Hadleigh is amazing at anticipating the students’ questions and needs. She’s witty and smart, and doesn’t get thrown by the occasional oddball question. Careful not to interrupt or change the flow of her lesson, I keep my eyes on my notebook, jotting down anything I want to talk to her about later.
The bell rings just as she mentions a worksheet with some short-answer questions for them to take home. She sees a few kids begin to head for the door without one and raises her voice. “Don’t leave without your homework, please.” The students who were about to exit halt at the door to wait. She picks up the stack of papers from the corner of her desk but is waylaid by a student who has hopped right out of her chair to ask a question. I hurry to the front of the room.
“I’ll hand them out for you.” I extend my hand toward the papers.
“Thank you, Mr. Rivers. That would be helpful.” She hands them to me, and as she does, our fingertips brush. Our gazes meet, and I feel a surge of awareness flow right through her fingers and into mine. I shut my eyes for just a fraction of a second, letting the feeling roll through me before I turn on my heel to stand at the door, passing a hand-out to each kid as they walk out the door.
We have another class before lunch and it goes pretty much the same way, only this is a ninth grade geography class. Aside from some typical fourteen-year-old behavior, I do notice two things in that second class—first, I can’t take my eyes off of the teacher and second, each time her eyes find mine, she seems a little flustered. In fact, the more I watch her, the more ruffled she gets. Is it me? I hope I’m not making her nervous. I should probably keep my head down and just listen, but it’s hard when I know what I’m missing at the front of the classroom.
Chapter 8
Hadleigh
I sink down onto the small chair in the workroom after pulling my lunch from the fridge. Sawyer unpacks his food, setting it out on my desk in front of him. He glances at me. “How much time do we have?”
“Just twenty-five minutes, so go ahead and eat first, and then we can talk after. Lunch always passes in a flash for me, and I wouldn’t want you to go hungry.”
“Sounds good.” He takes a bite of a sandwich, chews carefully, and washes it down with water.
It’s a superhuman feat to wrest my eyes from him, but I finally do. As I take the first bite of my sandwich, I allow myself a few moments to think back on how the first two classes of the day had gone.
The students are officially abuzz about our new student teacher. Can I blame them? Not really. It certainly had made it much more difficult to maintain their attention today. A few of the notoriously boy-crazy girls kept turning in their seats to peek at Sawyer. He hadn’t seemed to mind, but he’d also kept himself busy in the back with his notebook during that first class.
I’d overheard some of the conversations among students. I generally make a practice of ignoring them as much as possible, but today it had been hard to block it all out. Instead of the usual chitchat about the latest app they are all downloading, who is dating whom, or how pretty their nails or hair look, I heard nothing but conversation about our new student teacher. The whispers back and forth had gone something like this:
“He’s probably only twenty or twenty-one. That’s only, like, five years older than us.”
“He’d be a senior if he’s student teaching this semester, right?”
“I wonder where he goes to school.”
“Hot. College guys are so freaking hot. I’d do him.”
“Oh, I’d totally get with that. You have to share.”
I close my eyes and try to obstruct all further memories of their chatter from rushing through my head because, oh my God, who am I to talk? Wasn’t it just like three weeks ago that I was calling him Mr. Yummy and tall, dark, and drool-worthy? I’m having the same thoughts as all of these young girls but I’m his mentor, for crap’s sake. The only thing that makes me feel slightly better is that he’s older than what they assume, closer to my age than theirs.
Oh, and let’s not forget another very important piece of information—I’m fairly certain the blonde at the bar had been his girlfriend. He. Has. A. Girlfriend. He’s taken. And he’s your responsibility—your mentee.
And, ugh. So damn attractive. Why does he have to be so mouthwatering? I mentally slap myself for the twentieth time today. With a sigh, I think back to the second class he’d observed.
It had gone mostly the same as the first, only he hadn’t taken as many notes. And every freaking time he made eye contact with me I’d lost my train of thought. I don’t remember having bumbled around a lesson like that in a very long time.
And it’s not even his fault. He’s observing my teaching style and how I manage a classroom of kids, and here I am taking in the cut of his strong jaw and noticing the dimple in his left cheek. Worse, I’d taken to imagining what it would be like to have his strong arms wrapped around me. The button-down shirt he’s wearing is doing him all kinds of favors, showing off his broad chest and shoulders, while the rolled-up shirtsleeves draw my eyes right to his lean, muscled forearms, complete with bulging veins. What the hell is it about men rolling up their sleeves on a damn button-down shirt that increases the hotness factor exponentially?
I finish off half of my sandwich and lean back in the chair, crossing my ankle over my other leg at the knee. “So. I saw
