“Good chance.”
“Hoping the water’s cold?”
“Like ice.”
I’m lying.
I don’t want to spray her with ice-cold water out of a garden hose.
I want to strip her naked and take her into a steaming-hot shower and kiss her out of sheer relief that she’s okay.
Worse?
I think she knows it.
Somewhere between me riding over to check out what was going on at Tony’s house that morning that she scared Parsnip into throwing me with mountain lion sounds and right now, this very minute, in my head, we’ve become something like friends.
Even if I’ve been avoiding her like the plague.
But no one else in town has appealed to me in the past couple of years the way she has.
Is it just that she’s new?
Is it that she knew and loved Tony?
Is it that I know all too well what it’s like to move to Hell’s Bells to get away from a bad relationship?
Twice?
This isn’t just complicated.
It’s way past that.
She holds my gaze for a long moment before she sighs and trudges past me. “Then let’s get it over with so you can go home and I can clean up everything I’ve fucked up all over again with my teenager.”
Speaking of ice water.
There it is, splashing down on all my fantasies.
I don’t fool around with my kids’ parents. Not my students’ parents and not my players’ parents.
No way in hell I’m letting anyone say I’m playing favorites because I’m boinking someone’s mother.
Again.
No matter how serious or not serious it is.
So I’ll hose her off.
I’ll keep my dick in my pants.
Then I’ll go home and make myself a frozen pot pie, watch a true-crime documentary, jerk off in the shower, go to bed, and do it all over again tomorrow.
At least, that’s what Ishoulddo.
We’re about to find out if it’s what Iactuallydo.
Chapter 10
