Deal-Breaker

by Siri Caldwell

  “Any questions?” Jori yelled. It was a sexy kind of hoarse‌—‌feminine and rough‌—‌the kind she wouldn’t mind listening to all day. “Any questions besides how I manage to be so adorable?”

  She was kind of adorable. Full of energy despite the early morning hour, throwing herself into her job, trying to get her students to have fun and maybe fall in love with her just a little bit. And that hair: a fauxhawk with a shock of blond flopping at the top and darker blond fuzz on the sides. Rae was sure she wasn’t the only one in the pool who yearned to find out if it was as soft and touchable as it looked.

  “Push those arms! Push those floats through the water like you mean it.”

  The twenty women at the shallow end of the pool churned the water with their foam dumbbells with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  Jori pumped her arms to demonstrate the level of energy she wanted to see. “Just because I can’t see you cheating, doesn’t mean you get to slack off.”

  Inspired, Rae jogged faster.

  Jori must have noticed because she gestured in her direction, inviting her to come closer. “Hey, sunshine. Why don’t you join us?”

  Rae smiled and shook her head. Jori meant well, but her class was amateur hour. If she knew Rae was a professional dancer, she’d understand that waving her arms around and looking goofy was not on her to‌-‌do list.

  “Come on. It’ll be fun.” Jori jumped into the pool with a splash and swam toward her in her sneakers and swimsuit, looking intent on a private conversation.

  Oh crap, Rae was going to have to find a way to not hurt her feelings.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rae.”

  “A ray of sunshine. I love it! No one’s ever come up with that one before.”

  “Actually‌—‌”

  “No, don’t tell me. That’s your name for today.”

  “Um…‌okay.” Sooner or later she’d find out it was her name every day. “I’m doing my own exercises. But thanks for the invitation.”

  “You’re welcome to join us anytime.”

  Rae was still figuring out how to make it clear that wouldn’t be happening when Jori swam off. The class was Jori’s focus, and she didn’t look back.

  Well, okay. That was easy. Jori wasn’t offended.

  “Ladies, no slacking. Everyone should be moving left now.” Jori pointed to the side to give them a visual, but pointed the wrong way. Some of her students went left, others right, and a few were so confused they stalled out and did nothing. “Your other left,” Jori corrected herself. “Right. Left. One of those.”

  Jori climbed back out of the pool. “Watch. This is how I want you to do this next move.” She faced away from her students and kicked one leg behind her, in and out. “Don’t be checking out my butt, though.”

  Now that she mentioned it…‌

  Jori turned to face the class and added an arm crisscross. “Your arms don’t have to be straight,” she reminded them.

  Several women snickered. Jori did the move again, hamming it up.

  “Speaking of…‌” Jori fiddled with her music and Kaoli Morgenroth’s first hit, “Alpha in Heels”, came on.

  Rae threw her arms overhead and whooped. The aerobics class would think she was one of those rabid fans who desperately wanted Kaoli to be gay, but really she was just happy anytime anyone played a Kaoli song, because it meant her popularity was on the rise. Kaoli Morgenroth was a big enough name that she could afford to put on extravagant shows with dozens of dancers and backup singers and band members littering the stage, but she’d never had a song reach number one, no matter how much her fans thought she deserved to. And that was going to change. Her voice was good, her shows were awesome, and one day soon she was going to write the hit song that would make her a household name.

  “Who read her interview in the latest issue of Celebrity Crush?” Jori asked. “What was that quote? ‘I’m not opposed to being with a woman?’”

  “‘I’m not opposed to being with a woman if things don’t work out with my boyfriend,’” amended one of the students.

  God, had Kaoli really said that? Of course she had‌—‌she’d say anything to get attention. Jori’s students laughed, but Rae had no sense of humor when it came to Kaoli. It wasn’t nice to dangle hope in front of the lesbian fans, to whisper promises like I might be gay, to rev them up with someday…‌, to say I’m not opposed to being with a woman when she damn well was. She’d had the opportunity to be with a woman and she’d turned it down.

  Not that Rae would tell them that. Kaoli would have her fired. The fans didn’t really think Kaoli was going to sleep with them, anyway. She was a face on an album cover. An image. A fantasy. They didn’t care that sometimes she wasn’t a nice person. Rae knew exactly how much of a jerk she could be, and even she didn’t care. Dancing for Kaoli Morgenroth was a dream job, and Rae had promised herself long ago that who Kaoli did or did not sleep with was not worth wasting brain power on. Who Kaoli said she did or did not sleep with was not worth wasting brain power on. All that mattered was getting in shape and getting back onstage as soon as possible.

  By the time the water aerobics class was over and Rae had aqua‌-‌cycled for another hour, her legs were shaking and refusing to do what she told them to. At the other end of the pool deck, Jori chatted easily with her students as they put away their foam dumbbells and flotation belts and left for the locker rooms in the small building beside the pool.

  When the last student was gone, Jori walked to Rae’s end of the pool and squatted at the edge. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” Rae came closer so she wouldn’t have to raise her voice, paddling mostly with her arms because her exhausted leg was pretty much useless. She stopped an arm’s length away, momentum drawing her closer than she’d intended. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not a real guest. You don’t have to make sure I’m having a good time.”

  Jori balanced her weight on her hands, lowered her feet into the water, and sat and leaned forward, hands curled around the edge of the tile. Her nose was sunburned and peeling. “What if I want to?”

  Her charming smile was hard to resist. Her legs were close enough that she could touch Rae with her toes if she wanted to. Too close. But Rae didn’t back up. Was it objectification to notice how athletic but deliciously non‌-‌skinny she looked, or the way her modest one‌-‌piece swimsuit strained to cover her not‌-‌so‌-‌modest bust?

  Not that Rae was staring. Staring would be rude, and she was a feminist and didn’t do that sort of thing. Which was kind of too bad, because now that she was getting the full effect of her…‌smile…‌really, her smile, not anything else…‌close up, she didn’t want to look away.

  But she did. Right into friendly green eyes that made her glad she was floating in the water and not trying to maintain her balance on land.

  * * *

  Jori had never once seen their new visitor out of the water since she’d appeared about a week ago, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the pair of crutches leaning against a deck chair were hers. And claiming she wasn’t a real guest? She had a feeling she knew what that meant‌—‌it meant her ray of sunshine was another one of Sierra’s and Melanie’s charity cases.

  Took one to know one. When they’d learned Jori was putting herself through grad school and teaching fitness classes to put food on the table for herself and her four‌-‌year‌-‌old daughter, they’d immediately offered her free room and board at their lodge in exchange for being their resident water aerobics instructor, which was awfully generous for only a few hours a week of work. She was surprised Sierra hadn’t asked her to keep an eye on her injured pet project, make sure she didn’t drown, but maybe Sierra wasn’t aware of Rae’s plans for her pool. Not that Rae needed watching. She seemed to be quite…‌capable.

  Ignoring the ladder, Rae swam to the edge of the pool a few body lengths away from where Jori was sitting and did a pushup to propel herself out of the water. She paused there,
supported by only her arms, and waited for the water to sluice down her skin. Then she swiveled to sit on the tile coping, rolled onto her side, and from there got to her feet in a weird maneuver that should have looked a lot more awkward than it did before she straightened and limped toward her crutches.

  Rae was all leg. Long legs, long arms, long everything. God help her if Jori ever saw her in heels, because adding three or four or five inches to those legs would boggle the mind. She looked nothing like a bony supermodel, though. Muscles flexed in her back as she swung her arms to keep her balance. And her glutes. And her shoulders. She might be skinny‌—‌she had so little body fat that she actually had to pad herself with two flotation belts, not just one, like any normal person, to keep her head above water‌—‌but she was ripped. Everywhere.

  Except for that one leg.

  “What happened to you?” Jori asked, following her like the nosy ambassador of hospitality Rae had asked her not to be. She couldn’t help herself.

  Rae wobbled and grabbed her crutches. “Dance injury.”

  “Doing what?”

  Rae was shivering in her swimsuit despite the weather, and no wonder‌—‌it wouldn’t kill her to put on a little body fat. She wrapped a towel around her chest as best she could while holding her crutches. “Landing.”

  Gorgeous, but defensive. Although it could be that the pain from whatever was wrong with her leg made her irritable.

  “Will you be here tomorrow? So I can annoy you some more with my charmingly intrusive questions?”

  Rae’s frustrated expression softened. She had nice eyes. Whoever loved her was lucky, getting to linger in the glowing apology and forgiveness that transformed her average brown eyes to shining warm mocha.

  Jori blinked. Where had that thought come from?

  Rae tossed her head in a flirtatious move that was meant to be done with luxurious long hair but worked surprisingly well with her stubby ponytail. “Come back tomorrow and find out.”

  Chapter Three

  Jori had visited Professor Walston‌—‌her Advanced Financial Accounting Standards professor‌—‌in his office many times during the course of her intensive, year‌-‌round, eighteen‌-‌month master’s program, and she’d never seen him sit behind his desk. He always rolled his ergonomic chair with its ridiculous number of creaking knobs and levers away from his cluttered desk and crossed his ankle over his knee like he was following some rule he’d read in an industry journal for how to keep things informal with his students.

  Not today, though. Today he sat behind his desk.

  It seemed she and her classmate Domenic Eubanks had turned in identical answers, including identically worded essays, on their exams.

  “After your excellent participation in class and the other work I’ve seen you do, I must say I’m disappointed in this turn of events,” her professor was saying. He’d been talking for a while. Academic dishonesty was unacceptable, and he’d thought better of her, and of course he’d be speaking with Domenic, but his teaching assistant had nothing but good things to say about the young man, although she shouldn’t worry about that because no one was going to show favoritism toward anyone.

  “I have no idea what happened,” Jori protested. “I already told you I wasn’t sitting anywhere near him, so I don’t know how he could have seen my answers. All I know is, I didn’t cheat.”

  “The evidence says otherwise.”

  She tried another tack. “Can I retake the exam? Prove I know the material?”

  Professor Walston stared down his nose over his glasses at her, using up all the air in the office. “I’m afraid not.”

  “There must be something I can do to prove I didn’t copy his answers.”

  His face remained stony. “Go home and give it some thought.”

  “That’s it?” His lack of suggestions was not encouraging. If his only plan was to wait for a confession, there wasn’t a lot she could do.

  “If I can’t determine which one of you cheated, or how the cheating was accomplished, I’m afraid both you and Mr. Eubanks will have to be expelled.”

  * * *

  Jori escaped the building taking extra‌-‌long strides and cut a diagonal path across the campus green toward the parking lot. It wasn’t just her future hanging in the balance‌—‌it was her daughter’s, too. As much as she loved teaching water aerobics, it wasn’t enough to support the two of them indefinitely. She needed to move on to a better career. She’d invested a lot in this master’s program and she needed to graduate.

  She didn’t see Axel with his bulky backpack slung over one shoulder until she’d crashed into the hard corners of the textbooks inside and he’d gone tumbling to the ground.

  “Sorry,” she spit out, rubbing her arm where they’d hit. What was he, invisible?

  Axel scrambled to his feet and struck a casual pose as if nothing had happened. It would be bad for his image if anyone noticed he’d been knocked over by a girl.

  She and Axel had met in undergrad, back when he thought he was straight. They’d dated for two whole years before he lost patience and blew up at her for not having sex with him and accused her of being gay. She got scared she’d lose him, and Baylee was born nine months later. He broke up with her anyway, but he never really disappeared. Now they were in the same grad program together. Axel joked that she’d chosen this school because she couldn’t resist following him, but that was so not true. Her mother thought she’d done it for Baylee’s sake, but that wasn’t it, either. They’d shared the same favorite econ professor junior year, and it was that professor who’d convinced both of them that Tonoloway College had everything they were looking for. Nothing personal about it.

  Axel hiked his backpack onto his shoulder. “Having a bad day?”

  “You could say that.”

  Jori spared a glance behind her at the building where Professor Walston had his office. Axel would hear about it soon enough, so she might as well tell him. “Walston thinks I let Domenic Eubanks copy off my exam. He can’t figure out who cheated, so unless Domenic comes clean, we’re both expelled.”

  Axel’s face went blank with that kind of vacant, slightly panicked look people had when they were about to get in trouble. But he had nothing to do with this, so why would he panic? Was he that alarmed that he couldn’t come up with a snappy, sarcastic comeback? A moment later, he shook it off and resumed his usual blasé expression. “Who except one of his boy toys would want to help Domenic?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think I’ll try that argument. Walston is convinced it’s me, and anything I say against Domenic will make me look bitchy, and with my luck, guilty.”

  “What did Domenic do, copy your essay word for word? He’s not wily enough to switch things up?”

  “Apparently not.”

  Axel played with the strap of his backpack. “I know you didn’t do it.”

  Jori spluttered. Of course she didn’t do it. She and Axel were two of the best students in the class. And if for some inexplicable reason she were to copy off anyone, it would be off Axel’s exam, not Domenic’s. Axel at least would have the right answers.

  “You’re taking my side? I’m touched.”

  “Don’t get all gooey on me. It’s just…‌I saw Domenic pick up your test booklet after you left the room. It had to be yours. You turned in your answers right before he did.”

  Oh God. Oh God. Axel could save her butt. This was perfect. Perfect.

  “You saw him copy my answers?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Wait…‌what? He didn’t want to help her? “You said‌—‌”

  “I said I didn’t see him copy your answers. I saw him pick up a test booklet that might have been yours.”

  “Same difference,” Jori said impatiently. She should haul him into Walston’s office right this minute before he decided he hadn’t seen Domenic pick up her exam booklet, either. Honestly, Axel was a good friend, but when the shit hit the fan, he was always the first one to duck.

>   “Who knows what he did with it? He could have picked it up by accident.” Axel shook his head in that irritating know‌-‌it‌-‌all way that she frequently wished professors would put him in his place for. “You know I always sit in the front row. I can’t see what goes on with the rabble in back.”

  The urge to yell was overwhelming, but yelling would get her nowhere. Yelling didn’t work for women, not unless they wanted to be accused of hysterics and labeled mentally unstable. It certainly didn’t work with Axel‌—‌she knew that from personal experience. What worked with Axel was helplessness and falling apart‌—‌two feminine skills she’d never excelled at.

  “If you tell Professor Walston what you saw and clear my name, I’ll do anything you want.” Damsels in distress didn’t grit their teeth, so she tried to relax her face into something approaching a smile. “Anything short of having sex with you,” she added, just in case one disappointing night hadn’t been enough for him. She knew he was sleeping with men these days, but sometimes she got the feeling he still wanted to bang her because that would be guaranteed to miraculously transform him into a respectable straight guy. After all, it had worked so well the first time. “Please. There must be something you want.”

  She hated to sound desperate, but desperation was what was called for. Desperation worked. Begging worked. It wasn’t even an act‌—‌she was desperate. That should make it easy to be convincing, convincing enough to make him respond the way he usually did to desperate females, which was to think he was in control, and when he thought he was in control, he felt safe enough to be magnanimous. She really wanted to get her degree, she had only one semester left before they gave her a piece of paper that would help her get a good job, and she’d be damned if she got kicked out of school so close to the finish line. Especially when she’d done nothing wrong.

  Sure, she could probably transfer to another school, but what school would take her once they learned she’d been expelled for cheating? And even if she did manage it, it would mean retaking some classes if all her credits didn’t transfer, or taking additional classes to meet the new school’s requirements, not to mention moving to another town and finding money for not only tuition but also rent, because she would no longer have Sierra Mosier’s generous part‌-‌time job that came with free housing. She had friends here, too. And babysitting, which was essential, since Axel was unwilling to spend any time at all taking care of their daughter.