Just Like a Man (23 page)

The hell he didn't, Selby thought. But she didn't belabor the point. And she did appreciate his apology. She even appreciated his compliment, due to the fact that she'd received precious few of those in her life. What she didn't appreciate was the steamy way he looked at her when he offered it. Mostly because it had the desired effect of making her feel steamy, too. Good heavens, what made the man so potent?

In an effort to hurry them along—and also in an effort to cool herself down—she said, "What did you need to ask me?"

"It's about the math," he said. "I'm still having trouble with the algebra."

"More than five minutes' worth of trouble?" Selby asked halfheartedly.

"Just problem number seven, that's it. Can you just show me again how you got the answer you did?"

Had it been any other student, Selby would have taken the extra time to offer a quick explanation. It would be rude—not to mention unfair—not to help Thomas if she could. Just because he made her heart flutter wildly by looking at her, and just because there was a dark, mysterious part of her that, even then, was wondering what it would be like to go home with Thomas Brown and let him have his way with her… well, that was no reason not to help him with his math. She just wished she could believe it was his math that he really wanted help with.

"Okay, quickly," she said, relenting.

But it ended up not being quick at all. Thomas simply could not seem to grasp what should have been a fairly easy principle for him. And if he couldn't get this, then he was going to struggle for the rest of the session. So, resigned to walking the six blocks necessary to catch the number 20 bus, Selby pulled out a clean sheet of paper and went over the work with him one more time. Then two more times. Then three. Then four. By the time he finally understood the problem—and smacked himself in the forehead good and hard for not having seen it before,
Man, that was so easy, am I an idiot or what?
—it was too late for Selby to catch the number 20 bus, too.

"Thank you so much for taking the extra time to explain all that," he said. "I really appreciate you staying late to—" He halted midsentence and gazed at her, obviously chagrined. "Late," he repeated. "Ah, hell. I've made you late, haven't I?" This time he was the one to glance down at his watch. "How long did we take? You didn't miss your bus, did you?"

"Actually, I missed both of my buses," Selby told him.

"But that's okay. I can call a cab. There's a pay phone in the school lobby."

"I'll walk with you, to make sure you get one," he said. "And I'll wait with you till it gets here."

"That's okay, you don't have to do th—"

"It's the least I can do," he interrupted. "I'm the one who made you late. Or better yet, let me give you a ride home."

Oh, no,
Selby thought.
No, no, no, no, no.
That wasn't doable
at all.
"That's okay," she said. "A cab is fine."

Even if it was a complete waste of money. Her apartment was way too far for her to walk, especially after dark, since it wasn't in the greatest neighborhood to begin with. Oh, it was pretty much fine during the day, and it was cheap, which suited her needs perfectly. But it wasn't the kind of place to be out alone at night. Not if you were a law-abiding citizen who spent your evenings abiding the law, at any rate.

"Well, at least let me stay with you until I know you've got a ride," he said.

Gee, what a choice, Selby thought. Hang out alone in a deserted high school after dark, or hang out with a potential hoodlum in a deserted high school after dark. She had no idea what to do. So she did what she always did in such situations. She went with her gut.

Probably, she thought, Thomas Brown wasn't the kind of guy who would hurt people. Probably he was just a smartass. Probably she'd be safer with him than without him. Probably.

But then she looked at his face again, at the jet hair that tumbled rebelliously over his forehead, at the dark brown eyes that were bottomless, mysterious, perilous, at the full, seductive mouth that hooked into a smile that was at once charming and menacing.

And she realized it wasn't her personal safety she was worried about. What worried her was that, at the moment, looking at Thomas Brown, her personal safety was the last thing on her mind. Because something about him made her feel very impulsive and very irresponsible. And that was the last way she needed to be feeling. Especially around a man like him. Because he was impulsive and irresponsible, too. Worse than that—he was downright reckless. And to a woman like Selby, recklessness was a romantic fantasy. To a man like him, recklessness would be a way of life.

"Okay," she said in spite of her misgivings. Because, truth be told, her misgivings really weren't all that strong. Which was something else she should be worried about, she told herself. But she couldn't quite bring herself to feel that, either. "You can walk me to the phone and make sure I get a cab. Thank you," she added belatedly, trying not to sound ungrateful. "I appreciate it."

And strangely, Selby realized that that was true. She did appreciate having Thomas around for a bit longer. What she didn't appreciate was just how good it made her feel that he would be.

Pax eyed Selby Hudson from the other side of a Formica-topped table in a downtown diner, marveling again at his amazing good luck this evening. Because it certainly hadn't been his usual skill with women that had made this little interlude possible, since Selby Hudson seemed to be remarkably immune to that. Go figure. No, it was an amazing series of plain dumb luck that had won him the most glorious of prizes: a cup of coffee with her. Because she appreciated him having given her a ride home, and the least she could do was buy him a cup of coffee, and no, of course it wasn't because she didn't want him to know which of the four buildings on the corners of the intersection where they had parked was her apartment building, don't be silly. She just wanted to repay him somehow, and he looked like he could use a cup of coffee, and gosh, so could she.

So here Pax sat, in the kind of restaurant he would normally
never
patronize, in a neighborhood he would never have visited under circumstances that didn't involve wanting to get robbed and beaten senseless, curling his fingers around a chipped stoneware mug that the dishwasher hadn't managed to quite rid of lipstick. And he was
happy
about it. What he couldn't figure out was, why?

Oh, yeah. Because he was lucky, that was why.

Lucky that Selby had missed her bus the first time that day. Lucky that she'd told him about it, thereby giving him the idea of making her miss her bus again. Lucky that the phone in the school lobby had been vandalized beyond repair—and he hadn't even had to be the one to do it. Lucky that she hadn't had any coins to make a phone call for a cab company once they had found a phone. Lucky that she'd believed him when he told her he didn't have any change either.

Hell, he was even lucky someone had invented the cell phone in the first place, thereby heralding the demise of the pay telephone so that they'd had to walk four blocks before even finding one-—though he couldn't imagine why Selby wouldn't have a cell phone herself. Even teenagers carted around cheap phones these days. And a woman who worked nights and walked the streets alone should definitely have one in case of emergencies. Or in case she met a man who might be looking to compromise her. Still, he knew better than to complain, because he'd used that four-block walk to lull Selby Hudson into a false sense of security and convince her that he was a good guy. And he was
really
lucky she'd bought that.

But then, Pax had always been lucky. Well, since college anyway. And he knew how to use good luck to his advantage. Always.

"You really didn't have to do this," he said as the waitress dropped a handwritten check onto the scarred tabletop and walked away, change jingling in the stained, once-white apron tied around her waist.

"I wanted to," Selby told him. And she sounded like she was telling the truth, too. "I appreciate you giving me a ride."

Pax chuckled at that. Appreciate, hell. She'd looked like she was going to faint dead away when he straddled the big bike and kicked the starter into gear and yelled for her to climb aboard. For a minute, he'd thought she was going to decline and brave the streets alone. So he'd goaded her, dared her, called her chicken, and she'd immediately set her jaw and cocked her chin and swung her leg over the seat. He'd made a mental note that Selby Hudson didn't like being called a coward, knowing he could use that little tidbit of info again later. And then he'd reveled in the feel of her slender arms wrapping tentatively around his torso.

And he recalled with some astonishment the splash of heat that had doused his midsection when she'd touched him. He hadn't been prepared for that at all.

"So how'd you get into teaching night school?" he asked now, pushing the memory away until he could ruminate on it further, later, when he was alone.

She shrugged, rubbing the pad of her thumb over the handle of her own chipped stoneware mug, directing her gaze at her coffee, at his coffee, at a gash on the tabletop, at the clock on the wall to their right, out the window to their left. Anywhere but at Pax. "Same way I got into teaching day school," she told him. "I answered an ad."

"You teach during the day?" he asked, wondering why that surprised him. Of course she'd have a day job, he told himself. And the fact that it involved teaching, too, made complete sense. "Where do you teach?"

"I teach fourth grade," she told him, not answering his question, but enlightening him just the same.

"Fourth grade?" he repeated, unable to mask his surprise.

She did look at him then, but her gaze met his only long enough to let him know she found his bewilderment bewildering. "You sound surprised," she said before glancing away again, as if even that small measure of eye contact had made her uneasy.

"I am surprised. I guess I see you more teaching high school than elementary school."

"I like teaching little kids," she said, smiling, her gaze still fixed on the gash in the table, which she began to trace with the pad of her thumb. And something in her smile tethered a breath in Pax's chest for a minute, long enough to make little dots dance before his eyes, long enough to make his brain feel fuzzy. He had thought her beautiful since the day he'd walked into class, but when she smiled like that, Selby Hudson was downright dazzling.

"Why?" he asked.

She shrugged again, but she continued to smile and worry the scar on the table. "They're just fun, that's all. In fourth grade, they're still pretty naive, but they're so curious about everything, and they want straight answers. You have to be honest with kids that age. They know when you're lying to them."

He eyed her with much consideration, wondering if there was some underlying significance to what she had said. Nan, he decided. She was just stating a fact, that was all. She wasn't overly hung up on honesty. And she sure as hell didn't suspect he was being dishonest with her.

"So why did you become a teacher in the first place?" he asked.

She didn't answer right away, only continued to trace her thumb over the gash in the table, as if in doing so she might somehow be able to heal it. Finally, she said, "I don't know. Because I was curious when I was a kid, too, I guess. I always liked learning new things. So now I like helping other kids learn new things, too."

For some reason, Pax didn't like her answer. It made him feel… well, not guilty, he thought. But… uncomfortable. Yeah, that was it. So he did what he always did when faced with something that made him uncomfortable—he changed the subject. "Did you grow up in Indianapolis?"

She shook her head. "Southern Indiana. A small town. You've probably never heard of it."

"Try me."

Her gaze flew to his, and there was nothing timid or tentative in her expression now. "I'd rather not," she said coolly. "Thanks, anyway."

Oh, dammit,
Pax thought.
Here we go again.
"Selby, I didn't mean it like that," he told her. And he hadn't. "Jesus, I've never seen anyone more skittish than you."

"Oh, please," she countered indignantly. "I think I have a right to be skittish around you, after the way you've been since walking into my classroom that first night. My God, you asked me to
spank
you."

Her voice had risen in direct proportion with her indignation, Pax noticed, and by the time she came to the word
spank,
what few people were sitting in the diner had all looked her way, and a dead silence settled over the place. Selby blushed furiously when she realized what she had done, then she folded her elbows onto the table and dropped her head into her hands, something that made Pax's chuckles evolve into full-fledged laughter. He couldn't help himself. She was just so… cute.

"Please don't laugh at me," she said softly.

And immediately, his laughter stopped. Because there was something in her voice when she spoke that just commanded him to. "I'm not laughing at you," he said softly.

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not," he assured her.

"Then why are you laughing?" she asked, her voice muf-fled, since it was coming from behind the hands that still cradled her head.

Pax smiled. And before he could stop himself, he heard himself saying, "Because you make me feel good, that's why." And only after voicing the sentiment did he realize it was true.

For a minute, he was afraid she was going to think he was hitting on her again, when in fact that wasn't what he was doing at all. He was just stating a fact, pure and simple. Selby did make him feel good. And he couldn't remember the last person who had done that.

Gingerly, she moved her hands and lifted her head to look at him, her long bangs hanging down in her eyes and making her seem vulnerable somehow. She looked so young, he thought, not for the first time. She had to be fresh out of college and almost totally ignorant of the world. But there were times, too, when he would swear she was his age or older.