“Good.”
She started to walk away.
“And, Claire?”
She turned around.
“I asked Mr. Green to switch you into my algebra class. Mr. Dunnan seems to think he bores you and you need a challenge.”
“You what?”
“See you tomorrow.” Bennett smiled, completely amused.
Claire shook her head and started her laps.
“Did you volunteer to take her?” Cooper asked.
He shook his head. “Dunnan wanted me to cut her from the team. I negotiated to take her off his hands.”
“Smart.”
“She’s going to hate it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to make her work. Dunnan lets kids skate. Should have retired five years ago. When you demand excellence, you get it. When you accept mediocrity, you get it. Remember that, if you decide to fall into the trap of being a full-time teacher.”
“I’ll do that.”
Claire ran by.
“You got it from here?” Bennett asked.
“Yeah.”
“I want to see her sweating. If she’s partying, she better not bring it on my field.”
Any previous conclusions that Bennett was one of the bad guys vanished.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Claire collapsed onto the living room sofa the second she walked in the door. Not only had she suffered a headache the entire day, Cooper ran her like a trainer working an Ironman competitor.
“That sounds like a bad day,” Jax said as she walked around the corner of the kitchen.
“You don’t want to know.”
Claire flung an arm over her eyes to block out the sun.
She heard Jax walk in the room and then exhale as she sat down. “You’re right. I don’t give a crap what happened in school, unless it involved Cooper. What I want is the details of last night after I got out of the car.”
Before Cooper picked them up, Claire and Jax had agreed that Jax would give them a few minutes to have a private conversation. Now Claire regretted that plan.
“The long story, or the short story?” Claire asked.
“Whatever one you want to deliver.”
Claire’s arms slid off her head, and she pushed herself into a sitting position.
“Cooper has a thing for me.”
Jax sat silent, blinked a few times. “Okay, and?”
“What do you mean, ‘okay, and?’”
“Sorry, Claire, but that’s obvious. I think you’d have to be an idiot to not see it. Even the guys on the team see it.”
“What? Are they talking about—”
Jax stopped her with a shake of the head. “Of course not. But you can tell by how they look at the two of you that they know there’s an attraction.”
Claire pointed to her chest. “I’m not doing anything, it’s him.”
“Maybe it’s more him.”
She kept shaking her head. “No, it’s all him. I’m not instigating anything.”
“You flirt with him all the time.”
“I do not,” Claire huffed.
One look from Jax and she rescinded her statement. “Okay, we banter. But it’s always been like that. I have the pool stick, he makes some kind of phallic joke. It’s banter. Not flirting.”
Jax sat back, crossed her arms over her chest.
“You know when I’m flirting, you’ve seen it. Remember Blane in the stacks at Richter? That was flirting. And Steve last year in Vegas? That was flirting.”
“That’s a flower calling a bumblebee to mate. It’s called getting laid, not what you and Cooper are doing.”
Claire couldn’t believe her best friend was calling her out. “We’re friends. And last night he ruined that by telling me he’s had a thing for me since we met. Told me he left sunny California for dreary London because I was too young and naive to handle him when I first got here.”
Jax narrowed her eyes. “Is that really how he said that?”
Claire’s headache was coming back. “No. He said I was a child.”
“A child?”
Claire stood up from the couch, started for the kitchen. “He kept repeating that I was eighteen back then.”
Jax followed behind. “Which is true.”
Claire yanked open the fridge, pulled out a beer. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Always. But I just don’t see where all the fire is about this. Cooper owns up to the flirting comments and puppy-dog looks he gives you, and you’re pissed because he walked away six years ago. Walked away because you were barely eighteen and he was what? Twenty-four, twenty-five? Think about that, Claire. We’re back in high school, the kids there . . . Do you look at any of them and think, Well, maybe?”
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
“Okay . . . but what if you did?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“So fast-forward six years, you see that guy again . . .”
Jax was starting to make sense.
“It’s different.”
“Why?”
Claire twisted off the cap of her beer, took a sip. “Because Cooper and I are friends. He was the only one on the team that treated me close to an equal.”
Jax grabbed the beer from Claire’s grasp and took a drink. She handed it back and said, “That’s because you’re the closest in age. And guess what, you’re not eighteen any longer. He’s not too old, and you’re not too young. There is zero ick factor to the two of you getting together.”
Like picking a lock, the pieces slid into place and finally started to click. “But he’s my friend.”
“Trying to say you’ve never thought of him as more?”
“No.” Her denial was quick.
Jax started to smile. “You’ve never checked out his ass? The guy can fill out a pair of jeans.”
Some of the anger she’d harbored all day eased. “That’s true.”
“And that smile. When he’s belly laughing he has the tiniest dimples.”
Claire closed her eyes, pictured his smile. She hadn’t noticed the dimples, but now that she thought about it . . . She opened her eyes to find Jax staring at her.
“Sounds like you have a thing for him,” Claire said.
“Wouldn’t matter if I did, and I don’t, by the way, but it wouldn’t matter. The guy can’t stop looking at you.”
Claire put her beer down, leaned against the kitchen counter. “I don’t know what to do.”
Jax moved across from her. “Where did you leave things last night?”
“I was shocked. The man uprooted his whole life because of me, and I had no idea. And here I thought I was the smart one.”
“Okay.”
Claire looked up. “I ran. I didn’t know what to say, so I bolted.”
“What about today? You saw him at track.”
Claire found a smile for the first time that day. “I ran again. Only he was holding the whip.”
“What?”
“Claire Porter got into some trouble. Well, not trouble so much as showed off for a couple of teachers. I bragged about being hungover, then shoved Eastman’s algebra equations down his throat. Petty of me, but it felt kinda good. Then in Dunnan’s class, I did it again. Which probably worked to my advantage since I’ve already made my connection with Elsie in that group, and should move on.”