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“I know. That’s why I want you to be the one to talk to him. If I tell him what I did, he’ll drag me down to the police station himself. You can convince him not to press charges.”
She coughed in disbelief. Her brother had clearly forgotten her high school history with Carson. “How am I supposed to convince him of that?”
“You’re a beautiful woman. Do what beautiful women do.”
“What beautiful women do?” she repeated. “You mean like offer to model for any advertisements he may need?”
Matt sighed as though she was the one who was being unreasonable. “You don’t want me to go to jail, do you? Think what that would do to Mom.” This was usually her brother’s trump card whenever he wanted Olivia’s help. The two had had an unspoken agreement since childhood that they wouldn’t add any more worries to their mom’s already stressful life. Even before their parents’ divorce, their mother had been functioning as a single parent, sometimes working two jobs to make ends meet.
But this request wasn’t on par with writing essays for Matt so he didn’t flunk out of school or making a few of his truck payments because their mother had been foolish enough to cosign, and creditors were about to start calling her.
Olivia pinched the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not pimping myself out to your boss. Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have the kind of moves needed to bring in twenty-one thousand dollars.”
It was then that she noticed the class had fallen silent. She opened her eyes and saw that Mrs. Newman, the assistant principal, was standing in the classroom doorway. The woman’s mouth hung slightly ajar, and her eyebrows were lifted in what was probably horror. The students all returned to their desks, their gazes bouncing back and forth between Mrs. Newman and Olivia.
Lovely.
“I’ll call you back,” Olivia told Matt and slid her phone into her pocket. Her face was flaming red, she knew that, but she forced a smile at Mrs. Newman that hopefully looked professional. “Yes?”
Mrs. Newman took a step into the room. Her gaze kept going over Olivia in that same disapproving way. “I’m taking members of our student council around to deliver thank-you gifts to our teachers.” She glanced back and seemed to notice that no one was with her. She stepped into the hallway and motioned to someone.
A few moments later, Ezra, the school newspaper’s photographer, walked in with Wren, the student body secretary. She strode up to Olivia carrying a gift basket wrapped in red and yellow cellophane, the school’s colors. Ezra trailed her, camera raised.
Mrs. Newman sent Olivia a we-will-discuss-this-later look and left to take some other members of the student council around to different classrooms.
Wren smiled brightly at Olivia, posing for the photo op. “The students would like to thank you for being one of our teachers. We know that sometimes when you work, you have to deal with hard things.”
A few boys in the back of the class sniggered.
Yep, that’s what Olivia got for making prostitution references on the phone during class. She wanted to send the boys warning glares, but Ezra hadn’t taken the photo yet, and she didn’t want everyone who saw the newspaper’s end-of-year edition to wonder why the art teacher looked so murderous while receiving her thank-you gift.
Olivia reached for the basket, but Wren wasn’t through talking. “We know you don’t get paid enough for what you do.”
More laughing from the back section. One of the boys—she couldn’t tell who—muttered, “At least not twenty-one thousand a day.”
Wren sent the boys a confused look and continued, “We’re glad you’re here instead of working somewhere else.”
Even though it was more of a stretch to infer innuendo from that sentence, the boys in the back laughed like Wren had just said something hilarious. Teenage boys could do a lot of stretching.
Wren ignored them. “We hope you’ll have a great summer, full of touching moments—”
“Thank you!” Olivia grabbed the gift basket before Wren could say more. Then she glared at the boys in the back, trying to set them on fire with her eyes.
That’s when Ezra took the picture.
Well, that would look great in tomorrow’s edition. The school year really couldn’t end fast enough. And now, to top off everything else, Olivia was going to have to talk to Carson Clark.
2
After school ended, Olivia called her brother back. He didn’t pick up. Coward. He knew she would lay into him about gambling with someone else’s money.
There was nothing else to do but drive to her mom’s house. Matt used to live there too, bouncing between construction work and cattle work at one of the ranches in the area. Perhaps Olivia should’ve lived at home as well. She would have saved more money for that ever-elusive house down payment that was her goal, but she was twenty-five and wanted her independence, so she lived in an apartment in town with two roommates.
She pulled up to the small one-story white home in the rundown area of Lark Springs. Weeds were making their presence known around the lawn, and the house’s paint was worn and flaking in places. Olivia had told her mother she’d help her repaint the house in August, and her mother was saving up to pay someone to do landscaping. Now, any extra money their mother had would likely go to paying off Carson in an attempt to keep Matt out of prison.
In fact, when her mother found out what Matt had done, she might go back to working some night shifts at the grocery store like she’d done after her divorce.
Olivia gritted her teeth. It wasn’t fair for Matt to do this.
