Page 128 of Midnight Curfew

It’s not a bad idea, though. She knows Dallas. She wouldn’t be like the other women, looking to be impressed or have their minds blown. I’d be touching someone he knows, someone who might as well be working a job. My father would hear that I did well.

“I don’t normally consider their women a conquest,” Milo calls out, “but I’d love some videos of her sucking Saint cock.”

I leave the stacks. Yeah, Macon wouldn’t like that at all.

Throwing the Seneca into the fireplace, I hear a knock on the door.

“Yes?” I bark.

Mrs. Calderon steps inside and closes the door behind her. “A teacher has a request that might require additional funding,” she tells us.

“We have a form for that,” Vincent reminds her.

“She requested I ask Mr. Ames tonight.” She pushes her glasses up her nose, looking directly at me. “It’s short notice, and she didn’t have time to wait.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“She’s outside.”

Quickly, she turns to go get her, and I halt at the table. “No, that’s not how—”

“Let her in,” Milo cuts me off.

We don’t meet with teachers. We help make decisions. Find funding. Quietly infiltrate their academics. We don’t listen to complaints from teachers who need more printer paper.

Vincent, Milo, and Jerome drop down into seats, and I watch as the young biology teacher walks in, her hands clasped in front of her. A paper is pinched between her fingers, her strawberry-blond hair pinned back on one side. At least she’s appropriately dressed in a black skirt and blouse. No wrinkles. Clean nails.

“Hello.” She smiles. “I do apologize for the ambush. I realize this isn’t how things are done.”

“No, it’s not.”

Milo throws me a look, snorting.

Sooner or later, he’s going to catch on as to why I’m not flirting with everything with tits.

She draws in a big breath. “I would like to take my students to the caverns at Marianna,” she says.

“Why aren’t you submitting this request to the dean?” Jerome asks her.

She looks apologetic, licking her newly freshened lipstick. “If I don’t have the buses and hotel rooms, it won’t matter.”

“If we approve those expenses,” I retort, “he’ll see that as approving the trip.”

Her gaze darts back to me.

I can’t hide my sarcasm. “Right?”

That’s why she’s here. She came to us in her tight little outfit because we’re young. The dean is fifty-eight, and his wife teaches French in room 282.

Seeing that I’m onto her, she redirects. “Giving them exposure to the natural world…”

I shake my head. “I don’t give a shit.” I hold out my hand for the paper she wants signed.

We’ll approve the expenses, but I don’t want to hear her whole damn lesson plan. Scurrying over, she hands me the blue paper, and I take a pen off the table, unscrewing the top.

I don’t bother reading, just scanning for where I sign, but I see “Dallas Jaeger” printed in black with his cell number.

“Why is Dallas Jaeger listed on this?” I ask.