Second Chance Temptation
Sinful Nights Book 4
By Elizabeth Lennox
www.ElizabethLennox.com
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Copyright 2019
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Chapter 1
“Don’t you dare!” Cynthia hissed when she noticed Ryan Dalton creeping up behind her. At six years old, she was far more proficient about spotting aggravating boys who are doing something annoying than most girls her age. Mostly because of Ryan, who constantly teased her. Two years older, Ryan had taught her that recess was a hotbed of mystery and intrigue. In order to keep the spiders and snakes away from her, she had to watch Ryan like a hawk!
Cynthia would never admit to anyone, ever, that she enjoyed the challenge of outmaneuvering Ryan! He’d gotten her good with some amazing pranks over the past year, but she learned quickly and had her revenge!
Cynthia shot him a glare, thinking fast because she could see he had his hand hidden behind his back. Always a dangerous situation! “Ryan, if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to tell every person on this playground that you are going to marry me,” she threatened, which was the worst threat she could come up with.
It worked! Instantly, Ryan’s face paled. But he was more resilient and not as stupid as some of the other boys in her class. With a shake of his head, his confidence returned. “You wouldn’t!”
Darn it, he’d called her bluff! There was no way she’d say anything like that, considering Ryan was gross and disgusting. All boys were gross, but Ryan, her nemesis, was even worse than all the others combined!
“Don’t push me!” she growled.
Ryan straightened to his already impressive height, putting on the innocent expression that had gotten him out of trouble more often than not in his eight year life. “What? I’m not doing anything.”
Cynthia’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. If it wasn’t a spider, it was a snake. If not one of those, he’d find something to do to torment her! His efforts might be as simple as pulling her braids. Or as irritating as running faster, climbing the monkey bars faster and higher, or pulling some horrifically creative prank…all of it just irked her!
“You’re always doing something Ryan Dalton!” she snapped, stomping off, flipping her blond braids over her shoulders as she went.
Ryan watched her leave grinning as his mind worked on his next torment. The snake wrapped around his wrist wiggled slightly and he lifted it up to his face. “Sorry. We weren’t quiet enough this time.” The snake’s only response was a fascinating flick of its tongue.
Walking over to the edge of the playground, he knelt down and carefully released the snake, watching to make sure it found cover and safety before returning to his friends on the other side of the playground. Unfortunately, his teacher called an end to recess before he could come up with another plan.
Glancing behind him, he spotted Cynthia standing with a group of her friends. He waited for a moment, ignoring his own friends who nudged him back towards the school building. Waited. Waited.
He grinned when Cynthia glanced over her shoulder, sending another glare his way. “Yes!” Only then did he turn on his heel and raced into class. Of all the girls in school, Cynthia was the most fun to torment. Ryan had no idea why, he thought as he pulled out his math homework. He just loved it!
Cynthia sighed with…relief? Not exactly relief, she thought. And actually, now that Ryan was gone, recess had lost its appeal.
She truly hated him. Her mother said that she shouldn’t hate anyone, but her mother never had to deal with Ryan Dalton. He was always trying to irk her and, usually, he succeeded. He was a bad boy! Turning away, she looked at her friends who were playing tic-tac-toe in the dirt with a stick.
Boring! With a sigh, she looked around, trying to find something more interesting to do.
“Wanna race around the field? I bet we could run fast enough to jump onto that branch!”
Three of the girls jumped up. “Yeah! Let’s do it!”
Cynthia grinned, more than ready for the burst of excitement. “Okay, we’ll start at the swing set, then race to the baseball field. We have to touch each of the bases, then sprint to the slide and then over to the monkey bars.”
The girls followed Cynthia’s path with their eyes, then nodded their agreement as they lined up.
“Ready? Set. Go!” Cynthia hollered.
And they were off, racing and giggling as they ran to the baseball field, kicking up dust as they rounded each of the bases, then off to the monkey bars. “Go up the slide!” one of them called out. As a group they swerved, running towards the ladder of the slide set up on the opposite side of the playground. Four girls up, four of them down…since Cynthia had been the first one to slide down the hot metal slide, she paused at the bottom in the worn out, dirt circle, dancing from the heat since the sun had spiked the temperature of the metal slide to about one thousand degrees. The denim of her jeans wasn’t enough protection against that kind of heat. That meant that the other girls got ahead of her as they raced over to the monkey bars.
A moment later, all four of them tumbled to the ground in a pile, trying to catch their breath.
Ryan looked out the window of the school, watching the girls race around the baseball diamond. He chuckled when Cynthia’s butt burned from the slide, but the smile disappeared when he watched her race ahead of the other girls.
With a sigh, he turned back to the teacher, trying to pay attention. Fractions. Really? What was the point? Wouldn’t it be better to go outside and run around? Especially since he could run faster than Cynthia! Yeah, beating Cyn was much more important than fractions!
Wasn’t running and breathing in the sunny, warm air more important than learning if there were five slices or ten slices to a pie? He was going to eat the whole pie anyway, he thought, hoping the pie was cherry. His favorite was cherry. Although, maybe blueberry pie would be better. Because then he could eat the whole blueberry pie and not save any for Cynthia. Right in front of her! Even now, as the teacher droned on about stupid fractions, he could picture Cynthia’s furious expression. He’d seen her at the county fair last summer and knew that her favorite was blueberry. Yeah, it would be awesome to eat the whole blueberry pie right in front of her. She’d get that angry look in her pretty…uh…ugly brown eyes and her nose would squinch up. It always squinched up when she was angry. And because she was so much fun to torment, he saw that squinched up nose a lot.
“Ryan!” the teacher interrupted his daydream.
“Yes ma’am?”
“Could you tell me the answer to number four?”
Ryan had no idea which “number four” she was talking about, but he glanced swiftly around the room, noticing there were worksheets on every desk now. Oh yeah. Fractions. Parts of a pie.
Looking at the paper his teacher had set on his desk at some point, he quickly calculated the problem. “Five eights,” he answered.
The teacher looked stunned and Ryan knew that she’d been trying to trick him. She did that a lot. He didn’t understand why, but didn’t really care either. He was able to keep up easily in school, even though the teachers kept putting him in the most difficult classes. He kept up too easily, some might say. The principal had spoken to his mother about moving him up a grade. But Ryan had forcefully rejected that idea. And yeah, some might think that his rea
soning was stupid. He didn’t care. Life was about having fun and if he moved up a grade, then he wouldn’t have the same recess as Cynthia Hemmings. What fun would that be?
Chapter 2
Nine Years Later…
“Hey, Cyn! Wait up!”
Cynthia turned, hugging her books to her chest defensively as Ryan Dalton hurried down the hallway. As a senior, Ryan was one of those guys that every girl wanted to date and every guy wanted to be. Obnoxiously tall, weirdly smart, incredibly handsome, mostly due to that charming grin that made the girls sigh and flutter, and unusually athletic with an easy smile as well as eyes that suggested he knew things he shouldn’t.
Ryan had stopped tormenting her as he had in elementary school, (which she’d only admit her disappointment silently to herself) but whenever they passed each other in the hallways, he looked at her. And every time, she felt a funny flip in her stomach.
During her freshman year of high school, his look had been taunting, as if he were just waiting for an opportunity when he could do something horrible to her again. There was that startled look a few months ago when she’d worn a dress to school. And then again when she’d worn the jeans from last year that had been a bit too tight. She’d tossed those jeans out as soon as she’d gotten home because they were too uncomfortable.
But this past year, his look had been…curious. Curious in a strange and different way that she didn’t really understand. Then last week, he’d looked at her differently. It hadn’t been threatening…not really. His look had been…softer. Her silly reactions to his glances before had been bad enough. But when he’d looked at her that afternoon, she’d blushed. It had been the first time in her life that she’d blushed over a man and Cynthia had gone home, flopped on her bed and wondered about her reaction.
Had she gone soft? Cynthia had learned the hard way not to trust Ryan – and vice versa! Every time Ryan had tormented her, she’d gotten right back at him, giving as good as she got. So going soft would be really bad!
Not to mention…well, when he looked at her like that, she didn’t understand why she felt soft and gushy inside. And she really didn’t understand why she felt that weird sensation in her belly.
Even worse, Cynthia really didn’t understand why she looked for Ryan in the hallways lately. As they walked from one class to the next, she’d tried to keep her eyes down and not glance towards his classrooms or where he usually passed her in the hallway, but each day, she failed. No matter how hard she tried, at the last moment, when she knew that she would pass by him, she looked up and…he was staring right back at her with that strange light in his eyes.
Which is why Cynthia waited in the busy hallway, the other students rushing around her as she waited for Ryan to jog over. But Cynthia wasn’t stupid. She eyed his hands, bracing herself for him to toss a snake at her or maybe a spider. She wasn’t afraid of either, but he didn’t know that.
“What do you want?” she asked. Did her voice sound breathless? Should she pull back? Dealing with Ryan Dalton was always tricky. For too long, she’d hated him. All through elementary school, she’d fought against him, pushed hard to win the dares and challenges he’d tossed her way. And yet, she couldn’t forget the day she’d met Ryan. It had been her first day of kindergarten. She’d been too scared to enter the building, so she hid behind a nearby tree, peering nervously around the base of the trunk. Ryan had been walking to school as well but caught sight of her. She spotted him first and tried to duck behind the tree, but Ryan walked over to her anyway.
“It’s okay,” he’d told her gently. “Here, take my hand and I’ll walk you to class, okay?”
Back then, Ryan had only been a couple of inches taller than she was. At five and seven, she’d thought he was the nicest boy in school. He’d walked her right to the door of her classroom, introducing her to the teacher. “You’re going to be okay,” he’d promised. And because he’d been a big, strong second grader, Cynthia had believed him wholeheartedly.
She’d seen him watching her that year and, for a long time, she’d convinced herself that he was looking out for her, ensuring that she was okay.
It hadn’t been until she’d reached the sophisticated and confident age of six that he’d started tormenting her.
Fifth and sixth grade had been lovely. Ryan had graduated from elementary school and gone off to the other building, which contained grades seven through twelve. Her mornings, afternoons, and recess periods had been blissfully free of spiders, snakes, worms, and tormenting. If they’d been a bit boring, if she sort of, kind of, maybe, perhaps missed the spark of excitement created whenever Ryan was around, she’d never admit that to anyone. Ever!
But now, watching Ryan hurry to catch up with her, she tried not to melt into the locker that barely kept her on her feet. The one or two inch height advantage from first grade had expanded over the years and now he towered over her. At six feet, four inches, Ryan was more than eight inches taller than she was and she hated it! She also hated that she felt all hot and melty inside, even as she cringed, wondering what he wanted.
“What do you want?” she asked warily.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” he told her. Showing her his empty hands, he laughed as only a confident boy could. “I promise, no snakes or spiders or slugs this time.”
Cynthia didn’t trust him. Not even a little. She’d done an excellent job of avoiding him now that they were both in high school, furtive glances in the hallways aside, but that was mostly because he had football practice most days and she helped her father out at the bar her family owned and ran.
“Don’t you have practice?” she asked, turning and heading for the exit where the buses were waiting for students.
He walked right beside her, his longer legs easily keeping up with her pace. “Canceled. Coach’s wife went into labor earlier today. Want a ride home?”
A ride home? With Ryan? Did she look that stupid? “I’m fine. The bus will get me home.” She continued to walk towards the line of buses, trying to dismiss him.
“I can get you home faster,” he promised, jogging ahead slightly so he could get in front of her.
“No, thanks.”
That’s when he whipped out the big guns and smiled down at her. That smile…darn it, he was good! “Aww, come on. You hate riding the bus. Everyone hates riding the bus. Why not let me give you a ride.”
Impatiently, Cynthia frowned at his chin instead of his eyes. She knew better than to look him in the eye when he wanted something. His eyes were too…powerful. All the girls in school oohhd and aaahhed annoyingly about Ryan’s eyes, saying they like Clint Eastwood’s, but Ryan’s were better. Cynthia had looked up Clint Eastwood doubtfully, but once she’d looked into the man’s baby blues, she’d conceded that Ryan had the same piercing eyes, which could easily glow with happiness or mischief, depending on what pranks he had up his sleeve.
“Why would I get into a car with you?” she demanded, stepping around him and making a beeline for her bus.
“Because the school bus takes twice as long. And we could maybe…”
She froze, her fury building. Did he think she was stupid? She spun around and let him have it!
“Look, for years, you’ve tormented and pestered me to the point of insanity, humiliated me in front of my friends, beaten me at whatever sport we played, and generally made my life hell. So no, I’m not getting into your car, because I don’t want to be dropped off on the side of the road and forced to walk home, or lose a tire, or be dumped in a place I don’t know, just to give you a chuckle! Thanks, but no way am I that stupid!”
With that, she spun on her heel, heading towards the busses and freedom from Ryan’s presence. Darn it, even his shoulders were nice!
He didn’t give up. “I promise, just a ride home.”
“I said no! There’s nothing more to say!”
Ryan caught up with her and touched her wrist gently. Cynthia cringed away warily.
“I get it.”
Ignore him
, she told herself. Just keep walking and don’t look back!
Darn it! Her feet slowed of their own accord. “What do you get?”
He grinned and her stomach flipped over. Several times! Her knees wobbled slightly and her breath caught in her throat. No! She didn’t like him and she didn’t like what happened to her when he got close!
“You’re afraid to be alone with me.” Shaking his head, he didn’t back up. “For years, I thought you were the bravest person around. You never shied away from taking me on, no matter what I did to you. I couldn’t even get a scream out of you when I put that frog in your sleeping bag on the school camping trip in third grade! Kudos, by the way,” his eyes sparkled with humor colored with admiration. “But I guess that courageous girl is gone.” He shook his head, feigning disappointment, and backed up. “Too bad. She was a real bad ass.”
With that, he walked away, still shaking his head.
Cynthia watched him go, furious all over again. Darn it! Why did he push her buttons so thoroughly? And calling her a bad ass…that was probably the best compliment anyone could give her. He knew it too. He knew it and was using her pride against her!
No way would she ever admit that she’d been terrified of the frog in her sleeping bag. She’d never, ever, tell him that she’d stayed up all night, shuddering in horror at the worry that there was another one!
“I’m an idiot!” she muttered, before sighing and following behind Ryan. “An absolute idiot!” She pulled out her cell phone to text her friend, who was already on the bus, letting her know what was going on.
She didn’t say a word, even ignored his smug grin when she yanked open the passenger side door of his ancient, beat up, and filthy Jeep Wrangler. He slid into the driver’s seat without a word. But Cynthia paused for a moment, peering under the passenger seat, in the back seats, and even opened the glove compartment. Nothing jumped out, slithered, or hissed at her. Gingerly, she slid into the seat.
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