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Callie mimes zipping her lips and sips her coffee, her eyes sparkling with humor and a low-key heat that up until the last couple of weeks I probably wouldn’t have recognized.
“Anyway, I came home from practice, and when I got to my room, the box of… you know, magazines and stuff were sitting on top of my bed.”
“I’m guessing that’s not where you left them.”
“No,” I agree. “They’d been safe on the top shelf in the back of my closet for a long time.” At least, I thought they had. For the first time in my whole life, I wonder whether my parents knew about my stash before that day. What if Dad just picked that day to talk to me about it?
I make it a mental note to never, ever bring it up.
“So Dad came in and sat me down and asked me if I had any questions. Gave me the ‘being responsible’ lecture. Made sure I knew what condoms were.” He’d handed me a box of them, still in the pharmacy bag. I’d thought my face was going to burst into flames.
“You’re blushing,” says Callie.
“Anytime you want to start telling your embarrassing teenage stories, feel free,” I say. Callie goes quiet, long enough I wonder whether I’ve misstepped. She told me about her parents, but we haven’t talked about them much.
“It wasn’t my parents,” she says suddenly, her cheeks warming prettily. “A teacher at school caught me with a book I wasn’t supposed to have.”
“Ooh, dirty books.” Callie giggles when I wag my eyebrows at her. “Do tell.”
“In hindsight, Mrs. Sutton was probably right to take it away, but at the time, I had no idea it was so bad. My friend Allison had snuck it out of her mom’s nightstand and told me it had sex stuff in it. We were only fourteen.”
“What book?”
“Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” says Callie dryly.
“Good Lord,” I say, chuckling.
“In hindsight, Mrs. Sutton had a point,” Callie says with a grin.
“Did you get in trouble at home?” I ask.
“Mom grounded me for two weeks,” says Callie, smiling at the memory. “She didn’t believe I hadn’t read it. Dad thought it was hysterical.”
“I’ve never read it.”
Callie smirks. “I probably never would have, except I got in so much trouble for it.”
“What about your friend?” I ask, finishing my coffee and setting down the cup. “Did she get in trouble, too?”
“I think she got grounded, but only because my parents called her mom,” Callie says, then laughs. “I’d forgotten about that whole deal until just now.”
She clicks around on the computer at her desk, finishing her own coffee and dropping our cups into the recycling bin in the corner.
“Am I keeping you from your work?” I ask, eyeing her legs under her skirt.
“Not so much,” she says, winking at me but still clicking around on the computer. “I’m mostly here for admin stuff today. Lucy’s got the counter covered and reservations are pretty low until closer to the holidays.”
I flip the lock on the door. Callie’s eye flick up to watch me. She arches a brow, but she doesn’t stop me from closing the blinds on the only window in the office.
“What if Lucy needs help up front?” I ask, wheeling Callie’s office chair back from the desk and spinning her around.
“She’ll call back,” says Callie a little breathlessly. She comes face-to-face with the bulge at my crotch and her eyes linger. She licks her lips. “You have something in mind, Raleigh?”
I take a page out of West’s book and seize the opportunity at hand. I kneel in front of her chair, pushing her skirt up over her thighs.
“Only every minute I’m with you,” I say. “Plus, most of the rest of them, too.”
27
