Learning the Ropes (6 page)

At the sound of footsteps behind her, Rory quickly pulled the ice bucket up and began filling it before she looked completely insane. Any cool she had acquired in the deepfreeze evaporated when she turned around and saw the object of her obsession leaning against the counter watching her. Noah was so tall that the counter seemed abnormally low and she felt like a dainty little thing in comparison to him.

Her mind whirled with comments—some smart and some just barely bordering on what would constitute conversation—but she couldn’t seem to get her mouth and mind to work in tandem. He didn’t seem to be in a big hurry to fill up the silence either. He simply stayed quiet and took his time sending his gaze over her face and down her body. Rory shivered.

He raised an eyebrow. “Cold?”

She nodded rapidly. The alternative—that she had shivered in reaction to his scrutiny—was not even an option.

He moved forward and took her arm just above the elbow, pulling her slightly towards him. “You know if we ask John, he’d probably let you turn on the air conditioner rather than using the freezer to cool the place down.” She gazed at him in confusion, struck anew at how good he smelled and not following the thread of the conversation at all. Until he reached behind her and shut the freezer door.

Rory jumped back and only stopped moving away from him when the counter stopped her. “Oh! I wasn’t trying to cool it down. I’m on ice duty. See.” She lamely held up the filled ice bucket between them.

He smiled at her and continued with that unnerving stare. He lifted his hand and stroked the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “You don’t look any worse for wear today. Although I do have to admit that I’m surprised to see you up and about.”

Rory wanted to turn her face away from his, but found that she couldn’t. She’d spent so much time working up a good hatred of him that she had absolutely no defense against his sweet side. A side that she hadn’t even been aware that he’d possessed until the night before. Especially galling was the fact that she owed him big time now. And the best place to start seemed to be gratitude.

“Thank you. You know, for everything last night.” She stammered, her tone not terribly appreciative.

“Of course, it was my pleasure.”

Rory felt her cheeks heat up. Naturally he would make reference to the fact that she had thrown herself at him. He continued on, though, “It’s been ages since we actually had a conversation instead of just sniping at each other. I had forgotten how funny you are.”

Rory rolled her eyes. “I’m sure I was a barrel of laughs last night. If I’m being honest, I don’t really remember a lot.”

“Then how do you know that you should be thanking me?”

“Well I woke up with clothes on, in my own bed, and with water and pain killers nearby. Which were my saviors by the way. I’m not even mentioning the fact that I wasn’t allowed to drive home drunk, which I appreciate.” Rory tilted her head back so that Noah could see she was serious. “You went above and beyond the call of duty.”

Noah lowered his hand to a curl that had sprung loose from her ponytail. He twisted it around his finger as he surveyed her face. “Anytime.”

“Hopefully that will be the last time. I’m turning over a new leaf.”

Noah chuckled softly. “I’m not so sure that one night of overindulging requires leaf-turning.”

“I felt so bad this morning that I would have planted a whole new tree if that’s what it took to feel better.” Rory hadn’t been aware of moving forward, but her feet were now between his and the only thing that kept them separated was the ice bucket. She prayed that he would think her stiffened nipples were from the freezer.

“Like I said, if I didn’t know better I wouldn’t think last night had happened for you at all. You look beautiful,” he said softly.

Rory made a noise in her throat that was meant to convey the fact that she thought he was full of shit. She knew that she didn’t look remotely beautiful. She aspired to beautiful on a good day, which this most definitely was not. It was hard to remember that she didn’t believe him when he was looking at her like he had never seen her before though.

“Your eyes look even bluer with all that red in them.” Noah laughed as she stomped her foot down on his insole. “Okay, how about this? Your pretty mouth is a lot more tempting when you’re not yelling at me like normal.” Noah’s voice had grown husky and he was definitely leaning closer to her. Maybe he hadn’t been as unaffected last night as she had believed. Maybe it had been harder than it looked for him to walk away from her in bed. Maybe he really did think she was beautiful.

She wasn’t able to focus on her maybes anymore as his lips lightly brushed hers. She wished she could chalk up her sudden dizziness to hangover issues but she had a feeling they were more closely related to his teeth nibbling on her lower lip. The hand that had been twined around her curl was now sunk into her hair, loosening her ponytail. And his other hand was slowly running up and down her side, skimming nearer to where she wanted it with every pass. She tried to press closer but couldn’t get near enough to him to assuage the ache that was growing in her breasts. She lifted her arms and twined them around his neck just as he tilted his head to deepen the penetration of his tongue.

A cough from the doorway made her jump. And jumping made her spill the contents of the ice bucket all over Noah’s back. He jerked forward to get away from the cascade of ice and cold water and only managed to bust her lip with his nose.

Rory squeaked and slid out from between his body and the counter to see John lounging in the doorway. “Mac sent me in here to see what was taking you so long. I guess now we know.”

“No, it’s not what you think. Noah was just helping me…” What was he helping her do? Learn CPR? Check her oral hygiene?
Get all hot and bothered in her best friend’s kitchen?

Noah moved closer and brushed his hand over her back in comfort. Of course the motion had the exact opposite effect, what with her already being so close to jumping him. She stepped a little further away in self-preservation and tried to remind herself to breathe.

Noah folded his arms across his chest and stared down his friend. “Helping her get ice. And that’s exactly what you saw, John. Me helping Rory get ice.”

“Ah, is that what the kids are calling it these days?” John smirked.

“Well it seems like you guys have everything under control here. I should really be leaving. Thank you so much for inviting me, John. Give Mac my love.” Rory knew she was babbling, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She only knew she needed to get out of there. Get back to her apartment where things made sense again.

Before she could make it out of the door though, Noah’s voice sounded behind her. “Rory, I’ll be at your school on Monday after classes let out. We need to talk.”

She kept her back turned but shook her head. “I’m not sure what you think we need to talk about. I don’t really have anything to say.” It was better for her sanity to put an end to whatever this was between them now. Fool her once—shame on him. Fool her twice and she deserved every bit of the heartache he was sure to bring.

“Actually, I’m thinking you’ll have a lot to say about a certain quiz I saw—,” he continued as if she hadn’t said anything.

The sex quiz! He had seen it. There was no way she could talk about this now, with John viewing their entire conversation with a smirk. “Fine, Monday. I get done at 2:30.”

Without waiting for an answer, she turned and made her way to the front door rather than going back through the backyard. Celeste had her own car and would be able to make her own way home. Rory dug her keys out of her pocket and forced herself to walk sedately to the door, ignoring Noah when he called her name. She also ignored John’s loud laughter.

Once she made it out of the house, she took off down the street to her car at as fast a clip as she could reasonably get away with. The kind of walk/run that old ladies had invented in the mall. The further she got away from the party—from Noah—the easier it was to breathe. If Noah being nice threw her for a loop, then his kiss had knocked her out of the stratosphere. And she couldn’t even begin to think about what that might mean.

Chapter Four

Rory tried breathing through her nose to control her temper, a trick that some magazine or another had taught her. In through the nose and out through the mouth, slowly and deliberately. She put a hand to the desk to catch her balance when all her deep breathing accomplished was dizziness. Certainly not a reduction in anger or an improvement in control. She should know better than trust magazines by now—they had caused her nothing but hardship over the past several days.

She blew a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail out of her eyes. Classes had been finished for about a half an hour and most of the students were gone. They had either caught their bus or some other ride or were already deep into whatever after-school activities defined them this week. And thank goodness because they had been impossible to control. Every time she had turned her back to write something on the board she had heard them whispering behind her and the clicking sound of texting fingers. Just once she wanted to turn around and catch a note being passed—at least then she would have something interesting to read in return for breaking the focus of the entire room. It was definitely a bad day when she was longing for more nostalgic forms of classroom disruption.

Spring fever was setting in big time. And not just with them. Rory had been antsy herself and barely able to concentrate on the lecture notes in front of her. Noah had seen the quiz in her house and she was going to have to explain it to him somehow. Since his invitation/order at the party, she had created, considered, and discarded a few plausible explanations and several completely ridiculous ones.

That quiz is actually not mine.

It’s one I’m considering giving to my students.

I cheated off the wrong person.

It seemed like honesty was really the only policy in this scenario. After all, whatever she thought of Noah, he wasn’t stupid. And, to be completely truthful, she really had no idea what she thought of Noah, only that she couldn’t
stop
thinking of him. After the party, she had gone home and lain on the sofa in front of
Law and Order
for quite a while. Eventually, after a lot of concentration and a classic greasy fast-food hangover cure, she was able to piece together everything that had happened that night. From Noah’s rescuing her to her aborted seduction attempt. And the part in-between when he had confessed that the one other time they had gotten together, he had believed she was dating a good friend of his.

She hadn’t been. Wouldn’t throw water on Greg Francis from ten feet away if he were on fire. But she understood how Noah could have been confused with his friend deliberately lying to him. And her response hadn’t been much better. She clearly remembered bouncing up to him at the bar the next day, so sure that something great and new had been formed the night before. So sure that they were on the same page. How could they not be with chemistry so fantastic? But he’d turned away from her with a look so cold it could have frozen water. It had certainly frozen any feelings she’d had for him. She buried them under layers of embarrassment, hurt over being used and, most helpful of all, anger.

The hell of it was that she was still attracted to him. Despite her upset and betrayal, she had lusted for his great face and gorgeous body almost nightly. Even after she had long moved past what she had assumed to be his “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” moment with her, she had used her anger like a shield to keep him at a distance and to remind herself that she wanted nothing to do with him.

Despite whatever had gone on between them in the past, she had new problems to focus on now. After her lunch meeting she had forgotten all about her problems with Noah, though. Forgotten their meeting entirely. She had bigger fish to fry than Noah Sellig. Like an entire change to her curriculum for the summer term and next school year. One that she was not happy about in the slightest. A change that had her hyperventilating in her classroom when she should have been preparing herself to see Noah.

She turned her attention to picking the chairs up and balancing the seats on the tabletops so that the cleaning crew could sweep and mop. As she moved through the aisles, Rory let herself do a little slamming. So much slamming that she didn’t hear Noah knocking on the open door.

“Hey, what did that chair ever do to you?”

Rory whirled around and saw Noah smiling at her from across the room. He had a grocery bag in his hand and his suit jacket draped over his arm. Which left him wearing slacks and a white button-down shirt with a tie. Did he know that a tie was her kryptonite? How come she had never thought of him wearing this kind of outfit? Maybe the fact that he looked so good in worn jeans and T-shirts had blinded her to the fact that he would look absolutely sinful in professional attire.

If he loosened that tie, she was in serious trouble.

“Noah. Hey.” Rory looked down at the chair that she had set down with a pretty noticeable amount of violence and decided that a half-truth wasn’t exactly a lie. “The kids were just awful today. I’m just giving myself a bit of slam therapy.”

He moved further into the room and surveyed her decorations. Rory tried to see the room through his eyes. She really tried to keep the inspirational sayings and the posters of kittens hanging from branches with the words “hang in there” emblazoned on them to zero. Instead, she favored interactive bulletin boards where the kids could make guesses about a scientific theory and then lift a flap to see if they had gotten the answer correct. At first, she hadn’t thought that any of them would be interested in the boards but she had seen several slip over before or after class and surreptitiously see how they had done. The boards were always on future lessons and she noted that a few students knew a little about the subjects when she first introduced them.

The back wall was covered with pictures of lab equipment with explanations of use and safety procedures. One-quarter of each year, the four biology teachers rotated their use of the lab; the rest of the school year was spent on lectures.