Shivers ran down my spine. The last thing I wanted to explore was anger; it reminded me of his personality. It was way too close. Taylor had been a bomb just waiting to set off. Only he was the only one with the timer.
“Hey.” Jack touched my arm again. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I was going to hate this project. “Fine.”
I couldn’t help but think about the angry notes I was still receiving and the fact that someone was clearly angry with me, so angry and hateful that they destroyed university property on my behalf. I swallowed the fear and focused on the project at hand. By the time class ended, both Jack and I had adjusted our schedules so that we could work together for the rest of the week.
“Lisa,” Dr. Blake barked just as I stood from my desk. “A minute.”
Jack swore under his breath. “Damn, it’s like he can’t help but pick on you. If it helps… I know what that’s like.” His face was shadowed. “If you want me to do something—”
“No,” I shook my head and laughed to put him at ease. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Just be careful. Crazy comes in all forms, even ones who look completely harmless.”
“Noted.” I swallowed and turned toward the front of the room.
Tristan was stacking papers on his desk. When the last student exited the room, he walked to the door, locked it, and pulled the blinds down.
Nervous, I shifted on my feet. “You going to scold me again?”
Tristan’s entire body tensed as his face searched mine. “I was actually planning on apologizing, but if you’d rather have a punishment.”
Curse him for making my entire body tremble! And it wasn’t with fear. The way he looked at me, the way he said things, it just… it did things to me, things I wanted to punch him for, because he was just like Gabe said, hot, then cold, then hot again.
“Dinner,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “I want to apologize and take you to dinner.”
“Are you planning on rejecting me afterward?”
He went very still, his eyes meeting mine, looking straight into my soul, into every insecure part of me. “No, Lisa. I’m not going to reject you afterward.”
It was hard to explain the way he spoke to me; at times he was flirtatious and well… happy. Other times? It seemed like he was fighting another side of himself, one that was more reserved, uptight, controlled. And if you were to ask me which side scared me the most? I’d say both. Because both sides were dangerous to me — both pushed a person like me past the point of no return. His seriousness made me curious; his flirtation made me want more.
“Just dinner?” I asked. “Isn’t that against the rules?”
“Yeah, well…” He glanced down briefly before flashing a sensual smile, his eyes dilating. “…it seems to be an impulse I can’t really control around you.”
“Control’s overrated, you label-making fool.”
At that he laughed, a rich chuckle that had my entire body relaxing and heating at the same time. I took a step toward him and smiled. “So, rule-breaker, where are we going?”
He grabbed his messenger bag and keys. “You’ll see.”
“Cryptic.” My eyebrows arched as I crossed my arms over my chest. “This isn’t going to turn into one of those six o‘clock news things where the crazy professor takes the girl out then buries her in the woods, is it?” I tried to sound like I was joking, but the minute the words left my mouth, it was no longer funny. Suddenly, I realized how stupid it would be to go with him. I knew nothing about him, nothing at all!
He smiled, tilting his head toward me. “Why am I getting the sudden urge to pull out a list of character references?”
“Because I just scared myself,” I admitted out loud.
“You want my social security number?” He winked. “Credit score? First grade class photo? Oh, and by the way, in first grade I was nominated most likely to own a pet store… so, if you aren’t okay with that, we probably shouldn’t continue this.”
“This?”
“Dinner.”
“Because you liked pets?”
“I wanted to own a lizard farm.”
I covered my mouth with my hands and nodded solemnly. “All little boys have dreams.”
“A bully crushed mine when he told me lizard farms don’t exist.” He shook his head. “In second grade I was voted least likely to succeed, on account that I didn’t speak for the entire year.”
“Why’s that?” I took another step toward him.
He took another step in my direction and shrugged. “It took me a while to get over the lizards.”
“So you stopped speaking?”
“It was more of me trying to make the public aware of my outrage.”
“Ah, like lizard strike.”
“I made shirts.”
“Tell me, professor, is that when the label-making started?”
“No.” He nodded toward the door and started walking. I followed, genuinely interested in what he was going to say and hating that it was possible he was stringing me along only to go all cold-crazy-psycho on me again. “That was an entirely different situation.” He pulled the door open.
“What? No more stories?” I asked.
“Dinner.” He shrugged, his eyes a stormy gray. “I’ll tell you at dinner.”
“Bribery.”
“My trump card. Label-maker stories. You know, I do actually know how to romance a woman.”
“Well...” I cleared my throat and broke eye contact. “…since I’m your student, I’ll just take your word for it.”
“Right,” he said quickly then repeated, “Right, shall we?”
“Lead the way.” I forced a smile and tried to remember that this was dinner, nothing romantic, just my very sexy professor once again apologizing for being a jackass during class.
The halls of the building were pretty empty. As it was, I should probably have been walking a bit faster, considering I still had a class to get to.
When we reached the end of the hall where we’d most likely part ways, I felt someone watching. I turned around. Nothing. But the feeling remained. Fully creeped out, I fell into step beside Tristan and turned around again. Only he’d stopped, meaning I tripped against him and almost had a really embarrassing incident where my lips met his — by default.