She shivered as a tingle of arousal eased down her spine.
At the first tap of the microphone on the impromptu dais, she pulled herself together. “Language, Mr. Krause.”
But she drank his coffee, and as she did, she could see him watching her mouth.
Once she’d gulped down the heavenly contents of his cup—and then the second cup he poured for her—her thoughts cleared enough to remember the special treat she’d prepared for the meeting. Although she hadn’t known the name of the presenter beforehand, anytime their superintendent hired a consultant, certain things were a given.
As Principal Dunn reminded everyone of the presenter’s qualifications with the polite but unenthusiastic tone of a woman who’d been ordered to waste an hour of a staff meeting for no good reason, Rose produced two small squares of paper from her own briefcase. Then folded them in half so no one else at their table could read the print on the grid.
Discreetly, she tapped Martin’s knee under the table.
He jumped, turning to her in a startled rush, and she rolled her eyes and removed her hand.
Real smooth, Krause.
When their curious colleagues had turned back to the presenter, she tapped his knee again—this time, he managed to remain composed—and tipped her head downward, indicating that he should look beneath the table. Once he did, he eased a hand down below, and she pressed the folded paper in his palm.
At the ridiculously brief contact of skin to bare skin, she almost jumped herself.
Hunched, protecting the sight of the paper with his arms and hands, he unfolded her little project. It took him a moment, but then Handsome Cologne Man reappeared with a slow, pleased smile. His hand disappeared beneath the table, and he wiggled his fingers, gesturing for her own paper. She passed it over, and he read that too, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening with his amusement.
“Bingo?” he mouthed. “Really?”
She scrawled in her notebook and turned it so he could see.Loser buys coffee next time.
After a moment, he wrote a response on his legal pad. His gaze steady, he watched her read his message.What does the winner get?
Whatever he or she wants, her fingers wrote, entirely without direction from her brain.
Like he had at the sight of her copy room striptease, he went very still for a moment.
His lips parted, and his handwriting became a bit choppy.High stakes indeed.
They were. Higher than any she’d allowed for a long, long time.
Resolutely, she turned back to the presenter and attempted to pay attention. For the sake of professionalism, naturally, but also so she wouldn’t miss any of the educational buzzwords on her bingo sheet.
Some of the concepts Barnes espoused were helpful, but they weren’t anything she or Martin hadn’t heard a million times before. In some cases, decades before, only couched in different terminology. So a little frivolousness at this meeting wouldn’t hurt either of them. And as everyone knew, teachers made absolutely terrible students, so she and Martin weren’t doing anything worse than, say, Mildred over there, with her crossword puzzle in her lap. Or Becky and Rasheed, who were whispering to each other. Or Jia, whose discreet game of cell phone solitaire seemed to be progressing nicely.
“Let’s discuss the most important parameters for student success,” Barnes began.
The game was afoot.
She’d chosengrowth mindsetas the center square for both boards, so it was essentially a free space. Within a minute after the presentation began, she and Martin had marked it off.
Differentiation. Stakeholders. Entrepreneurial.
Dammit. Those were words she’d given Martin, and he made a low, pleased hum as he crossed through each of them.
Fifteen minutes later, Martin was silently exulting in his imminent triumph. Either of two separate phrases would give him bingo:high-impactorresearch-driven. And since Barnes was about to start discussing assignments, she was probably fucked.
So thoroughly fucked.
She shifted in her seat as her imagination ran with that image, ran until it was flushed and breathless and sweaty.
With effort, she dragged herself back to the tasks at hand. Professional development. Bingo. And then, to her pleased shock, Barnes took it old-school.
“As you’re aware,” he intoned, “we need to ensure through our choice of grading rubrics and our communications with students that we encourage grit and resilience. Along with making certain our assignments require a certain amount of rigor, problem-based learning—”
