This Loving Feeling (A Mirror Lake Novel) Read Free Page A

come up here and sing with me? I mean Ms. Rushford, will you come up here and sing?” He turned immediately in her direction, as if he’d known where she was all along. Then he extended his hand and motioned for her to join him.
    Up there.
    On instinct, she shook her head. Frowned hard, the only way she could convey her distaste—no, her abject horror at being put on the spot. These were her students, and she was a respectable teacher. She was no longer the girl who fell for a bad boy who’d turned into a wild man whose antics were splashed all over the grocery-store tabloids.
    “C’mon, Ms. Rushford,” his gravelly voice cajoled. “I bet you’re the coolest teacher in the school.” He looked over the crowd of cheering teens. “Am I right?”
    The uproar was deafening.
    His voice was a unique blend of the smoothness of velvet rubbing against the roughness of stubble. She could still hear it whispering sweet, lovely phrases into her ear. Ones she’d actually believed at nineteen.
    She was much less gullible now at twenty-six.
    Shit . He could’ve picked any of fifty doe-eyed girls in sherbet-colored dresses, eager, expectant, and steeped in adoration. After all these years, why her ?
    Sam was suddenly swept away by her own students, the traitors. “Oh my God, Ms. Rushford, you know him?” one of her students asked. She only had time to shrug as they collectively pushed her forward, everyone shouting and cheering. She managed to catch Jess’s gaze from her place near the drinks, full of concern and worry. As the crowd began chanting “Ms. Rushford, Ms. Rushford,” and “Sing one song, Sing one song,” she knew she was doomed. She couldn’t disappoint her kids, seeing how excited they were at the amazing turn of events, so she allowed herself to be drawn up onto the stage.
    Under the spotlight and the disco ball, she found herself next to Lukas Spikonos. The splinter under her thumbnail. The water seeping into her shoes on a rainy day. The prickle in the bouquet of roses. And every other awful metaphor she could think of.
    She could force herself to make nice, for the sake of her kids. She had no choice. She would never spoil this for them, no matter how much she disliked him.
    “Hello, Samantha,” Lukas said, tossing his head a little to flick a lock of gypsy black hair out of his eyes. He played a little strum on his guitar, the spotlight bouncing off its spit-shined wood, as he casually hooked one long leg around the rung of a stool and gestured for her to take a seat on another one nearby. There went that smile again, still slightly crooked even though he could surely afford to throw millions at some dental work.
    She deflected the smile by glancing at the guitar. Some fancy acoustic model she knew nothing about. He had one arm draped around it, his hand hanging casually over the body. Those hands. Each long, elegant finger adorned with a hammered silver ring she knew he’d made himself. On his wrists, he wore bands of leather cords.
    Reluctantly, she looked up. Met his deep, searching gaze, being careful not to look too long lest it suck her in and turn her to dust. “Hi, Spike,” she said, deliberately avoiding his God-given name. “Long time no see.”
    “You as well, Samantha Rushford,” he said as he swept her slowly up and down, taking in every inch. “Long time no see.” Then he started the riff, that same damn one again. He crooned into the mic, his butter-soft voice spreading smoothly through the gym and trying to work its way into her heart.
    But failing. Gritting her teeth, she forced a frozen smile. For the kids, for the kids , she repeated to herself as every impulse begged her to reach out and strangle his beautiful neck with one of those shiny guitar strings. She crossed her arms to hide her clenched fists.
    For the next three minutes, life imitated art in the weirdest way as she joined him in a song about love gone bad. Their love gone bad. The pure, resonant tones of his