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CHAPTERNINETEEN
Beckett
It was hard to pinpoint exactly what made Maddie so attractive. When I’d first seen her, I’d pegged her as a pretty but unexceptional college student. The V-neck sweater and fitted dress pants she’d worn for our date hugged her trim curves perfectly, but that wasn’t all that made the difference either.
It was her smile, I decided, smiling back at her across the restaurant table. The way a dimple formed on just one cheek, the way her dark blue eyes sparkled when she laughed, the self-deprecating note that’d crept into her voice as she related a story from her high school days, which let me know she wasn’t trying to brag, just sharing a little of herself.
She took a sip of her water and continued her story. “One of the worst was the head gym teacher, who also coached a bunch of the sports teams. Every time we walked into the gym, he’d scrutinize our outfits and then dress code any student he didn’t agree with. But it was only the girls. We couldn’t wear T-shirts that showed any of our shoulders or had a neckline lower than an inch below our collarbone, but he’d let the guys get away with basketball jerseys and stuff like that. None of us were trying to flaunt anything. It just got hot in there, especially late in the spring.”
My smile widened, sensing retribution to come. Maddie had started this line of conversation by admitting she’d been quite a crusader for justice in her teen years. “So what did you do about it?”
Maddie ducked her head briefly in apparent embarrassment, though why she’d be embarrassed about sticking up for herself and her fellow students was beyond me. I guessed girls always had people come down on them harder for speaking up and demanding attention too.
Fucking ridiculous. It’d been a couple of women who’d taught me a lot of what I knew about being a force to be reckoned with in the world, and I’d have had a lot more than harsh words for anyone who’d tried to knock them down a peg.
“One day in June it was just sweltering,” Maddie said, “and I got fed up. I wore a sleeveless shirt with a neckline that was just a smidge too low, and I brought a measuring tape with me to class. Sure enough, the teacher zeroed right in on me and demanded I go to the office. So I handed him the measuring tape in front of the whole class and said I wasn’t going anywhere until he measured me and the two guys from the basketball team who’d come in their jerseys and proved that my shirt was somehow less acceptable than theirs.”
A chuckle burst out of me. “I bet he wasn’t happy about that.”
Maddie’s smile turned a little softer at the memory. She might feel awkward about it, but I could tell part of her was proud of the stands she’d taken.
“Nope. Especially because the guys’ jerseys were at least an inch lower cut than mine, and the straps were a little thinner, so he had no ground to stand on. He tried to get all intimidating and insist that I go anyway, but my best friend was filming the whole thing on her camera… We both went and showed the principal how he’d acted, and he got a formal reprimand. And they adjusted the dress code so girls could wear thick-strapped tank tops for gym class.” She cast me a cautious glance as if checking whether I was put off by the account. “We might have threatened to take the video to the local news if they didn’t.”
I clapped my hands lightly in a show of applause. This woman might not have come from the gritty sort of background my former mentors had, but she had plenty of guts, no doubt about it. “Sounds like you handled it perfectly.”
Maddie blushed. “I mean, that’s not how everyone saw it. I was a lot to handle back then. I’m sure I stressed my mom out with all the campaigns I took up against one thing or another, clashing with teachers and all that. And it’s because I was so hard-headed about this stuff that I ended up pissing one teacher off enough to screw up my grades for college admissions.”
I dug my fork into my pasta. “Everyone is difficult in high school. It’s the age for it, isn’t it? I wasn’t an easy kid—that’s for sure.”
I’d intended that comment to prompt a question of her own, one that would let me tease the subject I was most interested in without asking anything too pointed. It worked. Maddie popped a bit of her glazed chicken into her mouth and raised her eyebrows at me. “And how were you difficult, Beckett? I sense some juicy stories.”
It was almost too easy. A pang of guilt jabbed me in the stomach over the way I was manipulating her.
It was my job. I needed to know for sure whether the guys she was associating with were any kind of threat and whether she was mixed up in that threat with them. If I didn’t pursue every possible avenue toward getting that information, then I’d be letting down every man and woman working under me.
But there was no denying that I saw Maddie as a hell of a lot more than a source of information. I’d already been intrigued by her before I’d asked her out, and the more we talked, the more admiration trickled through my chest.
I’d met a lot of people in my line of work, but no one who had quite the mix of daring and sweetness that she did. She was a fighter, but a genuinely moral person at the same time.
Which meant she might not give me the time of day if she knew the full extent of my line of work, but I shoved that thought aside. That was a problem for another day, quite possibly for never. For all I knew, she might not want to entertain my advances beyond this date.
Giving her a playful smirk, I ate a mouthful of the pasta, letting the tangy rosé sauce coat my tongue as she waited. Anticipation worked wonders.
In reality, I’d spent all of a day in a public high school, and that visit had only been for the sake of learning about the son of someone my dad needed to target. I’d always been homeschooled by my dad’s people and then in the thick of our kind of business, but I had enough of a gist to transpose a real story from my teens into a more appropriate setting.
“There was this bully at my high school who was terrorizing a lot of the kids,” I said. “His dad worked with mine, and I knew my father wouldn’t want me to intervene and potentially cause trouble at his job. But I hated seeing what he was doing to people, and I couldn’t help thinking in the long run it’d be better to do something about it than not. I guess you know that feeling, like something needs to happen and you can’t just stick your head in the sand?”
“Yeah,” Maddie said softly, her gaze fixed on my face with an avidness that urged me on. I found I wanted to impressher, even if that wasn’t the main reason I was telling this story.
“Well, I threw myself headfirst into the situation,” I went on. “There was a group of students who’d started pushing back against the bully, but I knew some things they didn’t about him that would help make him stand down. At first they didn’t take me seriously, because I was a few years younger than them, but after I proved I could help, it was obvious we could accomplish a lot more working together.”
I watched Maddie’s expression carefully for any flicker of recognition at that kind of dynamic. Had she joined forces with that trio of guys to tackle something she saw as wrong in the city? Something to do with my and my father’s business dealings, though she wouldn’t have realized it was connected to me?
But her main response was to knit her brow. “How did your dad take it?”
Of course she’d worry about that. She wasn’t just morally good but also compassionate.
I grappled with how to answer the question, because the basic answer was,Not well at all. But I didn’t want to turn this into a venting session about my family issues.
