Her poise faltered. “Anyway, good luck to you, gentlemen. And I hope I can still call you gentlemen when the night’s over.”
She and Tara left, taking seats two tables over. Close enough to watch and see if his table was Googling for trivia answers, far enough away that they could talk about him and his buddies without being overheard.
Much.
“You didn’t tell me he was hot,” Tara clearly said.
“Honey, the skinny dark-haired one. Notthe cute one with the muscles.”
“I know, Kaci.”
Pony grinned at Lance. “Cute? Girl needs glasses. I ain’t cute, and you ain’t hot.”
“She calling us cheaters again?” Juice Box asked.
Lance watched Kaci and Tara lean closer together, whispering and pretending they weren’t watching him back. “Looks like.”
“That chick can call me anything she wants. If you don’t want her, Thumper, I’ll take her.”
“She owes me a new keg,” Pony said.
“Wouldn’t hold your breath,” Lance said to both of them. “But we can show ’em who has the brains around here.”
Because when it came to this chick, winning was where it was at.
Two hours later,Kaci was drowning in a sea of embarrassment thanks toher mouth being too big for her brain.
Again.
“We have to bet it all,” Tara said. Their meals were gone, sweet tea drained, and they were fighting for thirteenth place against Lance’s table.
No, he wasn’t Lance. That was just what his voicemail wanted her to believe.
He was still Captain Catapult. Captain Kiss-and-Run.
When she’d asked Tara to come out tonight on the pretense of breaking up her routine—and to avoid listening to those hypnosis tapes she’d picked up at the library—she hadn’t intended to run into him.
But there they were in all their arrogant flyboy glory, beating Kaci and Tara by one point in a battle not to be last.
She hated losing.
She didn’t mind that there were four tables of James Roberts students beating her—none were obnoxiously rowdy or in any of her classes, all had at least one sober driver at each table, and she’d happily give them the high of beating a professor in trivia, if they even knew who she was—but she minded losing to Lance and his flyboy buddies.
“Dollars to donuts those boys are betting it all,” she said. “Bet two points. If they’ve got the answer, they’re gonna beat us no matter what. If they don’t, two points are all we need.”
“You sure?”
“Sugar, math is a third of my life. Trust me on this one.”
“Okeydokey.” Tara scribbled their final trivia bet on a scrap of paper, then dashed it up to the judge.
Lance was watching Kaci.
Captain Kiss-and-Run. Lordy goodness, if she let him have a real name, he’d be a realman, but he couldn’t be a real man because there was no way that boy was even flirting with thirty yet.
Which obviously hadn’t mattered that night she met him, but one night of making out was far different from whateverthiswas.
Plus, Kaci was off men.
