Page 22 of Love Lessons

It was all I could do not to touch Mason on the knee just then, to give him a reassuring pat. But I held back, choosing instead to lean back in my chair as I said, “I’ll keep a close eye on her, Mason, and I’ll let you know if I observe even the slightest shift in her mood. She’s in good hands.”

His eyes found mine again. “Good. I appreciate that. I appreciate—” He paused to swallow. For such a cocky guy, he was having trouble getting his last word out. “You.”

Damn it. I could have melted before him. At that moment, I knew agreeing to let him volunteer in my room was a mistake—because my attraction to him had turned into a full-blown crush in just a ten-minute conversation. There was an ache deep within me—it started in my ovaries and crept up toward my heart.

It wasn’t just that he was a good father that was making him more attractive to me. It was everything—from the way he smiled, the relaxed way he lounged in that tiny chair, and how he flirted—as inappropriate as his comments had been. Under any other circumstances, I’d be falling for this man hard and fast.

But I couldn’t.

I swiveled my chair back around to set my notebook down on my oversized desk calendar. “Well,” I said, reaching for a manilla folder containing that day’s literacy printables. “Ready to hear about your Room Parent duties for the day?”

Mason sat up a little straighter in his chair and slapped his thighs to indicate just how ready he was. “Yup. Lay it on me, Ms. Devin.”

chapter ten

mason

I’d never seen Finley act goofier than when she returned from art class and spotted me sitting in her classroom. She knew I would be there that day, but my presence still made her giddy. It took Ms. Devin five minutes to get everyone to quiet down and sit in their spots on the rug, but Finley was the antsiest of them all—giggling and cupping her hands over her mouth and whispering, “That’s my dad.”

When it seemed Finley’s wiggling around wasn’t about to die down, Kendall even had to ask her to sit on her hands as she went over the literacy activities for the morning. I wondered if she would have been sterner if I hadn’t been sitting in the room. “Settle down,” I mouthed to Finley, feeling a little embarrassed.

“So I’m going to put you in groups of four and we’ll rotate, just like last week,” Kendall was saying. “And Mr. Reed here—”

“Finley’s dad!” The girl beside Finley pulled up to her knees, grinning at me.

“Yes, Avery,” Kendall said, grinning in my direction as she tucked her hair behind her ears. “He’s going to play a fun rhyming game with—”

“I want to play with Mr. Reed first!”

“He’s my dad! I get to play with him first!”

Kendall shushed everyone, saying, “One-two-three, eyes on me!”

And the kids responded with, “One-two, eyes on you!” in unison before falling silent. Color me impressed.

“Listen, we’re all going to get a chance to play with Mr. Reed.” The second the last words left Ms. Devin’s mouth, we caught each other’s eyes again—and though she kept her composure, I could tell from the slight upturn at the corners of her mouth she was entertaining the same perverted thought as me.

Oh, how I’d love to play with her.

For the next forty minutes, I sat at a bright blue table and played a rhyming activity with four kids at a time—it reminded me of the memory game we had at home that Finley was obsessed with. Some of these kids were better at rhyming than others, and I found myself playfully roasting the ones who couldn’t quite figure it out. “Bro, say that out loud—‘man’ and ‘mat’? You’re matching the beginning sounds!”

The kid before me slapped his forehead in defeat, but he was grinning from ear to ear. It seemed like every time I said the word “bro,” these kids couldn’t contain their giggles, so I kept doing it. And this particular redheaded boy—I think his name was Walter, for crying out loud—was so amused by my reaction every time he got a match wrong, he kept messing up on purpose.

At one point, Kendall walked over to my side of the room to remind Walter and the others to bring it down a notch. Her tone was gentle but authoritative, and as she spoke, she looked down at me. I swallowed, feeling like I was the one who’d been caught misbehaving. For a moment, I was worried she might be changing her mind about allowing me to volunteer—I was only getting these kids unnecessarily riled up and she’d ask me to never come back. I glanced across the table at Elijah, who was picking his nose, and awaited my punishment. But with her hand on the back of my chair, Kendall said, “I couldn’t get them interested in this game at all last week, but they’re so engaged with you. What’s your secret?”

I found myself momentarily lost in the sweet vanilla fragrance that enveloped her, unable to answer right away. Her proximity overwhelmed me, her arm just grazing my back as she leaned over the table beside me to hand Elijah a tissue. I kept my eyes fixed on the cards in my hands, ignoring the fact that her breasts were inches from my face. I cleared my throat. “I think the magic ingredient is calling them ‘bro,” I answered, glancing at Walter, who nodded in agreement.

“Is that right?” Kendall asked, chuckling. Unable to avoid her gaze any longer, I finally looked up at her face only to immediately get lost in her eyes. The noise of the chattering kids began to fade, and for a second, it was as though we were the only two people in that classroom. All I could think about was the playful way she smiled in some of those nude photos she’d sent me, and how I wished I still had them.

“Well,” Kendall continued after a moment, snapping me out of my daydream. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Her eyes lingered on mine for a second longer before she returned to her table on the other side of the room, where she had been doing some one-on-one assessments. I watched her walk away before lowering my eyes to Walter, who was wiggling his eyebrows at me.

“What?” He merely shot me a knowing stare like he was onto me. “Don’t look at me like that, bro,” I said, making every kid at that table giggle.

After a couple of center rotations, Kendall announced literacy time was over and everyone needed to find their seat. She gave me a job to do, too—she asked me to sit at her desk and cut some papers in half and staple them together to make rhyming booklets for all the students. I went to work as she taught at the front of the room, pointing at words on the smartboard and helping the kids sound them out. I was so distracted by the soothing sound of her voice and the way she giggled and clapped when her students correctly guessed a word I almost forgot she’d given me an assignment.

After that lesson, she allowed the kids to have a little free play before lunch. I swiveled the desk chair toward her and handed her the stack of completed rhyming booklets. “Here you are, ma’am.”

---