“Tsk. Anthony Rivera,” Helena said with a sigh. “I swear that boy hasn’t had new material since high school. Now, what were we talking about?”
“Actually, do you mind if I borrow Goodman for a minute, Ms. Fortnum?” Knox interrupted, shocking the hell out of me. “I need to speak to him for a second.”
I frowned. Since when did Knox speak to me voluntarily?
I couldn’t imagine what offense I’d committed this time, but I was in no hurry to hear my crush tell me what an irredeemable person I was, and that must have shown on my face.
“Actually, I do mind. I was just about to tell Gage tales about having you as a student, Knox Sunday,” Ms. Fortnum teased.She added to me in a low voice, “Do you know, Gage, in nearly four decades of teaching, I never had another like him? Knox was an original. On his very first day of third grade?—”
“Oh, wow! Okay, then! As fun asthatconversation promises to be,” Knox cut in, “I really need to?—”
“Is this an emergency?” I demanded.
He hesitated. “No. Not exactly.”
“Then I’m sure you can wait. Be polite.”
Knox looked up at the Averill Union Beavers’ basketball championship banners hanging from the steel rafters. “Now would be a great time for an intervention, FYI,” he told the ceiling. “Avalanche? Fire alarm? Alien invasion?” He flicked a lightning-fast glance at me and added, “Stampede of Orwellian cows hell-bent on revenge for millennia of oppression? Any interruption, really. I’m not picky.”
I narrowed my eyes and told myself he wasnotfunny. “Don’t even joke about the cows.” I leaned closer to Helena. “You were saying?”
Knox tipped back the last of his drink and scowled. “They don’t put nearly enough alcohol in these things.”
Helena peered at him curiously. “It’s a high school fundraiser, dear. I don’t believe there’sanyalcohol in them.”
“That would explain it,” Knox muttered.
The level of enjoyment I obtained from his discomfort probably made me a bad person… and I was okay with that.
“So what did third grade Knox do?” I wiggled my eyebrows. “Did he shake fifth graders down for their ice cream sandwich money?”
“Oh, no. That was Emma,” Helena said fondly. “But it was usually for charity, of course. Save the dogs, save the bees, save the wild spaces.”
“Hmm.” I stared up at Knox’s handsome face and tapped my lip thoughtfully. “Did he eat paste with a Popsicle stick? He has the shifty-eyed look of a paste eater about him.”
Knox rolled his eyes and said in a bored voice, “Takes one to know one, Goodman.”
“No, no, the paste eater was Reed, the third brother. Bit of an odd duck, that one.” Helena chuckled. “He still down in DC, Knox?”
Knox nodded. “Still working for a think tank down there. He gets home less often than I do.”
I looked Knox up and down thoughtfully. “Then Knox must’ve been the tattletale. The rule follower always making sure the other kids stayed in line.”
“Wrong again!” she crowed happily. “The tattletale was Porter, the fourth Sunday. But he wasn’t a rule follower so much as a… a… what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Con artist,” Knox supplied grimly. To me, he said, “When he wasfive, he threatened to tell our dad that he’d caught me and Reed drinking out on the roof of the back porch. I was over twenty-one, and Reed was like sixteen, and this kindergartener wanted to shake us down for candy money to keep quiet.”
I laughed out loud. “You totally paid up, didn’t you?”
“What do you think?” he asked, and maybe he meant it as a challenge, but it came out softer, like a question. Like he really wanted to know my opinion.
His green eyes met mine, and it was like a shot of adrenaline to my system. My heart swooped down into my belly before getting stuck in my throat.
Fuck.This man twisted me up so badly.
“You know,” Helena went on before I could get myself un-stuck, “I sort of imagined that if TruCrimeTV ever came to my house to interview me about a former student, it would be because Porter had been living a double life, pretending to be alost Latvian prince.” She almost sounded disappointed that she might not get the chance. “But then the man decided to go to college.”
“Yeah, well, don’t give up hope just yet,” Knox said, breaking our staredown so he could focus on Ms. Fortnum. “He’s majoring in English Lit, so I’m thinking he might need to pursue a life of crime if he wants to make a decent living.”
