Page 7 of Star Pupil

I tilted my head to look at his face because his voice sounded odd when he suggested my mom call his employer. Scanning his face, I couldn’t figure out what it was, except that he didn’t look very happy with my mom. His eyes held none of the warmth they usually did when he looked at me, and there was a muscle ticking in his jaw. His full lips were pressed into a straight line. He looked fierce, and all the more attractive to me because I had a feeling his anger was due to my mom’s attitude towards me.

I’d never had someone stand up to her for me before. My mom was like a steamroller when she’d made her mind up about something. People quickly learned to get out of her way or else they’d get run over. My dad had taken it even further, getting all the way out. If only he’d taken me with him when he’d left, instead of leaving me to my mom. Then again, if he had, I never would have met Griffin and I was starting to think that would have been a travesty.

“Oh, I’ll be asking some questions all right,” she muttered.

Griffin pulled his wallet from his back pocket and extracted a business card. “This has Olivia’s information on it.”

My mom snatched it away from him and glanced down at it. “Executive assistant to the CEO. I guess she’ll do,” she muttered as she stomped out of the trailer.

“Poor Olivia,” I sighed. I didn’t know the woman, but my mom was a lot to handle when she was pissed off about something.

“Don’t worry about Olivia,” Griffin reassured me. “She’s used to dealing with difficult people. Our customers are all in this industry, so most of them are a pain in the ass. She’ll take care of your mom.”

“My mom isn’t easily soothed when she’s this wound up about something.”

Griffin glanced at the clock and then held his hand out to me. “You’ve got another two hours of classroom time today, plus an hour of R&R. How about I get you out of here for a little bit in case your mom doesn’t calm down?”

It would only piss her off even more to come back and find me gone, but I did it anyway. Throwing caution to the wind by taking his hand, I knew I would have followed Griffin anywhere he wanted to take me.

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