Page 22 of Working for the Teacher

She looks down at herself and bursts out laughing. “Oh my God.”

I catch her around the waist before she can escape, pull her back against me, and kiss her. When I let her go, I give her ass a playful smack.

“Go put some clothes on. I’ll get the pizza.”

“You’re very bossy for someone who came here to fix my bathroom.”

I grin. “Pretty sure I did a lot more than that.”

Her mouth drops open. I’m still laughing when I head downstairs.

By the time she joins me, the pizza boxes are open on the counter and I’m already halfway through a slice of pepperoni. She’s pulled on an oversized T-shirt, her hair still damp and her cheeks pink.

I hold out a slice. She takes it and bites into it immediately.

I watch her chew, barefoot in her kitchen. I think about Reyes’s threats. About the entire town waiting for me to fuck up again.

None of it feels as heavy as it did an hour ago.

Not with Charlotte looking at me like that.

7

CHARLOTTE

I'm sitting on the counter of the guest bathroom wearing Ryder's shirt and nothing else, watching him rip out the last of the ruined drywall, and I have never in my life found something so distracting.

“You're staring,” he says, without turning around.

“I'm supervising.”

“Uh huh.” He glances over his shoulder, and whatever he sees on my face makes one corner of his mouth tip up. “Keep looking at me like that and this bathroom's never getting finished.”

“That would be a real tragedy for my resale value.”

He laughs and goes back to prying a strip of soaked insulation away from the studs.

“So,” he says. “I've been thinking.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“I want to take you on a date. A real one. Not you standing around watching me demo your bathroom, and not whatever happened in that shower an hour ago, which I'm not complaining about, for the record.”

Warmth unfolds in my chest, unexpected and a little embarrassing in how much it excites me.

“There aren't exactly a lot of places to go in Forge Creek for a date,” he says.

I think about it for exactly two seconds. “Kincaid's.”

He stares at me like I've lost my mind. “Kincaid's?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to go to Kincaid's.”

“Can't a girl love a burger and a milkshake?”

“You lived in New York. You're telling me you had that city's entire restaurant scene, and what you actually want is a diner milkshake.”