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“Hey, sexy.” I greet her with a smile and wonder if I should pull the covers off to show her how hard I still am, how much she’s turning me on.
“Hey, Ollie.” Ava doesn’t even turn in my direction. She pulls out some things from her wardrobe and rushes back into the bathroom.
“Ava, you can change here. I don’t mind.”
She doesn’t respond. But she flies out of the bathroom in record speed, wearing a pink shirt, a black cardigan, and a demure striped pencil skirt that nevertheless skims the curve of her ass in the most delicious way.
She really does look like a high school teacher this morning. I wouldn’t mind getting detention from Miss Green . . .
“Late for school?” I ask.
“Yeah. And apparently, I’m being sued.” Ava grabs her bag and, before I fully digest what she’s saying, dashes outside into the hallway.
“What?”
I follow Ava into the living room where everybody’s staring weirdly at everybody else—except for Mason and Nathan, who are still asleep. Glad I’m not the last one to wake up on a morning like this, when something bad and important seems to have happened.
I walk Ava to the front door as she hurries down the hallway, stopping by the coat hanger to grab a scarf.
“See you later,” I say.
“Yeah,” Ava says without even looking up as she rummages through her bag.
“You got everything?”
“Yeah.”
Just before Ava leaves, I see some movement across the street. I think I catch a dark figure just behind a tree, but I can’t be sure.
I squint at the dark figure, but Ava pulls the door shut before I can get a closer look.
I grab the door handle and turn. As the door swings open, Ava pops her head inside and shouts, “Call me whenever you’re done reading through it.” She turns to me. “Hey, Ollie. You’re still here.”
“Yeah.” I narrow my eyes and scan the sidewalk across the road.
“See you later,” Ava says as she runs to her car. The engine whirrs on and soon she’s on her way to school.
I stay outside for some time, but nothing else happens that’s out of the ordinary. I must’ve imagined seeing someone.
“What kind of an asshole sues an ex-girlfriend?” I ask later, after Liam explains what’s going on. Like all my brothers, I’m shocked and furious.
Liam shrugs. “You’d be surprised. I know some lawyers who are also very sore losers.”
“We can fight this, right?”
“Of course we can,” Mason snaps, diverting his attention from his phone call. He’s been put on hold for more than fifteen minutes, and he’s not happy.
Usually, our assistant, Sally, handles the annoying phone calls for us, but we’re trying to avoid her this morning because we want to get to the bottom of Ava’s case.
I don’t know if anybody’s admitted it yet, but I get the feeling everybody likes Ava as much as I do. I’ve never seen my brothers work quite so hard at anything before.
Liam’s already drafting a response to the lawsuit. Mason’s calling his powerful friends, trying to find somebody with valuable connections we can use in town.
Nathan and Noah are trying to keep Ava calm over the phone while also fielding calls from Sally, who’s ready to dump a ton of work on us.
We’ve shared a woman before, but this is different. In the past, it was all just about the sex. There were never any emotions involved, and no commitments were ever made.
But with Ava . . . Hell, none of us has even gone past second base with her, yet we’re taking on all this work to help her out. And I thought the whole reason we were here in Ashbourne is so we could take things easy for a while.
I don’t know where everything’s going with Ava, but this is going to be interesting.
Ava
Finally, after a lot of pushing and prodding, I manage to get Noah to tell me the truth.
Of course, I didn’t believe it when he told me everything was a-okay this morning. He sounded too weird.
Whatever products the Hunter brothers are selling, if Noah’s making good sales, they must be good products. He doesn’t seem to be able to tell convincing lie.
Liam grabs the phone when he realizes Noah’s blabbed. Liam tells me he has everything under control and “any sane judge” would throw the case out of his courtroom.
That’s reassuring.
But still . . . I’m being sued. For the first time in my life.
After I hang up, I enter the staff room with my head buried in my phone. Liam’s just sent me screenshots of the important bits from the document, and I’m zooming in with my thumbs so I can read the small text.
I take a seat on one of the chairs haphazardly arranged around a square dining table. Tony and Jessica are already at the table while a handful other teachers are lounging on the couches a few feet away.
