Impossible To Resist (BWWM Romance Book 1)(59)
Connor mindlessly rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, revealing his strong forearms, and went right on teaching and talking with no idea in the world that he was being so carefully studied by so many. If he had known, he’d have preferred that every one of them were studying the content of his class rather than him.
Catalina, having been through three years of school with him, was well accustomed to seeing the reaction he produced in females around him. She eyed them, rather than him, smiling to herself, knowing what they were thinking, and knowing that there was no way in the world that he would ever consider anything even remotely close to it with a single one of them. He was a traditional man of honor and morality in every aspect of life; something she had gotten to know about him in the very first month of her classes with him when she had started college.
The class ended a short time later and several of the women went to him with inane questions and quick snippets of conversation, trying to flirt with him and catch his eye. He was profoundly adept at answering their questions, resolving their issues, or just being polite and friendly, and then evaporating from their presence swiftly.
He looked directly at Catalina and nodded his head subtly toward his office. She quietly stood up and left, crossing the hall and going down a few doors to his office, and where she waited for him.
A few minutes later, he stepped away from his classroom alone and walked down the hall toward her, letting go of a breath he had been holding and giving her a smile. She smiled back and her dimple showed, and her blue gray eyes seemed to have a light in them that made his stomach tighten when he saw her. He tried to push the feeling away, but at the end of the last year it had begun to stir in him every time he saw her, and he promised himself that a summer away from her would make it go away. A summer away from her had made him long to see her again, and when the fall semester started, the feeling came back stronger, and he fought against it just as hard as it pulled at him.
He wasn’t even sure what it was exactly; it wasn’t sexual arousal, it was something about her that sucked his breath away from him, made him feel like everything in the world around him was vanishing, made his body tense, made his stomach tighten just a little, and made him want to be nearer to her, like she was a magnet and he could not find solace unless he was near to her, and the nearer he was, the stronger the pull became.
Connor felt it paramount that all of those feelings be kept locked safely inside him, and that he never let them show. She was first and foremost his student, his responsibility; and he was her teacher, a guide and protector, and nothing more.
That was all that he would let himself be to her, and every time the feelings came and he fought them, it was for both of them. It was for her, to respect her as a student, a professional in training, an individual, and a woman, and it was for him, to maintain decorum and a high moral standard, to be trustworthy and responsible, to be the educator that she trusted him and paid him to be, and nothing more.
It was a struggle that had begun to grow increasingly difficult, and dim tendrils of anxiety had rooted in him, stealing through the core of him, whispering to him that he had almost an entire year ahead of him to struggle through, and that it wasn’t going to get any easier as time passed and she neared graduation.
The promise of her imminent departure weighed so heavy in him that he refused to think of it. He blocked the dark day from his mind and focused, as he was so good at doing, on every present moment, which allowed him the breathing room to try to concentrate on being her devoted professor, committed to her future and her success as a photojournalist.
“How are you doing today?” he asked lightly as he drew near to her and pulled the keys to his office out of the pocket of his jeans.
She caught the fresh scent of his cologne as he came to her and as she breathed it in. It made her pause a moment as she tried to clear her mind and refocus on what he had said to her. Looking at him from a distance and appreciating the view was one thing, but standing next to him, breathing in his scent and feeling the heat from his sculpted body was another thing altogether. She blinked a few times and smiled, looking away from him for a moment as he walked past her into the room.
“Oh, um…. I’m great! I’m so excited about the trip! I wasn’t sure if we were going to get the passes at all, so I didn’t let myself think about getting them, I just waited and kept my mind on other things, but now that we have them, it’s all I can think about!” She followed him into the room, feeling her face warm slightly when she realized that her eyes had gone straight to the back pockets of his jeans, just like all the other girls in the classroom. She closed her eyes and sighed, then turned her head to look at the bookcase on the far wall of his office as she walked over and sat on the big old leather sofa there.
Connor tipped his head and laughed lightly. “Yeah, I didn’t know if we were going to get those either, and it was a surprise to see them come in this morning, but I’m just as excited as you are. This is a good story for you to begin with; it’s a big deal, and you should be thrilled about it.”
“I’m nervous, too,” she admitted, looking down at her hands in her lap as she twisted the ring on her right hand. It was one that her mother had worn before she passed away, and Catalina never took it off. It was gold with eight tiny diamonds in a circle, eight small red rubies in a circle above that, and one single tiny diamond at the center of the rubies, making the ring look like a poinsettia. She always wore it, and it was a nervous habit of hers to twist it when she was feeling pressured.