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But this,. watching him as he was taking all of me in—it was different than when other people looked at me. Maybe it was something about his stare, the way it was so serious, and yet so captivating. Finally, he looked away, back to his conversation with the other men, leaning on the mantle of the fireplace that lined the wall. And I definitely couldn’t miss the grumpy look on his face as his colleagues talked to him.
Seriously, did the man know how to smile? And why did I want to see it so badly? His smile—I wanted it directed at me. Was there a gas leak in here, or had the wine hit me that much? Either way, there was something very wrong with my head. Because I didn’t date, and I didn’t want to date.
I could just appreciate how fine he was without wanting to date him, anyway. Yeah.
I turned back to Hazel, and she raised an eyebrow at me. “What the hell was that?” she whispered under her breath, and I just shook my head.
Voice unsteady, I responded to her. “What?” She just gaped at me. “I don’t know?” I tacked on at the end as if that helped at all. How long had we been staring at each other across the room? If Hazel had noticed it… had anyone else? I was a little embarrassed, just thinking about the fact that someone caught me making eyes at a professor. Oh my god.
“You don’t know?” Hazel sounded exasperated. “Do you even know who that is?” She cursed under her breath again. “Noelle—”
“Think fast,” I whispered back, “Look who’s coming over to say hi.”
Hazel’s eyes looked up, and saw Lucas’, and then flashed to mine, a little startled. Save me, she mouthed.
You’re on your own, sister, I mouthed back.
Just then, Lucas came up to join us, and he stood at my other side. “Hey. Good to see two friendly faces,” he said. And then he must have followed our gazes to the other side of the room. “What are you all looking at?”
“Nothing,” I said, at the same time Hazel uttered, “Unbelievable.”
I glared at her. “What?”
Hazel seemed to have been ignoring the man of her literal dreams beside her, because she exclaimed, “Did you not see what just happened, Noelle? Because I saw it with my own two eyes, and that—” I cut her off with another pointed look, but Lucas didn’t seem to catch it.
“Are you…” He glanced in the direction that Hazel had been gazing at just moments before. “Are you guys looking at Professor Harper?” Lucas finally asked, and I just gave a helpless shrug.
“I think someone is.” Hazel nudged me in the side, giving me a playful wink.
“Am not—” I started to argue back.
And then, in the time it took for me to look over at Hazel, pleading for her to drop this topic of conversation with my eyes, about to change it to something else entirely, I realized he was gone from his spot in the corner of the room. Oh. Okay then. I frowned, turned back to our high-top table, and set my wine glass down so I could balance myself.
“Good luck!” Hazel chirped into my ear, and when I turned around, she was gone, and I was met with a pair of icy blue eyes.
Oh—so that’s what color they were. And damn Hazel for abandoning me.
“Hello,” he said, with a deep, smooth voice.
“Oh. Hi.” I squeaked out. And oh. If I had thought he was beautiful from a distance… up close, he was even more so. And with those bright blue eyes?
Suddenly, I wished Hazel had finished her sentence from earlier, about who this man was. I looked at her and Lucas smiling together at a table by themselves and narrowed my eyes a little bit at them as she waved with an innocent expression on her face. Oh, I was so going to force it out of her later.
Do I know who he is? If he was a complete sex god whose gaze had my heart pounding in my chest… Absolutely.
As he stood towering over me, still holding his cup in his hands, I marveled at just how tall he was. I was almost close enough to smell his cologne, but I resisted the urge to take a deep inhale to find out just what he smelled like. Pine trees? Musky scents? What on earth was wrong with me that I was thinking that? It had been way too long since I had been on a date, that’s what. And was I still gaping at him? I really needed to close my mouth and attempt to be a normal human having a normal conversation.
“You looked like you needed a rescue,” he said as pushed up the sleeves of his sweater onto his elbows, showing off his arms underneath.A sight I was trying to ignore by reminding myself how he was a professor here. Yep. That arm candy was definitely off-limits.
“Oh,” I said again, aware of how much I sounded like a broken record. “Mhm, did I?” I finally asked, looking up at him. A rescue from Hazel and Lucas? My panicked expression was probably because of you, mister, I thought to myself.
He just nodded at me, fidgeting with the wine glass in his hands.
“It seems to me like maybe you just needed an excuse to get away from them,” I grinned, tilting my chin towards the group of faculty members he had left behind—or managed to escape from, whatever they had been talking about.
“Maybe so.” He frowned, glancing back at them.
“Well, glad I could assist in the save, either way.” I smiled at him. His eyes—I couldn’t get over how very blue they were—settled back on my face, and even though he didn’t return my smile, I could see the way he relaxed a little bit in my presence.
