“What did I do?”
“Nothing,” she snapped. “And that’s exactly the problem.” Without another word, she turned back to her group of friends, gossiping at a much lower decibel this time since they didn’t want to be heard this time.
I had no idea what Mirabelle was going on about, and I doubted very much that I wanted to know, so I turned my attention to the specials board in search of something new and delicious to go with my morning coffee. I wondered what kind of pastries Joss liked, and if I’d score any points by bringing something for her.
She hadn’t spoken to me in two days and worse, she’d made herself scarce, avoiding the teacher’s lounge as well as the teacher’s table in the cafeteria. I know because I checked. Often.
“Howard Smith was pleased with the work and doubled his original donation.” That voice I knew well, it belonged to Tanisha Johnson, one of Joss’ soccer girls. She was incredibly smart, but the girl never stopped talking. “His wife wants to clean the attic too, which will get us closer to the fundraising goal.”
“Bless Coach Callahan for thinking of the girls. Becky has a real shot at a college scholarship because of that woman.” I didn’t recognize that voice, but I knew it was another soccer mom. “It’s just too bad they’re not getting the support they need from the rest of the school.”
Which meant, in short, me. I wanted to say something, to defend myself, but only parts of the conversations made sense to me. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Joss had put the word out that there was no additional funding for the girls’ soccer team, and I was now public enemy number one. For something that was completely out of my control.
“At least this will be another community project for their college applications.” The woman shook her head, disgust in her voice. “I had to put up with the same thing on the state winning basketball team back in my day. You’d think there might be some comfort in knowing that some things just don’t change. There’s not.” The women shared a laugh and kept on talking.
I bit back a groan and buried my face in my phone screen to avoid any unwanted conversations, which seemed to be all conversation at the moment. Eventually the soccer moms left with their lattes and muffins, and it was my turn at the front of the line.
“Morning, Mara.”
“Rutherford,” she growled at me. “What’ll it be?”
I didn’t bother to hide my groan this time because Mara could take it and give it back ten-fold. “Not you too. What in the hell did I do?”
Mara folded here arms and glared up at me. “Nothing. You did absolutely nothing to help those girls, forcing them to split their already limited time between school, practice and now fundraising. Otherwise, you did nothing at all.”
“It’s not like I’m withholding funds out of spite, I can’t do anything.”
“It’s a good thing the rest of the town is willing to help. Now, what do you want?” I rattled off my order with an annoyed huff.
“If there was money someplace else, I would.”
“Sure, you would,” she shot back over the sound of the coffee grinder. “Did you even ask, or try to help?” When I tried to answer, she pushed the grinder button again to drown me out.
I wanted to scream and shout at the top of my lungs, but it was pointless, because Mara was right, I hadn’t tried to help Joss or the soccer team in any way. That only pissed me off more, and this time it was aimed mostly at myself.
And a little at Joss.
When I arrived at the high school, I made a beeline for the teacher’s lounge and found Joss there, hunched over a tablet with her headphones in place.
“I hope you’re happy with yourself.”
Joss blinked and pulled out one headphone. “I always try to be happy with myself, why do you ask?” That look of absolute innocence on her face was so damned maddening.
“Because you’ve done your best to make sure the whole town thinks I’m some kind of soccer Scrooge. You’re making me look bad.”
Joss let out a laugh and shook her head with a scoff. “You’ve done that all on your own, Principal Rutherford. And I didn’t do anything to make you look bad, I simply explained to the parents what the deal was and presented the only solution available to me. And like me, they are willing to do whatever it takes to secure a future for those girls. It might be nice if they had your support.”
“You think I don’t support them?”
“What have you done to support them besides showing up for one game all season?” She was so sure of herself as she sat back and folded her arms. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She stood and grabbed her things as she made her way to the door.
“Not so fast, Ms. Callahan.” I reached out and grabbed her wrist just before she was out of reach altogether.
“What do you think-,”
In one quick move, I spun her around and pulled her body flush against mine, fitting my mouth over hers as if it belonged there. This kiss was as hot as the last one, only a little hotter, because we could be caught at any moment. Her lips were soft and supple as they pressed against mine, her tongue tasted of peppermint cocoa and her skin smelled like pineapples and coconuts.
Her scent and her taste was a lethal mix that yanked a groan from me as I ground my body against hers.
Joss pulled back with a gasp and pushed at my chest. “How dare you! Thinking you can use my old crush on you to get me to back off helping my girls, that’s just dirty and rotten. What’s worse, it’s unprofessional and a low blow. I expected better from you, Principal Rutherford.” She opened her mouth to say more before she snapped it shut, growled and stormed out of the teacher’s lounge.
“Yeah well, I expected better of myself too.” It’s just too bad that I couldn’t seem to win for losing when it came to Joss. She drove me crazy, made me do things completely out of character, which ended up hurting her feelings or pissing her off.
Or both.
Joss
Takeout menus in a small town left a lot to be desired, but there I stood at my kitchen counter staring at the options. Pizza or tacos or burgers. There was a Chinese food option if I was willing to wait, and really, what else did I have to do?
The doorbell rang and I smiled, wondering if the takeout gods had heard my wishes and sent a big box of soul food to my front door. It was unlikely, but still I hurried to the front door and pulled it open.
“Principal Rutherford.” The words came out on a disappointed groan. “What are you doing here?”
He flashed that panty melting grin that I—still—found irresistible and leaned in just close enough that I smell the minty toothpaste he’d used recently. “I thought we agreed you would call me Ben.”
I shrugged, unwilling to be moved by his flirtatiousness. “You agreed, and I decided it wasn’t appropriate.”
He held up a familiar box that smelled like sausage and mushrooms and heaven, a smaller box on top that my nose recognized right away as fiery chicken strips.
“I brought pizza. And wings. And wine,” he said in a sing-song voice as he held up the bottle in his other hand. “I thought we could hang out. Get to know each other. As friends,” he added with a smile that made those last two words difficult to believe.
“Friends call before they show up.” It was a weak comeback, but other than ego, I had no real reason to refuse his offer of friendship, even if it was insincere. And I was hungry.
He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if you’d pick up.”
My brows rose at his honesty. “So, you decided to take the choice out of my hands?”
“Not at all. You’re perfectly free to slam the door in my face right now and miss out on this double veg, double sausage, double cheese pizza.”
I folded my arms and shook my head. “What a snake, using my favorite pizza against me.”
“Whatever works,” he said, completely unapologetic, which was kind of hot actually. “If it helps, I got my favorite wine because I didn’t know yours.”
It should have helped
, dammit. It didn’t. “There’s nothing to know because I don’t have a favorite wine. Can’t really stand the stuff.”
His cheeks pinkened, but Ben wasn’t deterred. “Then invite me in and you can hold that against me all night.”
It wasn’t the only thing I wanted to hold against him, which was exactly how I knew this was a bad idea. A terrible idea, in fact, but somehow I found myself taking one and then two steps back and motioning him inside.
“No need. Friends don’t know everything about each other. Right?”
“Right,” he said on a snort and stepped inside. “How about a tour?”
“You only get a tour if you show up during daylight hours with an invite.” Ben’s laughter was deep, and it ricocheted through my already tense body. “Let’s eat.”
“I could eat, then again I can always eat. My mom says I have a wooden leg. Haven’t found it yet, but it’s the perfect excuse to eat my weight in pizza.” His words made me realize that while I’d been crushing on Ben for more than a year, I didn’t know much about him outside of school.
“Are you and your parents close?”
“My dad and I were very close, but he passed away a long time ago and Mom, well she’s a meddling mother so yeah, we’re close.” The affection in his voice was undeniable, which only made him more appealing.
“Meddling as in matchmaking?”
He barked out a laugh and nodded. “Exactly. She’s the one who bought the Time for Love gift certificate because, ‘it’s time’,” he said in a voice I assumed was meant to be hers. “It doesn’t matter that my younger sisters, twins, have five kids between them, all that matters is that I don’t have any, and no good prospects.”
“Sounds like she just wants to see you happy.”
“Of course she does, but when and where that happiness comes, and with whom, is my decision.” He shrugged it off, and it sounded like a conversation they’d had more than a few times. “What about you, close with your family?”
“Nope. My dad left when I was pretty young, and he was mostly absent from my life. My mama is gone, but when she was alive our relationship was…complicated.” Mama was the last thing I wanted to talk about so I grabbed plates, a wine glass for him and a bottle of beer for me. “My mama was very traditional she would call it, I’d call it old school.”
“Is her death what brought you to Texas?”
I looked up from my slice of pizza, surprised. “Who says I’m not from Texas?”
Ben laughed and pointed at me. “That thick Mississippi twang does.”
“Guilty.”
“Do you miss it?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess, sure. I try not to think about it too much since my life is here now. But when homesickness strikes, I go in search of good ol’ soul food, and when times are really desperate, I try to make it myself.”
“Not a proficient cook, Ms. Callahan?” Why did his voice have to be so smooth and buttery when he called me that? It was a sound a girl could get used to hearing, but not from a friend.
“Not really, no. Disappointed?”
He shrugged and leaned back in his chair, pizza grease making his lips slick and noticeable. Very noticeable. “Kind of. I love to drop by when there’s food cooking.”
I laughed at his honesty. “Me too, but Mara doesn’t really cook. She bakes, and it is nice to stop by when bread or cookies are fresh from the oven.”
Ben stared at me for a long moment with a smile, and I wondered what he was thinking, but before I could muster up the courage to ask, he lifted his wine glass and his green eyes sparkled. “To finding common ground.”
I lifted my beer with a laugh. “To being ineffective home cooks and not starving.”
“Cheers.” His gaze heated and held mine until my body overheated and my nipples beaded, forcing me to look away. Sometime later we’d finished off half the pizza and all of the wings and Ben smiled at me. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I shrugged and stood, grabbing both plates. “The food was delicious and the company was all right too.”
“Just all right?”
I nodded and kept my back to Ben so he couldn’t see the smile on my face, because, sadly, this was probably the best date I’d had in a long time. Too long, in fact. “Acceptable.”
His deep rumbling laugh echoed in the kitchen and my smile grew. “Now who’s lying?”
His voice, so close, along with the heat of his body, drew a shocked gasp from me. I turned with a look of absolute innocence on my face. “Are you calling me a liar? How very un-Texan of you, Principal Rutherford.”
He laughed again and shook his head. “I see what you’re doing.”
“Yeah?” I blinked innocently. “What am I doing?”
“Denying this, the heat and the chemistry between us. What I want to know is, why?”
Self-preservation. “Because I’m not entirely sure of your motives, Ben.”
He took a step closer and put his hands on my waist. “My motives are innocent, I swear Joss.” His thumbs hooked into the waistband of my yoga pants and slid back and forth along the skin there.
“What are they?” I needed to hear them, to know where all this was leading, and I needed to put off the kiss that was coming for as long as I possibly could.
“To get to know you,” he said softly and leaned in, dragging kisses from one end of my collarbone to the other. “To let you know me.” His lips dropped to the crook of my neck. One side and then the other. “To please you.”
I gasped at his words and shook my head. “Friends don’t do that.”
“No? Maybe we could be the kind of friends who do please each other.” Before I could protest and tell him that’s not what I wanted, his hand slid to the back of my neck and cupped it as the other slid further down my yoga pants.
Then Ben is kissing me, tugging at my lower lip and then sucking it with a hint of roughness that shot straight between my legs a moment before one long finger touched me right there. A soft sigh escaped my mouth and turned into a moan.
He moaned in response and slid his tongue deeper into my mouth, gripping my neck tight so I was just where he wanted me. It was so hot I felt my body shudder at the sound, or maybe it was his finger flicking at my clit. Ben’s mouth ravaged mine as he shoved my pants and plain cotton panties to my knees and then he really touched me and the feeling was so incredible, so mind-numbing that all I could do was shamelessly grind against his hand, his fingers.
“You’re so wet,” he whispered in my ear. “Soft and wet, and hot as hell.” Those gravelly words shot straight to my core and my body shook and convulsed while Ben growled dirty, sexy, sweet things in my ear. “Come for me, Joss. Come all over my hand just like you want to.”
His words were hot, too hot, but then he slid two fingers deep while his thumb played my clit like a fiddle and that was it, my body flew into a white hot orgasm that took my knees, forcing Ben to hold me up with an arm around my waist. His fingers continued to move, prolonging the orgasm, the sound of his fingers playing in my moisture the only sound aside from my deep, panting breaths.
“Ben,” I moaned and his mouth crashed over mine once again, kissing me like we’d both just had an incredible standing up orgasm.
“That was so fucking hot, Joss.”
“Really hot,” I agreed. “And really satisfying.”
“Good to know.” He kissed me again, gentler this time, and took a step back when he was done. “I’ll be thinking about the sounds you make when you come for a long time.”
I blinked, confused. “You don’t want me to…?”
“More than you know, Joss. Now I’ll just have to jack off to the taste of you,” he said and licked the fingers that had just been inside my body before he walked away with a satisfied smile on his face.
I fanned my face and tugged on my pants until they were back in place so I could lock the door and go to my room, because Ben wasn’t the only one who’d be touching himself later.
Or sooner.<
br />
Or now.
Ben
I spent the entire work day replaying that scene with Joss in her kitchen, and now it was after five and I hadn’t accomplished a damn thing. But the look of pure pleasure that crossed her face when she fell apart and coated my fingers as she clung to me, was a scene worth replaying. Over and over again.
Even if it meant that tomorrow’s to do list would be twice as long. How I managed to make it through the budget meeting for next semester was beyond me, but I pasted a smile on my face and smacked my hands together.
“Any questions?”
“If we say no, can we go?”
I sighed and shook my head, waved them off as I made my way back to my office. It was still early enough to put in an hour or two of work before heading to Joss’. Uninvited. Again.
“I can’t even believe he’s doing the girls like this, I mean they are the only winning team in the whole damn school.” That voice belonged to one of the physical education teachers who didn’t like me.
“It’s like men can’t stand to have women win unless they’re winning too.” That voice belonged to the art teacher and I could almost see her shake her head in disgust. “I thought he’d be better than the old principal. I was wrong.”
Those words helped get rid of thoughts and images of Joss, mid-pleasure, and replaced them with anger. Annoyance. I stood from my chair as soon as I sat down and went in search of the woman who plagued my mind all damn day. I found her in her classroom, head bent over a stack of papers.
“You have to make them stop.”
Joss looked up and her face transformed into a welcoming smile. “Hey, Principal Rutherford. What’s up?”
“You have to make them stop,” I said again, this time more insistent as I folded my arms across my chest.
Joss gaze went to my biceps and I gave a little flex before she blinked and shook away the lust. “Make who stop what?”
“The teachers are talking trash about me, like I’m purposefully mistreating the soccer team. I’m doing what I can, and I’d like them to know that.”
Misbehaving Curves: A Boss Romance Page 7