The man he’d shown himself to be, she couldn’t picture trying to make her feel small. Pitying her, rather than sympathizing with her. Hurting her with derision or snide judgment. Talking down to her.
And she could swear he was into her, at least a little bit. He watched her when he thought she didn’t notice, and it wasn’t always the casual glance of a friendly but professional colleague. He’d blushed when talking about her allure just now. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t visited anyone else’s classroom for casual chats, not even on that first day.
No one needed to know if they became more than coworkers and casual friends. Not a single soul. Martin seemed more than capable of discretion, and maintaining strict, protective boundaries around her privacy required absolutely no effort on her part. Not after all these years.
So she was doing this, even though her entire history cautioned against it. But the defenses that had kept her inviolate for so long also kept him out, so she was willing to breach them, at least a little bit. At least enough to ask one simple question.
“Martin?” She met his eyes, beat back her incipient panic, and offered a ladder to her tower. “Would you like to go on a date with me?”
Martin’s muscles lost all ability to move, including his tongue.
Which was fine for the moment, because every conceivable answer to her inconceivable question was ricocheting around his overtaxed mind.
Yes! Holy fuck, yes!
No. Nononono.
Excuse me, were you talking to me? Old Sobersides? Are you certain?
She was waiting there patiently for his response, her round bottom resting against the countertop, her arms crossed. But it didn’t seem to be a defensive gesture, oddly enough.
As soon as she’d entered the department office today, he’d noticed the change, despite his preoccupation with the heartbreaking phone call to Kevin.
She’d come to him a woman exposed.
Still impeccably dressed, in a black blouse with big bell-shaped sleeves dipped in gold at the ends and a matching skirt that faithfully molded itself to her bountiful thighs. His mouth had gone dry when he’d first spotted that skirt, those thighs, in the morning.
Her hair sleeked back into a flawless ponytail in the back, and her face formed a perfect ivory-and-pink oval, punctuated by big brown eyes and lush lips. But that face…
That face.
For the first time, she’d granted him the same face she showed her students, his daughter. Expressive. Warm with humor and affection and tolerance. And she’d revealed it not for just a moment, or in response to some stupid joke he’d made. He’d received the gift—and it was a gift, he knew that—of a Rose Owens freed of her self-imposed restraints for the entirety of his phone call and their subsequent conversation.
Then…then she’d asked him on a date.
Again: holy fuck.
Now those crossed arms seemed more a gesture of self-warming than defensiveness, since the department office got chilly at times. He wanted to offer his jacket, but he didn’t think it would fit her. Besides, that would involve muscle movement, which was beyond his capabilities at the moment.
“Martin?” Still no impatience.
He wanted to say yes to the woman who’d appeared today. Hell, he wanted to say yes to the woman who’d greeted him in the same department office three weeks ago, icy remove intact. Both those women intrigued him, impressed him, and—unprofessional though it might be—aroused him.
But he’d fled her room in a panic earlier that week for good reason.
He wasn’t worthless or weak or mute, or anything else his father and brother had called him. But he’d just emerged from a twenty-four-year marriage with the one and only girlfriend he’d ever had. A simple, straightforward woman, with simple, straightforward needs.
He hadn’t been able to meet them. He’d bored the living hell out of her.
So how the fuck could he even pretend he’d be able to give Rose what she needed? She was two women in one, and he didn’t truly understand either of them, much as he admired both. Her motivations, her desires, her capabilities all eluded his grasp.
Maybe more time spent together would remedy his befuddlement. But even if he understood her, what exactly could he offer her? A middle-aged, divorced man with Resting Proctologist Face mourning the imminent departure of his daughter to college?
Rose was a powerhouse. Gorgeous and complicated and vibrating with authority. She could do better than him. She’d realize that at some point, if the date blossomed into something more.
At the thought of her disappointment, her anger, as he failed to offer what she deserved, all the wild hope that had pinwheeled to life the moment she’d asked him for a date shrank and shriveled into nothingness. He shriveled. Became small and awkward and quiet.
Bullies, he could now handle. A potential lover, not so much.
He tried to swallow. Failed. “Um…thank you so much, Rose.”
From his first, halting syllable, her amber eyes sharpened on him, and her spine returned to its usual pin-straight posture. But she was still waiting, still silent, so he needed to continue fumbling through this and offer her an explanation she’d understand. One with a certain amount of truth in it. One that wouldn’t humiliate him quite as much as the entire truth.
“I wish I could,” he added.
He really did, although her expression didn’t seem to indicate an inordinate amount of faith in his sincerity. Dammit.
Then he was talking, talking, talking, desperate for any words that might erase the momentary flash of hurt he’d seen in those amber eyes before they turned frigid. “It’s just that I only moved here last month, and I’m still settling into the house. And into Marysburg, for that matter, and the school.” He offered her a smile with more teeth than sincerity. “The beginning of the school year is so hard and so exhausting, I don’t know how I’d find time for dating. Especially since I have Bea every other week, and she’s searching for the right college. Not to mention what might happen if things didn’t work out, and we still had to share your classroom and coexist in the same depart—”
She raised a queenly hand. “Enough. I understand.”
Uncrossing her ankles, she rose to her full height. She inclined her head, fully encased by whatever restraints she’d snapped into place around herself.
“Please rest assured that this conversation won’t need to be repeated.” Her fingers, wrapped around a ream of blue paper from the supply closet, didn’t tremble, and her eyes didn’t lower from his. “I apologize if I’ve made our working relationship awkward.”
She was apologizing? In what world did she need to apologize?
“You didn’t.” He let out a slow breath, regret seeping into his instinctive panic. “Rose, I don’t—”
But she was already turning for the door. Which had remained cracked the entire conversation, he now realized. And was opening, inch by inch, to reveal—
Oh, no.
The vulpine face of Dale Locke, suffused with the eager glee of a man who’d finally, finally cornered his prey. Keisha stood beside him, brows drawn in distress.
Martin would like to believe they’d just arrived at the door. That they’d heard nothing.
Dale’s first, overloud words smashed that hope. “You’d catch more flies with honey than vinegar, Brandi. Thought you were old enough to know that.”