by Carter Ashby
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
About The Author
Carter Ashby is a hardworking housewife and homeschool mother by day, and a romance reader and writer by night. She lives in rural Missouri with her husband, three children, and two dogs.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Addy And The Smart Guy
Spring break arrived, a week after helping Zoey move—or rather keeping Zoey occupied while Kellen and Jayce helped her move. Now she found herself with a weekend free of plans.
Spring break had meant little to Addy when she was an undergraduate, and even less, now, as she worked through her Master’s degree. She would still have work to do, mid-terms and essays to grade. Her parents wanted her to come spend some time with them. Even though St. Louis was less than an hour away, she still lived in the city and went home on weekends rarely.
It was hard to avoid the bigger breaks, though. Addy hated to hurt her parents’ feelings, but she was just happier in her little one-bedroom apartment in the city, where there were no rules or expectations but her own. Still, it would be nice to hang out with Zoey and Maya for a while. If she could separate them from their boyfriends.
Addy was a teaching assistant to Dr. Greyson McDaniel. He had a small desk for her in his office, up against the far wall. Addy sat there organizing her files. She taught Political Science 101 for Grey—Dr. McDaniel. After talking about him to her friends, she’d gotten in the habit of thinking of him as Grey. She mentally berated herself and determined to get back in the habit of calling him Dr. McDaniel. She was prioritizing her work on her laptop so she could take it home with her when he walked in.
Addy glanced back and smiled. Though she tried not to be in the office with him when he was there, sometimes their schedules overlapped. He looked fantastic as always.
A raggedy professor, he kept his hair a little too long and his clothes a little outdated. His glasses came off sophisticated, rather than nerdy, but the way he shoved them up the bridge of his nose frequently softened his image. His face, though, was achingly beautiful. A strong nose and jaw, sharp lines and the perfect amount of stubble. A slim, fit body which she only knew about because she’d seen him in his gym clothes on occasion. When he went to the gym, he pulled his hair up in a stubby ponytail that was somehow adorable and sexy at the same time.
Addy just couldn’t stand to look at him. It hurt too much.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Hart,” he said.
“Good afternoon, Dr. McDaniel.” She’d already turned back to her computer screen.
But then the door clicked shut. She jumped. Frowned. It was unlike him. Whenever they were together in the office, he always left the door open. He was very conscious of propriety. Just last year a well-known professor in the psychology department had been caught in a scandal involving two of his freshman students, a male and a female. Drugs had been involved. The publicity had seemed to never end.
Dr. McDaniel had more than his fair share of young, female admirers, but he was always extremely formal and distant, never wanting to invite scandal. Even a rumor could destroy his reputation, and maybe his career. The dean had been on a personal mission to eliminate all incidences of improper fraternization between teachers and students. Just the fact that Addy was the teaching assistant to a single, good-looking professor automatically put her and Dr. McDaniel on the dean’s radar.
So for him to close the door seemed a major lapse in judgment. She shook it off, continuing the task at hand. She’d be leaving in a few minutes anyway.
“Got big spring break plans?” he asked
She laughed because it was funny. She didn’t need to explain to him why it was funny, he already knew what a tame life she led.
When he didn’t say anything else, she suddenly got a nervous feeling. He was still there. Standing back by his desk, she suspected. What was he doing?
She turned. He was facing her, but not looking at her. He was frowning down at the floor and holding an envelope.
Her heart sped up. She began running through possible scenarios. Had she done something wrong? Had he done something wrong? Did that envelope contain bad news? Did somebody die? Get fired?
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
He looked up, suddenly, as though just realizing she was there. “What? Oh, yeah. Everything’s fine.” He leaned back against his desk, blinked, and looked away.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. Good.” She hesitated and then turned back to her laptop.
“I’m going on vacation,” he said.
Um, okay. “Oh, cool,” she said. “Taking the girlfriend?” She couldn’t say the name of the woman Dr. McDaniel had been dating the past few months. She’d met her. Seen her around. She was gorgeous, mid-thirties like him, sophisticated and pretty much perfect in every way.
“No,” he said.
Her fingers paused over the keyboard. “Oh.” She went back to typing up a work schedule for herself.
“I have this cabin out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Nobody there knows me. It’s quiet. Secluded.”
She checked her email one last time to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. “Sounds real pleasant.”
“It is. I’m flying. In the morning.”
She nodded, then shook her head at the amount of work she had to do. “Well I hope you have fun. I’ll be doing all your work for you, it looks like.”
She’d meant it as a joke, but he hadn’t laughed. Huh. Weird.
“And you don’t have to think about this now, or anything,” she said, “but when you get back, I think you’re going to have to meet with that Gwen Morris. Yesterday she gave me this lecture about how her father paid for her to take ‘Dr. McDaniel’s poly-sci 101 class…not Addison Hart’s.’ I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did to piss her off, but she’s got it out for me.”
“I’m sure you’ll handle it,” he muttered.
“I can’t, is what I’m saying. I mean, I don’t know what she wants or believe me, I’d give it to her just to shut her up—“
“Addison?”
He rarely called her by her given name. It was usually Ms. Hart to him. She swallowed and turned, frowning up at him.
“Um. This is for you.” He crossed the room and handed her the envelope.
She took it and stared at it.
“Like I said, I’m leaving in the morning. Have to be at the airport at nine to get through all the security. But…again, this place. Nobody knows me. Or you. It’s…it’s really nice. I just…I wanted you to have that…,” He nodded toward the envelope. “Just in case.”
Then he turned and just left.
Addy sat twisted in her chair, staring at the door he’d left open. What the hell? She opened the envelope. Inside was a round trip ticket to North Carolina. “Holy shit,” she whispered.
Coming March 10, 2015
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