Trouble Me: A Rosewood Novel (20 page)

There, of course, was the crux of the problem. Rob had seen ample proof of Jade’s qualities as a teacher. The evidence was in the homework packets Hayley was assigned, a fun mix of traditional exercises and more-creative assignments, and in the way Hayley raced up the elementary-school steps each morning. Every parent dreamed of a school year beginning like this for his or her child.

He couldn’t bring himself to divulge that there were other aspects that made the classroom situation impossible. Ted wouldn’t know about Rob and Jade’s ancient history, and it went against Rob’s principles to speak of them. She’d been underage, and her case was long since closed. He damned well wasn’t going to discuss their all-too-recent history either.

The conversation concluded and Rob hung up, feeling frustrated and increasingly guilty. As much as he wanted to make the messy situation with Jade disappear, wishing wouldn’t make it happen. Removing Hayley from Jade’s class wasn’t going to make him forget the night he and Jade spent together or the way she’d kissed him minutes ago.

He could taste her on his lips.

There was bitter with the sweet, however. He could still see her tormented expression as she ordered him out of the classroom. He could still hear her ragged sobs as she broke down and cried on the other side of the door. He’d stood in the hallway like an impotent clod, wanting to go back into her room and say
something
but knowing his presence would only make things worse.

He had to apologize to her. He’d behaved like an ass. He’d
sounded
like such a dumb fuck. That his brain had been fried by lust was no excuse for his behavior. How could he have ever thought sex with Jade in a classroom a possibility? Asking her for a condom was, without a doubt, the most idiotic question he’d ever uttered.

She must despise him—if not for his ill-timed, moronic question, then for his condemning, holier-than-thou attitude.

She’d called him a prig and a hypocrite. It rankled that he couldn’t dismiss her accusations outright. He’d be the first to admit that he was tough; he was a cop. But he also believed he was ultimately fair-minded.

Yet he’d been anything but concerning that night in Norfolk. He realized now that it had been easier to play the blame game and tell himself that he’d been caught in Jade’s sexual lure than to admit he’d made plenty of the moves that led them to her hotel room. Because to admit that uncomfortable truth would be to acknowledge that he’d desired a woman who wasn’t Becky—and desired her with desperate intensity.

Acknowledging that he
still
wanted Jade was even harder, especially now, knowing who she was and what a mistake it would be to get involved with her.

He drove from the elementary school on autopilot. It being a weeknight, Warburg was quiet. Lights shone over front doors and glimmered softly in upstairs windows, giving the houses a snug, sleepy look. Pulling into his own driveway, he saw that the family room at the end of the house was illuminated. His dad and mom would be in there, watching TV as they awaited his return. His gaze traveled to Hayley’s window. It was dark, but he knew she’d still be awake. She’d be too excited, wanting to hear exactly what he thought of Miss Radcliffe.

Unbuckling his seat belt, he remained immobile, staring at the small house he and Becky had bought six
months into their marriage and trying to reconcile what he felt for Jade Radcliffe with the life he’d made with Becky in the trim little Colonial, with the love they’d made in there.

From where he sat, it was an impossible task. Whatever it was he felt for Jade—and damned if he could identify it yet—he knew it bore no resemblance to what he’d had with Becky.

But somehow that didn’t lessen the fierce hunger that consumed him whenever Jade entered his thoughts.

Hell
. Well, there were a slew of things he craved but didn’t let himself have. Jade Radcliffe was going to enjoy the number-one spot on that particular list, he thought as he climbed out of the car.

He’d apologize to Jade for his actions and he’d keep Hayley in her class, but then he was going to maintain his distance. After all, Jade would only be teaching through the fall semester and then she’d be out of their lives.

Walking up to the front door, he spied one of Hayley’s makeshift horse jumps and bit off a curse. Hayley was going to be disappointed, but there it was. No way was he signing her up for riding lessons at Rosewood.

Because getting any more involved with Jade could only spell trouble.

All Jade wanted was to go back to her cottage, crawl into bed, pull the covers over her, and will the world away, but she’d promised to drop by the big house after parents’ night. She knew her sisters well. If she didn’t show up, they’d come to her place—and they might not leave. The sooner she gave them a highly edited version of the night’s events, the sooner she could forget the true horror of the evening and lock it away with all the other shitty memories she had of Rob Cooper.

Except that not all of the memories she had of him were so very lousy. Had he been drunk that night in
Norfolk or had someone slipped him a happy pill? she wondered as she stomped up the front-porch steps, aware that the scowl on her face was probably as heavy as her tread.

Luckily, Rosewood was a huge old house and Georgie and Will’s rooms faced the back, so the noise she was making wasn’t likely to wake them up. As she passed a carved gilt mirror in the parlor, she smoothed the lines of her face, checking, too, that she’d scrubbed all the traces of her tears in the elementary-school bathroom.

She found Miriam in the library, watching a movie. Grace Kelly was on the screen. It took Jade only a second to identify the film; she loved
To Catch a Thief
.

“Hey, where are the others?”

“Margot ran upstairs to check on the kids, and Jordan’s making popcorn. Travis, Andy, and Owen went to do the barn check.”

“Owen probably wanted to sneak Cosmo some extra bedtime treats.”

Miriam nodded and stretched. “Yeah, Owen’s a soft touch when it comes to Cosmo. The guys were also going to drop by Thistle Cottage and look at Ned’s bathroom. Owen wants to redo it for him and is recruiting Travis and Andy to convince Ned that an update is essential.”

“That’ll take some serious convincing.”

“Yup. So we get to continue with our Grace Kelly fest. It’s in your honor, Jade. Margot told me you brought up
Rear Window
the other night and how since then Jordan and she have been dying to see her in action. You missed
High Society
.”

“Bummer.”

“So how’d it go tonight?” Miriam asked. She pressed the
PAUSE
button, freezing the image of a gorgeous Grace Kelly with her arms around Cary Grant’s neck,
her eyes shining with triumph as she told him she’d figured out he was the infamous cat burglar.

What great stuff, Jade thought. Too bad her life wasn’t like that. Instead of Cary Grant, she got a jerk who wanted to know whether she had any spare condoms. What did he think, that she kept them in her teacher’s desk, next to the confiscated chewing gum?

Feeling depressed, she dropped down onto the sofa beside Miriam. “Sorry,” she apologized, when they bumped shoulders. With a groan, she laid her head against the cushion of the deep-green velvet sofa.

“It was that bad, huh?”

“Pretty darned hellish,” Jade admitted with a sigh.

“I’m surprised. You worked so hard putting your presentation together. It was great.”

“That wasn’t the awful part.”

“Oh. Gotcha. It was the doting parents.”

Jade lifted her head to stare moodily at the screen, then wished she hadn’t as Miriam said, “Hey, have you been crying? Your lids are all red.”

Damn. She hadn’t thought anyone would notice. Silly of her. Miriam was as perceptive as her sisters. “It’s not a big deal.”

“What happened tonight? Did Rob Cooper or the Harrisons give you a hard time?”

“Both, but the former took the prize.”

“What did Cooper do? Try to arrest you?”

“Ha. Not funny, Mir.”

“Sorry.”

“Forgiven,” Jade replied. Miriam was her closest friend. She’d stuck with her even when Jade had been at her most self-destructive, about as fun to be around as poison ivy.

“So what happened between you and Rob Cooper?”

Though Miriam was a few years older, she wasn’t that old—Jade could tell her about the night she’d spent with
Rob Cooper and not have her faint from shock or
completely
freak with worried disapproval, which effectively crossed both Jordan and Margot off her Share Latest Stupidity list. “Mir, do you remember when I came home from Florida, how I told you I met a guy in the hotel?”

“The hottie?”

“Yeah.” Jade nodded glumly, remembering how, even hours after rolling between the sheets with Rob, she’d been humming with sexual satisfaction. She’d always thought she had pretty good internal radar when it came to jerks. Clearly it needed a major repair job.

Or maybe the problem was her. She’d known who he was tonight and she’d still let him kiss her. And a lot more besides, her guilty conscience reminded her. Like almost making her come in his arms—in her classroom.
Oh, God
.

“Sure I remember you mentioning him.” Miriam laughed. “You were looking like my cat, Lulu, after a saucer of cream. Very happy. What’s your Norfolk hottie have to do with how your parents’ night went?”

Jade shifted uncomfortably on the soft velvet cushions. “Well, it turns out that the hottie was Rob Cooper.”

“What?” Miriam shrieked. “He’s—Jade—that’s
—oh my God!
It’s one thing not to bother getting a guy’s number; I didn’t realize you couldn’t be bothered to find out his
name
!”

Okay, so maybe Miriam was reacting a little more intensely than Jade had anticipated. It must be the fact that she was getting ready to tie the knot with Andy. “I didn’t really think knowing his name mattered,” she said defensively. “And, FYI, he didn’t seem to think knowing
my
name was all that essential either—”

“What’s this about not knowing names?” Jordan entered the library, carrying a truly enormous bowl of
popcorn. “Did you forget the name tags? How’d it go otherwise, sweetie?”

“Yeah, tell us everything,” Margot added, a few steps behind her.

“Yeah, Jade, tell them
everything
,” Miriam said, folding her arms across her chest. Her posture reeked of maturity.

Oh, crap
. The trouble with Miriam was that she wasn’t only Jade’s friend, she was Jordan’s and Margot’s as well. Mir looked up to them, admired them—which wasn’t to say that Jade didn’t as well, but in addition to worrying just how badly they were going to react to what she told them about Rob, well, it was also kind of weird to be sharing this stuff with her sisters.

But a glance at Miriam’s set expression told Jade it was useless to prevaricate. So much for giving Jordan and Margot a neatly edited version in which all the messy and less-than-stellar moments were carefully deleted.

Shooting her best friend a dirty look, she said with a sigh, “You guys better take a seat. And, Jordan, you’ll definitely want to put the bowl of popcorn down.” No sense in having good popcorn tossed all over the floor when Jordan fainted from shock.

Ten agonizing, embarrassing, heat-crawling-over-her-cheeks minutes passed while she hemmed and hawed her way through her account of meeting a really good-looking sexy guy in Norfolk, spending the night with him, and then discovering to her considerable dismay that the man she’d relegated to a fond (though steamy) memory was very much in her present—because he was none other than Officer Rob Cooper, aka RoboCop, aka Hayley’s dad. Deciding she might as well get the worst of it over, she included her and Rob’s mutual horror at parents’ night when they recognized each other. But she kept to herself the final, truly mortifying bit, when Rob
had kissed her and stroked her until she nearly climaxed, and his appalling condom request.

Not only was the story embarrassing as all get-out, but in order to stress that she wasn’t a complete idiot, she’d already mentioned the word
condom
a few too many times in front of Jordan.

Jordan had her own unpleasant prophylactics memories. Back when she was pregnant with Olivia and married to her first husband, Richard, she’d happened upon a bunch of them in Richard’s suit pocket. Suffice it to say, the condoms weren’t being used by Jordan and Richard.

Jade didn’t want Jordan to have to relive the anguish of that by uttering the word anymore. And revealing that she’d allowed Rob to kiss her again, or that the moment he’d touched her she’d practically come in his arms, was too upsetting to admit aloud. This was
RoboCop
, after all.

So she ended her story with, “Then Cooper told me he was going to have Hayley moved into Tricia Creighton’s class, and he left. Good riddance—to him, not to Hayley, who obviously gets her brains from her mother.” Just to make sure everyone knew there was nothing left to the story, Jade grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it into her mouth.

Unfortunately, Margot wasn’t buying it; her older sister knew her too well. She pinned her with a long look. Jade wouldn’t have believed the itchy flush covering her throat and cheeks could intensify. It did. She felt like she’d broken out in a full body rash of guilt.

Stuffing her mouth with popcorn hadn’t been such a brilliant idea either. When she swallowed, the kernels scratched the inside of her too-tight throat.

A silence descended over the room. While Miriam and her sisters absorbed the story, Jade looked around the library—anything to avoid looking at their expressions—as if she’d never seen the portrait of Tallis,
Rosewood’s first stud, or noticed the gold fringe on the lamp shades, or traced the swirling pattern in the Oriental rug with the toe of her shoe.

Jordan spoke first. “Well, I think you handled the situation admirably, Jade. I mean, what an impossible situation. And I must say, Rob Cooper is behaving very badly. I’m surprised. He should know better.”

Jade’s jaw went slack with astonishment to hear her sister criticize Rob Cooper, who basically epitomized moral rectitude.