Kate Canterbary

She considered this for a second before handing her sword to Noah. “I don’t want to scare them,” she explained. “They might think I’m trying to conquer their land if I’m armed.”

Getting to my wallet meant releasing Shay and there was a solid moment where I blinked down at my niece and prayed for a better solution to come my way.

In the end, Shay shocked the shit out of me by reaching into my back pocket, grabbing my wallet, and passing Gennie a five. When she returned my wallet to the pocket and gave my ass a swift pat, I was toast. Just fucking done.

None of it would matter because she’d kissed me back—and she’d loved every second of it.

When I pulled away, I said, “I am sorry.”

Shay shook her head. “Don’t be. You can use me any time you need to fend off the thirsty women of Friendship. There must be dozens of them. I’ll break their hearts for you. Destroy their dreams.”

“You sound…excited.”

She took Shay’s hand and towed her toward the stadium. Shay glanced back at me, held out her free hand.

I’d never moved so fast in my life.

“I thought you wanted her to be your girlfriend.”

“I thought you wanted her to be your girlfriend.”

She gave me a look that must scare the shit out of her students. “You know why, Mr. Just Dropping By With a Freshly Baked Loaf of Carby Goodness.”

“—kept lingering and watching, and you really would not believe how persistent she is,” I said. “And that’s the only reason he kissed me.”

“How many times?” Grace asked.

“How many times what?” I replied.

“Did he kiss you,” she said.

I fiddled with the strap of my sundress. “I don’t know. A few times, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Emme said to herself as she studied the ground. She crossed her arms over her torso. “Yeah, so, he’s in love with you.”

The truth was, the memory of her plump ass was going to haunt my descendants for the next thousand years and I had no desire to apologize for it. It was going to haunt me just the same.

Gennie held up a finger. “You were looking at marriage stuff on your computer, you got dressed up in fancy clothes that one day and when I asked why you were dressed up, you said it was for adult business, and you guys are really obvious with all the love shit.”

“The love shit,” Noah repeated.