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Gina started. “I bet your students love it when you sneak up on them like that.”
Teo blinked. “Why would I sneak up on them?”
“Aren’t they always trying to get away with something? Smoking under the bleachers. Drinking at the dance. Making out in the parking lot.”
Teo’s gaze went to her mouth and stayed there. The morning sun suddenly blazed far too hot.
“You … um … ever catch them?”
“Catch?” he repeated, still staring at her lips. He licked his, and she thought she might self-combust.
“The kids. At your school?”
“No.” He pulled his eyes away, but he appeared to have as much trouble doing it as she was having forgetting about it. “But I don’t try.”
“Why not?” She studied him. He didn’t look like a bad boy, but maybe he’d reformed. “Did you get caught misbehaving when you were in school?”
“I was homeschooled.”
“No way.”
His lips curved, and she found herself licking her own, wondering how they’d taste after she’d pressed them to his.
“My mom had interesting ideas about education.”
“Since you wound up being a teacher, did you agree with them or disagree?”
“I agree with almost all my mother’s ideas. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Your mother told you to come to Nahua Springs Ranch?” She was going to have to meet his mother.
The strangeness of that thought gave Gina pause. She wasn’t ever going to meet his mother. It wasn’t like she and Teo were dating. They were flirting, which was biza
rre enough. She never flirted with men, because men never flirted with her.
She’d been told she was pretty, and maybe she was. But she’d come to the conclusion that there was something wrong with her, something broken deep inside that kept men from being interested for more than a minute. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a second date.
“She did,” Teo said. “She … uh … thought I should get out more.”
“You a gamer?”
For an instant he stared at her blankly. Then he followed the jerk of her head toward Derek and understanding spread over his handsome face. “I’ve played. But I’d rather be doing.”
His gaze flicked back to hers, and the unspoken word you hovered between them.
“Gina!” Jase’s voice made them jump.
She turned her head only to discover that everyone else was mounted and ready to leave.
Everyone else was also staring at her and Teo. The Hurlaheys grinned indulgently; Melda gave her a wink and a double thumbs-up.
The As glared. If looks could kill … et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Tim Gordon appeared impatient. He probably figured that if they didn’t get on the trail now, he’d lose any chance he had of getting his son on the trail at all.
That son glanced back and forth between Teo and Gina, then made a gagging motion.
Last she turned her gaze to Jase. Gina wasn’t sure what she saw in his eyes before he walked away. Anger? Disgust? Disappointment? Whatever it was, it made her chest hurt when, a minute later, he thundered down the long dirt lane toward the main road, the dust from his horse’s hooves nearly obscuring him.
