“Mom, watch this!” Nick’s excited shout interrupted Jack, and even through my desperation to hear what he was going to say, my brain sent warning bells off. Nick was shouting for his mother. His mother, who also happened to be evil incarnate.
“Don’t let her see you sweat, baby.” Jack sighed. “No one invited her.”
I glanced around his arm and saw that Stacey was dressed in a stunning light pink dress—along with a scowl that was aimed at me. I whipped back into the safety zone that Jack’s body created. “It’s a hundred degrees, Jack. I can’t even hide my real, physical sweat. I think she’s going to murder me. She hates me so much. Oh, Jack. She hated me even before she found out I was doing the dirty with her ex-husband.”
“’Doing the dirty?’ How are you the same woman who begged me to fuck your...” Jack didn’t get to finish that sentence with my hand covering his mouth.
I peeked around his arm again and saw that Stacey was headed our way. “Throw me in the pool,” I hissed.
Jack laughed. “What?”
“Throw me in the pool, Jack. Just get me away from her. Please!” The next thing I knew, I was over his shoulder, and he was jumping into the pool with me.
He wrapped his arms around me and we came up together to the sound of the kids laughing hysterically. Water beaded on Jack’s eyelashes as he licked his lips and grinned at me like a little kid. “Good enough?”
“Cannonball!” Henry, of all the kids, came splashing in next to us, and I pulled away from Jack to make sure he came up okay. When he did, he had his dad’s wild-eyed grin stretching his lips. “Freddie, did you see me?”
Jack’s hand cupped my ass as he swam by me to grab Henry. “She saw you all right, kid. Where’d you learn to bomb the pool like that?”
Birdie let out a war cry before running and jumping in, splashing Jack right in the face. She squealed as he lifted her with one arm and Henry in the other. “Sorry! Sorry! Don’t throw me! Throw Mom again!”
Jack held her up higher. “You’d sacrifice your mother that fast?”
She laughed and swung her legs behind her. “She liked it! Throw her!”
“Only after I throw you!” Jack tossed her towards the shallow end and then sent Henry sailing after her. Both kids came up laughing and watching expectantly for Jack to toss me.
I shook my head at him as he moved closer to me. “Jack, do not throw me.”
He dipped lower in the water and crept steadily closer. “Sorry, woman. Your daughter sacrificed you, and you must accept your fate!”
I screamed out a laugh as he grabbed me and lifted me out of the water, holding my body over his head. I flailed around, but it was useless as Jack winked before tossing me into the deep end. I came up and saw him chasing after the kids while making the sound fromJaws,something they definitely didn’t understand.
Sawyer met me at the pool ladder and pulled me out with a big grin on his face. “I was hoping for a boob slip, but I got nothing.”
I rolled my eyes and reached for the towel he was holding. He held it over his head and bit his lip when I stretched up to try to grab it. “Sawyer!”
He wagged his brows. “I’ll give it to you for a kiss.”
I became painfully aware of his hard body against mine and wanted desperately to do it. When I tried to glance around to see if anyone was looking, Sawyer caught my chin and wouldn’t let me. I knew immediately that Stacey was watching us.
“She invited herself, but I’m still sorry she’s here. It doesn’t matter, though. You’re still my girlfriend, and I’m still a man starving for some affection from his woman.” He dropped his eyes to my chest and groaned. “It’s unfair for you to look this good while trying to pull away from me.”
I grabbed the towel while he was distracted and wrapped it around myself. I wanted to argue that he didn’t need to call me his girlfriend when I knew he didn’t feel that way. Instead, I went up on my toes and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for the towel.”
Avoiding Stacey, I walked around the pool and headed into the house to hide out in the bathroom for a moment to catch my breath. I caught Beck watching me and smiled at him before rushing inside. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing, and being around them, playing around with them, was just confusing me even more. Sawyer had called me his girlfriend, and Jack had been staring at me like he was going to say something huge. Everything was twisting around in my head, and I couldn’t make sense of what I needed or wanted.
I dried off before tracking water through Beck’s house, but that gave Stacey enough time to catch up to me. Just as I pushed open the bathroom door, she was there, scowling down at me.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, prancing around here in that bathing suit with your thighs bouncing around. You’re not good enough for Sawyer, and you never will be,Freddie. You’re a loser who couldn’t keep a job teachingart. He might be having his fun, fucking the fat girl, but he’ll get over it. It’s a kink, honey, not anything that you bring home to your mother.” Stacey leaned her face even closer to mine. “And throwing yourself at his best friends? How fucking patheticareyou? God, I’m so glad I came by to see what an embarrassment this whole thing is.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Stacey jabbed her finger in my face and I snapped it closed.
“You’re nothing. Sawyer is a respected doctor from a respected family. He isn’t going to take some trailer trash hick home to his parents.” She poked her finger into my forehead and hissed out one parting blow. “Where do you think I spent the last two nights, sweetheart? It’s sad, really, to see him trying to figure out how to let you down gently. Why would he want hot dogs when he’s got steak, though?”
I had a flash of my conversation about Beck’s art. Steak had been the boring option in my version, but no one preferred hot dogs over steak.
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