Flirting with Boys by Abbott, Hailey (freda ebook reader TXT) 📗

her or her family. He just did whatever he wanted all the time. The effect on her never entered his mind. Celeste cast a sidelong glance at her boyfriend as they walked along. His eye was swelling up and there was a long red mark across one cheek. He even looks like a thug, she thought bitterly.

Travis pushed open the door of her dad’s office and the blast of air-conditioning hit them. Celeste shivered and followed him in.

Her dad was tapping on the computer and didn’t

look up. “Sit down,” he said, waving his hand in Travis’s direction. Travis sank onto a plastic and metal chair while Celeste nestled herself in a corner of the ugly, nubby plaid sofa and tried to be invisible.

Mr. Tippen finished what he was typing and leaned back in his chair. He tapped a pen on his desk. Travis unconsciously straightened his back and clasped his hands between his knees like a little boy waiting to be called on in school.

“Well, Mr. Helding,” Dad said. “It seems to me that you are one strike away from losing your job.”

Celeste started up from the sofa and opened her

mouth to protest, but her father glared at her and she fell back in silence.

“Strike one, of course, was forfeited by stealing the golf cart in the first place. And, as I observed by the pool, you’ve just used up strike two. That would leave one more strike and you’re gone from Pinyon.” Mr.

Tippen’s voice rose slightly at the end of his last sentence and his grip on his pen tightened.

Travis nodded. “Mr. Tippen—” he began.

Celeste’s dad cut him off. “I am not finished speaking, Travis. Now, I recall that at the beginning of the summer I had a long conversation with your parents.

And they made it perfectly clear to me that this debacle was to be entirely your responsibility. If you lose your job at Pinyon because of your own immaturity, you will be responsible for the rest of the golf cart damages yourself. And let me tell you, the value of golf cart is significantly higher than what an eighteen-year-old can earn in a single summer. I don’t think you’ll want to be bur-dened with that, do you?”

“No, sir,” Travis mumbled, staring down at his knees.

“Good.” Mr. Tippen stood up and Celeste couldn’t help thinking that he had really missed his calling when he went into resort management. He definitely should have been a high school principal instead. “Then I trust there will be no more problems like this.” His voice was frosty.

“Yes, sir,” Travis said again, like a parrot.

“And Celeste.” Her father turned his gaze on her and she cringed involuntarily. “I don’t know what part you had in all of this, and to be perfectly honest, I’d rather not know.”

Celeste forced herself to keep looking him in the face. It wasn’t easy, since it felt like his eyes were boring holes in her head.

“All I can do is remind you—again—that this family depends on the success of the resort, and that success depends on the happiness of our guests.” He leaned across the table and skewered her with another stare.

“Including the Saunders family. See that you keep that in mind.”

Celeste gulped and nodded. Her father waved his

hand at them dismissively and turned back to his desk.

Travis got up and shambled toward the door, Celeste trailing in his wake. She looked back at her father. He was already typing again on the computer. A quiet exit seemed like the best strategy.

Out on the pathway, Celeste turned to Travis, her hands on her hips. His halter top/ripped shirt had dried somewhat but still looked totally stupid. “Look, Travis, we have to talk,” she said.

He sighed noisily. “Don’t you think I’ve been bawled out enough for one day? I said I was sorry, remember?

What do you want me to do, stab myself with hot

needles? The little punk deserved it anyway.”

A guest in a bathrobe was coming down the path.

Celeste grabbed Travis’s arm and dragged him off to the side, behind a clump of azalea bushes. Stiff twigs poked her in the back. “Look,” she hissed. “Whatever I have to say, you deserve it. Your stupid temper got me in trouble, pissed off my dad, and possibly screwed up our family business. You heard my dad in there—it’s my job to laugh at Nick’s stupid jokes and listen to his stories.

The Saunderses are our customers! Keeping them happy keeps us in business. So if you beat up their son, that makes them unhappy, get it?”

A sulky look crossed Travis’s face. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Hey, listen, Ms. Pissy 2009, maybe you should be happy that I was trying to defend your honor. I mean, the guy was pawing you all over!”

Celeste felt the blood rise in her temples and couldn’t resist actually stamping her foot. “Travis! You are so irritating! First of all, number one, Nick was not hitting on me, for the billionth time. He was talking about his party.

And two”—she waved her fingers in his face—“that little piece of class down there in the pool was not about me or my honor. It was all about being a stupid guy and doing some sort of marking-your-territory thing, like some dog peeing on a fence. I am not your fence, Travis Helding, so don’t think you need to get all badass for me.” She stopped and took a deep breath. Her head was pounding.

Travis opened his mouth as if to say something.

“Shut up! I’m not done. Furthermore, it’s revolting that you think I actually need defending. I mean, wouldn’t you trust me to shut Nick down if he was really hitting on me?”

Travis stood still a minute, his mouth hanging open.

“Okay, fine,” he said carefully, as if talking to a dangerously deranged person. “Look, I’ll try not to let that little Saunders prick get under my skin, okay?” He laid a tentative hand on her arm.

Celeste took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry I’m freaking out,