Page 45 of As Long As You Kiss Me

She gave him a wicked grin. “I can really use this sugar daddy thing to my advantage.”

“I, um,” he stammered. “You do know I’m a teacher, right?” He wasn’t smiling.

Had she taken the joke to far? “Wait, you know I’m kidding, right?”

A huge smile broke across his face. “You think I didn’t know that?”

“Oh. Well, I wasn’t sure,” she said, feeling lame.

“Gotcha.”

The punk. She poked him in the ribs.

“What was that for?”

“For teasing me so much.”

“So that’s how I get you to put your hands on me more. All I have to do is pull a prank on you.”

She considered poking him again, but that would only encourage his bad behavior more.

They went out to the car.

“So what now?” Sully asked, looking over at Jackson, who looked good enough to eat for dessert with his toned arms and tanned skin.

“Now we wait. If we go over there too early, we might get caught.”

“We went over there early last time,” Sully said.

“Yeah, but this is different. We have to plant things around his house.”

“That’s a good point. I really don’t want to be caught.”

“So let’s go over to my place if you want. We can snack on some food and wait it out a bit.”

Jackson didn’t have to ask twice. Snacks with a guy that hot? She was all over the idea. The plan had two of her favorite things. Junk food and a piece of eye candy. It didn’t hurt that she was developing strong feelings for him too. But she wouldn’t think too much about that.

After eatingchips and watching funny videos on Jackson’s phone, snuggled up on his couch, they drove over to Mason’s house around midnight. Jackson had decided they both needed to be wearing black, so she had on a pair of his sweatpants and one of his black t-shirts. The pants were pretty baggy on her, and she had to pull the drawstring tight to keep them from falling down. She’d checked herself out in his bathroom mirror, and she’d looked like she was drowning in the shirt he’d given her.

It was for a good cause. Sort of. If you could call sabotaging your ex to get him to move out of town a good cause. But it was for the greater good of Maple Creek. She was making the town a safer place with him gone.

The bag of critters sat between her feet again. “The sooner we get rid of these ‘pets,’ the better.” Sully was done with them being so close to her in the truck. They should have taken her car so they could have put them in the trunk.

She could just imagine that wolf spider getting loose and crawling up her leg. This had better run Mason off to make this car trip worth it. She felt like her scalp was full of creepy crawlies, and she kept scratching at it.

She looked over at Jackson. Being with him was as easy as breathing. And he was easy on the eyes too. He connected her to her brother in a way she hadn’t felt in years. It was almost like she’d gotten a piece of her brother back by having Jackson in her life.

He pulled up to Mason’s street and parked several houses down from his. They climbed from the truck with the spider and mouse in a brown paper bag, which were each in a little container to keep them secure. They walked closer to his house, and the lights were off in his section of the home.

“Looks like he’s gone to bed,” Jackson whispered.

“Think we’ll need the ladder tonight?” She’d noticed it was still in the back of his truck.

Jackson rubbed his stubbled jaw.

Was it prickly on his fingers? She wanted to touch it to find out. Bad Sully! She needed to focus and stop drooling over the hotness walking next to her.

“We’ll have to,” Jackson said. “I’ll drop off the stuff in some bushes, and we’ll go back for the ladder.”

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