Authors: Judy Angelo
He didn’t.
He'd better not –
Mr. Arrogant – for she would have a proper answer for him. Tessa’s face was
serious as she watched him from across the table. And, as usual, he was
wearing his ‘forever scowl’. Indie had said that was just him, nothing
personal, but how could it not be personal when you gave a man your best smile,
used your eyes to tell him you were totally interested, only for him to give
you a glare in return? Unforgivable.
But then another
thought came to Tessa – as they so often did. Rather than letting him throw
her into a bad mood and spoil her evening, why not have some fun…at his
expense?
A smile tickled
the corners of her mouth as she stared at him. He must have felt the change in
her because he cocked an eyebrow as if in curiosity and then his face grew even
darker than before. He was probably suspicious. Well, he had every right to
be, because before he left that evening she was going to make him sorry he’d
disrespected Tessa Tyndale.
“Here you go,
Tessa.” Indie reached out and pushed the basket of crispy fried chicken toward
her. She’d gone and sat across from Tessa, right beside Wolf. Traitor. Tessa
gave her a healthy glare for that move.
But then she
decided to drop it. The meal looked so delicious, and Indie and Stone were
such good friends of hers, it didn’t make sense for her to sulk and spoil the
evening. Not on account of Wolf Spencer, anyway. And besides, she had plans
for him. Later.
“Thanks, Indie.”
With a bright smile Tessa accepted the basket and began to select her favorite
portions of chicken. “You outdid yourself this evening.”
Indie smiled. “I
do try,” she said, gracefully accepting the compliment.
But Tessa did not
miss Stone’s ‘yeah, right’ look. Indie – cook? In her dreams. More than
likely the hardest part of her job had been to decide which caterer to use.
Oh, to live the life of a billionaire's wife.
Tessa smiled to
herself, pleased for her friend. Stone had married Indie in a lightning-fast
romance – one that lasted all of one month before the wedding – and Indie
totally deserved it. Tessa couldn’t have been more happy for her.
And now here was
Stone’s friend, the great Wolf Spencer. Probably a billionaire himself. And
maybe that was why he’d acted like she was beneath him, glowering at her like
that. What? Did he think that because he was a billionaire she was throwing
herself at him? God forbid. Or was it that, because he was a rich and
eligible bachelor, he expected to be pursued? Well, he should know by now that
this was one woman who was not into pursuing anyone. If he wasn’t interested,
she wasn’t either.
“You haven’t heard
a word I said, have you?”
Tessa blinked then
looked across at Indie. “Pardon me?”
Her friend shook
her head. “There goes Tessa. Head forever in the clouds. What naughty plans
are you cooking up now?"
“Who, me?” Tessa
put on her best innocent face.
“Yes, you. Don’t
think I don’t know you,” Indie said with a laugh. “But I won’t worry about
that now. I asked you, how’s school? Any amazing adventures to share with us
today?” She glanced over at Wolf. “Tessa teaches high school and the amount
of mischief those kids get into, you’d think it was a circus.”
To Tessa’s shock,
that got a rise out of Wolf. At Indie’s words the clouds dissolved and his
face actually broke into a smile. Not a huge one, but a smile nonetheless.
“I remember the
trouble my friends and I used to give our teacher back in high school.” The
smile softened his lips and his face took on a faraway look as if remembering
happy times.
Tessa’s jaw
dropped and then she gave him a fake scowl. “Oh, so you were one of those,
were you? One of the troublemakers? I can bet your teachers were relieved
when you graduated.”
He looked at her,
eyebrows raised as if in surprise at her teasing tone. “Actually, no. One of
them even shed tears at my graduation. Mrs. Sirju – my favorite teacher.”
This time his face broke into a wide smile. “And she was the one I used to
give the most trouble. But one day she fixed me good. Never created mischief
in her class again.” He ended this with a chuckle, as if remembering those happy
days of troublemaking.
Her curiosity
piqued, Tessa laid down her fork. “What happened? Did she suspend you?”
“Worse than that.
She-”
“No, wait,” Indie
broke in. “Start at the beginning. What did you do to get in trouble? You’re
such a serious kind of guy, somehow I can’t see you as the troublemaker type.”
“Oh, I did my fair
share, I can tell you that.” Wolf grimaced then he shook his head. “But on
that particular day my buddies and I-”
“Don’t say it,
Wolf.” Stone stopped him. “Never tell women about your lowest moments.
They’ll use it against you.”
“We will not,”
Tessa and Indie said in unison, then they turned to each other and laughed.
“You can trust us,
Wolf.” Indie reached over and rested a reassuring hand on his arm. “You’ll
never hear about this again. Promise.”
Wolf gave her a
wry grin. “I don’t know. It’s not you I’m worried about…” Then he turned his
gaze toward Tessa.
She opened her
eyes wide. “You’re scared of l’il ole me?” She raised her eyebrows and gave
him one of her signature pouts. Those had been known to charm many a man. And
if that was what it took to get Wolf to reveal the secrets of his adolescent
years then she was more than willing to employ that strategy. She was just as
curious as Indie. Maybe even more. Wolf Spencer was like a mysterious onion
and no matter how much it burned her eyes, she just wanted to peel away layer
after layer until she got to the heart of the man. He couldn’t be all scowls
and growls.
“I might be,” he
said and darned if he didn’t look like he meant it.
“Well,” she said,
tilting her head and giving him a slow smile, “the only reason you’d need to be
scared is if you don’t tell me. I have ways of making a man talk so if you
don’t want to get hurt, start talking.”
“Do it, Wolf,”
Indie said with a grin. “She’s got a tiny fist and she’s not afraid to use
it.” She pointed to her shoulder. “Right here, where it hurts.”
Wolf straightened
up and gave Tessa a look of respect. “Well, in that case, I’d better start talking.”
“Wimp,” Stone
muttered under his breath, his eyes full of laughter. “Scared of a girl.”
“You’re darned
right, I am." Wolf was totally unashamed. “Okay, so here's what
happened. We’d just finished a tedious session in Calculus so Javed and I decided
to lighten things up a bit. Our next class was in the Chemistry lab so we
decided to entertain the class with an experiment before Mrs. Sirju got there.”
“Ah, ha,” Indie
said, nodding. "The classic ‘blow up the classroom while the teacher’s
away’ experiment. I remember that one.”
Wolf put up a
finger. “Except this time we weren’t trying to blow up the Chemistry lab. We
were trying to make a stink bomb.”
Stone nodded.
“The second most popular chemistry experiment.”
Wolf continued.
“We’d just finished mixing the solution when in walked our teacher – a whole
seven minutes early. We’d been planning to pour it into the vase that sat on her
desk. She was always sniffing those flowers and we wanted to give her a whiff
of something new.”
Tessa looked at
him askance. “So that was how you planned to reward your teacher for her
dedication?”
Wolf shrugged then
grinned at her. “We didn’t look at it that way. We were just having fun.”
“Hrmph.” She gave
him a stern look on behalf of Mrs. Sirju and all the teachers suffering at the
hands of wayward teenagers. Then her curiosity got the better of her. “So
what happened next?”
Wolf chuckled.
“That was when things got really interesting. I put my thumb over the top of
the test tube and hid it under my jacket. As she was heading toward her desk I
tried to sneak out but she chose that very moment to turn back toward the
door.”
“I guess she
forgot something,” Indie said.
“I guess, but it
was the worst thing she could have done. She bumped into me, I stepped on my
shoelace and began to topple forward, she reached out to grab me and knocked
the tube out of my hand. It fell on the floor and smashed into a thousand
pieces, spraying her sari and my trousers with the worst smelling stuff you
could ever imagine.”
“Ooh.” Tessa
crinkled her nose, imagining the awful stench.
“No,” Wolf said,
shaking his head. “Try ‘eww’ and you might be just a little closer. My
teacher screamed, I gagged and the whole class burst out laughing. Neither
Mrs. Sirju nor I could stay at school that day. We both ended up leaving. I
had to soak in a bath with soap and baking soda to get the smell off. Not sure
what Mrs. Sirju did but when I saw her next day I didn’t ask.”
They were all
laughing now and especially Tessa. For the life of her she just couldn’t
picture Wolf as having been a kid who would do something like that. A serious
guy like him? But then as he laughed too, his blue eyes twinkling and a dimple
winking in his left cheek, she couldn’t stop staring. Was this the Wolf Spencer
she’d met at the wedding? If she hadn’t witnessed the transformation herself
she would have sworn it was a different man.
“So…so what
happened when you saw her next class?” Indie asked between guffaws.
Wolf shook his
head. “That’s the really sad part. For the rest of that semester I had to be
her lab assistant. I had to make sure the lab was always clean, the equipment
ready and the worst part – I had to go in front of the class and do
demonstrations with her. I was a really shy kid so that was the part that gave
me nightmares.”
“No. She made you
her lab assistant?” Tessa stared at him, incredulous.
“Yes, and I have
the emotional scars to prove it. You don’t believe me?”
“I do. It’s
just…that’s the very same punishment I gave one of my students this week. Except,
he’s not my lab assistant. He’s my teaching assistant.”
Wolf gave her a
crooked smile. “Great minds think alike.” He relaxed back into his chair.
“But of all the years I spent in India, the semester I spent as Mrs. Sirju’s
lab assistant was the time I learned most. And,” he tapped the table with his
knuckle, “it cured me of my shyness. Being forced to speak in front of an
audience every day for months will do that to you.”
Then his face
turned wistful. “Mrs. Sirju and I grew really close that year and when I met
her son, who’s just a year older than I am, we clicked immediately. I kept in
touch with them for years after leaving the American School. And even though
she’s gone I’ve never forgotten her.”
“She passed
away?” Tessa’s voice was soft and respectful, just in case her guess was
accurate.
He nodded. “Four
years ago. But she’d lived a full life and Sanjay told me that after the
stroke she died peacefully in her sleep.”
They were silent
for a moment, each seeming lost in thought, then Indie spoke. “I never knew
you went to school in India.”
“I lived there
from age eight to eighteen. When I was eight my mother got a teaching
appointment at Gopaul Singh University in Delhi so she packed us all up – me,
my brother and my dad – and we headed for India.”
“Wow, no objection
on your dad’s part?” Indie asked as she reached out to pull the bowl of fruit
salad closer. She began to ladle out smaller bowls, filling them with the
mélange of pineapple, watermelon, mango and mandarin orange.
“None at all. He
was a practicing engineer and he picked up a position very easily, lecturing at
the technical college just outside the city.”
Tessa didn’t say
anything but she was all ears. So he’d spent his adolescence in India while
his parents taught college. Interesting. So that put in question her theory
that he was probably one of Stone’s billionaire friends. He wouldn’t be from a
billionaire family if his parents taught school. Not impossible but unlikely.
She liked that. She had no intention of competing with a man’s money for his
attention.
Then she caught
herself. She’d been thinking about Wolf as a potential man friend. But hadn’t
that ship already sailed? She’d crossed him off her list and had been planning
to teach him a lesson. So now what?
Now that she’d
gone past the stone wall he’d used for a face and had seen the human side of
him should she drop her evil planning? Hmmm.
It was still
fairly early in the evening so she guessed it would depend on whether she got
bored or if he got grumpy again. Right now he had a smile on his face. She
didn’t have the heart to prank him. But if he reverted to his old scowling
self she would definitely have some fun.
As she reached for
her bowl of fruit salad she smiled serenely back at him. If he only knew what
thoughts were fighting for control in her head he’d be shaking in his boots.
But she would bide
her time and see what the rest of the evening would bring. One thing was
certain – if Wolf’s magical transformation was anything to go by, it was going
to be an interesting evening.