Changing the Rules (Richter Book 1)(32)

News of Claire’s shenanigans caught up with the track team.

Cooper wasn’t sure if it was strategy on her part or because of what he’d told her the night before. A combo of both, he assumed.

He searched the team as they slowly made their way on the field, looking for her.

They needed to keep it together.

Coach Bennett approached him. “Afternoon,” he said.

“Hello.”

“I heard our new sprinter is pushing the limits in the classroom.”

“You mean Claire?”

“You heard about it, too?”

Cooper nodded.

“Yeah. Listen, I don’t want to lose her. Varsity girls need a solid runner.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Cooper said.

“No, I’ll do the talking. After, I want you to run that attitude out of her.”

Damn.

He wanted to text her, send a warning.

“Here she is. I’ll let them stretch and then pull her aside. No reason to give her an audience. I heard she likes that.”

Cooper tried to make eye contact with Claire, but she was doing her best to look anywhere but at him.

When the stretching was done and the kids took the field, Coach Bennett waved Claire his way. A look over his shoulder and he asked Cooper to join them.

“Do you know why we called you over?” Bennett asked.

Her eyes caught Cooper’s for two seconds.

“Yeah.”

“I like you, Claire. You fit on the team, the coaches like you. But the classroom has to come first. If you mess up out there, fail your classes . . . track is history.”

“I’m not failing.” The attitude she used on campus seeped out.

“Do you want to be out here?” Bennett asked.

Claire looked from the coach to Cooper. “Yeah.”

“Then clean up the bullshit. I can’t stop you from doing what you wanna do when you’re not in school, but if you bring it on campus, I won’t have any choice but to cut you.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

She started to walk away.

“And, Claire?”

She turned around.

“I asked Mr. Green to switch you into my algebra class. Mr. Dunnan seems to think he bores you and you need a challenge.”

“You what?”

“See you tomorrow.” Bennett smiled, completely amused.

Claire shook her head and started her laps.

“Did you volunteer to take her?” Cooper asked.

He shook his head. “Dunnan wanted me to cut her from the team. I negotiated to take her off his hands.”

“Smart.”

“She’s going to hate it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to make her work. Dunnan lets kids skate. Should have retired five years ago. When you demand excellence, you get it. When you accept mediocrity, you get it. Remember that, if you decide to fall into the trap of being a full-time teacher.”

“I’ll do that.”

Claire ran by.

“You got it from here?” Bennett asked.

“Yeah.”

“I want to see her sweating. If she’s partying, she better not bring it on my field.”

Any previous conclusions that Bennett was one of the bad guys vanished.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Claire collapsed onto the living room sofa the second she walked in the door. Not only had she suffered a headache the entire day, Cooper ran her like a trainer working an Ironman competitor.

“That sounds like a bad day,” Jax said as she walked around the corner of the kitchen.

“You don’t want to know.”

Claire flung an arm over her eyes to block out the sun.

She heard Jax walk in the room and then exhale as she sat down. “You’re right. I don’t give a crap what happened in school, unless it involved Cooper. What I want is the details of last night after I got out of the car.”

Before Cooper picked them up, Claire and Jax had agreed that Jax would give them a few minutes to have a private conversation. Now Claire regretted that plan.

“The long story, or the short story?” Claire asked.

“Whatever one you want to deliver.”

Claire’s arms slid off her head, and she pushed herself into a sitting position.

“Cooper has a thing for me.”

Jax sat silent, blinked a few times. “Okay, and?”

“What do you mean, ‘okay, and?’”

“Sorry, Claire, but that’s obvious. I think you’d have to be an idiot to not see it. Even the guys on the team see it.”

“What? Are they talking about—”

Jax stopped her with a shake of the head. “Of course not. But you can tell by how they look at the two of you that they know there’s an attraction.”

Claire pointed to her chest. “I’m not doing anything, it’s him.”

“Maybe it’s more him.”

She kept shaking her head. “No, it’s all him. I’m not instigating anything.”

“You flirt with him all the time.”

“I do not,” Claire huffed.

One look from Jax and she rescinded her statement. “Okay, we banter. But it’s always been like that. I have the pool stick, he makes some kind of phallic joke. It’s banter. Not flirting.”