Budget Cuts and Midnight Lust (The Marchfield Middle Series)

Emma Bennett has a purple ponytail, a chipped World's Best PE Teacher mug, and one ironclad rule: do not fall for the man trying to dismantle everything you've spent five years building.

She's broken the mug twice. The rule is next.

Dr. Max Harrison is precise, annoyingly logical, and in possession of a jawline that has no business existing in a middle school. He has a twelve-page proposal, a $50,000 grant on the line, and absolutely zero interest in catching feelings for the woman who thinks his spreadsheets are a threat to childhood joy.

He's starting to suspect she might be right.

When budget cuts force them to merge Field Day and the science fair — one event, one budget, one very small lab — their arguments develop a disturbing tendency to feel like foreplay. Somewhere between a PTA showdown, a catapult malfunction, and the dawning realization that data cannot explain what's happening in his chest, they'll both have to decide what they're actually fighting for.

Turns out, the best reactions happen when you mix two things that shouldn't go together.