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Colin flipped through her notebook. “I like it.”
“Then if we have time, we can show them some lines from ‘The Tale of Melibee.’” She stopped herself from explaining why. This thing between them was never going to work if she couldn’t turn the rivalry off, which meant she had to stop constantly trying to prove she was smarter and more knowledgeable.
He froze. “The what?”
“‘The Tale of Melibee’? One of the tales from Chaucer? The character?” Colin’s face was blank. “His response to ‘Sir Thopas’?”
He shook his head.
“Have you never readThe Canterbury Talesall the way through?” That was practically a felony for a medievalist.
“Not all of it.”
She tried her best to force the judgment out of her voice when she said, “I guess I’ll handle that part.”
He frowned. “You’ll have to.”
She rose to her feet and ran her hand over his arm. She hoped the contact conveyed everything she couldn’t. “Why don’t you get them started?”
“Yeah?” His face was so uncertain when he glanced down at her that it was criminal she couldn’t press a kiss to his lips. Her body felt full of hands, all of them reaching for him.
He cleared his throat. “Maybe I could pull up a few examplesfrom church writings to compare with how the Wife of Bath uses religion—Charlie went through a bit of a Christian history phase too, so I have some experience with that.”
“That sounds great. We can use the examples as a jumping off point and then dig into the other ways that she establishes her authority.”
For the next few minutes, Allison constructed a loose outline while Colin got the projector working and displayed a passage from some church father Allison had never heard of.
When he asked the class to end their group work, it took about three seconds for him to have their undivided attention. As if he’d cast some kind of spell.
Sitting back in her chair, Allison did her best to observe Colin not as a rival, but as a colleague. Someone from whom she could learn something. He was smooth, pacing the podium with languid grace, and every third word wasn’tum, like,orsort of(which seemed to be the main components of Allison’s vocabulary whenever she was in front of a classroom). It was as if he’d written out an entire script beforehand and memorized it.
Apparently, he’d even learned something about brevity since their first day in class, because his lecture only lasted about ten minutes before he cast his gaze to Allison and said, “This is, of course, only one kind of authority the Wife exhibits in the prologue. What are some others?”
Damn him. It was a perfect segue, deserving of an EGOT, a Michelin star, a Pulitzer.
Rising to take his place by the podium, Allison felt her heart hiccup when she turned and saw all the hands in the air.
Chapter 28
“When Katie in the back row made that comment about how the story focuses on the value of women’s experience…” Colin lolled his head along the top of the cushions of Allison’s couch in a daze.
After their incredible team-teaching session, Allison had decided it was time for him to sleepover at her place. She figured if Sophie was forced to interact with him, her friend would see how much he’d changed. And Allison needed Sophie to get on board with Colin. For whatever reason, it felt like the key to fixing everything between them.
But when they’d gotten back to Allison’s that night, it was empty. Sophie had left a note on the refrigerator whiteboard that she was crashing at the Viking’s. If she wasn’t already practically a ghost, Allison would have been convinced her best friend was avoiding her.
But at least this meant some uninterrupted alone time with Colin. Thanks to all the clandestine touches and subtle flirting in class today, Allison’s hormones were completely revved up.
The way his finger was tracing lazy circles around her kneecap was not helping matters. Lately, he reached for her out of instinct. Like she was a natural part of him. Like they were books in the same series that fit perfectly together on a shelf.
Allison felt him smile as she nuzzled her face into his neck and pressed a light kiss to his jaw. She seemed to touch him just as easily.
“It took everything in me not to cheer.”
“Actually, you did a little whoop,” she pointed out.
He grimaced. “You caught that?”
“Everyone caught it. But it’s a whoop-worthy moment when a student reaches a conclusion on their own.”
