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Chapter 7
“Well, please keep me in mind should anything, uh…” The words were difficult to say, like she had to drag them out of her mouth. Tanith inhaled softly, then forced a smile. “If anything becomes available. I’m ready to start immediately, as often as you need me.”
“If I’d known you were open to teaching, I would have poached you a long time ago,” Dermot Howard, head of the art department at the liberal arts college attached to the private medical school just outside of Angel Fire, said with a laugh. His rotund belly did a little jiggle as he chuckled, and Tanith did her best not to stare down at it. A lesser person would have laughed, only not with him. Dermot was a swell sort of guy. Old-fashioned yet flamingly gay by every stereotypical standard. Tanith liked the guy.
“I taught when I was just out of college,” she admitted, hoping that would make things easier, “so it isn’t new to me. I think it’s been in the works for a little while. I just needed to find the right time to start making that transition.”
“Well, you know our students love you,” he told her, positively beaming. He’d been like a cat with a saucer of cream ever since their mid-morning meeting had kicked off in his expansive office. Three of the four walls were all windows, the space bathed in beautiful natural light. The one wall he did have was covered in art from his students; a number of said pieces had been on display at one point or another in her gallery sometime in the last five years.
Tanith had always believed in fostering a strong relationship with all art students in Angel Fire, those in and out of formal education. She and Dermot had known each other since she moved down here and had worked together on many college class art installations over the years.
Never had she considered working under him in any capacity. Unfortunately, her conversation with Blake last night had really sparked a fear inside her. Had she wasted her life pursuing a risky profession when, in reality, there was a stable job waiting for her just around the corner? Did she really have to struggle to stretch every dollar? When she hadn’t been able to pay Trudy the other day, Tanith had considered letting her go and finding a cheaper tutor—then instantly hated herself for even considering it.
After fleeing her first date, a bit embarrassed by her reaction to a pretty standard conversation regarding the validity of arts in the real world, Tanith had given herself a good talking to in the mirror. No more could she even think of sacrificing Hayley’s education or care for the sake of her dreams. She would still run the gallery, but if she found a stable teaching position within the art department, she would cut back and throw herself into whatever paid more. She had never considered herself a person who cared about the money, but things were getting serious now.
Blake had scared her into action. She’d fired off an email to Dermot before bed last night, and this morning he had called to invite her for tea and conversation. Thankfully, she hadn’t had to beg or grovel; Tanith had merely floated the idea of teaching at the college as an adjunct professor, all the while listing her previous credentials, and Dermot had practically fallen over himself with glee. Although no formal offer had been extended, she could see in the way he looked at her that he wanted her for his department.
“Now, I hate to shoo you out, but I have a class starting in ten minutes—”
“Don’t even worry about it,” she insisted, pleased to have an excuse to leave. Her gallery had never been closed this late in the morning. Something felt wrong about not being there, but it was a feeling she would just have to swallow and ignore for now. “We’ll talk again soon.”
“That we will, Tanith Ravenna,” Dermot purred. He’d always enjoyed curling his tongue around her name. She shot him a grin and a wink, then hurried out of his office before they got sucked into yet another seemingly endless conversation about nothing.
As Tanith gently closed the door behind her, she let out a much larger sigh and leaned back against the dark wood—otherwise her knees might fully give out and she’d crumple down to the floor. While she took a few moments to catch her bearings, she nodded and smiled at a few faculty members in passing as they sauntered down the corridor. While she knew most of them as acquaintances, something on her face must have read that she wasn’t in the mood for a friendly chit-chat today. Good, because she wasn’t.
She finally shuffled away, trying to remember the route out of the somewhat oppressive hallway system. While the classrooms at the college were beautiful, totally designed to emphasize the art lessons taking place, the behind-the-scenes teacher area was a disaster. Totally claustrophobic. By the time Tanith finally escaped it, she had to take a seat on a bench beside a newspaper stand and collect herself.
Thankfully, during that time she concluded that maybe this wouldn’t be that bad. Becoming a teacher again wasn’t exactly selling out. She wasn’t throwing down her paintbrushes and picking up eight mobile phones that she’d be glued to at all hours of the day. A liberal arts college, teaching artistic expression to eager students, was probably the farthest thing from a corporate environment.
Digging her water bottle out of her enormous purse, she took a few long sips, then capped it, feeling more confident than before. She could do this. If it meant bringing in a second income to support Hayley without feeling on the verge of a nervous breakdown every single day, Tanith could do that. Because this wasn’t her. This frantic, stressed out, leave-in-the-middle-of-a-first-date person was the exact opposite of who she was and what she stood for.
With that in mind, she made her way out of the arts building following a group of students into the courtyard between the art and the med side of things. Just as the seas parted and the sun shone down, Tanith spied the face of a man she owed a serious explanation to. Blake strolled alongside Espie’s good friend Maida, the two of them chatting amicably. A pulse of jealousy rushed through her when Maida threw her head back and laughed at something Blake said—and the feeling made her stop dead in her tracks.
Tanith was not a jealous person. She and Blake had had one crappy date; she had no right to be jealous of something as innocent as two friends—hopefully just friends—chatting at school. Blake was Maida’s professor, after all.
And now he was looking straight at Tanith. Fight or flight kicked in immediately, but she chose to stay and fight, despite how badly her embarrassed pride wanted to hightail it back to her car and get out of there.
Maida noticed her a few moments after Blake did, and soon enough the pair were making their way over. Tanith returned Maida’s exuberant wave with a half-hearted one of her own, heat rising to her cheeks as she felt Blake’s unflinching stare fixing to her face.
“Tanith, hey,” Maida greeted warmly. “What are you doing in this neck of the woods?”
“Just meeting an old friend for breakfast,” she said, which wasn’t a total lie. “What about you? Leaving class?”
The pair chatted contently for a few minutes, with Blake sort of just hovering there in the background. Maida left when she realized she was running late for her next class, which left just Tanith and Blake alone in a whole courtyard of students. Somehow, Blake was the only person Tanith could see. The only person she could feel. She had always believed in auras, but never had she been able to physically feel one as strongly as she did with Blake. He radiated a pleasant warmth, a subdued confidence that piqued her interest each time she saw him.
Still, no matter how interested she was, Tanith knew she had some apologizing to do—and the silence was dragging on just a little too long. “Blake, about last night—”
“I’m so sorry for what I said…”
They both stopped shortly after speaking over one another, and Tanith gestured for him to go first. He ran a hand through his thick brown hair, looking only mildly uncomfortable all of a sudden, and she had to wonder if she made him nervous.
“I realized what a complete tool I’d been after you left,” he admitted. She bit her lip as she tried to ignore the fact that he looked damn sexy in his teal button-down and silver-striped tie. The knot hung loose. Like someone had had their way with it already.
There was that pulse of jealousy again. Tanith swallowed hard and pushed back images of her yanking that tie off completely to the far back of her mind.
“It was really insensitive of me to just spout all that crap about the arts not being able to support you.”
“Well, to be fair, you never said me in particular,” she pointed out, to which he gave a quick chuckle.
