The Marriage Campaign by Karen Templeton

Author:Karen Templeton [Templeton, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary
ISBN: 0373657242
Google: FZ9IEI7CVwYC
Amazon: B009YLXRSS
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-02-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Jack had been so mad when he found out Blythe was coming along on the field trip, he’d told Quinn he was too busy to hang out with her. Because it wasn’t like she didn’t know how he felt about Blythe. Of course, that wasn’t the problem, the problem was how his dad felt about Blythe. Like the way he kept looking at her now, even though they were at opposite ends of the long table in the restaurant so they couldn’t actually talk to each other—it made Jack’s stomach hurt so much he didn’t even want to eat.

Across from him, Quinn sipped her soda through a straw, her eyes all big and sorry. Too bad. The last thing he needed was some girl trying to run his life. Some pushy, smartypants girl who thought she knew everything about everything. Everything about him, anyway. About what he wanted.

Even though he didn’t feel like it, Jack turned to talk to the kid next to him, some boy named Brandon who was kind of a pain in the butt, to be honest. But anything was better than having to look at that traitor—

“So,” Brandon was saying, “I got this really cool game for my birthday. Teen-rated and everything. Wanna come over and play it sometime?”

“Maybe,” Jack said, only half listening as he watched his teacher and Blythe talking a mile a minute to each other. Hey—maybe they’d hit it off and start going out, and his dad would forget about her. He glanced down the table to see if Dad was watching them, but Darnelle Freedman was too busy yakking his ear off for him to notice—

That funny feeling started up in his chest, the one that happened when he thought about Mom. All these people, laughing and talking, and he felt...empty. Alone. Like none of this had anything to do with him.

His eyes got all stingy, like he was going to cry; panicked, he shoved himself to his feet, the funny feeling getting worse. Tighter, like he couldn’t breathe. He caught Quinn frowning at him, heard his teacher asking if he was okay.

He booked it out of the restaurant like a total dork, barely missing a waiter carrying a full tray.

* * *

Wes bolted from his chair, catching Blythe’s concerned gaze, the connection—despite not having spoken to each other for a month—so intense it startled him.

Air whooshed from his lungs when he found Jack outside the restaurant, his face in his hands as he hunched over on the cast-iron bench in front of the window. Breathing out the adrenaline spike, Wes sat beside him, fighting the impulse to haul the raggedly breathing boy to his side. Kid was probably embarrassed enough. He settled instead for gently rubbing his back; Jack glanced up, then clamped the bench on either side of his thighs, gaze fixed in front of him. A woman pushing a jabbering baby in a stroller passed, then the mailman, who nodded in their direction before shoving a handful of envelopes through the mail slot in the door.

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