Pretty Jane (The Browning Series Book 3) Read online

  PJ snapped back to current affairs, eyes narrowing on the strange woman still lecturing her. “I thought I was.”

  “I’m not sure Mr. Hollis would agree with you.” Ivy shook her head, a couple unruly curls springing free from the tight bun she’d woven at her crown. She grimaced at a file spread open on Dulton’s desk. “Testicular torsions take a while to heal.”

  PJ shrugged and stared at her fingernails. They were pink today, with cute little daisy embellishments and a glittery topcoat. Several days ago, right before she’d gone on that crazy rescue mission with her former stepfather, Grayson Browing IV, they’d been jet black and sharp when they’d dug into Wade Hollis’s sac. Why had she torqued the hell out of the guy’s nuts?

  Two reasons, the first being a bit of a mystery to PJ because usually when people talked trash about Grayson’s darling daughter, Lily, PJ didn’t give a rip. But that day hadn’t been a “usually” kind of day. That day the guys from Jefferson Prep had been over to help set up for some dance CSA was hosting, and that day PJ had run into a couple of them exiting the school’s gym.

  This was where reason number two came into play, because of all the pricks in the world she could have overheard talking trash about Lilith-the Princess-Browning, it had to be Wade Hollis, and while PJ strongly disliked her former stepsister, she absolutely loathed Wade Hollis. They had a long-standing beef, and she’d owed that fucker some payback. So that day the claws had come out, and Wade’s balls had paid the price.

  “He should be thanking me,” PJ said, eyes slivering dangerously.

  “And how do you figure that, Miss Thang?”

  “I don’t know, Ivy, probably because if any one of the Brownings had heard what Wade said about their precious Lily, the dude would actually be missing his balls right now.”

  “You may have a point.” The counselor hopped down from the desk and crossed her arms as she strode forward. “But it hardly matters when you haven’t seen fit to enlighten anyone on the highlights of that particular conversation.”

  It hadn’t been a conversation. It had been about twenty seconds of Wade jawing off to his boy Troy about how he was gonna deep-throat the princess at some spring break party… followed by him squealing like a pig. PJ had left him writhing in the hallway next to Troy, who’d been laughing his ass off.

  Thirty minutes later, Wade had gotten the last laugh, however, because the guy had actually had the nerve to report her for assault, and PJ’s headmistress had had no problem suspending her.

  PJ drummed her nails on the arm of her chair, snapped her gum, and stared at the woman who’d stopped in front of her.

  “Wow, so you’ve got nothing to say?” Ivy drawled.

  Nope. Not really.

  Francine had been the only one PJ had told about Wade’s trash-talking. And this was only because Dulton had actually had the nerve to interrupt her mother’s Cancún vacation to apprise her of the situation. After two prior high school expulsions and a number of suspensions, PJ had figured she kinda owed Francine a more thorough explanation than “Sorry, ma. I guess I just lost my shit again.”

  But the sassy chick blinking at her now? PJ didn’t owe this woman a thing.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Ivy taunted. “From what I’ve heard, that’s some kind of rarity.”

  PJ had to bite back an f-bomb as she chewed with increasing speed on her Wrigley’s. Fuck, this counselor was annoying. Where did Dulton find her? Where the fuck was Dulton? PJ must have wondered some portion of this out loud because Ivy sat down next to her with a knowing smirk. “Oh, she’ll be along soon enough,” she said, leaning towards her, “but first you need some guidance.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes,” Ivy said emphatically, “you do.”

  PJ squirmed as Ivy stared. “I really don’t think—”

  Ivy’s hand fired up again, a few more curls slipping free from her bun as she leaned even closer, the energy around her growing charged. “Let me give you some advice.” PJ swallowed her Big Red in one nervous gulp as Ivy Espinoza, Counselor, OS, got all up in her face. “You need… to get right… with you.” She punctuated her words with little flicks of her fingers, then sat back with a satisfied expression, apparently quite pleased with these sage words of wisdom.

  PJ was not. She frowned as she rolled them around in her head. Get right with you… get right with you… What the fuck did that mean? “I don’t get it. Am I not right with myself?”

  Ivy gave a sharp crack of laughter before springing from her chair.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” PJ watched the woman stride toward the office’s only exit, a door propped open by a little stone sculpture of the Virgin Mary.

  “I’ll be around,” she said, still laughing as she shot PJ a sassy salute and slipped from the room.

  PJ threw up her hands in exasperation. “What kind of counselor are you? That’s the stupidest advice I’ve ever heard! What the hell is an OS, anyways? I’m not sure you deserve so many stars—”

  PJ’s ranting was abruptly cut off by the very late arrival of her principal.

  Dulton strode into the office, sat down, and sniffed the air around her desk as though suspecting PJ of lighting up something else. After a few tense seconds, the woman seemed satisfied PJ wasn’t high and offered her a flat smile. “My apologies,” she said briskly. “I was detained by Wade’s mother. You’ll be happy to know he’s expected to make a full recovery from his injury.”

  “Not really,” PJ muttered, already losing interest in the boring lady with the boring bun who was rifling through her desk. Shifting her sights to the window, PJ could just make out the mysterious new counselor disappearing into a crowd of students crossing the campus.

  Who the hell did Ivy Espinoza think she was! “You need to get right with you?” Good god! PJ could have gotten better counsel from a fortune cookie.

  “Miss Bruister!” PJ jumped as her principal slammed a large metal stamper down on a sheet of paper before handing it to her. “You have hereby been expelled from Christian Sisters Academy. Good day to you.”

  Shit! PJ stared at the document with a growing sense of panic. Not because she was getting the boot. She was by no means surprised by that. She’d cleared her crap out of the dorms as soon as she’d been placed on suspension. But for some reason, Francine’s continued absence agitated her. Despite her scatterbrained tendencies, her mother had never missed one of these before. “My mom will be here any minute,” she heard herself rambling. “Don’t you need to talk to her first?”

  Dulton smiled, her thin lips disappearing in a gleeful smirk. “No, Miss Bruister. I do not. CSA is a private school. Unlike the previous schools you were dismissed from, we have a far more expedient expulsion process. Any violation of our rules and procedures is grounds for immediate termination.” Bushy gray brows arched as Dulton’s hawk-eyed gaze swept over PJ with disapproval. “And you, my dear, have violated enough of them by continuing to wear more makeup than a prostitute.”

  PJ tried not to flinch. She’d been called worse before. Once she’d gotten to a certain level of cosmetic enhancement, the slights had started coming on a weekly if not daily basis. Usually, they didn’t bother her much, but for some reason this chick’s words sort of stung. PJ stared at the little gold cross Dulton had pinned to her CSA sweater. Then she stared into the woman’s cold beady eyes and cleared her throat. “Didn’t Jesus love the prostitutes?” she asked quietly.

  “No. He did not.” Dulton pounded another form with her stamper and handed it to her. “Here’s another copy for your mother. Lord knows that ditsy woman will probably lose the first one. Have her sign it and fax it back.”

  PJ gritted her teeth, white-hot anger flaring to life under her skin as her claws dug into her fists. She could turn the other cheek about the “prostitute” business, but no one was gonna disrespect her mama and get away with it. PJ bounded up from her chair, ripped the paper out of the woman’s hand, and shoved it into her JanSport. “Sure,” she drawled sweetly.
“I’ll get right on top of that.”

  “Good day, Miss Bruister.” Dulton stared pointedly at the door.

  PJ raised her hand in a fuck-you salute before sailing from the room. The secretaries in the office smirked at her as PJ strode through the lobby. PJ didn’t pay them any mind. She had bigger fish to fry.

  Without slowing, PJ exited the building and crossed the campus to the lockers. In seconds, she had hers open and was yanking out books and shoving them into her backpack. Next, she grabbed her skateboard and mini Caboodle. She’d always kept the little toiletry kit stashed in her locker for those unbearably humid Louisiana days that wreaked havoc on her makeup. Right now, she was going to use it to wreak havoc of another sort.

  PJ slammed her locker shut and skated over to an old metal garbage can in front of the admin building. After setting her kit on a nearby planter, PJ unloaded her backpack and dumped one textbook after the next into the trash until she got to a small paperback she’d rarely opened. PJ glared at it for a couple seconds before tossing the Bible back in her bag.

  Turning back to her kit, she grabbed a bottle of nail polish remover and the lighter she often used to soften her eyebrow pencils. PJ glanced toward the quad. The majority of her former schoolmates had already disappeared to their classrooms, but one in particular was striding her way.

  Margo Nesbitt had short black hair, blunt bangs, and thick plastic frames that made her look like Marcie from the Peanut gang. She stopped a few inches from the can, peered inside, and eyed the pile of discarded books expectantly. “It is pretty cold out,” she said with her usual shy smile.

  “Really?” PJ shrugged out of her navy pullover, exposing the leopard-print tank she’d worn underneath. “Hadn’t noticed.”

  “We’re going to miss you here at Christian Sisters,” Margo said wistfully.

  PJ resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she doused the top of her uniform with several ounces of acetone. She didn’t think too many people would actually miss her at CSA. She hadn’t put in a whole lot of effort to making friends. Serial expulsions kind of did that to a girl.

  But PJ supposed if she’d had at least one gal pal at the school, Margo Nesbitt would have been it, so she offered the girl a genuine grin as she tossed her sweater in the can and fired up the trash. “Thanks, Margo. Keep an eye on things here for me, okay? Especially anything to do with Wade Hollis.” PJ slung her bag over her shoulder, then pulled her phone and earbuds from the pocket of her skirt.

  “Will do,” Margo said solemnly.

  A minute later, PJ cruised from the campus with Halsey’s “Nightmare” blasting in her ears as her former headmistress rushed from the admin building with an extinguisher in her arms.

  PJ hit Lakeshore Drive feeling completely okay with herself.

  Ivy Espinoza didn’t know anything.

  Chapter 3

  Fortunately for PJ, the gym her mother worked at wasn’t far from the school. Minutes after she made her fiery exit from the academy, the first few drops of a late February rain were already splattering her cheeks, and by the time she skated into the lot of the popular health club, PJ was caught in a steady downpour that had her regretting torching her sweater.

  “Welcome to Fit Bodies, Fit Minds of East Baton Rouge!”

  PJ kicked up her board as Joanna Hughes called out her usual greeting. The busy receptionist was scanning membership cards with a phone pressed to her ear when she caught sight of PJ pushing through the turnstiles. “Oh, hey there, PJ.”

  “Hey, Jo,” she said with a wave. “You know if Francine is in a class now?”

  “Yeah, she had to take the ten o’clock Zumba on account of Gloria coming down with the grunge. Fitness room C.”

  “Thanks.” PJ headed over to a large studio in the corner of the gym, where a couple dozen women were grooving to a Shakira jam as her mother cheered them on.

  “Work it, ladies! Shake what your mama gave you! ‘Cause these hips don’t lie! Whoooooo!”

  PJ rolled her eyes. It was a testament to just how loud her mother could get that PJ could actually hear this through the solid pane of glass separating Fitness Room C from the Cardio Center. PJ stopped in front of the window and watched the energetic brunette running the class. Francine Bruister was thirty-seven years old, five ten, and a size six. She didn’t have much in the way of hips to lie about, but that didn’t stop her from rolling what little she did have like Miley Cyrus twerking at a nightclub.

  PJ, on the other hand, had plenty of hip action going on. Hers were wide, maybe not so much as Ivy Espinoza’s, but they were definitely curvier than average, and her wet skirt wasn’t doing much to disguise this fact. Reaching over to a dispenser hanging outside the fitness room, PJ racked out a couple feet of paper towels and swiped at the remains of her ill-fitting uniform.

  Dulton had always given her shit about her skirt being too short, which was ridiculously unfair considering the stupid pleated thing had only come in three sizes, none of which were cut for a girl with a solid six-foot frame and ample thighs. God, she couldn’t stand them.

  The pleats, not her thighs.

  While PJ was admittedly a little self-conscious about some of her jigglier bits, she also knew her legs were powerful and full of ass-kicking potential, so she tried not to hate on them too much. Boring beige cotton and hideous pleating, on the other hand, was a whole different matter. There really wasn’t much she could do to save that level of ugly, so PJ quit trying and tossed her towel in the trash.

  Turning towards the Cardio Center, she caught a senior checking her out from one of the recumbents. He’d obviously been appreciating the pat-down because he flushed when she waggled her fingers at him. PJ snorted as his gaze jerked back to his newspaper.

  This was another thing she was used to. For some strange reason, PJ seemed to attract the attention of older men nearly as often as she scared the crap out of guys her own age. She wasn’t too bothered by this because, generally speaking, she preferred older men. Specifically, guys in their mid-twenties with a penchant for grandpa sweaters, not sixty-year-old grandpas riding stationary bikes.

  “PJ!”

  PJ jumped as her mother rushed from the fitness room and hauled her in for a fierce hug. “I’m so sorry, Janie Lou!” she cried, her bubbly Southern drawl booming in PJ’s ear. “I forgot to take my phone out my purse for the reminder texts, and then Gloria called in sick, and our schedules got shuffled around, and you know how these things throw me—”

  “Can’t breathe,” PJ choked out.

  Francine’s hold loosened. Then she hopped back. “I am sooooooo sorry!”

  “It’s fine—”

  “Was it horrible? Were they mean to you? I hope you told them what that awful Hollis boy said about your sister.”

  PJ scowled, instantly annoyed at the woman’s persistence in referring to Lily Browning as her sister. “Stepsister, Francine. Jesus Christ! We only lived with the Brownings for three flipping years!”

  Her mother dashed away a bead of sweat from flushed, freckly cheeks as she blinked. “So they were mean to you.”

  PJ sighed. Her mother might be forgetful, but she’d always been supportive. And PJ was being a real bitch. “Look, it wouldn’t have mattered,” PJ said, reining in her temper as she flicked at a piece of lint on her tank top. “I would have been kicked out for the dress-code infractions anyways.”

  Francine glanced back into the fitness room, where a couple dozen of her clients were either chugging down water or struggling to breathe, then returned her sights to her daughter, her voice lowering in a passionate whisper. “Now, you listen to me! That dress code policy is a bunch of patriarchal hogwash. You are too good for that school anyways. We’ll just have to find you another one that appreciates strong, assertive women—”

  “Francine—”

  “—that encourages free thinkers—”

  “Francine—”

  “—that embraces the artistic soul!”

  “Mama!”

  Francin
e smiled as she always did when PJ called her this. Reaching out, she settled her hands about PJ’s cheeks, a gesture which normally agitated PJ because she didn’t particularly like people messing with her face, but right then, she sort of needed it. “Yes, Janie Lou?”

  “I don’t think high school is a good fit for me.”

  “You may be right.” Francine glanced down at her fitness watch. “Look, I’m about to wrap up with some Rihanna. Wanna join us?”

  PJ would rather strip naked and bounce on a pogo stick than Zumba with the gals in Fitness Room C. “No, thanks. I’ll burn off some pent-up hostility out here.”

  Her mother frowned. “When are you going to get over your fear of dancing in public?”

  “Not today.” PJ stalked off as her mother let out an exasperated groan. Seconds later, Francine was hollering at the ladies to get their umbrellas up as she blasted the pop tune like it was the national anthem, and PJ was checking out the available equipment in the Cardio Center.

  A quick scan turned up one recumbent near the pervy senior, three ellipticals in front of that, and a treadmill the next row up beside a skinny chick with fake tits.

  The woman looked awfully familiar. This probably wasn’t a good thing. She looked like the type of chick who’d talk your ear off about every gal in the Pinterest gang she belonged to before launching into a detailed description of the latest episode of Desperate Housewives.

  PJ opted for an elliptical. Dumping her stuff on the floor beside one, she plugged back into her jams, climbed aboard, and opened up her stride while slipping into her favorite new fantasy: Beau Browning slamming her up against the side of his cousin’s truck.

  She sighed as she remembered that moment in Sacramento when he’d had her pressed up against the Ford, his body covering hers just as the world all around them exploded with sound. One crack right after the other. Like fireworks. PJ hadn’t realized at the time those pops were gunshots. She’d been too stunned by the hottest set of pecs ever to grace a sweater-vest suddenly flattening her boobs into pancakes. She’d been too overwhelmed by the sudden knowledge that she and Beau were the same exact height. Hip to hip, lip to lip, eye to eye. The same fucking height.