To Professor, with Love (Forbidden Men #2)(45)

“Are you insane?” I gasped, suddenly very breathless.

“Yeah.” He blew out a hard breath as he took a step back. “I think maybe I am. Just a little.” Then his gaze raked over me again. “Or maybe a lot. Jesus, I can see how hard your nipples are through that blouse.”

Slapping my arms around my chest to cover the girls, I glared at him, hissing, “We are not starting some illicit affair, Mr. Gamble.”

“We’re not,” he repeated, but he made it more like a question than a repetitive statement.

I flushed. “No! Oh, my God. It...it would be unethical, dangerous, sleazy, and...and...and besides. We’re completely not compatible.”

“What?” The last comment made him blink back to reality and scowl at me. “You think not? And here, I can’t help but remember how very well we fit together.”

“Will you stop that?” Heat suffused me from head to toe, knowing exactly what he meant.

He cocked his head to the side, looking confused. “Stop what?”

“Stop...stop the flirting and references to what happened. We’re forgetting it. Remember?”

But he only grinned. “If I’m supposed to forget, then how can I remember?”

“Oh my God, you’re impossible.”

“If you’d let me, I’d finish what we started right here. Right now. You’re not drunk any longer, and that was the only thing holding me back.” An ornery grin curved up the right side of his mouth. “Didn’t you tell me how you dreamed about me taking you on this very desk?”

Color leached from my face. “I did not.” But Christ, had I? What had I told him?

“Oh, but you did. In very colorful detail.” He looked too happy to report my horrendous behavior, and I wanted to smack him and then kiss him and then probably tackle him onto my desk so he could take me in colorful detail.

“We shouldn’t be talking about this.” I spun away, facing a wall of bookshelves. Holy God, there was nowhere to go. I’d have to shimmy around him if I wanted to escape through the only doorway. There was the window, but we were on the third floor.

Maybe I should try it anyway.

“So then...I guess that means we’re not going to do anything about it, huh?”

“You need to leave, Mr. Gamble. This conversation is...it’s wrong.”

“I don’t see how it’s any more wrong than you agreeing to go out with a guy who’s already engaged to be married.”

“What?” I twisted my torso to face him.

He cocked a challenging eyebrow. “Dr. Chaplain. Are you telling me you don’t know he already has a fiancée?”

My mouth fell open. “Excuse me? No, he most certainly does not.”

Oh, my God. Did he? No, he would’ve taken her to the scrimmage with him if he had. Wouldn’t he? Or was she one of those women who didn’t get into sports?

“He proposed to her in one of the classes I took from him last semester.” Noel’s voice shocked me back to the present.

Disappointment spiked through me. And Philip had seemed so promising. I didn’t care that he hadn’t interested me the way the irritating student in front of me did, but he’d been...nice, simple. Doable. Well, aside from the whole ditching me at a bar by myself thing. Oh, shit. He really was a bastard.

“But why...why would he ask me out if he was already engaged?”

Noel shrugged, something akin to regret flashing in his eyes, as if he felt like hell for enlightening me to the truth. “Maybe he thought you knew. And didn’t care.”

“Oh, God.” I whirled away again. Could someone really take me for that kind of person?

“Seriously, why do you keep spinning to face the bookshelf?”

Crap. Now Noel knew what a lunatic I was. “Because I’m looking for a book,” I ad-libbed at the last moment, surprised and proud of myself for thinking up that answer so fast. And you know, now that I thought of it, there was a book I’d needed to check. It was one of those second copies where I’d made notes in the margins. And if I remembered correctly, they’d been pretty damn good notes. Except, I was almost positive that particular book was tucked away in a box...on the top shelf.

Oh, well. I’d gone this far. Might as well keep on. I grabbed the chair sitting on the other side of my desk because it didn’t have rollers and would hold me firmly.

“What the hell are you doing?” Noel asked as I stepped up.

“I thought I asked you to leave.” Lifting my arms, I used the tips of my fingers to wiggle them under the box and draw it further out from the shelf.

“For God’s sake. Here. Let me get that before you hurt yourself.”

“I put it up here; I think I can take it down. And you’re supposed to be gone...like I asked.”

“You didn’t ask. You demanded and—Jesus, Aspen.” His voice filled with warning. “Don’t. You’re going to hurt yourself. I’m six three. I can reach it a hell of a lot easier than you.”

“Well, I’m five four. What’s your point? I can reach it just...fine.” Crap. My fingertips barely touched the surface. I hiked myself up onto my tiptoes and tried again.

“No, you can’t. Just let me... Aspen!”

“Stop calling me by my first name. It’s not proper.”