Authors: Serenity Woods
“You’re practically Victorian.” Slim and pretty, with thick, shiny black hair, Mia always wore the latest fashions.
“Because I don’t have a skirt above my knees and my shirt unbuttoned to my cleavage?”
“Grace, honestly. You’re beginning to worry me. You really should try to have sex at least once each decade, you know, or you’ll forget how to do it.”
Grace stared at the floor in front of her desk and tipped open her hands in protestation. “Mia…do you mind?” When her colleague remained quiet, she tried to concentrate on the paper in front of her. Then she groaned. “God, listen to this. ‘If conditions are not favourable, bacteria go into a period of adolescence.’ I mean, honestly.”
Mia laughed. “Whose paper is that?”
She put another red cross on it. “Jodi Rutherford’s.”
“Ooh.” Mia perked up. “The medium’s daughter? I didn’t know you taught her.”
Grace sighed. “Oh Lord, don’t you start. What is it with the women in this school? One mention of that guy and I swear their bodies undergo some kind of chemical change, turning them into goo.”
“Grace Fox, seriously, have you not seen him? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Grace put her pen down impatiently. “Of course I’ve seen him. Well, a photo of him. You can’t avoid it. His picture’s been plastered over half of Wellington for the last week, for crying out loud. But he’s just a guy. Two arms, two legs. Nothing that warrants all the mooning about.”
Mia shook her head. “Now I
know
there’s something wrong with you. Sweetheart, Ashton Rutherford is sex on legs.
Seriously.
He’s, like, six-foot-four and played lock for the Hurricanes.”
“That means absolutely nothing to me, Mia.”
Mia rolled her eyes. She was an avid Rugby Union fan. “They’re the tall ones who jump up at the line-outs.”
“Is that supposed to impress me?”
“Don’t you find him a little bit intriguing? A rugby-playing doctor who became a clairvoyant—don’t you think that warrants even a little bit of interest?”
Grace snorted. “Any man who gives up a serious profession after years of training to become a fortune teller needs his head tested.”
“He doesn’t tell fortunes. He’s a medium. He speaks to dead people.”
Grace gave her a look. “This conversation does not sound like something I’d be even vaguely interested in. I’m packing up now. It’s nearly seven.”
Mia sighed and started logging off on her laptop. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me he could have been coming to see you tonight.”
“I honestly didn’t expect the guy to turn up. I’m sure interest in the welfare and progress of his only daughter is way beneath such a superstar. On my to-do list, informing you which students’ parents were coming tonight was right at the bottom.”
“He wouldn’t be at the bottom of my to-do list,” Mia mumbled.
“Mia, honestly.”
“You sound just like your mother when you talk like that.”
Grace shuddered.
The ultimate insult.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. You seriously need to get laid, though.”
Tell me about it
. She didn’t say that, however. Instead, she said, “For the love of…will you desist?”
“Next guy that walks through the door, I’m telling you. Look—the door’s opening…”
“Please don’t let it be Professor Michaels,” Grace muttered as she got on her hands and knees to pull the plug of her laptop out from underneath the wall heater, making Mia laugh out loud at the mention of the overweight, balding, officious deputy principal who drove them all to distraction.
Mia’s laughter turned abruptly into a gasp. “I don’t believe it.”
“What?” The lead was stuck. Grace pulled it hard, but it had somehow got wedged against the plug of the heater and refused to come out.
“Well, this is going to be interesting.”
Grace took the plug in both hands but it still failed to move. “Sweetie, I don’t care if he’s Robert Downey Junior, I am
not
having sex with him.” She leaned all her weight on the lead, and all of a sudden, it gave and pinged out of the wall. She fell backward, banged her head and ended up sprawled in a most ungainly fashion facing the parent who was waiting at the foot of her desk.
“If you’d turn down Robert Downey Junior I guess I don’t stand a chance,” he said, amused.
Grace looked up at the face of the man she’d seen plastered on billboards all across town and then turned slowly to face Mia, whose eyes were practically falling out of her head. Mia stared at her and made a slight gesture with her hands, bringing them together, making Grace realise she was facing the guy with her legs open, giving him a splendid view right up her skirt.
To buy a copy of An Uncommon Sense from Amazon, click
here
.
Book 2 in the Sensual Healing series,
Making Sense
,
will follow from Samhain Publishing on December 4th 2012.
Table of Contents