Page 12 of Apparently, I’m Trouble

His jaw snapped shut so hard that the muscle there jumped. My panties grew just a touch tighter.

His voice was soft yet rough as he said, “I’m not with the band anymore. I was never really with them. When we first moved here, Kira found their fundraiser ad for a guitarist and she wanted to see me on stage. I couldn’t say no.”

He looked out of the classroom, as if trying to spot his daughter in the busy hallway. “I was in the middle of setting up my business after the move, and it was hard to find the time to get to the center. It wasn’t about disrespecting you.”

So they just moved here. He was starting over.

I folded my arms and waited for an apology. Seconds beat by as he brought his gaze back to mine.

Nothing. Not even a hint of regret.

I sighed. Would I have to be the bigger person here? That wasn’t fair. He was physically bigger. It should’ve been him.

Still, I had Kira to worry about now.

I gave in.

“Fine. Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot.”

“Maybe,” he agreed.

“So… truce, then?”

He nodded.

A man of very few words.

He picked up a paperback just as I was about to not-so-subtly leave and said, “I came to ask about this book.”

I rocked back on my heels and blew out a breath. This man was sucking all the air out of my classroom. I already agreed to swipe our short but problematic history under the rug. Wasn’t that enough? I had a round of boozy bingo squares to cross out, damn it.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“It isn’t something she can read. It’s not… right for her.”

I frowned. “There’s no hanky-panky in there, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“No. It’s the grief. It’ll upset her.”

“And getting upset is a problem.”

He put the book down. “Right now, it is.”

“Then you… want me to choose something else for her?”

“If you can.”

I sighed again, frustrated. There was an… admittedly attractive man in my classroom, and unlike my deepest, darkest fantasies, he wasn’t ravaging me.

No.

Instead, he was asking me to give his daughter a different book to study. After I just spent the weekend running around Manhattan trying to find a bookstore that actually had this one in stock.

But… argh. If I took him out of the equation, what I was hearing was that this book could upset Kira. And if he was telling me that she couldn’t handle the grief in this book, then that made my decision for me.

“I can.”

The look on his face changed. It softened. And I didn’t like it. It made my stomach flutter, and those feelings were strictly reserved for non-panty-related thoughts.