Room-maid(51)

“Right. But the implication is that you are my girlfriend.”

And would that be so bad? I swallowed the words back, trying to calm down my racing heart. Because all it had heard was you and my girlfriend. “Your personal life is nobody’s business and if they’re intrusive enough to demand answers about it, then they deserve to be shut down. But I’m not too worried about the whole thing because I know you’ll win them over.”

“How do you know that?” I loved that smile, the one that said he was amused and enjoyed what I was saying.

How did I know? Besides the fact that he was charming enough to convince a rattler not to bite? “I saw you schmoozing people at Bitsie Fernley’s event. You’re good at it. And you’ll be good at it at work, too.”

He thumped his hand against the table and then leaned forward, as if declaring the matter over. He gestured toward my laptop. “What are you up to?”

“Before I begin my nightly indentured servitude of molding tissue paper into a somewhat recognizable decoration, I’ve been working on a couple of things. The first is trying to figure out some good ways of working with that little boy in my class, the one who’s been misbehaving. His dad emailed me and said that his wife left and that’s why his son’s been acting out. Second, I’m trying to figure out how to budget because no matter what I do, I never seem to have any money.”

“I can help you with both of those things.”

“Oh yeah, Superman? And how are you going to do that?”

“Your first problem, I called my stepsister. She’s an elementary school teacher, too. I asked her for some advice about your situation.”

“You . . . you talked to your stepsister? About me?” Why did that make my breath catch?

“Yes, and she said to try really utilizing positive reinforcement. Because right now he’s learned that if he misbehaves, you’ll respond, even if it is negatively. Catch this little boy being good and verbally reward him for it. Do the same for other kids so that he sees positive behavior getting praised. She was guessing that it’s all about the attention. Which I understand. I kind of went through something similar when my dad . . . when he left us. My mom basically checked out and I wanted the attention of my teacher at school. Just to know that there was some adult in my life who still cared about me.”

It was the most personal thing he’d ever told me, and my chest felt tight. I wanted to cry for him, for the little boy who had felt unloved by his parents.

Because I had grown up feeling exactly the same way.

I wanted to ask him about his family but was afraid of being shot down. “It sounds like you had a really good teacher.”

“Ms. Sparr. I put her through a lot, but she stuck with me. She used to give me these little assignments in class like cleaning the chalkboard or sharpening her pencil. She used to let me be the line leader a lot, too. Small things but they made me feel special. I really needed that attention.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, maybe you could give it a shot. Because if she had looked like you, I can only imagine it would have been a lot worse.”

“Um, thanks?” I asked it as a question because I didn’t know what in the crap he was talking about.

Was his implication that my face would scare small children into being bad? Or that he thought I was pretty and that would have made him want my attention more? I was so confused.

“I’m going to go change and then I’ll come back and help you with your second problem. Because that just happens to be my area of expertise.”

Then, heaven help me, the man winked at me. Actually winked at me and it was one of the sexiest things I’d ever been a part of. My blood pressure spiked and I grabbed my phone.

I texted Shay and Delia. We needed to parse out every possible meaning of what he’d said.



Shay instantly responded:



Shaking my head, I texted:





I really couldn’t fault her logic there.

Delia didn’t answer, and I was disappointed. Also, a little concerned because she usually responded to texts quickly, and recently, the past few times I’d texted, she’d stayed silent. Had she bewitched the new substi-cute teacher into going on a date with her? I made a mental note to check in with her and see how she was doing.

I also wanted her more objective opinion on this. Shay was a bit unreliable when it came to this situation because she wanted Tyler and me to get together, given that he was incredible looking.

Which, again, no faulting that logic.

Tyler came back in the room and I hid my phone under my leg, as if he could read it from six feet away. Pigeon followed him but came over to lie down on the floor next to my feet. I reached down to scratch behind her ears.

“I am going to order some takeout. Do you want some?” he asked. “My treat.”

“While I know my answer is supposed to be ‘no thank you,’ because of dignity or pride or whatever, I’m going to say absolutely yes.”

He grinned. “I do like how you speak your mind. What should we get?”

Inspiration struck. “Oh, remember how we were talking about getting you some culture? One of the ways of doing that is to eat foods from different countries. And we’ve got so many different international restaurants nearby to choose from. Maybe Korean? Vietnamese? Thai? Turkish? Indian? Egyptian?”