He turned to look and she took it as her cue to whirl around, determined to be gone before he faced forward again.
She hurried downstairs and joined everyone else outside, shifting her bare feet on the cold sidewalk as she raised her face to the falling snow.
No one paid her any attention, thankfully. The focus was on the snow.
The icy flakes felt good on her overheated face.
Nolan arrived next to her. “Here.” He dropped a pair of shoes beside her feet.
“Those aren’t mine.”
“I know. They’re mine. Slip them on before your feet freeze.”
She crossed her arms tightly against the cold, refusing to accept his shoes.
He laughed low. “You really are stubborn. They’re just shoes.”
She locked her jaw, watching as Sanjana rushed into the yard and started trying to scrape snow off the leaves of a bush to form a meager snowball.
Emmaline laughed at her and shook her head. “There’s not enough snow yet, you fool!”
Hayden’s feet were starting to actually burn from the cold. She really should put the shoes on, but she couldn’t do it.
She turned to go back inside the house.
She should go home. If it wasn’t so late, it wouldn’t even be a question. However, in her mind, going home would be admitting that Nolan got under her skin. And what would Emmaline think if she bailed on her? She’d agreed to tutor her.
Hayden moved to the living room window and watched everyone through the open shutters.
Well, not everyone. Beau stepped up beside her, watching the others alongside her.
Sanjana jumped on Emmaline’s back and rode her like a horse. The two girls galloped through the falling snow, laughing and shouting loudly, indifferent to the neighbors they were probably waking. Even Lia and Monica were getting into it.
“How long until someone calls the cops?” Hayden asked Beau.
He chuckled. “It won’t happen. Everyone on this street loves the Martins. They have barbecues and block parties. Whenever a kid falls and scrapes a knee, they run them over here so that Mrs. Martin can patch them up.”
“For real? Block parties?” She shook her head with a snort. “Definitely isn’t like our neighborhood, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed.
A few more moments passed as they observed the antics of Emmaline and her friends in silence. Then Beau asked, “What are you doing here, Hayden? Is it really the money?”
“You say that with such skepticism. Like money is so not important. But we come from the same world, Beau.” A world where lack of money only added to the misery. She didn’t need to explain such things to him, but she did it anyway. Maybe his closeness with the Martins had blinded him. “You know it matters.”
“This is causing a lot of trouble. Is it worth it?”
She resisted asking, Trouble for who?
She stared through the shutters at Emmaline. She was a nice girl, and she thought Hayden could help her. She wanted some pointers from Hayden so that she could come out of her shell. That wasn’t asking a lot. Wasn’t she entitled to that? Couldn’t Emmaline make that simple decision regarding her own life?
Her gaze drifted to Nolan Martin.
The boy could kiss—and that had absolutely nothing to do with what she was doing here. She had to keep telling herself that. He had a girlfriend. She had to keep telling herself that, too. She’d never fooled around with someone else’s boyfriend before. At least not knowingly. She wasn’t looking for more drama in her life. She didn’t love that she had done it . . . didn’t love that while she was kissing him, his lips belonged to someone else.
“There won’t be any trouble,” she said as Nolan turned his head to look at the house, directly at the window. Her breath caught even as she told herself it was too dark for him to see her standing there.
Yet she felt certain that he did know she was right there on the other side of the glass—that he could see her.
And she felt certain he knew she was staring back at him.
She turned and took herself to Emmaline’s room and waited for them to join her.
She would be good. She would focus on why she was here in the first place. Under no circumstances would she think about what she just did with Nolan. It would not affect her. Instead, she would play the part of a “normal” girl spending the night at a slumber party—as though she did these things all the time and didn’t just watch them on TV.
They piled back into the room, still excited over the snow, and Hayden faked it. She pretended to be like the rest of them, staying up and answering their hypothetical questions and going to bed later than she ever would. With school and her job, she valued her sleep, but tonight she acted as carefree as these girls and stayed up way too late.
She woke with a foot in her face—another reason why sleepovers weren’t her thing. Why be crammed into a double bed when she could have a bed to herself? She pushed the offending foot away with a grunt, thankful at least that it didn’t stink.
Hayden lifted her head and scanned the room, locating Emmaline on the floor, curled under a SpongeBob blanket. Sanjana and Monica were nowhere in sight.
Lia’s foot drifted back into her face and she shoved at it. “Gah! Enough with the foot already.”
Emmaline stirred on the floor. Lifting her head, she rubbed at her eyes and looked around. She took in Hayden and Lia on the bed. “Sanjana?” she called out, twisting her head toward her bathroom door. “Monica?”
“They left,” Lia muttered. “Parents picked them up hours ago.”
Hayden didn’t know exactly what time they all fell asleep. It had been well after three in the morning. They’d watched a movie and gone over a few more kissing techniques. It was why she was here, after all. That hadn’t changed.
Groaning, Hayden pushed herself up. “I have to get to work.”
“Aw, do you have to? I thought we could run to get some doughnuts.” Emmaline propped herself up on her elbows. “My treat.”
Of course, it had to be her treat. Spending money on doughnuts wasn’t an option for Hayden.
Hayden stood up and started folding her bedding. “It’s been . . . fun, but I really need to go.” She didn’t know if fun was the word, and she knew she didn’t sound convincing.
“Can we hang out tomorrow?” Emmaline asked hopefully.
Hayden hated to crush her, but this wasn’t good for her. Money withstanding, she felt the need to put distance between herself and the Martin family. “I’m pretty busy.”
“What about my lessons? We’ve only just started. I’ve got a lot left to learn.”
“I don’t know, Emmaline,” Hayden hedged. Now that Nolan knew about it, she didn’t feel right coaching his sister. “This is . . .”
“Is it because of last night? My brother?” She blew out a quick breath. “Don’t let him intimidate you.”
Hayden met her gaze directly. “He doesn’t.” Yes, he made her feel things, but he didn’t intimidate her.
“Wow. It’s like a winter wonderland out there,” Lia announced from where she stood peering out of the blinds.
Right then Hayden’s phone dinged. She frowned as she read the text from her manager.