I glance up, expecting to see one of my fellow teachers, but instead, it’s a woman I’ve never seen before. She’s in a soft-blue sundress with short, sun-kissed hair, a long neck, straight posture, a round ass, and strappy-heeled sandals.
I sit straighter.
Is that someone new from the district?
Why wasn’t she at this morning’s staff meeting?
I crane my neck, twisting to look closer, but she’s gone, sashaying down the hallway and around the corner.
Probably just as well. I’m not opposed to having some fun—and I do like fun, even if I refuse full-on relationships—but work is one place I make an effort to not find fun.
Learned that lesson the hard way.
Left my last school district to move back here because of it.
I grunt to myself and go back to scrolling the roster. Looks like I have Juniper Spencer in my second period. Trigonometry. So she’s advanced. If they stay, I’ll have her in calculus class next year.
I grunt again. It’s a small class every year, maybe five students, which means we get tight.
Crap.
This isn’t a mistake, is it?
It’s for June’s own good, I tell myself. Hell’s Bells High was where I finished high school, too, and I wish someone would’ve told Mr. Simmerton to go easy on me in English Lit until I found my bearings, which I never really did. This is me looking out for a new kid in the school in ways that some of my fellow teachers might not consider.
Especially the teachers who have lived in Hell’s Bells more or less their entire lives.
Which is basically most of the rest of them. And same for the students.
Not a lot of turnover in Hell’s Bells, and the high school is small. Little over a hundred kids total most years. Some oil magnate donated the building to the town decades ago. If they hadn’t, our kids would be busing to a county school about twenty miles away every day. We make it work, doing our best to balance our limits with meeting each of the kids where they are.
And it looks like June will be in regular junior-level courses for the rest of her schedule.
Which means now I’m wondering if Maisey pulled her back a level in everything else to ease with the transition and she should’ve been advanced everywhere. Or if advanced math is wrong. Or why I’m getting involved in this at all when June Spencer will not be one of the kids coming to me for help if she struggles with anything.
Not if I won’t let her on the soccer team.
I’m scrubbing my face to cover a sigh of frustration when I catch another hint of motion in my doorway.
She’s back.
The blue-dress woman is back, and this time, she’s not walking away.
This time, she’s stopped right there in my doorway, smiling brightly at me.
“There you are! I completely misheard Mrs. Vincent in the office and thought she said to look left at the end of the hallway, not right. Is this your classroom? I adore that poster of Einstein. Not that that should dissuade you from leaving it up. I’m sure the teenagers will love it too. Who doesn’t love a genius sticking his tongue out?”
My jaw has gone slack, and I cannot find the muscles to pick it up off the ground.
This is not Maisey Spencer.
It’s not.
It can’t be.
For one, she’s in a dress.
Showing the tiniest hint of cleavage.
And curvy, shapely legs.
Jesus.
Who knew she was hiding knockout calves and adorable knees under those jeans?
And her hair.
Her hair.
For the love of all that’s holy, someone please tell me she didn’t give herself an entire makeover that’s left her as a total bombshell.
She has small diamond studs in her earlobes, pink lipstick decorating her Cupid’s bow lips, and she’s done something with her eyes to make them pop.
Suspicious?
No.
I’m about seven levels past that.
Worse, though?
I have never, in my entire life, been the kind of guy to let loose a hubba-hubba, but that is exactly what my dick’s saying right now.
Maisey Spencer is hot, and I am not immune to noticing, no matter how much it pisses me off.
She lifts delicate, newly shaped eyebrows at me. “Flint? Everything okay?”
“You’re a girl.”
Motherfucking fucker, I did not just say that.
I drop my feet to the ground, scrambling to cover the fact that those words actually left my mouth, and in the process I drop my laptop onto the school-grade tile floor.
“Are you all right?” She steps smartly into my classroom, heels clicking like a ticking time bomb coming to set off my libido, while I bend to pick up the device that damn well better not be broken, which puts me in exactly the right—wrong—spot to notice her dress swishing just above her knees.
Her adorable knees.
What the fuck?
Who thinks knees are adorable?
And why am I frozen, staring at the tiniest peek of the bottoms of her thigh muscles, which should not be what I’m noticing about this woman, and should definitely not be what I want to see more of?
Who wants to see a woman’s thigh muscles when there’s that hint of cleavage and that slender neck and those plump kiss-me lips painted pink?
No.
No, I am not all right.
I jerk back to my feet and set the laptop safely on my desk. “No food in the classroom,” I grunt.
I’m a damn caveman.
Her lips purse, but her eyes—her eyes.
They’re dancing with amusement.
“My apologies,” she says with entirely too much cheekiness. “I was making the rounds, introducing myself and handing out cherry crisps to all of the staff, but if you don’t want yours, I’m sure—”
I growl.
It’s feral.
And I should be ashamed, but cherry crisp.
Oh, fuck.
The hair. The cherry crisp. “You met my aunt.”
“Opal?” She slides the aluminum foil pan onto my desk, then follows it by sliding her ass onto my plain wood desk, too, making the dress ride up enough for me to see even more of those firm, thick thighs. And then she swings her legs.
I’m going to have a very visible problem very, very soon.
“She’s so talented.” Maisey swishes her hair. “I owe you a debt of thanks for cutting me out of that swing. Never in a million years did I think I’d ever cut my hair this short, but oh my God, I love it. I feel like a new woman. So thank you.”
Mental note: become a hermit. While living at the gatehouse on her ranch. Which she’ll drive by probably eighteen times a day.
Hell, I saw her drive by at least six times every day since that moving truck showed up a few days ago, and I’m only home about four waking hours a day right now.
Fuck.
“My pleasure,” I manage to choke out.
I did this.
I did this to myself, and now I will pay for it.
Dearly.
“I saw you have Junie for Trigonometry. If we were still in Cedar Rapids, I’d ask you to not go easy on her. She has this habit of saying she can’t do it so she can get out of it. I’m pretty sure she’s afraid of failing, so she’d rather not try at all. But with all the changes she’s had to go through—”
“I can handle teenagers just fine.”
It is annoying as hell when she beams at me like that.