Skin in the Game Read Online Free Page B

I’ll be home late, so don’t wait up.”
    Already feeling as if she was doing the walk of shame, she turned and headed upstairs to her room to figure out what on earth to wear on her date with Cade Reynolds. She wasn’t sure she had a single thing in her closet that would be appropriate for the occasion.
    On the other hand, maybe she didn’t need to worry. Brutal honesty compelled her to admit that they might never leave his hotel room. After all, he had given her the room number rather than asking her to meet him in the lobby or the hotel bar. That pretty well indicated what he had in mind for their “date.”
    But since it was also what she had in mind, she couldn’t take offense. After all, she’d wanted to get into Cade Reynolds’s pants since the first time she’d seen him take a snap. True, he probably thought she was some easy groupie-type chick who was only interested in him because he was rich and famous. Not to mention drop-dead gorgeous. He couldn’t know she’d lusted after him in high school, and she honestly didn’t want him to. Not merely because she didn’t want to be remembered as the pathetic, geeky girl with the head for math and football, but because she didn’t want him to think she had aspirations of something more than a hot, sweaty roll in the sheets.
    Because she didn’t. She couldn’t.
    Unlike Cade Reynolds, she was tied to Harper Falls. Not just by her teaching and coaching jobs, but by her father. It had been almost five years since her mother’s death—the cancer had moved quickly and mercilessly, and Sharon Peterson was gone a mere six weeks after her diagnosis. Though they’d all come home as soon as the prognosis was known—Angie and all four of her older brothers—when it was over, they’d all had to go back to their lives.
    All except for Angie, who had known that if she left her father alone in the house, he’d be dead himself within six months. Daryl Peterson had never lived alone a day in his life. He’d gone from the farm to the military to marriage. Without someone to keep him company, he would be utterly bereft, but there was also no way they’d ever talk him into senior housing. He’d always said old folks’ homes were for people who were either sick or senile, and he was neither. Instinct told her that if she left him alone, he’d be like the widowers she often heard about—dead within a year of their wives.
    And so, Angie was still here, living at the age of twenty-nine in the house she’d grown up in. For the first three months, she’d had to commute to her teaching job in St. Cloud. But somehow, fate had smiled on her. The cantankerous old math teacher at Harper Falls High, Mr.
    Lovgren, who’d taught every one of her classes from algebra through calculus, retired.
    Miraculously, the principal offered Angie the job with little more than a glance at her resume. In the four and a half years since, she’d not only increased the percentage of students passing the AP calculus exam but had also managed to work her way into the position as Harvey Lund’s assistant coach, with results anyone had to admit were impressive. For the first time since she’d been a freshman in high school, the Eagles might get another shot at the state championship and no one could deny that Angie’s creative play calling was the difference.
    In short, she was happy with her life just the way it was—and was going to be. She needed a man like Cade Reynolds to sweep her off her feet and carry her away like she needed an athletic supporter.
    One night with Cade Reynolds would have to be enough to last her the rest of her life.
    Because that was all she had to spare.

    ###
    Angie pulled one dress after another from the closet, examined it, then tossed it onto the bed in disgust.
    Too plain. Too busy. Too schoolmarmish. Too downright ugly. What had possessed her to buy that hideous thing in the first place?
    One thing was for certain. If you could judge a woman’s social life by