“I’d appreciate that,” he smiles back at me.
“Anything else you’d like to share with the class, Professor. You seem to have hit it off with my sister while I was laid up in the hospital.”
“You asked me to call her,” he reminds me before pausing. “She had questions. Many questions.”
I groan and lean my head back against the headrest. “I can only imagine the interrogation you endured. Emily doesn't know the meaning of boundaries.”
He chuckles to himself. “Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly when she asked for a copy of my driver’s license, social security number, and a blood sample. “
“She asked for your what?” I stare at him in horror.
“Driver's license, blood sample.” What’s the blood for, exactly? She told me it was standard procedure,” Jonah says with a straight face. “Does everyone have to submit a background check to her or is it reserved specifically for men in your life?”
I stare at him in horror. “Please tell me you're joking.”
He pauses just long enough to make me think the worst. “I’m joking. Well, mostly, but it does bring up something that I should have asked earlier. Other than Emily, do you have other emergency contacts? Mom? Real boyfriend or husband?”
I shoot him a knowing look. “Really?”
He shrugs one shoulder, though there’s something almost cautious underneath the teasing now. “It’s an honest question. It’s not like we’ve talked about that.” His fingers tap once against the steering wheel. “For all I know, you could actually be married.”
I stare at him for a second, genuinely thrown by the idea. Could he really think that? That I would spend the last few days flirting with him like this and be involved with someone else?
“Allow me to reassure you, there is no one else.”
Jonah’s expression eases immediately, and my stomach flips at his reaction.
“Probably a good thing considering your sister asked if we were sleeping together. How awkward would that have been if I had said yes.”
I nearly choke on my coffee. “God, I'm going to kill her,” I mutter, sinking lower in my seat. The painkillers are definitely not strong enough for this conversation.
“Relax.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “I told her we're colleagues. That it's strictly professional.”
“Good. That's exactly what it is.” I take a long, deliberate sip of coffee to give my mouth something to do.
Professional.
Right.
I stare out the passenger window and let the landscape blur past. Fields and sky and the occasional rusted water tower. My brain is supposed to be on the storm cell, on radar readouts, on where we're setting up next. Not on my sister asking a man I've known for four days if we're sleeping together.
And definitely not on the question itself.
I pinch the bridge of my nose with my good hand and squeeze my eyes shut.
Don't think about it.
Except now I'm thinking about it. Because my brain is a traitor and the painkillers have apparently greased the wheels of every inappropriate thought I've been repressing since Oklahoma.
Would he be methodical about it? Would he make a mental chart of my responses the way he tracks atmospheric data, filing away which touch makes me inhale, which one makes me bite my lip? Would he be the type to whisper tell me what you need in that low voice he used when the debris had tried to take me out, the one that stripped all the professor out of him and left something raw underneath?
I shift in my seat, the leather suddenly too warm against my thighs.
Or—and this is where the thought goes off the rails entirely—what if all that composure is exactly the cover for the opposite?What if underneath the careful, measured exterior is someone who doesn't ask permission? Who takes. Who lifts me against a wall like I weigh nothing, one hand at my jaw turning my face exactly where he wants it, the other?—
Stop.
I dig my nails into my thigh.
