Playing Dirty. Susan Andersen

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      Tried to keep the news to herself.

      Then ultimately caved, because they were a sisterhood and she told them everything.

      “I did it, Poppy. I thought for sure I was going to graduate—if not die—a virgin, but last night I…” Heat crawling up her chest, she suddenly turned shy at the idea of saying the words aloud.

      Jane’s mouth dropped open. “Oh. My. Gawd,” she said slowly. “You did the deed?”

      She nodded.

      Poppy looked perplexed. “With who?” Then her eyes narrowed. “Oh, crap, please tell me it wasn’t Buttface Gallari!”

      “Don’t call him that!” Okay, so she was the one who had given him the title way back when. But still—

      “Just…don’t, okay?” she said in a softer tone and shook her head. “Look, I want to tell you guys everything, and I will—after school when the potential to be overheard isn’t so high.”

      “Yeah, all right,” Poppy agreed. “But the minute we’re clear of this place, I’ve got some questions for you, sister.” Turning Ava loose, she pushed open the lunchroom door, and they walked into the chaos and bedlam of second lunch.

      Trays and crockery clattered, voices reverberated off walls, and students seemed in constant motion as they either moved between the long tables or jockeyed for position at them. Peering around a couple of jocks tossing a baseball back and forth, Ava looked for Cade. Not wanting to appear too obvious when she didn’t immediately locate him, she followed her friends to the lunch counter.

      She’d picked up a tray before she noted an unaccountable lessening in the noise level. It was never quiet in here, yet except for a few conversations still going on at the farthermost tables, the usual babble had faded to near silence. She looked over her shoulder to see everyone looking at her.

      Someone snickered.

      She smiled uncertainly, so damn dumb that even then she didn’t get that she was the butt of some joke. It wasn’t until Dylan Vanderkamp, the biggest ass in Cade’s crowd of mega-asses, rose to his feet, smirked at her and brandished a fat roll of cash that she began to get an inkling that this was not going to be good.

      “Here you go, Gallari,” Dylan said, “two hundred bucks.” He extended it across the lunch table. “A bet’s a bet, my man. You said you could bag the fat girl, and by God you did it.” Giving Ava a slow up and down that left her feeling naked, he curled his lip. “I’d say you more than earned it.”

      It was a bet? a voice shrieked in her head. I’m the “fat girl” he slept with on a bet? Her hands went numb, her legs lost strength and sickness rose in a sour tide up her throat.

      Dylan stepped to one side, and for the first time she saw Cade, who was lounging on his tailbone looking bored. He glanced at her, and for one crazy, hopeful second, she thought he’d slap the money out of Vanderkamp’s mitt. But he merely raised a languid hand and plucked it from the other boy’s fingers.

      “Thanks,” he said and tucked it in the front pocket of his jeans.

      Everything inside her turned to ice. At the same time, all those eyes avidly waiting for her reaction seemed to burn pinprick holes everywhere they touched.

      But she couldn’t simply stand here, taking shit off Cade’s group of over-entitled Neanderthals. Her chest might feel as if a two-ton rock sat on it, and God knew she desired nothing more than the ability to turn invisible—but she and her friends had always given back as good as they’d gotten from these idiots. Suckered by Gallari’s sweet talk, she’d forgotten for a while who she was dealing with.

      She sure as hell remembered now. And, dammit, she would get a handle on herself, if it killed her.

      A bitter laugh almost escaped her. Because the treacherous, lying, two-faced bastard had gotten a jump on that, hadn’t he? Still, if she was going down, she’d at least do so dealing a little damage of her own.

      “I think I should get part of that,” she managed to drawl past the huge lump in her throat. “One session with Quick Draw McGraw here pretty much put me off sex for life—and if that doesn’t entitle a girl to a cut, I don’t know what does.”

      It was the slightest balm to her wounded heart that a few people laughed at Cade’s expense rather than her own. It wasn’t enough—she’d prefer that his dick shrivel up and drop off—but it would have to do. That lump was growing and she couldn’t force out another word.

      As if she knew, Poppy placed an unobtrusively supportive hand on her back. “Yeah, what was it she told us, Jane?”

      Jane shrugged. “That if she ever got over the trauma of Gallari’s fumbling and worked up the nerve to try it again, it would be with someone who knew what the hell they were doing.”

      Cade continued lounging and looking bored, but Ava had the satisfaction of at least seeing a little dull color climb up his razor-sharp cheekbones.

      She’d take more pleasure in seeing him experience a fraction of her humiliation, but God, she just hurt so bad. She felt shattered, as if her insides had been torn apart, then put back wrong. She would never, ever forgive him for setting her up this way, for lifting her up—only to slam her down.

      Swallowing hard against a rising tide of grief, she turned her back on him, blindly grabbed a bowl of Jell-O and slapped it on her tray. No way would she be able to swallow a bite.

      But damned if she intended to turn tail and run from Buttface Gallari. Even if, inside, a piece of her had just died.

       CHAPTER ONE

      I’m not sure if I just made a really savvy move—or the biggest blunder of my life.

      Present day, the ninth of November

      THE BASTARD was late. Ava Spencer cursed the man she was waiting on as she paced the front foyer of the Wolcott mansion, alternately hugging herself against the cold and trying to rub some warmth into her arms through her coat sleeves. The place had been closed up for several weeks, and between the wind currently buffeting the mullioned windows and the rainstorm that had blown through earlier, leaving a Seattle-centric damp-to-the-bone chill in its wake, she was freezing her ass off.

      She would’ve turned on the heat, but there was little point. If the guy ever deigned to get here, she’d be showing him the mansion from attic to wine cellar. And while Jane kept the front parlor and hidden closet in Miss Agnes’s upstairs sitting room climate-controlled for the preservation of the Wolcott collections that weren’t currently sold or on loan to museums, it would take until noon tomorrow to warm up the rest. And although she had turned on every light in the house, the illusion of warmth from the yellow glow of the lamps and overheads didn’t come close to replacing the real thing.

      A laugh that went a little wild escaped her. Like that was the crucial issue here. Because… It’s not some guy, Av. It’s Cade Calderwood Gallari.

      Jeez Marie. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to this. So, yes, she was concentrating on the minutiae for all she was worth to keep from thinking about him. Because it was too freaking late to second-guess herself now.

      Wasn’t СКАЧАТЬ