“Yeah, but it’s not like you knew I would,” June mutters.
“I had an alarm set so I wouldn’t miss it. I did. I—oh, crap.” Maisey’s patting her hips near about where her pockets should be. “My phone. I lost my phone.”
“Why are you covered in shit?” June asks.
“It’s mud! It’s mud, honey. It’s just really stinky mud. I think. I hope. I was nowhere near the septic tank, but—” She cuts herself off, waving a hand. “Come inside. I’ll get cleaned up, and you can tell me about your game, and I’ll make you dinner. And maybe we can use your phone to find mine.”
“I thought you died,” June whispers.
Maisey blinks at her daughter. “Oh, baby, no. Shh. No, sweetie, I wouldn’t give your father the satisfaction.”
I don’t realize my own heart is in my throat until that exact moment, when I realize Maisey Spencer is 100 percent okay, and 100 percent on my shit list now.
I don’t know if I should yell at her for doing all this by herself, or if I should hug her and tell her I’m glad she’s okay and ask if she needs help cleaning up.
The ideas a filthy, dirty Maisey Spencer is giving me . . .
I settle for scowling at her.
It’s the safest option.
“I thought you died,” June repeats, this time through a sob.
“Oh, baby.” Maisey reaches for her.
June rears back. “You moved me here and I hate it and then you missed the only game I’ve gotten to play in and you didn’t answer my calls and I thought a bear ate you and I’d be all alone because I know Dad doesn’t want me, and now you’re all Oh, no, this is fine, and it is not fine, and stop looking at me. Just stop looking at me.”
She turns around, stares in horror at me and Opal like she forgot we were here, and then takes off at another dead run, this time straight to the house.
Maisey gets three steps before Opal intercepts her.
“Sweetie,” Opal says, reaching out like she wants to pat Maisey on the shoulder but also doesn’t want to get dirty, “why don’t you go find a garden hose? I have a little experience with teenagers who hate you because you’ve made them live here. I’ve got her.”
I don’t call Opal on the lie.
I loved living here with her, even if I never found where I fit in at school and avoided coming back out of fear that she’d taken me in out of obligation.
But the reassurance from my aunt has Maisey’s entire body deflating.
She’s like an empty sack formerly known as a human, coated in mud and the weight of the world.
“Thank you.” The only thing worse than her dull voice is the shine starting in her eyes.
Dammit.
Not the tears.
And the utter defeat.
And the knowledge that my aunt is leaving me here to hose off a woman that I’m currently having unwelcome fantasies about that involve naked mud wrestling.
She’s newly divorced with a teenager who needs all her attention. She’s the mother of one of my students. She has her hands full on this ranch—even if she can handle more than I initially gave her credit for—and I don’t have time or patience for any more drama in my life.
Already spend my days with teenagers, and while I love it, I have my limits.
She is not next-fling material.
No matter what my dick thinks.
“C’mon.” I jerk my head toward the house, knowing my voice is gruff and hoping it’s gruff enough to telegraph Stay away rather than I’m seriously looking forward to this. “I’ll hose you off, and then we can talk about the people you can hire around town to be out here with you while you’re working so you don’t do something dumb, like dropping a log on yourself and turning into wolf food, which anyone can sometimes do no matter how much experience they have.”
Those wounded baby blues study me long enough to make my stomach churn.
Can she see right through me?
Does she know I’d love to have my hands all over her right now?
“You’re seriously going to enjoy this, aren’t you?” she mutters.
“Good chance.”
“Hoping the water’s cold?”
“Like ice.”
I’m lying.
I don’t want to spray her with ice-cold water out of a garden hose.
I want to strip her naked and take her into a steaming-hot shower and kiss her out of sheer relief that she’s okay.
Worse?
I think she knows it.
Somewhere between me riding over to check out what was going on at Tony’s house that morning that she scared Parsnip into throwing me with mountain lion sounds and right now, this very minute, in my head, we’ve become something like friends.
Even if I’ve been avoiding her like the plague.
But no one else in town has appealed to me in the past couple of years the way she has.
Is it just that she’s new?
Is it that she knew and loved Tony?
Is it that I know all too well what it’s like to move to Hell’s Bells to get away from a bad relationship?
Twice?
This isn’t just complicated.
It’s way past that.
She holds my gaze for a long moment before she sighs and trudges past me. “Then let’s get it over with so you can go home and I can clean up everything I’ve fucked up all over again with my teenager.”
Speaking of ice water.
There it is, splashing down on all my fantasies.
I don’t fool around with my kids’ parents. Not my students’ parents and not my players’ parents.
No way in hell I’m letting anyone say I’m playing favorites because I’m boinking someone’s mother.
Again.
No matter how serious or not serious it is.
So I’ll hose her off.
I’ll keep my dick in my pants.
Then I’ll go home and make myself a frozen pot pie, watch a true-crime documentary, jerk off in the shower, go to bed, and do it all over again tomorrow.
At least, that’s what I should do.
We’re about to find out if it’s what I actually do.
Chapter 10
Maisey
You know it’s been a day when facing freezing-cold water from a garden hose isn’t the worst of it.
But having Flint Jackson being the man about to spray me down is pretty damn close.
Much as I want to dislike him, I can’t. And not disliking him makes me like him in ways I have no business liking him. I need to find me, not the first available man who doesn’t hate me.
Anymore.
“How was the soccer game?” I ask Flint while he screws the hose onto the faucet on the side of my house.
We’re standing between an empty flower bed and a dead boxwood. Legit didn’t know you could kill those things, but I guess Uncle Tony had to have some weaknesses. I’m covered in drying mud. I have once again ruined my teenager’s life—but at least I know she doesn’t want me to die—and I’d like nothing more than to pretend Flint is that old man I always thought he was on the occasions Uncle Tony would mention him.
Flint shoots me a look that I like to call his What the hell is wrong with you? look. Dean would regularly ask me what the hell was wrong with me. Once I realized the biggest thing wrong with me was that I was married to a man who thought there was something wrong with me, it was damn easy to figure out what I needed to do to solve my problem, even if executing that plan was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life.