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“Hundred.”
“Three or four hundred million?”
He shrugged. “Don’t hate me because I’m rich.”
“No problem,” Gina muttered. She had plenty of other things to hate him for.
Like the way his unbuttoned shirt kept fluttering every time he moved, giving her tantalizing glimpses of pecs and abs. What kind of professor had a body like that?
“I’m not going to dig up your ranch.”
“I know,” she said, and he let out a relieved sigh. “You’re going to dig up your ranch.”
“No. I mean yes. But—”
“Sheesh, for a teacher, you sure have a hard time expressing yourself.”
He tilted his head, and his hair slid across his cheek, making her remember how she’d threaded her fingers through it and held on. Damn! What was wrong with her? Nothing a good dose of bitchy couldn’t cure.
“I suppose you’re better in print. Your letters were certainly…” She let her lips curve. “Amusing.”
His eyes went blank as he thought back on what he’d written. “They weren’t meant to be amusing.”
“Which is what made them so damn funny.”
She was being mean, but she couldn’t help herself. He’d bought her ranch!
“‘It would behoove you to allow me to dig on your property,’” she quoted. “Who talks like that?”
“I try not to talk like that.” He glanced at the floor. “When I was a kid, it used to get me beat up. Until I hit my growth spurt anyway.”
Gina stilled. The idea of him as a kid—skinny, bespectacled, picked on—caused a sudden rush of protectiveness. If she’d been there, no one would have dared.
Then she heard her thoughts. She wanted to beat him up now. Why on earth did she care if he’d been beat up then?
“But it comes out in my writing,” he continued. “And when I’m nervous.”
Gina searched for something to bring back her anger. She didn’t have to search very far.
“You said you were homeschooled. Or was that as much of a lie as your name?”
“I was. My mom took me on digs with her, and they weren’t very often near a school.” He shrugged, making his shirt shift again. Was he doing that on purpose? “They weren’t very often near a road.”
“How’d you get beat up if you didn’t go to school?”
His gaze met hers again. “There are more places than a playground to find a bully.”
True enough.
“Don’t look so mad,” he said, and Gina realized she was scowling, clenching her fists, thinking about retroactive violence again. “Getting picked on got me off the couch. Or the cot in my case. I started working out. I learned how to defend myself. Without that experience I might have turned into a perennially hassled, geeky, four-eyed, overweight professor.”
As if.
“You said your mother took you on digs. She is … like you?”
“Yes and no.”
Gina would hate to be a student in his class. You’d never know the correct answer on a test, the way he waffled around. Of course, the view might make up for it.
