Playing for Keeps (Neighbor from Hell #1)(10)

He simply shrugged. “If that’s what you want to believe…”

“It is and I do.”

“If I could get everyone’s attention before you head off to homeroom?” Jenkins said, holding up his clipboard to get everyone’s attention in the teacher’s break room. “We need one more volunteer for tonight’s dance,” he said, throwing a hopeful glance Haley’s way.

“Wax on…..wax off….” Jason whispered, earning a rather indelicate snort form Haley.

“Did you say something, Miss. Blaine?” Jenkins asked Haley, drawing everyone’s attention to her.

Jason leaned back in his seat and watched Haley as the blush crept up her cute little face. She nervously pushed her glasses up her nose. Ah, seems his protégé still hated drawing attention to herself. Well, she’d have to get used to that if they were going to be friends since he had a rather nasty habit of drawing attention to himself pretty much everywhere he went.

“Yes, Miss. Blaine, did you have something to say?” Jason asked in an amused tone.

She shot him a narrowed glare before turning to look at Jenkins. The glare was gone only to be replaced by a rather sweet and innocent smile. He was so focused on her smile that he almost missed what she said.

“No, Mr. Jenkins, that wasn’t me. Mr. Bradford was volunteering to chaperone tonight,” she said cheerfully.

“What?” he said, too late.

Jenkins grinned at him. “Well, that’s excellent! Very good. Make sure you’re here by seven o’clock and it goes until eleven. Thank you, Mr. Bradford.” Jenkins said. It didn’t escape Jason’s notice that the man didn’t bother double checking with him and that he practically ran out of the room before Jason could refuse.

His attention immediately turned to the little traitor. “You betraying bitch,” he gasped.

Her smile went from innocent to wicked in less than a second. “Have fun at the dance.” She stood up and placed her hands together in front of her as if she were praying and bowed.

Smartass.

She betrayed him. Damn that hurt. He couldn’t help but grin. She really was coming along rather nicely.

*************

“Oh my god, I love him!” the girl, Cindy or something, wailed loudly, making Jason shift nervously. He’d never dealt well with emotions, especially female emotions. He looked around nervously and damn near sighed with relief when he spotted a small group of girls descend on the girl.

“He’s such a jerk!” one of them said.

“Don’t say that! I love him!” Cindy cried.

“Oh, I know you do. He’s not good enough for you,” a slightly chubby girl said as she put her arm around the girl.

Good. Everything was fine. He could go back to chaperoning a bunch of hormone driven teenagers to god awful music. Yup, he was truly going to kill Haley. He stepped away.

“Mr. Bradford, why would he do this to me?” the girl demanded.

He froze mid-step and looked around nervously, hoping another Mr. Bradford was standing close by and willing to handle this. No such luck.

He cleared his throat. “Do what exactly?”

She scoffed at him with a look of utter disbelief that told him she thought he should be very aware of everything in her life. Considering he’d never paid much attention to any woman’s life she was in for a hell of a rude awakening. Thankfully one of her friends took pity on him.

“Marc Griswold. They ate at the same table two times in the last two weeks, he talked to her during study hall, and asked to borrow her notes. Now he’s here with her,” she said with such distaste that he couldn’t help but follow her glare.

He spotted Marc dancing with a very pretty brunette. Her name he remembered, Janie. She was a smart girl and funny as hell. If memory served him correctly Marc had been in love with the girl for the last two years. The poor guy who was normally so sure of himself and easy going turned to a stuttering fool when the girl was around. He’d been wondering when the kid was going to work up the courage to finally ask her out.

“Hmmm, good for him,” he mumbled, earning a collective gasp of outrage.

“How could you, Mr. Bradford?” the girl wailed even louder, making him cringe.

Oh, he really was going to kill Haley for this shit.

************

“I had a really nice time,” Jonathan said, probably for the tenth time.

Haley forced herself to smile and of course lie. “I did, too,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to elaborate on what she found nice, because she would really be hard pressed to find something nice about this evening, except of course that it was nice that it was ending.

This was absolutely the very last time she went on a date with any man Mary, one of her oldest and dearest friends, suggested. One would think after Mary set her up with the taxidermist who crossed dressed she would have learned her lesson, apparently not because somehow she agreed to go out with this loser.

It didn’t start off badly. In fact, he was on time and she thought he was rather cute in a nerdish way. He was tall, a bit thin, but still, he looked nice. His clothes were clean and he smelled good. The first clue that something just wasn’t right occurred when they made it to the restaurant.

That’s when his mother called for the first time. Yes, first time as in there was more than one call from his mother. In fact, during their four hour date, it lasted that long because he took so long to eat, she called a total of twenty-three times. Yes, she was very sure it was his mother since he sat at the table when he took the calls and the speaker on his phone was rather loud.