Saint and Scholar (2 page)

She snorted and quickly covered her face with her hands from embarrassment. Then she began to giggle uncontrollably. She held up her index finger to bid him to wait.

He put a hand against his heart and widened his eyes. “Did I stick my foot in my mouth? Tell me you like boys, else you’ll break my heart, love.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and took a deep breath to recenter herself. “I’m just careful,” she finally managed.
Careful
was putting it mildly. Between her brothers and her friends, any man she dated had to endure an excruciating vetting process. Most didn’t last, and the ones
they
would have her date were either dull, closet assholes or both.

Grant nodded, then cringed when the campus bell tower announced the noon hour. “I gotta go. Got one last exam to administer.” He patted his bag demonstrably. “It’s my last semester here, thank fuck. I hoped my goddamned dissertation would sprout arms and write itself toward the end.”

She raised a brow at his decidedly nonprofessorial language.

He bowed and said, “’Scuse my Middle English.”

Without thinking, she reached forward and put her hand on his forearm. That spark of electricity again surged straight down her core. “Oh! Your language isn’t offensive to me. My mom is first-generation Italian American and my dad was Irish American. Between the two of them, there was lot of colorful language in the house growing up. I’m just always shocked when teachers turn out to be real people.” She started to draw her hand back, but Grant took it in his.

“Good thing I’m not your teacher anymore, eh?” he said, stroking the top of her hand with his thumb.

When she realized he was coming on to her, her breath hitched and chest constricted.
Me?

They stared at each other for a moment like two kids on separate ends of the gym during a middle school dance, then she took her hand back to swat her hair out of her eyes. She hoped to screw up enough courage to cut it one day, because it was getting on her last damn nerve.

“Right.” She ignored the chiming bells, hoping he’d ask her out to coffee or something. “Um, so I guess you’ll go back to Ireland soon, huh?” She couldn’t remember the man’s last name and hadn’t spared one thought about him in months, but suddenly she had a pretty good idea of what love at second sight felt like:
amazing
.

Grant shrugged. “Dunno. I’m sort of playing things by ear at the moment. A school in Ireland has been following my doctorate work with some interest and wants to hire me on as an assistant professor. I’m on the fence. They’ve hinted around that they’d likely promote me after a year, which is flattering, I must admit. I had wanted to get a job in the States, but the job market for college-level educators in this field is…well, I don’t want to bore you.” He started walking backward up the stairs, smiling at her as he transited.

“Oh, you’re not boring me at all!” She cringed at how awkward she must have come across. She was really out of practice with flirting, not that she’d ever been that great at it to start with. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in two years, and that last one was so exceptionally churlish she still hadn’t recovered from him. Until right then.

He paused his ascent and leaned against the stair railing. “Yeah? If only I could have gotten you to talk to me in class or seen me during office hours all those years ago. You have a pretty voice.” With one more smirk, he spun around and bounded up the stairs toward the building’s entrance right as the tardy bell chimed.

She blew out a most unladylike Bronx cheer.

* * * *

Grant twirled his pencil between his fingers and slumped down in his seat. He stole a look at the clock and watched it long enough to verify the second hand was
indeed
moving and he was not actually frozen in time, though it certainly felt like it. The thirty students in his section of level two English composition had their heads bowed over their desks and were frantically scribbling away in their exam booklets. They had two hours and fifty minutes to complete the two-essay exam, though most usually finished early. He said a silent prayer they’d all finish well before his patience was exhausted. It’d been a trying semester. He’d never before had so many students with the tragic inability to cite their sources. He blamed the Internet.

When a student’s hand darted into the air, he sat up, raised a brow, and mouthed, “Yes?”

“Grant, is it okay if we use information we learned in other classes in our responses?” she asked loudly.

Her classmates spun their heads to the back of the room where she was seated and glowered at her.

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and nodded. “Yes, Courtney, assuming it’s not completely spurious, you may pluck what you want from your accumulated knowledge stores to complete the exam. Any other questions?”

The students looked pointedly at Courtney and waited for her to shake her head. When she did, they went back to scribbling.

He was willing to bet his lucky hat Courtney would be a straggler. There was always a Courtney in every section he taught. In fact, from semester to semester, most of the students he taught were wholly interchangeable. Unmemorable. Except one.

Almost eight years earlier, during his first year doing graduate studies at the university, a nervous young woman arrived late to his class. She had mumbled her apologies at the door and quietly skirted through the overcrowded room to the one empty seat at the front center. Courses were always most full on the first day, with a few students wait-listed and hoping to nab a spot should someone drop.

She’d flushed red and busied herself by taking a pen out of her backpack.

“You must be Carla Gill?” he’d asked, pausing in front of her to give her his last syllabus copy.

She’d nodded without looking up and pulled her syllabus closer. “Yes, sorry. I missed the bus from the dorms. I had to jog all the way here.”

“No worries,” he’d said, hoping she’d look up.

She didn’t.

“Perhaps you’ll time your morning jog a bit better on Thursday.”

She’d managed a tiny smile, but immediately afterward buried her face in her hands to hide that charming blush. That was the closest thing to an actual conversation they’d ever had, up until that morning in the quad. He’d been watching out for her over the years and hoping to bump into her, as he knew she was a native of the area. Every time he’d seen her or encountered her in some place, she’d seemed utterly disinterested in interacting. He had seen her far more times than he’d screwed up the courage to say hello, but usually opted to leave her be. He’d even thought about dropping her an email once or twice, but every time he brought up the screen and pasted in the email address listed in the alumni directory, he worried about how she would perceive the intrusion. Would she think he was some sort of stalker? Really, he was just a besotted fool. Who
wouldn’t
be for her?

That morning on the quad, he’d thought,
Screw it. I’m probably leaving anyway. What’s the harm?

There he was with a stack of paperwork on the desk in front of him ready to fax overseas. It only needed his signature and he’d be expected to be in Ireland to present himself for orientation within a week. With all of the American schools he’d interviewed far from making hiring decisions for the fall, he was out of time. That paperwork needed to go in immediately or he’d lose the gig. They’d texted him that admonishment at the start of the exam period. He thought about the way Carla shuddered at his touch and how the pupils in her blue-green eyes danced when he’d put his entire focus on her. Oh, she was interested. If he’d known she was receptive, he would have sent the damned email, but now he may have been too late to start anything beyond a one-night stand. Carla didn’t seem to be a one-night stand kind of woman.

He ground his teeth and scooped up the employment paperwork on the desktop. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said to the class as he strode to the door. “For any emergencies that just can’t wait, I’ll be in the department office.”

He nearly jumped out of his Pumas the moment he pulled the door handle. His friend Seth, a bald, red-bearded ogre of a rugby player stood just on the other side with his fist raised, ready to knock.

“Jesus!” he hissed, pushing the big man back and pulling the door closed. He put a hand on Seth’s shoulder and herded him toward the fire stairs. “What are you doing here?” he asked once they were out of earshot of the students and on the way down to the second floor.

“We’re going to the club tonight and need a driver,” Seth said.

“Hell no.” They turned the landing. “If I keep messing around with you and Curt, I’ll be on some kind of international no-fly list. I need to fly out of this country next week, so I’d like to keep my shenanigans down to a bare minimum. You’ve still got another year here. Or more. What
is
your status with that dissertation?”

“It’s not the dissertation. My advisor has disappeared. Went
poof!
So you’re taking the job?”

Grant brandished his paperwork at Seth as he pulled the door open. “Faxing them now. Dropping the hardcopies in the mail as soon as Courtney finishes her exam.”

“Courtney is cute.”

“Oh, you know her?”

“Yes, sometimes when I’m bored I sit out on the wall and watch the kids file out of your class. She winked at me once. I think she’s a whore. Anyhow, girls in the physics department are much uglier than usual this year. I scout wherever I can.”

“Way to be inappropriate, bud.”

“Can’t get any if I don’t try.”

“Well, Curt doesn’t try and he seems to do okay.”

“He’s got the accent.”

“I’ve got the
same
accent.”

“His is better.”

Grant blew out an exasperated breath and Seth followed him down the hall into the office. They both waved at the perky receptionist as they walked past her desk toward the copy room. Once situated in front of the fax machine, Seth returned to his more pressing matter.

“Well, your imminent departure is all the more reason for you to go out with us, yes? A last harrumph?”

Grant cringed and continued stabbing at the machine’s keypad. Seth was an international student, like Grant and Curt, but hailed from “Mother Russia.” He was studying astrophysics and had plans to join the Russian space program at some point…if it still existed by the time he finished his damn dissertation. Seth regularly botched his colloquialisms and Grant had the never-ending chore of educating him on the intricacies of casual language. “Last
hurrah
, you mean. Listen, any other time you know I would, but I’ve got to grade thirty exams
immediately
and get those grades posted before I shove out of here.” That, and he wanted to try to catch up with Carla before he left. It couldn’t hurt to try, now that he was leaving. If he made an ass of himself, he would never have to worry about seeing her again to face the embarrassment.

Seth fell to his knees and pressed his hands together as if to pray. “Just two hours, man, come on. Scott’s honor we will behave.”

“Yeesh.” Grant collected the pages falling from the machine’s scanner while giving Seth a regarding stare. It was done. He was an assistant professor of Irish history. “Fine. Just two hours. Don’t get me into any fucking trouble.”

Seth leaped to his feet and whooped with glee.

Shit. I know how tonight’s gonna end. Should probably have bail bonds on speed dial.

Chapter 2

Carla hadn’t gone to school to become a forensic artist. It was a job she’d sort of stumbled into because of her mother, and it just
stuck
. She had actually been in the process of applying to the school of dentistry at the university during her senior year, and upon looking at the cost breakdowns, she’d really sat down and did the math. She would be paying off the student loans for nearly as long as it would take to pay off a house, and the idea of all that interest compounding made her feel physically ill. So, she put the dentistry plan on hold. It had only been tentative–a sounded-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time career decision, anyway.

One day in February that final year, the usual sketch artists the police department contracted were all unavailable for an immediate job. They were desperate and about to call in an artist from Charlotte three hours away when her mom suggested perhaps Carla could take a shot. She’d started college with a studio art minor, but had later dropped it along with her art history major. Drawing was one of the few hobbies she’d had as a child, and she’d won a couple of national-level awards for her graphite portraits. Those had taken
hours
to do, but Mom didn’t think it made a difference. Neither did the chief, so they called Carla in and kept her around.