“I was trying topassher on the beach … and I offered to help her with the play, didn’t I?” His voice came out harsher than he would have liked. Of course Sadie would be drawn to a guy like Jake. He looked a little bit like Tyler, the ham-fisted annihilator.
“Yes, and you’d better hold up your end of the deal. Actuallyhelpher with this play that you all but forced her to plan …andbe nice.” Annie held her gloved finger up at him accusingly, her eyes narrowing to slits.
“Okay, okay,” he finally acquiesced. Annie didn’t know about the past he had with Sadie, so she wouldn’t understand. Hell, Sadie didn’t even know about their past, apparently. The last thing he wanted to do was for either of them to find out after all this time. “I promise I’ll be nice.”
“I’m holding you to that … because I invited her to Thanksgiving.”
Liam’s heart jumped to his throat in the scary, Sadie-induced way. When Annie had initially invited him to her place for Thanksgiving, she hadn’t mentioned that Sadie would be there, too. It wasn’t really a surprise, he guessed. She and Annie were good friends, and Sadie’s family was all back in Antelope Grove.
“I’ll be nice on Thanksgiving, too,” he promised Annie again in a placating voice.
Annie let out a deep breath, blowing the air out dramatically as she looked at him from under her brows. “You better … or else.” She held one finger up inside her mittens in one last attempt to be intimidating before pivoting on her heels and stomping toward the door a few yards away.
Liam watched her short form as she attempted to open the heavy weighted door to the building. Her mittened hands made it impossible, though. They kept slipping off the metal doorknob before she could get the door opened fully, and the weight caused it to quickly slam closed again.
Taking a couple of long steps forward, Liam reached from behind, flashing his card on the security reader and confidently pulling the door open, waving his hand forward in a motion indicating that she should enter.
Annie huffed, apparently made even angrier by his gentlemanly behavior. She pointed one last finger in his face. “Be nice.” Slipping through the door, she stomped down the shiny hallway, leaving Liam shaking his head.
“I’m always nice,” he called out to her departing form, but she had already disappeared down the hallway.
“Mr. Cohen?”
Liam looked up to see Sadie’s blond head peak inside his door, knocking as she opened it slightly.
Her face was bright and worried where she looked at him from the gap in the open door. She seemed unwilling to bring the rest of her body into the room. He wondered if it was because she was afraid of him, either from when he’d apparently chased her on the beach this morning or when he’d barked at her angrily in the library today. Alarm and regret rose within him at the thought.
“Ms. Sullivan,” he said with a slight catch in his throat as he intently focused his gaze on his computer screen. “Please, come in.”
He could see from the corner of his eye that she flashed a relieved smile as she pushed the door open completely and slid into the room. Dropping her large purse and the canvas bag that she was carrying on the floor next to the door, she sat down delicately in one of the chairs in front of his desk.
School had ended a couple hours ago, and everyone had immediately scattered for their homes and families. Liam thought that with the exception of Steve, the custodian, they were the only two people in the building, which he found strangely unnerving.
It was only five thirty, but it was already pitch dark outside his office windows. The fluorescent lights on his ceiling glowed so bright, though, it almost felt like he was on a stage, merely playing the part of a principal in front of his high school crush and a laughing audience on the other side of the windows.
Well, if that were the case, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let his guard down. Pushing away from his keyboard, he fixed a questioning look on his face and silently waited for her to speak.
She squirmed a bit at his silence. “I’m so sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to apologize for not getting much work done on the play yet. I know I’m really behind schedule.”
Stretching his cheeks slightly in his benign principal smile, Liam nodded at her. Flashing the principal smile at Sadie felt gross and made him feel like his heart was beating in his throat, so he dropped it and focused his eyes on his computer screen instead.
“It’s fine,” he mumbled distractedly, attempting to appear preoccupied by something on his computer as he hunched over the keyboard. “That’s why I offered to help.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that. You don’thaveto help me … if you don’t want to,” she said the last words in a rushed voice, tinged with a bit of emotion.
Liam looked up from his screen, finally taking her in fully. She’d pulled her long blond hair back into a ponytail since the meeting and wore the dark leggings and breezy top that a lot of teachers of young kids wore. She had an unbuttoned black pea coat on top of it, and he could see her fiddling with a pair of tan gloves on her lap.
The look on her face was pleading, and she had soft purple circles under her eyes, giving her an urgent, pathetic look.
She looked so tired—probably because she’d gotten up so early to go running.
“I’m sorry about this morning,” he blurted out awkwardly, immediately regretting the lack of finesse in the words. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She smiled as she let out a breath, flashing her white teeth as her eyes dropped to her lap. “I’m sorry I was so rude,” she said, looking up at him with a cringe. “I didn’t know it was you.”
He couldn’t say the same. He’d known it was her from the minute that he’d seen her blond ponytail waving at him in the distance. He’d thought he’d pass her, give her a cordial wave and keep going. Play it cool. Unfortunately, he’d never been very cool, so that whole plan had backfired spectacularly.
“You wouldn’t have tried to race me if you’d known it was me?” he asked in an attempt for a bit of levity.