Read Stacking the Deck (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 2) for Free Online Page B

I can wait.” He flipped his notepad closed and crammed it in his back pocket. Liz couldn’t help but notice how his jeans pulled taut across his hips as he did so.
    “I... fine. All right,” she said. She told herself she was agreeing because Trish had yet to take her shopping. It had nothing to do with the shivers of awareness that tickled her spine every time those mesmerizing green eyes slid her way.
    Carter smiled again, nodded, and strode away before she could reconsider. Moments later her cell phone rang from her pocket. Liz pulled it out with a shaking hand, glanced at the screen then stuffed it back in. She’d call Grant later.
    Just as soon as she figured out why on earth she’d agreed to go on a sort-of dinner date with her high school crush.

    CHAPTER FIVE
____________________
    L IZ GUZZLED A GLASS OF WATER, stripped like a mad woman and showered in under five minutes. She was downstairs again in fifteen.
    She glanced at her knee-length khaki skirt and pale blue tee, satisfied she’d chosen something no-nonsense and sensible, something that said “this is not a date” without going so far as to imply she had no self-esteem or desire to be acknowledged as a woman. It was a lot to expect from an outfit yanked hastily from one’s suitcase, but Liz wasn’t one to leave these things to chance.
    Her heart beat high in her chest as she stopped briefly at the hallway mirror on the way by, feeling for all the world as if she were sixteen again and ducking into her locker to check her teeth and hastily chew a stick of Juicy Fruit before study hall.
    “This is exactly why I didn’t want to come home,” she muttered, cinching her ponytail tight. Coming home made her feel disoriented. And flushed.
    Like the flu.
    She blew out an impatient breath.
    She hadn’t chewed Juicy Fruit in years, but one look at Carter’s disarmingly crooked grin and lazy, loping stride and she was fat old Beth “the Brain” Beacon again, nervously re-sharpening her pencils as she waited in the back room of the library for their weekly tutoring session.
    God. She could still remember the giant, slab oak tables. The heavy chairs. How, if she leaned close enough over his trig text and inhaled long and slow she could just catch the intoxicating scent of fresh air and leather and something else she didn’t recognize but knew, instinctively, was way, way better than chocolate.
    “Except everyone knows chocolate is bad for you,” she said aloud to her reflection.
    Her reflection did not appear to be buying it.
    Liz rummaged in her purse for her Altoids and popped one into her mouth, the mint sharp on her tongue, then marched out the door.
    Thank goodness she was no longer the ridiculous, naïve girl she’d been in high school.
    A ridiculous, naïve girl, for instance, would get all fluttery at the sight of Carter as he stood at the end of the driveway, leaning against his truck, all swagger and sex appeal in faded, torn jeans, navy tee and tattered Converse sneakers.
    Liz felt nothing. Nothing but minty fresh pragmatism.
    Carter pushed away from his truck as she approached, his cell phone to his ear. “Sorry, I can’t make it tonight,” he said into the phone. “My last job is running late… No. I’ll grab something…. I know you don’t want me to miss it… I’ll do my best… Yeah…  All right. See you then.” He hunched away a little. “Love you, too,” he murmured, then he slipped the phone into his pocket and turned to Liz. “Ready?”
    Och! Liz tried not to stare at the pocket of his jeans where she could just make out the outline of his phone. His poor girlfriend! She was probably nice, too. Carter always dated nice girls you wished you could hate except they volunteered at the food pantry or humane society and had alcoholic fathers or siblings with Down Syndrome so you felt sorry for them and envious all at the same time. No doubt his girlfriend du jour thought she could reform the reckless, bad boy in him and