,” she said at last. Her hands fisted at her sides, she turned to leave. She took two steps, then stopped and whirled to face him, her expression fierce with anger and…was it hurt?

“Just tell me, before I go. Was it worth it?”

Now he was really at a loss. “Was what worth what?”

“Getting me into bed the other night so you could have a good laugh at my expense today?”

He recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “What?”

“Oh, come on. You can’t expect me to believe you didn’t know exactly who I was when we ran into each other in that coffee shop. It must have been very amusing, pretending you didn’t know me, pretending to find me attractive…” Her voice hitched, and she trailed off. “Oh, just forget it.” She started away from him again.

Cade felt as if he’d been standing in a pitch-black room and someone had just switched on the light. Blinded. Or maybe more accurately, blindsided. That was the last accusation he’d expected.

He grabbed her wrist to prevent her from getting away. She glared over her shoulder at him and yanked, but he made up the space between them in three easy strides. There were times when being six foot five was a definite advantage. Especially now, when she was wearing a sensible pair of flats and he had a good six inches on her.

“I had no idea who you were until I talked to Coach this morning and put it together. And if you think I was pretending last night, you must also think I’m one hell of an actor,” he ground out.

She opened her mouth, no doubt to shoot off some blistering retort, but he didn’t give her the chance. Instead, he bent his head and slanted his lips across hers, plundering her mouth with all the pent-up hunger and frustration of the last couple of days. First, she sneaked out on him in the dead of night, and now she accused him of faking it! How could she even imagine that was possible?

As his mouth captured hers, she stiffened with surprise or indignation, maybe both. It didn’t matter. He deepened his onslaught, not sure if he was trying to punish her or subdue her and not really caring which it was. She tasted even better than he remembered, which hardly seemed possible, since his memory assured him she tasted like fresh, ripe peaches and sunshine, but the reality was better—sweeter, hotter, richer. When she melted against him with a groan of surrender and met the stroke of his tongue with her own, he wanted to pump his fist at the sky and shout with triumph.

Yes, this…this was the truth. He cupped her ass in his palms and rolled her hips against the solid weight of his growing erection.

You see? See what you do to me?

She could walk out on him, she could hate his interference in her life, but she couldn’t deny that this was real. And very mutual.

When Cade broke the kiss, it wasn’t because he remembered that they were still in the high school parking lot, which might not be exactly the best place for a teacher to be caught making out with anyone, but especially not him.

It was because they were caught. By the worst person possible.

The whistling catcall was nothing short of deafening.

“Damn,” Cade muttered when he turned and saw Chuck Donnelly bearing down on them from the other side of the parking lot.

Angie murmured something a little more colorful.

Instinctively, Cade moved to shield her, standing between her and her adversary.

“You shoulda told me you were hot for teacher, Reynolds,” Donnelly shouted. “I could’ve warned you she sucks up to all the head coaches.”

“I do not,” Angie said, her voice low and fierce.

Hell. Lund had asked him to take over the team to act as a buffer between Angie and Donnelly, but Cade doubted this was what his former coach had had in mind. If Donnelly thought he and Angie were in bed together—figuratively as well as literally—he’d never see Cade as a neutral party with only the good of the team at heart.

Thinking fast wasn’t easy under the circumstances, but Cade did the best he could to salvage the situation.

He laughed hollowly. “Nah, you’ve got it all wrong. She was waiting here to give me a piece of her mind. I decided to show her a better way to use her mouth.”

“What!”

Cade ignored Angie’s outraged gasp and focused on the man bearing down on them.

“Good job, man,” Donnelly said, close enough now to clap Cade on the shoulder.

“Maybe you can keep her in her place better than Lund. You know, show her who’s boss.”

Donnelly was grinning like a madman.

Asshole.

Angie gave Cade a violent shove from behind. “Oh. My. God. I can’t believe you. Either of you.”

Don’t believe me. It’s not true.

But he couldn’t implore her to understand what he was up to, so instead, he let her give him a withering look before stalking off to her car. Cade watched her go, her spine ramrod straight, her head held high.

Damn. He’d been so close to having her back in his bed. Now, thanks to this Neanderthal and Harvey Lund, he was back to square one.

Her car door slammed so violently, the asphalt beneath his feet seemed to shake.

Make that square negative one.

***

One would think this was the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first.

Not that Angie was surprised by Donnelly’s attitude. She knew he was a dinosaur who, despite being in his forties, still clung to the past in the vain hope it would save him from his own ineptitude. But she hadn’t expected it from Cade, who was her age and certainly not inept.

Especially not in bed.

God, she had to stop that. Right now, before her stupid, chemical attraction to Cade Reynolds led her to do something really dimwitted.

Like sleep with him again.

He was as big a jerk as Donnelly. Bigger, even. Because he’d pretended to be different, and he wasn’t.

Unfortunately, that knowledge didn’t stop her body from tingling with expectation at the thought of seeing him at practice this afternoon. And the next. And the next. And the next.

How on earth was she going to get through three weeks of having him constantly in her orbit? It was bad enough that Harvey had decided she wasn’t capable of running the team herself. To have it be Cade, of all people, was injury on top of insult. Temptation on top of torment.

She turned the corner that led from the teacher’s lounge to her classroom and drew up short. Donnelly leaned against her classroom’s door, arms crossed over his muscular chest. She reflected, not for the first time, that if he weren’t such an unmitigated asshole, Donnelly might actually be attractive. He was in excellent physical shape for a man approaching forty-five, with solid biceps and a great set of pecs he displayed by wearing snugly fitted T-shirts at every possible opportunity. Combine his physique with his square jaw, slightly hooked nose, and military-cropped hair, and she could almost understand how he’d been able to get married.

The mystery was how he stayed that way. And how he had managed to raise three really great kids, including a daughter who was one of Angie’s star pupils.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Waiting for you.”

She rolled her eyes. How stupid did he think she was? Wait, never mind. She knew the answer to that.

“Why?”

“Reynolds wants to talk to you before practice starts.”

Angie’s heartbeat accelerated at the mention of Cade’s name. Damn him, it was bad enough that she had barely been able to concentrate at yesterday afternoon’s practice because she’d known he was there…watching her, judging her, undressing her in his mind.

Okay, so maybe that last bit was her projecting. She was sure as heck undressing him in her mind, and it was distracting as hell.

“Then maybe he should actually come and talk to me himself, instead of sending his errand boy.” She reached for the door handle, hoping Donnelly would move aside if she didn’t appear intimidated.

He didn’t budge. “Reynolds didn’t send me. I came to tell you to stop being such a tight-assed bitch and come to the coach’s office instead of hiding in your classroom.”

“I’m not hiding.” Liar. She was hiding.

Although whether she was hiding from Cade or from herself, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that he was a threat to her future—if Harvey didn’t think she was competent to take over the head coaching position for a few weeks, why on earth would anyone believe she was capable of doing it after he retired?—not to her peace of mind and to her willpower. Even knowing he was a lying, job-stealing male chauvinist couldn’t keep the erotic details of their night together from replaying themselves in her mind…or prevent her body from longing to repeat them.

“Oh, come on, you were always the first one there when Harvey was head coach. You had him pussy-whipped into letting you do whatever you wanted, so why wouldn’t you be in a hurry to get started? But now that you know you have to deal with a real man, you’re too chicken. Just like a woman,” he added with a dismissive snort. “You can’t take the heat.”

Angie’s hands curled into fists. Oh, how she would dearly love to punch him in his smug face and make that nose of his hook just a little more.

Ignoring the flutters in her stomach at the thought of talking to Cade, she gave Donnelly a saccharine sweet smile and said, “Not only can I take the heat, I’m more than happy to start the fire. I’ll go and find Reynolds myself. Right now.”

As she started in the direction of the coaches’ office, Donnelly emitted a surprised grunt.

Angie turned in time to see the door give way behind him, causing him to jump away to avoid falling.

“That won’t be necessary,” Cade said, poking his head out of the partially open doorway.

“You’ve already found me.”

***

Cade hadn’t planned on waiting for her. As soon as he opened the door to Angie’s classroom, however, he’d felt compelled to explore. It bore absolutely no resemblance to the drab, regimented ones of his high school days.

The walls had been repainted from their institutional greenish-white to a warm, lively shade of yellow. Posters hung around the room: Da Vinci’s Renaissance Man, the Parthenon, the dome of the Pantheon, the periodic table, and so on. Several counters lined the walls. An assortment of abacuses in different styles was piled on one counter while the others were covered with wooden building blocks, tinker toys, and dominos. Finally, in the far corner of the room was a large table with a half-finished jigsaw puzzle on it.

And then there were the chairs and desks. Gone were the orderly rows of his youth.

Instead, the chairs were arranged—or rather disarranged—in haphazard groupings of two or three or sometimes four, the desks pointed toward the center.

All in all, it looked more like a kindergarten playroom than a high school math classroom.

And yet, it was clearly not just a playroom. Formulas and proofs were scrawled on the whiteboard in a feminine hand. He could tell from what she’d written that the last class of the day had been calculus, not because he could understand it, but because he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He remembered what Coach Lund had said about the school having to add another section of calculus due to Miss Peterson’s popularity among the boys. Cade had a feeling now it wasn’t just the boys. Everything about this room said that her classes would never be boring.

He’d been pondering whether he’d have done better or worse in math if he’d had a teacher as hot as Miss Peterson—cheerleaders and several members of the girls’ volleyball team had been more than sufficient to stoke his overactive teenage libido—when he’d heard muffled voices from the other side of the door.

And that was how he came to witness one of the most flagrant examples of verbal sexual harassment of his life. All right, maybe it was the only one he’d ever witnessed personally. But he sure as hell recognized it when he heard it.

Donnelly was nothing short of a pig. The man had no business teaching high school with that attitude. If he treated a coworker that way, how did he treat his female students, for God’s sake? The situation was far worse—and far more clear-cut—than Lund had led Cade to believe, and he was angry with his mentor for tolerating such clearly intolerable behavior.

Even more, he was baffled and frustrated by Angie’s response…or lack of one. From everything he’d seen, she was a smart, capable, confident woman. Why hadn’t she brought the jerk up on charges? It was an open and shut case.

Cade’s conscience had gotten the better of him in the course of the last day and he’d decided he needed to come clean, no matter what he’d promised Coach Lund. But now his offenses seemed trivial compared to what she clearly allowed Donnelly to get away with on a regular basis. By the time he heard her announce she was going to find him, he no longer felt like apologizing for his relatively minor transgressions.

He pulled the door open and announced himself. Angie’s expressive blue eyes widened as the color drained from her face. Cade wasn’t sure if she was more angry or surprised to discover he was in her classroom.

Donnelly, who almost lost his balance when the support he’d been leaning against gave way, jumped from the door and then looked from Cade to Angie with a smirk. “Well, looks like my work here is done.”

Cade was mortally tempted to tell Donnelly to meet him out in the schoolyard for a good, old-fashioned brawl, but instead he let the man saunter away with a false sense of security. Until Cade figured out why both Coach Lund and Angie were protecting Donnelly, he didn’t want to blow his cover.

Angie marched through the classroom door and shut it behind her. Given the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, Cade guessed she was more angry than surprised.

“Well, what did you want to talk to me about?” she asked, brushing past him and heading for her desk, which occupied the far corner of the room.

He followed her. “Why do you let Donnelly talk to you like that?”

“That’s an odd question, coming from you.”