“Take your time.” She swept toward the desk, her heels clicking with each long stride. “But as a reminder, we have a faculty meeting in the cafeteria in ten minutes.”
And he needed to talk to Bea before then, to confirm their dinner plans. He rose to his feet with a groan, which Rose didn’t acknowledge.
But as he reached her doorway, her voice stopped him. “The beginning of the year is exhausting enough, even if this weren’t a new school for you. Be sure not to run yourself into the ground.”
A quick glance backward revealed an impassive face, angled down toward her papers.
“I won’t.” He sighed. “I mean, I will.”
When she didn’t say anything more, he left and shut the door behind him. Because she deserved at least a couple minutes of privacy after a long day, even if she hadn’t asked for them.
During the faculty meeting, he saw her across the cafeteria. Spine straight, not a strand of her hair out of place. Sitting next to other faculty members, but entirely removed from them. There were no whispers or furtive laughs. No idle conversations between speakers. No smiles, much less adorable snorts.
He didn’t get it. At all.
He’d have said she considered herself above the rest of them, but that didn’t ring true. Not given her friendliness with Bea, and the brief glimpses he’d garnered of how she interacted with students. With them, she was all lively, charismatic warmth, rather than the chill of an empress. And even with him, all her coldness didn’t negate her generosity.
She’d given him her time and guidance during the summer. She’d given him a substantial portion of her classroom storage. She’d put up posters for his students. She’d even reminded him to take care of himself, albeit in an affectless way.
As Churchill might have said, Rose Owens was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a really soft-looking black blouse.
After the meeting, he lingered to introduce himself to a few of Bea’s teachers. By the time he left the cafeteria, Rose was long gone. But along the way to the department office, he glanced into her closed door’s little window.
He couldn’t see her. The placement of her desk meant she wasn’t visible from the door, which he imagined was not accidental. But there, on the floor beside her desk, he could just see a pair of breathtakingly high black heels, tumbled onto their sides. And over the back of a nearby student chair, a black velvet blazer lay carefully folded in half.
She was in there barefoot, in that silky confection of a shirt.
For her, he guessed that was basically one step from naked.
He stumbled over his own feet. Then made himself keep moving down the hall.
But three hours later, as shadows crept into the corners of the department office, and he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes anymore, he couldn’t help himself. He had to know. So he slipped his school-issued laptop inside his briefcase and slung the strap over his shoulder, gathered a stack of freshly-copied papers, and headed toward her classroom.
Nothing had changed. Shoes on the floor, jacket on the chair.
He knocked softly.
“Just a moment,” she called out.
Then, from the window, he watched a long-fingered, capable hand gather those shoes. After a moment, a black-clad arm reached for her jacket. Another few moments, and the tap of her heels came toward him.
He shouldn’t be disappointed. He really shouldn’t.
She opened the door and seemed unsurprised at the sight of him.
“Come in, Mr. Krause.” She clicked back to her desk with all due speed, but her descent into her desk chair lacked a soupçon of her usual grace. It was a revealing hitch, although it didn’t tell him anything her enormous trough of coffee that morning hadn’t.
“Just dropping off handouts for tomorrow.” He entered the room, leaving the door cracked behind him. “You’re tired too, huh?”
She’d placed an intricately pierced ceramic lamp, like one he might choose for his nightstand, on the corner of her desk. The light, warmer than the fluorescents overhead, gilded the smooth curve of her hair and cast a glowing, dappled circle on the floor. Her long fingers sorted through student papers one by one, each motion precise and beautiful.
He could have watched her forever.
“Not especially,” she murmured.
Such a liar. A good one. No tells that he could ascertain.
For some reason, he didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just followed her movements as she sorted, then typed, then jotted a few notes to herself on a sticky pad. When she finally lifted her eyes to him again, he blinked like a man awakened from a trance.
