Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“I was supposed to graduate two semesters ago, but I had my daughter and life got in the way,” I explained, knowing what she wanted to know without her having to ask.
Etta grinned.
“That’s cool,” she looked at the clock at her back. “It took me ten years to get here, but now that I am, I’m finishing.”
I liked her determination.
That was my goal as well.
A goal I was able to accomplish all because of Bowe.
Bowe, who, when I’d left this morning, had offered to drop my daughter off at my mother’s house since his first class wasn’t until nine.
I looked at the clock just as Etta had done, and winced.
It was eight fifty-nine, and I was now on my second class of the morning.
Maybe I should’ve gone to pee before class.
Taking one last look at the clock, I stood from my chair and hurried to the doorway, only to run smack dab into the chest of a very hard man.
“Oomph,” I pushed up, and then a smile appeared on my face.
“You know,” Bowe said as he smoothed his hand down over his chest. “I never thought to ask you what classes you were taking and where you were taking them.”
I grinned.
“I’m taking them here. And, obviously, you get to be my teacher,” I teased. “How cool.”
A smile widened on his face, but just as quickly fell as he realized that we were standing in the doorway staring at each other like two goobers.
“Where were you headed?”
“To the potty,” I said. “’Scuse me.”
He moved to the side, and I turned sideways to slip past him.
His erection didn’t go unnoticed, and once again I cursed myself for making that stupid ‘don’t take this any further than friendly’ rule.
He’d been nothing but a perfect gentleman in the time since we’d agreed that he could move in.
And when I say perfect gentleman, I mean he was everything that a husband would be minus the hot and sexy relationship that I knew he would bring to the table had I asked for it.
Had I not put a hard limit on it.
Fuck!
Rushing through the bathroom routine I’d perfected at the young age of two, I hurried back to the room, and felt my knees get weak when I heard him speaking out loud to the class.
“I’m Bowe Tannenbaum,” he was saying. “I’m a firefighter with Kilgore Fire Department, and will be teaching you cardiology for the first half of the semester.”
“Ohh,” a girl up front called bawdily. “How exciting. Have you saved many people?”
Was it acceptable to kill a classmate on the first day of class?
My eyes went to the front of the room and I inwardly cursed.
Mother fucker.
My pen came down to the table top with a clatter when I realized who was at the front of the room, and all eyes, including the one person I didn’t want to see ever again, came to me.
Jade fucking Matthews.
My father’s other daughter, the one he adopted and made his own when she was fifteen. The same age I was when he decided I was no longer the daughter he wanted.
Troy’s wife. The mother of Troy’s children. The mother of my daughter’s half sibling.
In my class.
Talking to the man I was slowly falling in love with.
Goddammit.
***
I walked in the door of my house, feeling just as much rage running through my veins as I had before, and slammed it behind me.
“Whoa,” Bowe said, startling me. “What’s wrong?”
I bit my lip.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I admitted. “All I want to do is forget that this day ever happened.”
It was three hours later, and I’d just finished the class that I knew was going to be a trial on my heart as well as my sanity.
That woman had a way of making even the best of women lose their shit.
I hoped I wasn’t going to be one of them who did.
“Oh, you’re going to talk about it,” he countered, taking hold of my hand and leading me to the kitchen.
He pulled one of the kitchen chairs out and deposited me into it before he walked to the fridge, opened it, and came back out with two bottles of beer.
“I have another class after this,” I told him. “I won’t be done today until four.”
Bowe laughed. “So do I.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Then you shouldn’t be drinking either,” I informed him.
He grinned unrepentantly and twisted the cap off before handing me the first beer. He followed suit and tipped the bottle, draining half of it before I could place the cold glass to my lips.
“It’s good,” he told me as I continued to watch him.
Shrugging my shoulders and mentally saying ‘fuck it’ I placed the bottle to my lips and chugged it, not stopping until I ran out of breath.
“Agh,” I belched, then immediately started to color. “Forget that you just heard that.”