Page 12 of Hank

"What?" She glanced up at him. "Something you said?" She shook her head and took her jacket and put it on. "Nothing at all. It’s just getting late and I have work in the morning."

"Okay," he said, opening the truck door and hopping out. "I do too."

She nearly bit her tongue to keep from asking him what he did for a living. It wasn’t her business.

She did allow him to help her down. Itwaspretty high off the ground.

"I’d like your number," he said, while setting her feet on the ground, then leaning against the truck after he let her go. She chanced a look at him, which was a mistake. Why did he have to grin at her like that? "And you should probably know my last name, it’s?—"

"I can’t." His grin faded, while he straightened at her words. "This…" Jo took several backward steps—putting distance between them so she could get the words out she needed to say—watching with a falling heart the way his jaw clenched and denial rose in his eyes. "This can’t happen again."

"This?" He didn’t move, but his body went just as tense as his jaw. "What do you mean,this? Did you thinkthis…" He waved a hand between them. "Was some kind of one-night stand for me?"

"I…I don’t know. I just assumed…" She took a deep breath and another step back to give herself the courage to say her next words. "But it was for me."

Hank’s head snapped back, as she forced herself to turn away from his hardened features, then took off at a brisk pace toward her car.

I did the right thing.

Did it matter she wanted to turn right back around, jump inside his truck, and let him take her to his home?

No, not at all.

Liar.

4

"Dr. Lawton?"

Henry "Hank" Lawton glanced up from the papers on his desk and searched out Wilson Reynolds. His student assistant sat at his workstation with his apprehensive, frowning gaze lifting over his laptop screen.

"Yes?" Hank pushed aside the papers he’d been grading during his planning period. Not for the first time, he wished he’d finished them the night before. And he would have if other things hadn’t occupied his mind. He flicked his gaze to the paper on top. Mike Cutter’s convoluted differential equation made absolutely no sense, meaning it was time to take a break. Besides, he was starting to get a headache.

Tenth-grade calculus.

What had possessed him to think teaching high school math would be a good idea? Oh, yeah, it was his noble thought of,Hank, you want to shape young minds.

Right.

"Um, well, sir, you’ve got another email from j?—"

"Don’t say it." He sat back, grimaced, and rubbed at his temples. The headache was getting closer to becoming full-blown. And here was yet another reason he should have takenthat university teaching job. If he had, he wouldn’t have had to deal with irate parents.

This had to be at least the fourth email from one [email protected] since he’d had to make the hard decision regarding the first six-week’s exam. Making the emailer, otherwise known as Collin Webster’s mom, a huge pain in his ass. The first one remained seared into his brain.

Dr.Lawton. You failed the WHOLE class? For cheating? Collin doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t need to. I suggest you RETHINK this whole "if I can’t decide who cheated, then everyone did" mentality. Collin can’t lose his basketball eligibility over something like this.

J. Webster

Had Collin cheated?

Probably not.

He was a smart kid and, as his mom had so succinctly put it in a separate email,no way in hell did he need to cheat.But the identical answers to all the questions over half the class had given—they’d obviously not thought out the whole, maybe the teacher won’t notice we all got a hundred thing—led him to believe he couldn’t trust anyone’s test answers. Collin had missed a few. But could Hank say with all certainty he’d been one of the sharper ones who knewnotto answer every question correctly?

No.

The same thing went for the rest of the class who hadn’t aced it. Had he gotten pushback from other parents? Sure. But Mrs. Webster had been the most persistent. Even after the other parents had agreed their child could take a new test, andthatgrade would be the one that would count.

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