Dare to Touch (Dare to Love 3)

“Okay, I’ll go, but why now?”

“Because Coach wants to go now. Sorry, Liv. We need you for this.”

She nodded. “Give me a minute to cancel my plans.” She scowled at her brother.

And when he turned his back and walked out, she stuck her tongue out at him behind his back. The babyish gesture didn’t make her feel any better, but childhood habits died hard.

It figured. Just when she decided to take Riley’s advice and explore her attraction to Dylan, work intruded.

* * *

Dylan wasn’t happy about his canceled lunch date, but he understood Olivia’s reason. He already knew he’d have his hands full with Marcus Bigsby in Arizona for the Pro Bowl trip next week, and if she could help convince the kid to send his cousin away, his job would be much easier. Dylan was only thirty, but when he watched the naïve tight end, he couldn’t help but think of him as a kid. Dylan had had more life experience in his teenage years than Marcus had had in his entire life.

Dylan shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood to eat in the cafeteria, so he figured he’d go visit his ex. Meg had left a message that she wanted to talk to him, and now was as good a time as any. He could have just called, but he’d heard the tension in her voice, and Meg had a tendency to find trouble. More like she had a tendency toward what she called bad boys who brought trouble along with them.

She usually ended up hurt and came crying to him. Sucker that he was for women in distress, beginning with his sister, he usually rode to her rescue.

He walked into the kindergarten class where Meg taught, knowing she had free time for lesson planning. Her found her picking up finger paint cans and moving them to a cabinet in the back of the room. Her light brown hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she hummed as she made her way around the tiny tables she was cleaning.

He cleared his throat, announcing his presence. “Hi, Meg.”

“Hi!” She spun around to face him and grinned. Paint-covered hands in the air to keep from getting him dirty, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Let me just wash up. What brings you by?”

“Umm, you left a message saying you wanted to talk?”

She glanced at him apologetically. “You didn’t have to come in person.”

“I know. I had the time.”

She rinsed her hands in a tiny sink and finally joined him at her desk. “Half my tuna?” she asked, reaching for a bagged lunch and pulling out a Ziploc bag.

He nodded and shrugged. “Can’t say it’s the lunch I had planned, but why not?” They settled into chairs and sat in silence, sharing her homemade sandwich.

High school sweethearts, he and Meg had broken up to go to college. When they’d reconnected years later, they’d tried to pick up where they’d left off, but it hadn’t worked, and they’d ended up agreeing that the old spark was gone. However, they made for good friends, and it worked for him.

“I have got to find something else to make for lunch. I’m tired of tuna.” Meg crumbled her foil up and tossed it into the trash.

“Okay, now that lunch is over, what’s wrong?”

She rose and strode over to a pile of construction paper and began hanging up her students’ drawings, not answering him right away. A clue all in itself.

“Is it Mike?” he asked of her live-in boyfriend. “What did that asshole do now?”

She didn’t turn around to face him as she spoke. “A sudden boys’ weekend in Vegas. With money he never seems to have for us,” she said, sounding defeated.

Dylan hated how that lazy bastard used her. “I thought he worked weekends. Isn’t he the foreman on a construction crew? How does he have free time to go party?”

She dipped her head. “Yeah. About the job… He said he prefers doing hands-on work and stepped down from that position.”

Dylan grunted. “In other words, he was demoted or fired.”

“I don’t know that for sure.”

“Did you ask him not to go?”

She nodded. “He blew up at me. Said he needed a break and to back off. Then he apologized and promised to make it up to me when he got back.”

Dylan stood and came up beside her. “Why do you keep picking these losers? Don’t you know you deserve better?” he asked.