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  Flirting with the Bad Boy

  A Sweet Water High Romance

  Michelle Pennington

  Contents

  Welcome

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Before You Go

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Sneak Peak

  Copyright © 2018 by Michelle Pennington

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Michelle Pennington P.O. Box 54 Hartford, AR 72764

  www.michelle-pennington.com

  Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locals is completely coincidental.

  If you want more sweet romances, join my newsletter at www.michelle-pennington.com and get the latest on all upcoming releases.

  Created with Vellum

  This book is dedicated to:

  Kirk

  Welcome to the town of

  Sweet Water, North Carolina!

  1 Town. 1 School. 12 Sweet Romances

  Don’t miss the next book in the

  Sweet Water High Series:

  Chemistry of a Kiss

  By Kimberly Krey

  1

  When I started playing volleyball in the sixth grade, I had no idea how much it would teach me. I mean, sure, my mom’s reasons for signing me up were so I could learn teamwork and commitment and discipline, but that was just the beginning.

  Volleyball taught me to not be afraid of floor burns, bruises, or sprains. I learned that the best silence is the moment before a serve and that a square of gym floor can feel more like home than your house. When I screwed up, I learned to fix my ponytail and attack the game again. And lately, volleyball has taught me that having a passion for something is lonely.

  After a long summer of camps, training, and practices, the pressure inside me was mounting, especially now that we had games every week. I didn’t have time to be lazy—to not give my all in every moment of practice.

  “Good effort today, Amber,” Coach Sydney said after dismissing us to go get changed. “Don’t forget to ice that ankle tonight.”

  Right. My bum ankle that continued to haunt me. I’d sprained it badly during a game last season, and it still gave me problems. But the weakness just made me more determined to realize my dream of playing college ball for Duke. Growing up in Sweet Water, North Carolina, there was nowhere else I’d want to go.

  As I walked back to the locker room with my hands on my hips and my lungs still heaving for air, I glanced at my teammates, who were all headed for the hallway, and rolled my eyes. As usual, while everyone else wanted to hang out in their spandex butt-shorts, waiting for the football players to get out of practice, I just wanted to go home. It wasn’t that I didn’t think some of the football players were hot; I didn’t want the distraction. From what I’d seen, boyfriends were nothing but time-sucks who created way too much drama. All my big plans to play for Duke meant that not only did my game have to be top-notch but my grades as well. So no boys for me. Not yet.

  I got my bag out of my locker and sat down to change my shoes. Two of my teammates, Sadie and Maya, came in, going straight to the mirror to fix their high ponytails and apply lip gloss. Glad they were ignoring me and I didn’t have to talk to them, I got up and threw my bag over my shoulder.

  “Holy cow, Amber. You aren’t going out looking like that, are you?”

  I turned and raised an eyebrow at Sadie. “Yeah, I am.”

  “The Hammer doesn’t care what she looks like,” Maya told her, a smirk on her shiny pink lips.

  My nickname. It was like a two-sided coin. When I was dominating in a game as outside hitter, being called The Hammer was definitely a good thing. But off the court, it took on a derisive note that meant I was too tall, too tough, too…different. Though Maya and Sadie could be fierce competitors in a game, they knew how to switch it off when there were guys around. I was missing that switch.

  “Have fun drooling over the sweaty jocks,” I said, waving a hand and heading to the door.

  “We’ll do more than that,” Sadie said, giggling. “You probably wouldn’t know what to do with a guy if you caught one.”

  “She’d probably arm wrestle him or something.” Maya’s lips twisted in disgust.

  Eye roll. “Maybe,” I said. “If he was man enough.”

  They stared at me with blank faces as they tried to process my response, so I just left. Even after years as teammates, they didn’t get my sense of humor—or anything else about me, actually. And that was fine. I had other friends who did.

  But Charlotte and Maddie were super busy all the time, and now that Charlotte was dating Lucas, we hardly ever got together.

  As I got to the main locker-room hallway, the football players were streaming inside. Their enormous locker room was just down from ours, a handy distance from the nearby indoor practice field. I stared down at my feet, watching the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights on the polished tile floor. In the periphery of my vision, I saw sneakers and hairy, grass-covered legs passing by. There was a certain sound that shoulder pads made—a sort of muffled, rustling, creaking sound. Then there was the smell of sweat and Axe body spray. It was like walking through a tunnel of testosterone. But if I didn’t make eye contact, I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.

  “Hey, it’s The Hammer,” one of the guys called. I didn’t look to see which one.

  I needed to up my avoidance game, so I stopped and pulled my phone out of my bag. I unlocked the screen and headed the last fifteen yards or so toward the glass doors ahead of me. With my eyes on my phone screen, I reached out for the handlebar of the door. But instead of cold metal, my hand landed on someone’s hot, sweaty hand.

  Looking up, about to apologize, I stopped when I saw the stocky, bull-shaped guy in front of me. Dugan Wesley. From the way he was grinning and blocking the whole doorway, it was clear he was just being a jerk. He always went out of his way to annoy me. He always succeeded.

  “Gross!” I pulled my hand back and wiped it on the hem of my T-shirt, scrunching up my nose in disgust. “Doofus! Man, go wash your hands.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  I squared up to him, our eyes almost level since I was five foot ten and he was lucky if he was five foot eleven. “Stay out of my way, and I won’t call you anything at all.”

  “I like being in your way. Hey, what’s the hurry? You got a hot date or something?”

  My eyebrow rose, an expression I was well known for. “I can’t stand the stench around here.”

  “What? This stench?” Dugan raised his arm up on the door frame, exposing his armpit, since the sleeves of his T-shirt had been cut off. I almost urped in my mouth at the sight of the
wet fuzz in his pit and the ripe body odor filling my nasal passages.

  Before I could guess what he intended, he grabbed the back of my neck and tried to shove my face into it. I bent forward, ducking out from under his hand and freeing myself, but before I even managed to straighten up, there was a rush of wind at my back and a flurry of movement and curses. When my eyes focused again, Jason Hunt had Dugan pinned to the wall a few feet away. With Jason’s brawny forearm pressed against his throat, Dugan couldn’t do anything but gulp like a goldfish while his eyes bulged.

  Jason was a new guy in school, and I didn’t know much about him; no one did. He walked around school like it was the last place he wanted to be and didn’t talk to anybody. Even though he wore dusty cowboy boots, ratty ball caps, and a bored expression, there wasn’t a girl in school that didn’t think he was hot. Like, super hot. There were rumors he’d been recruited for our school by none other than the football coach himself, and whether or not it was true, there was no denying the guy was a force to be reckoned with on the football field. And apparently in the hallway too.

  I wasn’t the only one gaping at him. A crowd had gathered around them, chanting, “Fight, fight, fight!” For a tense, dangerous moment, I thought I was about to watch Doofus meet his maker, but then Jason stepped back and flung him to the side.

  Dugan grabbed at his throat. “Dude!”

  A vein throbbed in Jason’s forehead, and his muscles remained tense. “Walk away while I’m letting you.”

  The crowd whooped and jeered as Dugan pushed his way through it. Still in shock, I watched Jason pass me to grab his gym bag from where he’d dropped it on the floor. As he headed for me—or the door—he seemed to get bigger with every step, till I found myself craning my neck back to meet his eyes.

  “You going out?” he asked, his voice terse and clipped. He reached around me and pushed the door open, holding it for me.

  Jolted back to my senses, I turned and passed through, coming so close to him that my shoulder brushed against his chest. Even just that brief touch nearly made me panic. Ordinarily, I would have gotten away from him as quickly as I could, but I needed to thank him first. “Thanks for what you did. I mean, I could have handled it, but—”

  “Sure you could have.”

  I blinked, confused. His words should have sounded sarcastic, but they didn’t. “I could have.”

  “I know. That’s not why I jumped in.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “Because I wanted to. And because you shouldn’t have to deal with it.”

  I nodded and started walking toward the parking lot. “Agreed. I don’t even get why he did that.”

  He turned and leveled a look at me, clearly questioning my intelligence. “Really? He has a thing for you.”

  “What? So he tried to rub my face in his sweaty armpit?”

  Jason gave me a half-smile. “I didn’t say he was smart.”

  “No way. Why wouldn’t he ask me out or give me his number or something? Not that it would work, but at least that would make sense.”

  He shook his head. “Because you intimidate him. And most other guys for that matter. Surely you know that.”

  I was used to getting teased by the girls on my team. Hearing it from a guy—especially the first one to ever really catch my attention—was a whole new low. “I didn’t, so thanks for telling me. I can’t tell you how awesome I feel now.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, stopping next to my car at the same time I did.

  I put my bag on the hood of my pearl-white BMW—which I had a love-hate relationship with—and dug for my keys. “Never mind, big guy. I’ll live.” But as I found my keys and hit the button to unlock my door, I turned and almost ran into his chiseled arm as he leaned on the door of the car.

  “Look, I’m not sure why you’re offended. You’re out of everyone’s league, and we all know it. I pegged that the first time I saw you.”

  I looked up at him, at his masculine jawline, wavy dark hair, and sharp blue eyes. He was so close I could feel the heat radiating from his skin, but I refused to be distracted. “You don’t even know me. None of you do.”

  “So what?”

  “You and I have never even talked,” I said, my temper flaring. “At least I’ve known Doofus since he was a chicken-legged punk in middle school. You? We are strangers.”

  “True. All I know is what I can see…and that is a pretty girl with a hard-as-nails expression and her rich nose in the air. Clearly you don’t need anything from us jokers who…”

  I felt like punching him for assuming I was a snob, but there was just enough vulnerability in his voice as he trailed off to make me pause.

  “Who what?”

  He dropped his arm and shrugged. “Who aren’t going the same places you are.” Then he walked away and got into a giant green truck with rust spots just a few parking spaces away. Even as his engine rumbled to life, I continued to stare at him, trying to figure out what he’d meant...and what had just happened.

  Too bad volleyball hadn’t taught me anything about tough guys who talk in riddles.

  2

  When I pulled up in my driveway, I sat staring at the wooden privacy fence in front of my car for several minutes, still not sure what had just happened. Part of me felt sort of giddy from the attention I’d gotten from the most mysterious guy in the school. That was the stupid part of me. The rest of me wondered if he was right. Did I intimidate guys? Is that why none of them ever talked to me?

  But it was impossible to know, and it didn’t matter anyway because I had my no-dating rule.

  Forcing it all from my mind, I got out and went inside through the garage and into the kitchen, tossing my bag at the foot of the stairs as I went. I was always ravenous after school because I didn’t eat much for lunch and working out for volleyball took a ton of energy. With only twenty or thirty minutes till my mom got home, I had to eat fast. She hated that I refused to eat more than would feed a bird around the other girls, but she didn’t understand. When you’re a big girl, no matter how athletic, people stare at you when you eat, as if eating a normal amount of food is the reason I’m a head taller than most girls and weigh twice as much as a cheerleader. No, my body just worked that way. I got it from my biological dad—one more thing I would thank him for if I ever saw him again.

  Grabbing a couple of ripe avocados from the fruit basket, an onion, spices, and hot sauce, I made a bowl of guacamole, grabbed a bottle of pineapple juice from the fridge and a bag of chips from the pantry, and headed for the stairs.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” my mom said from somewhere behind me. Her voice froze me in my tracks. “What have you got there?”

  I closed my eyes and turned. “Just a snack. Why are you home so early?”

  She looked as amazing as always with her shoulder-length hair straight and sleek and her dainty features highlighted with perfect makeup. But she still betrayed her frazzled nerves in the way she kept adjusting the sunglasses on her head. She nodded toward my little brother. “Ryker had a dentist appointment. Come on. What do you have?”

  “It’s just some guac and a juice. Totally healthy.”

  She groaned. “Great. Now if I don’t let you eat it, it will just go to waste.” She set her purse down on the counter and went to the fridge. She cracked open a diet coke and took a long drink. “Well, don’t get too full. We’re meeting Cole for dinner.”

  I pressed my lips together. “Again? I don’t feel like going anywhere tonight.”

  “Well, I don’t feel like cooking, and it’s the only way we can eat together, because Cole has to work late.”

  There were worse things, I guess. “Fine. But can we please not go anywhere too fancy?”

  “We’re going to a steakhouse, so jeans are fine if you wear a nice shirt.”

  I knew that arguing wouldn’t do any good, so I just shut up and took the chance to go upstairs. If I waited to come down till right before we left, she wouldn’t make me go back and change because she
was always flustered about being late.

  My stepdad wasn’t too bad. He was good for my mom in a lot of ways. Before she’d married him, we’d been a mess. If we weren’t late on rent, our electricity got cut off. We rarely had anything to eat but ramen noodles or whatever leftovers my mom brought home from the deli where she’d worked then. But that had been seven years ago. Then she’d met Cole.

  They’d had a fairy-tale romance, and the next thing I had known, I’d gone from having a small corner in a dingy apartment complex to having a giant bedroom suite with bedding and furniture straight from a pottery barn catalog. My closet alone was enormous. It had been empty when we’d moved in after the wedding, but once my stepdad got Mom a credit card, it hadn’t been long before she’d filled it with all the frilly dresses she’d always wanted to buy for me and hadn’t been able to. Since then, we’d had more than one argument about my choice of wardrobe.

  Luckily, having a new baby within their first year of marriage had taken a lot of the focus off me, and I was left more and more to my own devices—which suited me fine. I’d never been the type to be clingy or want too much affection.

  When I got to my room, I stripped off my sweaty clothes and sat down at my desk in my boy-short panties and sports bra to eat my food before I got into the shower. Guacamole would turn brown on me in no time. While I ate, I turned on a Korean drama I’d been watching on Netflix and tried to let my mind just go blank. But regardless of the fact that the guy on the show was Korean, he still somehow made me think of Jason. Maybe it was his cut musculature or the cool, mysterious expression he wore. So when a kiss scene came on, I felt suddenly flustered and turned the thing off.