The Mating Game: Big Bad Wolf(13)

“I had two drinks and fell asleep while he was in the shower. Then I woke and he was gone,” Daisy said.

“That’s it?” Larissa glanced at her in annoyance. “You went out with Ryker Harrison, and that was the best you could do?”

“Well, excuse me, it’s not exactly the date I was envisioning either. Eyes on the road!” She shrieked as Larissa swerved to avoid a bicyclist.

Note to self – call an Uber next time. Or walk, she thought.

Daisy looked up Ryker’s work email on her cell phone and sent him a text with her home address, telling him to send her a bill for the lawn. There went her measly savings – and she’d be eating ramen noodles for the next six months.

Her phone rang again. Ugh, the mother ringtone. Well, no point putting it off. She answered it.

“Daisy Bennett, did I see you on the news eating a hot dog? In public?” her mother moaned. “I thought I raised you better than that!”

* * * * *

Daisy had moved to Cedar Park from Georgia six months previously for three reasons: Because her aunt lived there, because it was far away from her cheating ex-fiancé and her suffocating family, and because she’d been offered a teaching job at Miss Bolker’s School for Proper Young Shifters. Her parents had cut her off when she’d refused to take Frasier back, so to finance the move, she’d sold the jewelry she’d inherited from her grandmother, and found roommates.

She’d moved there in May and waitressed all summer while waiting for school to start.

Literally the day before she was due to show up for orientation, she got a message from Miss Bolker’s saying that they would no longer be hiring her because they’d found a more qualified candidate.

Daisy had been suspicious – wealthy southern shifters tended to move in the same circles, and her parents knew members of the school’s board of trustees. Had they done this to force her to go back home and accept Frasier’s proposal?

No matter.

Daisy couldn’t afford to move, and she liked living near Wynona, so she had gone on a mad scramble to find a job somewhere in Cedar Park that would hire her. Despite her teaching degree and excellent recommendations, none of the private schools were hiring. She’d had no experience with public schools in her life, but she loved teaching and was determined to find a place that would take her. It turned out that there was an immediate opening at the Wildwood Elementary and Middle School – and she very quickly found out why. Nobody wanted to work at that school, or in that section of town.

She’d been working there for a month now. It was…interesting.

She felt she was struggling to break through to the kids. She came from a different world than they did, and maybe they sensed that. They also saw teachers come and go all the time, and many of them had been abandoned by adults in their lives. On the one hand, it was very rewarding to work with kids who actually needed her. But she felt as if most of them were wary and untrusting. Would they ever open up to her?

As she climbed out of her car, she saw that someone had spray-painted over the parking lot security cameras. Now they were bright blue, Daisy saw as she pulled her car to a stop.

And the prime suspect was leaning on a parked car and cleaning her nails with a pocket knife, fifty-one inches of bad attitude and emerald-streaked hair. Jasmine usually hid her pocket knife somewhere outside the school and retrieved it at the end of the day, to dodge the metal detectors. She’d also sharpened her claws so that when she partially shifted and extended them, she didn’t need any knife.

“So how’s my favorite terrorist this morning?” Daisy asked Jasmine Diaz, a very bright thirteen–year-old who kept getting held back because she didn’t play nice with others.

“I haven’t shanked anyone yet,” Jasmine said with a shrug. Daisy couldn’t tell if Jasmine thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Would you like to help us clean up the playground?”

Jasmine stifled a snort of amusement. “You don’t know me at all, do you?”

“Why are you here on a Sunday?” Daisy asked.

Jasmine shrugged. “Just finished morning detention. I punched Billy Jordan because he grabbed my butt.”

Daisy started walking towards the playground, and Jasmine followed her with a bored expression on her face.

They passed by a dull brick wall that was brightened by a glorious explosion of spray-paint art. “That is something else,” Daisy said admiringly.

“You like it?” Jasmine said, surprised.

“I love it. I wouldn’t mind having a painting from that artist to hang on my wall.”

“I might know how to contact the artist,” Jasmine said cautiously.