The Virgin Mistress (10 page)

 

When he showed up at Rebecca's apartment bright and early Saturday morning with fresh croissants, Austin told himself that he was just being friendly. He had his feelings under strict control and there was nothing to worry about. If he was thinking about her more than he should and he'd found an excuse to see her every other night since
they'd agreed on how to proceed with a limited physical relationship, it was just because he liked her and enjoyed her company. He readily admitted that his attraction to her was stronger than ever, but he wasn't stupid enough to let things get out of hand. Everything was fine.

When she opened the door to him, it was obvious she wasn't expecting company. Dressed in jeans and an old T-shirt that was splattered with paint, she'd tied her hair back with a piece of yarn and hadn't bothered with makeup. And in her hand was a glue gun, and it was pointed right at him.

Grinning, he held up his hands…and the bakery bag of croissants. “Don't shoot. I've come bearing gifts.”

“Austin! Just the man I wanted to see.” And with no more warning than that, she grabbed his arm and dragged him inside. “I need some help.”

“With a glue gun? Oh, no,” he grimaced. “That's not my thing. I'm not into crafts.”

“Neither am I,” she retorted. “I'm making a project for school. Oh, no, you don't,” she said quickly, grabbing his arm again when he started to sink down into one of her kitchen chairs. “Glue,” she said with a nod toward the seat. “I wouldn't if I were you.”

He jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, drawing a laugh from her. “Sorry,” she giggled. “Did I mention that I'm not very good with a glue gun? I have a tendency to get it all over everything.”

That, Austin discovered with a quick look around, was an understatement of gargantuan proportions. He couldn't tell exactly
what
she was making, but there was construction paper, poster boards and Styrofoam all over the kitchen. It was the glue, however, that really raised his eyebrows. It was everywhere.

Glancing up, he directed her gaze to the spot over her
head, where a Styrofoam ball was stuck to the ceiling with a huge glob of glue. “How did you manage that?”

Far from embarrassed, she just grinned. “I accidentally tripped over one of the kitchen chairs just after I put some glue on the ball, and when I stumbled, it just sort of flew out of my hand.”

“Straight up to the ceiling, huh?” Amused, he had to laugh. “Well, at least it wasn't the cat.”

She gave him a chiding look. “I don't have a cat.”

“Now I know why,” he teased, grinning. “What
are
you making, anyway?”

“It's a game for my students,” she explained. “I saw it on the Internet, and it looked like so much fun that I thought I'd make it for class Monday. But it's not as easy as it looked.”

A wise man would have made an excuse and gotten out of there before she glued the door shut, but his common sense had been in short supply from the moment he'd met her that first evening at Joe's. Before he could stop himself, he set down the bag of croissants on the kitchen counter and said, “Here, let me look at the instructions. Maybe I can help.”

An hour and a half later, the croissants still sat untouched on the counter, they were both covered in glue, and the project was still in pieces. But Austin couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed so much. “I think whoever designed this damn thing left out a few pieces on purpose just to drive us crazy,” he said. “Are you sure it's supposed to look like the space shuttle?”

“It's right there in the picture,” she pointed out. “See? The shuttle and the space station, complete with loading dock. According to the instructions, a six-year-old can make it in about twenty minutes.”

His gaze followed hers to the directions she'd printed
out, then shifted to the shuttle they'd constructed. For a moment, neither one of them said a word. Then their eyes met, and they both burst into laughter.

“It's awful, isn't it?” she chuckled, wiping her eyes. “It looks just like a—”

“Penguin,” he finished for her. “A fat, slightly lopsided, drunk penguin.”

In response to his comment, the penguin chose that moment to fall over on the table, face-first, and that sent Rebecca into gales of laughter. “I'm sorry,” she laughed. “It's just so pathetic. I'm usually a better teacher than this.”

“Hey, this has nothing to do with your teaching abilities. Somebody just screwed up with the directions. So let's change the game into something with penguins. At least the kids will laugh.”

He had a point. Her mind working, she studied the pathetic Styrofoam and paper penguins, and all of a sudden, she could see all sorts of possibilities. “You know, that just might work! Here, let's try this.”

 

By lunchtime, they had constructed what appeared to be an entire army of penguins, and even though more than a few of them didn't stand up straight and had a tendency to lean, Rebecca was thrilled. She knew her students were going to love them.

Her eyes shining as she and Austin both stood at the kitchen sink and scrubbed the glue from their hands, she looked up at him and said, “You don't know how thankful I am that you dropped by this morning. I probably would have spent the rest of the day trying to construct that crazy shuttle and ended up with nothing to show for it but frustration. Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” he said with twinkling eyes. “It was fun.”

Standing hip to hip, he was so close, Rebecca could have been in his arms just by leaning a little to her left. It would have been so simple…and so right. At that moment she wanted to feel his arms around her more than she wanted anything in the world, but she couldn't tell him, couldn't ask. They'd seen each other just about every day over the past week, and he'd ended each evening with a kiss on the cheek—after asking her permission, of course. But this time, she ached for more…just this once.

Her fear wouldn't let her say a word, but something in her eyes must have given her away. The smile on his face slowly faded and his hands stilled under the running water of the faucet. For what seemed like an eternity, time seemed to stop.

“Did I ever tell you how pretty I think you are?” he asked huskily.

Her heart thumping in her chest, Rebecca could only shake her head.

“You've just got this natural prettiness that you're not even aware of. Every time you laugh, I just want to grab you and kiss you. I'm not, though,” he assured her quickly, then qualified that statement with, “going to grab you. I will kiss you, though.”

This time, he didn't ask, but he knew he didn't have to. He had to see her permission in her eyes. Her heart wanted nothing more than for him to draw her into his arms and kiss her on the mouth like he would never let her go. It was what she'd dreamed of, what she ached for with all of her being.

But her head still wasn't ready to trust him or any other man. Try though she might, she couldn't stop herself from tensing.

But he was, this time, as always, a man of his word. He leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, just as he had so many times before over the last week. Only this time it was different. He didn't just brush his lips to her cheek and quickly draw back so as not to scare her. Instead, he lingered for the span of a heartbeat, his mouth pressed warmly to the curve of her cheek, and just that easily, he set her body temperature spiralling upward. Entranced, she gasped softly, wishing the moment could last forever.

She wasn't the only one. Given the chance, Austin would have slowly folded his arms around her and drawn her against his heart, where she belonged. Just for a moment, the temptation of that was almost more than he could bear. What harm could it do? She had to know now that he was never going to hurt her. She had to let go of her fear sometime, and this was perfect. It was broad daylight, they were both still sticky with glue, and there was nothing the least romantic about the situation.

But even as he went over all the reasons why he should have been able to give her more than just a kiss on the cheek, he suddenly realized what he was doing and swore silently. What the devil was wrong with him? Rebecca was still suffering years after she'd nearly been raped. After everything she'd been through, only she could decide when she'd be ready for something more satisfying than a kiss on the cheek.

And that was a decision she might not ever be able to make, he acknowledged. Only time would tell. In the meantime, however, she was calling the shots, and he didn't have a problem with that. Women had been calling the shots since the beginning of time, anyway, he thought wryly. They just let the men think it was all their idea.

When he grinned suddenly, Rebecca lifted a soapy fin
ger to her face. “What? Have I got glue on my nose or what?”

“Not at all,” he chuckled. “I was just thinking about something else. Are you hungry? We never did eat those croissants. Why don't we go pick up some chicken and have a picnic in the park? We've worked enough for one day.”

For an answer, she dried her hands and grabbed her purse from where it hung from a kitchen chair. “Last one out locks up,” she said with a grin.

Laughing, they both rushed to the front door.

 

“All right, Tommy! Way to go!”

“My penguin made it to the North Pole before his did, Miss Powell. Does that mean I win?”

“This isn't about winning, Lucy,” Rebecca told Lucy Meadows, one of her favorite students in her second period class. “There are all sorts of ways to get to the North Pole. The point of the game is to have fun and explore.”

She could tell by her frown that Lucy didn't quite understand that concept, but the rest of the students didn't care. They were more concerned with playing with the penguins and learning about the way they lived than winning. And Rebecca was thrilled. All of the students had learning disabilities, which was why they were in her class, and getting them all involved in a game or activity at the same time wasn't always easy. But they'd taken one look at the penguins she and Austin had constructed Saturday morning, and they'd been instantly captivated.

“Hey, we need some fish to feed these penguins. Can we make some out of construction paper, Miss Powell? What do the fish they eat look like?”

Pleased, Rebecca smiled down at Josh Kitchen and just barely resisted the urge to hug him. She'd had a soft spot
where Josh was concerned. He'd been abused by his parents and put into the foster care program by the state, and he'd been quiet and withdrawn from the moment he was first assigned to her class two months ago. Yet here he was, not only asking a question in front of the entire class, but wanting to learn more.

Touched, she smiled and prayed he didn't see the sudden tears glistening in her eyes. “Of course you can make some fish. I've got a picture right here in a book I checked out of the library that you can copy.”

He and the other students gathered around her desk, exclaiming over not only the pictures of the fish, but those of an Eskimo village. Moments later, the classroom was a beehive of activity as everyone scrambled to make a school of fish for the penguins and an Eskimo village.

“Miss Powell, come and look at my fish.”

“Mine's awesome!”

“I made an igloo. A real one!”

Laughing, Rebecca hurried from desk to desk, praising everyone for their efforts and offering help when asked for. This was why she'd gone into teaching, why, even when she didn't know how to get through to a student, she kept trying. Because when everything came together, it was magic.

Caught up in her students and the fun they were having, she never noticed that Richard Foster had appeared in the doorway to her classroom until Lucy tugged on her skirt and said, wide-eyed, “Mr. Foster wants to talk to you, Miss Powell. Is he mad? His face is all red.”

Whirling, Rebecca felt her heart sink at the sight of the principal's sour expression. His face was, indeed, red, and he had that look in his eye that every teacher in the school knew spelled trouble. Once again, he was obviously having a bad day.

She didn't, however, want Lucy to worry about that, so she just smiled and said reassuringly, “He's not mad, sweetie. He was just out in the sun over the weekend and got a little sunburned. Go back to your penguins, and I'll go see what he wants.”

Dread pooling in her stomach, she kept her smile firmly in place as she strode over to the doorway to greet her boss. “Good morning, Mr. Foster. How are you today?”

Ignoring her greeting, he glared at her and said in a low, cold voice, “What is the meaning of this, Miss Powell?”

Confused, she blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“And well you should,” he snapped. “Do you know I can't even talk on the phone in my office because I can't hear myself think for you and your students? What the devil is going on here?”

“We're playing a game—”

“I don't care if you're talking to the president of the United States. You will cease and desist immediately!”

She couldn't believe he was serious. “But—”

“There is no discussion on this, Miss Powell,” he cut coldly. “Your classroom is out of control. I don't know when or why you've gotten so lax in discipline, but I can't allow this to continue. You will end the game and restore order to your classroom.
Now!
”

Rebecca had never liked confrontations. As far as she was concerned, anger was just one letter away from danger and she wanted nothing to do with it if she could find a way to avoid it. But it was her job to see that her students got the best education she could give them, and she couldn't just stand there and let Mr. Foster destroy the breakthrough she'd finally made with some of her most troubled students.

“Please don't ask me to do that, Mr. Foster,” she
pleaded. “Look at Josh Kitchen and Tara Sears and David Hernandez. None of them have ever participated in any kind of classroom activity before. They're so excited, I just hate to discourage them.”