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Shooting up to his feet, he whirled around and fled. But then he paused at my quote board. After digging into his pocket, he pulled free a sheet of folded paper. Without opening it, he plucked one of my tacks from the cork and stabbed his note into the center. Then he was gone, and the doorway where he’d disappeared looked extra empty.
A nanosecond later, I scrambled from my chair and snagged the note off my board. Whipping it open, I gaped slack-jawed at the words he’d written in a sloppy, bold scrawl.
“The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.” - Geoffrey Chaucer.
A second later, I shook my head and grinned. “Touché, Mr. Gamble. Touché.”
Literary scholar or not, I’d just made a huge mistake; I had let Noel Gamble know how much he affected me.
I was still rattled by the time I eased back into my chair. I stared at my ereader but couldn’t make myself reopen the story I’d been reading. All I could think about was—
My desk phone rang.
I answered without paying attention to what I was doing.
“Hey,” an upbeat male voice entered my ear. “Are we still on for tomorrow night?”
“What?” I shook my head. “Who is this?”
“It’s, uh...It’s Philip. Philip Chaplain...from the—”
“Oh, my God. I’m sorry. Of course.” Who else would it be? Wasn’t like I had an active social life. “I wasn’t thinking. Please excuse me. I have my Friday brain on.”
He gave an uncertain chuckle. “It’s fine. Been a long week.”
Boy, hadn’t it. “Yes, it has.”
“Look, about tomorrow...” When he paused, I knew he was going to cancel. Damn. This had to be a record; I’d bombed my date before even going on it.
“Something came up...” Yep, I knew it. Something came up...unavoidable...maybe some other time...blah, blah, blah. We can still be friends. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. “So do you think we could just meet there at, say, seven thirty?”
It took me a moment to realize what he was asking. I’d been expecting the usual brush-off. Meeting there totally threw me for a loop.
“Oh! Uh...sure. Wait, where exactly are we meeting?”
“The Forbidden Nightclub. It’s on Second between Grand and Admiral. Huge place. Amazing drinks. I think you’ll like it.”
I’d never been there before, hadn’t even heard of it, and clubs were definitely not my thing. But I agreed because I’d already bought a dress for the occasion and I wanted—no, I needed—a reason to get my mind off a certain student of mine. “That sounds great. I’ll see you there.”
CHAPTER NINE
"Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.” - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
~NOEL~
The club was more crowded than usual. I swiped a white towel across the beading sweat on my brow as I glanced at the swarming bodies swamping the other side of the bar.
When a waitress appeared with a round tray full of empty bottles, I lifted my chin to her in greeting. “Tips any good tonight?”
“Oh yeah.” She wiggled her eyebrows before tossing the empties into the nearby trash. The familiar clink and shattering glass almost comforted me because it had become so common. But that was the only comfort I felt this evening.
I should’ve had the night off, yet in the past nine days since the twins had quit, I’d been stuck behind the bar of Forbidden all fucking nine of those days. I’d had plans to meet up with Tianna and her friend, Marci, at the frat party for my long-overdue threesome tonight. It’d been almost six weeks since I’d been inside a woman. That was a dry spell for me.
It was probably what had me thinking dirty thoughts about my English professor too. Lately, I thought about her just before I went to sleep. When my head was nestled deep in a pillow and my eyes had just fluttered closed, there she’d come, wavering into my subconscious until I’d officially had way-more-than-one wet dream about her.
I still couldn’t believe I’d almost kissed her in her office yesterday morning. It had to be the most embarrassing, horrifying thing I’d ever done.
It was impossible to tell whether she’d played dumb afterward, or if she honestly hadn’t had a clue how close I’d come to leaning in and devouring her mouth. I was just grateful she hadn’t made an issue of it.
