by Amy Andrews
“Tomorrow night.”
“No.”
“Wednesday night.”
“No.”
His heavy sigh shivered down his neck, giving her goose bumps goose bumps. “So I take it dinner’s a no, then?”
“Definitely more than a pretty face.”
There was a long pause during which Em tried not to think about his pretty face. Or his forearms. Or his tattoos.
“Why don’t I cut to the chase?”
Em clutched the receiver hard, the fibres in her belly pulling taut in anticipation. “Why don’t you?”
“I think you know we’re going to end up in bed together, Em. It’s just a matter of time.”
The certainty in his voice cranked up the tension in her belly. “And you feel you need to wine and dine me first?”
“Yes.”
“Because of Harper?”
“Because I want to.”
The ring of sincerity in his voice threw her. If she didn’t know his type better, she’d think he was being genuine. “Come on, Linc. You can’t be that desperate for a woman. You really want to have to work this hard with me when you could probably find a dozen willing women to do whatever the hell you wanted?”
“I’m not afraid of hard work.”
“Sure. But isn’t easy better?
“Easy’s overrated.”
Em laughed. “That is not what the tabloids say.”
Self-deprecation coloured his laughter. “Come out with me. Let me change your mind.”
“I don’t date guys like you.”
“Anymore.”
“Right.”
“Because I’m up for anything?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, come on. You can’t not date a guy because of that. You need a better reason.”
Em certainly didn’t. She didn’t have to explain anything to him, but Lincoln Quinn had a reputation for tenacity on the rugby field, and if this was anything to go by, it appeared to extend off the field as well. He’d obviously made up his mind and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He was going to be persistent, she could just tell.
Had a woman ever told him no?
“Fine,” she huffed. “Because I…” She cast around for things he couldn’t brush aside so easily. “I don’t date guys whose watch costs more than a luxury car. I don’t date guys whose idea of a first date is a footy game or”—she cut off the beginnings of his protest—“dinner at a place with a television showing the footy. I don’t date guys who think booty calls or texting a dick pic is flirting.”
Not anymore.
He laughed, and it was so damn dirty in her ear those fibres twisted a little harder. “No dick pics? Where’s the romance, Ermintrude?”
“I rest my case.”
He tutted several times, and when he spoke his voice had dropped an octave from wicked to filthy. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think? Maybe I might surprise you?”
“Maybe.” She knew herself, though. She knew he was her catnip, and she was sick of going out to dinner with guys who had one eye on the footy score. “But hey, at least this way you’ll have never disappointed me.”
“So tell me if it’s not pub television and booty calls, what do you science teachers do for fun? Sit around quoting from Darwin? Dissect Einstein’s theory of relativity? Or do you prefer to discuss the latest chemical symbols?”
“Yes.” Em laughed at the thought. “We have special cafés where we all hang out and drink H-2-O.”
He whistled. “You guys really know how to rock the house. How do you feel about E equals M C squared?”
“Ohhh,” she sighed dramatically. “Formulas.”
“Ah, so that’s the way into your—” Em was pretty sure he was about to say “pants” before he obviously thought better of it. “Favour,” he finished. “How about this one? A squared plus B squared equals C squared. Read that one in a textbook.”
“I’m impressed.” It was probably wrong of her to be picturing him naked right now. Reclined on her bed. Reading a textbook.
“Then my job here is done.”
The electronic bell rang out, muffled inside her staffroom but still audible. Lunch was over. Perfect timing. “I gotta go,” she said. “I have a class.”
“What is it?”
“Grade ten biology.”
“Ooh. Like birds and bees stuff?”
Em smiled in spite of herself. Lincoln Quinn would be a fun date. “No.”
And she hung up the phone.
Chapter Four
Linc swaggered into the busy locker room just after six the next morning, in his hoodie and track pants, grateful for the central heating after the winter chill outside.
He was inordinately pleased with himself. Despite her prickliness, he had a good feeling about Miss Em whatever-her-real-name-was Newman. Their phone conversation from yesterday was still making him smile.
Ryder narrowed his eyes at Linc’s entrance. “Hot damn,” he said, shoving his hands on his hips. He was shirtless, his jeans complete with a big-ass belt buckle and boots not yet discarded. “You won the bet already, haven’t you? I knew you could do it, man. The wonder cock scores again!”
Heads turned to check Linc out and nod at him in manly respect. Even those who just lost a hundred big ones.
Linc wished he’d never made the damn bet.
“He sure looks like a guy who got laid last night,” Donovan said as he pulled his shirt over his head.
Linc shook his head. “Nah.” He tipped his chin at the newlywed, keen to deflect attention. “Dex looks like a guy who got laid last night.”
“What can I say?” Dex smiled. “Apparently marriage is an aphrodisiac. That woman wants me bad.”
Tanner snorted. “She wants your babies, dude.”
“Well, hell”—Dex slapped his rock hard abs—“can you blame her?”
“Better make hay while the sun shines, man,” said Brett Gable, one of the team veterans, who’d been married for several years and had two little kids. “You get that woman pregnant and between the head-spinning-around-vomiting, the mood swings, and the leaking milk, you’ll never have sex again.”
Dex shrugged. “Whatever my woman needs.”
Brett snorted. “Talk to me when your nuts are so blue they look like something you can hang on a Christmas tree.”
Every guy in the locker room winced at the particularly vivid description. “So that means I win the pool, right?” Ryder stood and clapped Linc on the back. “I’m the closest.”
“Not so fast,” Linc said, unzipping his hoodie and stripping it and his T-shirt off over his head, warm air hitting his bare chest.
Tanner, already dressed and ready to train, lazily tossed a ball in the air. “Don’t tell me she turned down wonder cock again?”
Dex whistled. “I have some serious respect for that woman.”
“You’re losing your touch, man,” Donovan said, shaking his head.
“Nah.” Linc pulled his jersey over his head and tugged it down. Even if he had hooked up with Em, he had zero intention of telling these guys. “I’m playing the long game.”
Brett laughed and shook his head. “More like handing her your balls on a platter.”
A few of the guys sniggered. Linc ignored them as he shoved his jeans off and stepped into his training shorts.
“Hey.” Bodie frowned. “Where’s your TAG, dude? You hand that to her on a platter as well?”
More sniggers. “Nah.” Linc glanced down at the battered dull brown leather of his grandfather’s watch where his shiny TAG had sat for the last couple of years. It had gone to a better place. “Just felt like a change.”
“You get that thing in a cornflakes packet?” Brett mused.
Linc let the banter wash over him. It felt good having it on his wrist again. “Coco Pops, actually.”
The hilarity was cut short when Griffin King, the Smoke’s enigmatic coach, stalked into the room. His big, golden mane was in its usual disarray and his shirt looked like i
t had been picked up off the floor. But nobody gave a shit how the best coach in the business dressed.
Linc had been at the club for three years and was as in awe of Griff now as he had been as a twenty-year-old rookie. His reputation for being a hard taskmaster hadn’t diminished and the man was still strong and fit, despite being forty.
“Did you guys come here to talk about your breakfast cereal or did you come to play rugby?”
“Rugby, Coach,” they repeated in unison.
“Well, get your asses on the field. Last one out gets a hundred extra of whatever the hell I want.”
…
Linc rang Em at the same time he had the day before. Every part of him ached from a morning of gruelling training, but in a good way. The kind of way that made him grateful for his fitness, that made him feel alive. And pumped.
Pumped to make this phone call. Pumped to hear Em say yes.
“Hi, Em Newman speaking.”
She had one of those teacher’s voices. Firm but kind, with just enough fuck-with-me-and-I’ll-send-you-to-the-principal edge to keep a guy in line. That kind of voice that had never really worked on him when he’d been in high school, but then he’d never had a teacher as sexy as Em Newman, either.
He might have turned up more often if he had.
“I think I’ve been going about this all the wrong way,” he said, picturing her sitting at her desk, her mouth pressing close to the phone receiver so she wasn’t overheard.
“I’ve been going for traditional names. But it’s not Ermintrude. Or Emma. Or Emily or Emmeline. So I’m thinking now your parents might be hippies, and it’s actually something like Ember. Or Emerald.”
There was a long pause then a deep sigh. “Why do you care?”
“I want to be able to call you by your real name.”
“Well, the kids call me Miss Newman.”
Linc chuckled. “Oh. Don’t tempt me.”
Another heavy sigh. “Are you just going to ring me every lunch hour?”
“Sure. If I have to.”
“Don’t you have…push-ups to do? Or something? Balls to kick. Tries to score?”
He grinned. “Training finishes at twelve, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to score right now.”
“Linc…” He’d have to have been deaf not to hear the exasperation in her voice. “I have papers to mark.”
“You are hell on a man’s ego, Miss Newman.” He loved the way “Miss” rolled off his tongue, and a dozen dirty thoughts about naughty teachers with crazy curls bending over to help a student with a problem, their shirts gaping to reveal pretty bras, flitted through his head with a predictable effect on his dick.
Who knew teachers could be such a fucking turn-on?
Certainly not a guy who’d spent a good portion of his life avoiding them at all costs.
She snorted. “I have a feeling your ego couldn’t be brought down with an elephant gun.”
He laughed, not even bothering to try and dissuade her from the accuracy of her statement. “The Nerd Chicks are in town on Friday night.”
She didn’t say anything for a beat or two. “You know who the Nerd Chicks are?”
“I do now.”
Linc had spent a long time online last night trying to come up with something that’d blow Em’s mind. He’d finally found An Evening with the Nerd Chicks. Apparently they were three women with science backgrounds who ran a popular YouTube channel discussing all things science and had taken their show on the road.
“We should go together.”
There was another pause, but he thought he could hear her breath hitch. “Top marks for trying, Linc. But it’s sold out. It sold out in about half an hour.”
“Lucky for you I have two VIP tickets.”
He definitely heard her breath this time. Hissing slowly out in a long exhale. “Thank you but…no.”
“No? Did I mention you get to meet them afterwards?”
A soft noise that sort of sounded like a whimper or maybe even a low growl caressed his eardrum. “I said no.”
But it was the most unconvincing no Linc had ever heard. He could practically feel her conflict. “Come on, Miss Newman,” he pressed. “Why deprive yourself?”
“Because, Linc,” she muttered, her voice terse, “afterwards I’ll probably fuck you in your ridiculously sexy car.”
Linc’s pulse spiked at her direct prediction. Even if she had sounded utterly depressed over it. He laughed. “And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. What if I promise to not let you fuck me in my car? Or anywhere else?”
It wasn’t going to win him the bet—but he really didn’t give a fuck anymore. Linc just really wanted to take her to the show. Because she obviously wanted to go.
She snorted. “I can be very persuasive.”
And he was a pushover. She was right, it wasn’t a good combination for abstinence. “The problem with that being?”
“Because you’ll leave, Linc.”
“But—”
“Maybe not straight away,” she said hurriedly, interrupting his protest. “I’m sure you and I could have fun for a bit, but I only have to look at you to know you have absolutely no intention of settling down. You’re a young guy in the public eye, with a brilliant career ahead of you and thousands of women screaming your name every Saturday night. And that’s fine. Of course. It’s your life. But I’m sick of being somebody’s bit of fun, and I can’t take another man walking away.”
Linc blinked. She sounded so sad. So…weary. “You’re twenty-three, Em,” he said gently. He remembered Harper mentioning they were the same age. “There’s plenty of time for settling down.”
“Maybe. But if I keep going the way I am, I’ll be forty and still on the dating treadmill.”
He opened his mouth to assure her there was no way she’d ever be forty and single, but he could hear the sudden intrusion of the school bell in the background.
“Thanks for the invitation,” she said. “It was really very sweet, but I just…can’t.”
And the phone went dead in his ear.
…
The next day, Em made sure she wasn’t at her desk at lunchtime. She’d offered to do a colleague’s lunch duty, which was enthusiastically embraced given how much teachers despised the necessary evil.
It wasn’t a real hardship. It was pleasantly warm walking around in the winter sunshine and, apart from busting some kids for not wearing their hats and two others for smoking beside the bike sheds, it was enjoyable. The drift of conversation from different student groups was always amusing, and there was the usual eager beaver willing to hang out and impart some gossip or other.
Her mobile rang around the time that Linc had rung the last two days, and she tensed. How the hell did he get her number? But she relaxed again when a picture of Harper flashed on the screen.
“Hey, Em,” Harper said.
“Hey.”
They chatted amiably for a few minutes, mainly about married life and making babies. If her best friend wasn’t pregnant in the next few weeks, Em would be gobsmacked.
“How’s work?” she asked Harper, who was going into way too much detail about the whole baby-making process for Em’s sanity.
Thankfully, Harper was easily distracted, launching into the details of the latest mural she’d been commissioned to paint on the walls of City Central’s kids’ hospital.
“Did you read in the papers what that crazy Lincoln Quinn did?” Harper asked as she ran out of steam about her art.
Em tensed again. No, she had not. Nor did she want to.
“He donated his Tag Heuer to the hospital foundation to auction off at their next gala fundraiser. I know the Smoke and the hospital have a close affiliation and the club supports a lot of their fundraising initiatives, but that watch is worth a hundred K. More probably, given it’s the mighty Quinn’s. I’m sure a pack of his rabid female fans will all put in and buy it just so they can harvest some DNA and try
to clone him.”
Em’s heart banged in her chest as Harper continued chattering away in her ear. What the fuck? Linc got rid of his TAG?
What the hell for? Not because of her comment, surely?
She hadn’t meant for him to ditch his expensive watch, for crying out loud. She hadn’t really meant anything at all by it. It had been something she’d just plucked out of the air at the time because he’d wanted a reason they couldn’t date, and on the spur of the moment it seemed to be one of the glaring differences between them.
But the reality was she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the watch he wore. It certainly wouldn’t have stopped her from dating him.
It most definitely wouldn’t stop her from fucking him.
But did he honestly think giving it away would change her mind? That she’d just spread her legs for him next time they met because his TAG was no longer in the picture?
He was going to be bitterly freaking disappointed if that were the case.
She checked her department voicemail when she got back to her desk at the end of the lunch break. Sure enough, there was a message from Linc.
“It’s Emmylou, isn’t it?” his voice said as the recording kicked in. It was low in her ear as if he was actually talking to her in real time.
The smile in his voice was unmistakeable, and she couldn’t help but smile as well.
“No wonder you’re not letting that one out. Okay…it may be a little country, but I think that suits you, actually. I think you’d look great in really tight jeans and a checked shirt. And a hat.”
She laughed out loud at that. Trying to put a hat on her crazy curls was like trying to cram a lid on a container overflowing with slinkies.
“Anyway…I just rang to say those tickets are still available. Ring me.” He left his mobile number and hung up.
Em listened to the message three more times. Goddamn, his voice was sexy. She made a note to stop at the store for more batteries on her way home.
The expensive, long-life ones.
…
“God-fucking-damn-it.”
Jed Salinger, the head PE teacher, stomped into the staffroom two days later and threw himself down in the chair beside Em’s desk. He whisked his cap off and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Swear jar on the fridge,” she said, smiling at him, hoping no passing students had heard the outburst.
