Page 26 of Hank

"Well…" She managed to glance up at Collin to find a touch of red had tinged her son’s cheeks. "We just kinda noticed?—"

"We?" she cut him off while pulling herself back up and settling in her seat. "Who’s we? And what didwenotice?"

"Well, Willow was at practice and noticed he might, you know, be about to kiss you."

"Oh, god…"

"Was he?"

"No." She furiously shook her head while re-buckling her seatbelt. "No. Of course not." At least not at that exact moment. "It was just, just loud in the gym and he moved closer so he didn’t have to yell."

Kinda true.

"Oh. Okay." He didn’t believe her, and this was getting more and more awkward. "I guess since it was so loud, you had to leave with him."

"He wanted to speak privately." There, again, not a lie.

"Well, just so you know." Wonderful. He wasn’t finished. "If he didlikeyou like that, I think it’d be great."

"You would?" That gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling rising up inside her, but she immediately beat that fluffy sucker back into submission. "But he doesn’t. So, um…" New subject… New subject… Got it. "Tell me about this Willow."

Her son’s face got even more red than it had been before as she continued to back out of the driveway. Good, let him be in the hot seat for a while.

8

Hank liftedhis gaze to the clock, before focusing once more on his laptop screen. He had another ten minutes before the first bell rang to start the day, and he was going to spend it trying to figure out a way to get another exchange going with Jo. But nothing like the four emails he’d had with jwebster.

This time they’d be withJoWebster…

The woman he wanted to claim for his own.

And, yes, it was fast. Some people might even say crazy. But it wasn’t. At least not to him. Not after Sunday night when he’d known deep down a piece of him had been walking away as he’d stared after her. Not Monday and most of the day that Tuesday when he’d lived with a sense that he’d lost something wonderful that he had no idea how to get back.

Well, that last part might not be completely true. He’d had ideas. But hanging out every night at Laverty’s or approaching one of the owners to ask if they knew her last name would have probably put him into the creep category with the guy she’d run off.

Sad thing was, he hadn’t completely ruled any of that out by the time he’d run into her at practice. And that feeling he’d lost something? It had vanished the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

It had increased one hundred and ten percent when he’d had her in his arms again. After the fact, he’d realized how glad he was that she’d thrown him out. It wasn’t the right place. But if he’d had a condom…

But now that hedidknow who she was and the fact she wasitfor him, the whole ethical dilemma of dating a student’s mom—and, yes, theywouldbe dating—came into play. If he had to, he’d just have to quit teaching that particular class. Hopefully that wouldn’t get him fired.

Damn, when he’d decided to go into teaching, this kind of parent/teacher relations wasn’t what he’d envisioned. But now that it was there, he wanted to explore how far those relations could go.

The problem was, whatever he had to do to make things happen between them, Jo wasn’t going to be an easy sell. She’d pushed back at him pretty hard.

Hank didn’t scare that easily.

Buzzzzz.

First bell.

Cue his students slowly filing in—some of them trudging like this was the last place they wanted to be, which it probably was—and taking their seats as he closed his laptop. This morning, he kind of understood how they felt.

But while he had this job, he had to focus on something more than how his fingers ached to get tangled up in soft, blond curls again, or how he wanted time to explore the rest of a body he’d yet to get a good look at.

"Good morning, Dr. Lawton."

"Good morning, Leah." The smile he forced on his face had a lot to do with the fact he was mentally willing his dick to behave. Thankfully, by the time the second bell rang, he had everything well under control.

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