Page 23 of Tangled

I shrug. “In my experience, that’s rarely the case.”

“Well,Kane Garrison,” she spits out my name like it’s leaving a bad taste in her mouth. “Consider yourself lucky that your one-night-stand was withme. I know how to be professional and accept the consequences of my actions. It certainly was a surprise finding you here today, but rest assured, I’m not the one you should be worried about. Maybe you should look in the mirror on this one, and ask yourself if you’ll be able to handle seeingmeevery day, given how you’ve been eye-fucking me since you eliminated my cricket infestation.”

I chuckle and look away, wondering how my initial encounter with this woman has turned so sour in a matter of minutes. But I can’t deny that watching her lose her cool is one hell of a turn on.

Giving her a sideways glance, I start to retreat to my classroom, aware of how much work I still have to do to be ready for the day. “Don’t you worry, Olivia. You won’t have to worry about me wanting to get to close to you. We’re colleagues now, and I never sleep with my co-workers—well, with the exception of our little surprise. And if I ever get the feeling that you’re overstepping your boundaries, I know that getting rid of you won’t require more than a few crickets now, won’t it?”

“Ugh! You’re infuriating! Just… just do me a favor and stay far away from me, Garrison. I wouldn’t want you to catch any of my emotions rubbing off on you!” She shouts while waving her hands up and down her body, a body that I’m having a hard time forgetting what it looks like naked.

I tip my head back in a laugh as I turn around, striding back to my classroom while shaking my head at how my morning has started—how in a matter of days, my quiet and uneventful life has been flipped upside down by a redhead with a body that is made to be worshipped and a mouth that doesn’t have a filter.

And now I have to see this woman, day in and day out. I’ll have to act like nothing happened between us, even though our mind-blowing sex has been on repeat in my brain far more often than I’ll ever admit.

It’s alright, I try to convince myself when I reach my door and gather my thermos and lunch box from the ground.

No one has to know, I remind myself as I open the door and flip on the lights.

Olivia is just another woman you work with, my thoughts travel as the vision of her in that sleek black dress bent over my desk infiltrates my mind the second I stop in front of my desk in my classroom.

Jesus, I’m so fucked.

Chapter 12

Kane

“Come on, Bob. Level with me here?”

I coax the copy machine in front of me, smoothly rubbing the door that I just closed after clearing yet another paper jam.

“Is Bob jammin’ this morning?” Drew comes up behind me, assessing the screen as I program the 175 copies I need, silently praying that the machine will work for me this time.

“You know Marley… always jammin’,” I throw back at him as the machine fires up and starts spitting out papers.

“How was your weekend?” Drew asks as he collects his papers from his mailbox and strides over to the coffee machine, refilling his cup.

The teacher lounge in our building is our little cove of reprieve from answering emails and phone calls or dealing with brooding teenagers. A few copy machines line the far wall, cases of paper are stacked from floor to ceiling in one corner, and two round tables surrounded by chairs sit in front of a long counter to the left of the door, framing a refrigerator and housing our coffee pot and teacher-purchased supply of liquid caffeine.

“Uh, it was good. Uneventful,” I shrug, feigning innocence as I avoid making eye contact. “How about you?”

“Man, I finally caught up on some sleep. Tammy let me sleep in until almost noon on Saturday, then I graded some papers and took her out to dinner.”

“Sounds nice, man.”

“It was. So…”

Drew pauses mid-sentence as the clash of high heels on the tile floors pulls his attention to the doorway. As I turn, the air is sucked from my lungs when I see Olivia in a lavender dress, her vibrant hair pulled up off of her neck in a ponytail, and a soft pink dusts her lips.

Fuck me.

How on Earth are the teenage boys in her class able to learn anything when she looks like a walking teenage dream?

“Oh. Hi, there,” she acknowledges us while making her way into the room, her hands filled with reams of paper and a file folder.

“Here, let me help you,” Drew rises from his chair, looking back at me with intense eyes as I stay frozen to the ground in front of the copy machine, my back turned again to her and my best friend.

“Thank you. That paper is heavy,” she chuckles while brushing hair from her face. I keep an eye on her from the corner of my line of sight.

“I’m Drew Phillips.”

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