the woman wouldn’t call her out about it. But what she failed to understand was the notes were kept. Mrs. Douglas would eventually see it.”
“Why wasn’t she caught the first time?”
“The sub misplaced the note but documented she’d seen it and that was it.”
“Angelica thought she’d gotten away with it and they’d been fooled by the signature and decided to try again?” Candy hazarded a guess.
“How did you guess that?” He looked at her with what she saw as suspicion, and their tentative camaraderie evaporated as though it never had been.
“I work with her age group all the time, Mr. Strong. You don’t believe I had anything to do with this, do you?”
Candy began gathering strewn paperwork on her desk, the need to keep her hands busy paramount.
It was that or jump across the desk and slap him into the middle of next week for insinuating she’d had anything to do with Angel’s truancy.
Damn, the man brought out either the need to jump his bones, or the need to throttle him.
“Yes, I know this is your area of expertise. I wasn’t trying to imply anything else, Ms. Cain. I’m at a loss and on edge.”
Davis sighed.
He was coming across as an ass to Candy. He knew it.
He hadn’t come to antagonize her. He’d come to ask for her help.
But every time they were within two feet of each other, sparks flew. He knew he was the one to blame.
It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t keep his thoughts where they should be, whenever he was around her. And her wearing that tight little top with her smooth brown belly showing, her small tits pushing against the thin material so that he could see them bead when he’d touched her, hadn’t helped matters.
The minute his hand made contact with her soft skin, the sexual tension between them, hovering beneath the surface most times, had burst free.
He’d wanted to capture her small pink tongue when it’d snaked out to lick the bottom rim of her full lips. To suckle on those lush lips of hers was a fantasy he’d had for nine long months.
Davis adjusted himself in his seat. He mentally begged his cock not to thicken any more than it already had inside the tight confines of his Levi’s.
He had to focus on his reason for coming to her, and ignore his raging lust for her. Milly had been right, he needed her help.
She was so damn young. Seemingly too young to give advice about life to teenage girls.
He was disgusted with himself. She wasn’t jailbait, but couldn’t be much older than twenty-four or twenty-five years old at the oldest. Definitely too young for his thirty-seven years.
His eye roved over her lush ass when she stood up from her chair, walked over to her trash can and placed the balled-up paper inside. He followed her movement as she picked up a watering can and sprinkled a plant on her desk.
She had a nice ATW—ass-to-waist—ratio. His friend and project manager, Rodney Adams, had said that about a woman he was dating, and Davis knew exactly what he meant.
Her waist was small and showed off her rounded hips, thighs, and ass. She didn’t have much in the way of breasts, but she had enough to be a nice mouthful.
As she watered the plant, her small, obviously unbound breasts jiggled inside her top. The hem had eased out of the waistband of her jeans. Davis caught the flash of what looked like a wing in red and black ink that spanned her lower spine.
Damn, it figured. A tattoo went with the rest of the package.
Davis stifled a groan.
“How old are you?” He blurted the question and wished he could retract it. The words sounded as lame said out loud as they did in his thoughts.
She turned and faced him and her pretty, light-brown eyes widened. When she’d turned, her long, thick braid had whipped around and now lay nestled between her plump breasts.
Her eyes were tilted in the corners and her eyelashes were thick and dark, just like her eyebrows. Although her skin was the color of smooth milk chocolate with only a hint of cream, he could see a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her short nose.
Her lips weren’t overly full, but lush enough. His imagination ran wild with thoughts of taking her full bottom lip between his lips and sucking it.
Or imagining the feel of her mouth wrapped around his cock as she slowly glided her tongue over his entire length.
She was definitely too young for him to have the thoughts he’d had lately with irritating and increasing frequency.
Thoughts about what he’d like to do to her.
Lascivious, dirty, come sit in my lap thoughts.
The type of thoughts where they were butt naked in a bed playing some twisted version of Barbie and Ken.
The way she dressed further fueled the flame of his lust.
If she wasn’t wearing jeans and an itty-bitty top, she was wearing what looked like fabric wrapped around her body.
No seams, button or zippers, just a wrap of cloth around her hot little body, coupled with a T-shirt. He imagined how it would feel to start unwrapping her.
“I’m thirty-four…why?” She finally answered, and faced him.
“No particular reason. I assumed you were—”
“Younger?” she finished for him and placed the watering can down, near the plant. She walked back to her desk to sit down. “People usually do. If they’d look beyond the outer trappings, maybe they wouldn’t make assumptions,” she said with a small bite in her tone.
“I’d think that would be a compliment. To be thought younger.”
“Maybe to some. For me, I have no problem with my age,” she sat back behind her desk. “I don’t think you came here to talk about my age, Mr. Strong. You came here to discuss Angelica.” She effectively ended that line of conversation.
“Yes, I did. Sorry I asked you a personal question. It won’t happen again, Ms. Cain,” he promised, and felt a small tic twitch in the corner of his mouth.
Davis Strong thought she was younger than she was. That shouldn’t be a surprise to her, yet a strange excitement pooled in her belly. She sat back down and looked across the desk at him.
He sat in her faux leather chair and appeared more relaxed in her presence than he’d ever seemed to be.
That was, until she’d snapped at him. Now his features had tightened, and his body lost his relaxed appearance.
“Angel thought she was too smart and when she tried it again, Mrs. Douglas realized right away it wasn’t my handwriting.”
“What are they going to do about it?”
“The truancy coupled with her behavior at school—it’s not looking good for either one of us.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’ve raised Angelica alone for most of her life.”
“Yes, I do know a bit of your and Angelica’s history.”
Candy knew more than a “bit.” She knew his wife had died years ago when Angel wasn’t much older than a baby and Davis had taken care of her, alone, with only the help of his aunt and sister.
She also knew Angelica wasn’t his biological child. It was no secret; everyone knew, and Davis never tried to pretend otherwise.
“I got the distinct feeling the principal—the school—hadn’t exactly looked on me favorably as a single father raising a little girl alone, before this