by Liz Peters
“Have you ever met someone you were attracted to the first time you saw them, but you knew everything about the situation was just wrong? Like they were the exact opposite of what you ought to be going for?” Jamie had no idea where the question had come from, or why he was asking someone he’d just met. Reid was a virtual stranger, but there was something about him that made Jamie trust his opinion.
Reid just laughed, scrubbing a hand over his eyes and then back over his short hair.
“Man, you've got it bad don't you? Just tell me it's not my wife.” He grinned and shook his head. “Wait, maybe I don't want to know.”
“No, no… nothing like that, dude. It’s Debbie, not Sam. Sam’s great and all, but she’s all yours.” He hadn’t wanted to give Reid the wrong impression here, but it was clear he only had eyes for Samantha. Reid’s laughter came back again, and his voice had the tone of relief in it.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to be much help there. That one is a firecracker with a mind of her own. She’s been talking about finding a man since she got here, but I haven’t seen her go on a single date that I know of. Sam knows more. Those two are closer than a grasshopper’s thighs, but Sam doesn’t tell me everything. I wouldn’t want her to anyway. Those two need their girl’s space.”
Jamie had no idea why he was listening to Reid so intently. Maybe it was because the younger man knew Debbie better than he did. He wasn’t surprised to find out that Debbie and Sam were best friends. That much had been clear from the moment that he saw the way they interacted with each other, and Sam had been great since he’d walked in that first day. She let him have his way around the office, insisting that he could do whatever he’d decided was best. She was a smart girl. Whoever she’d fallen in love with must have been pretty awesome in their own right. The two of them were total opposites in all the obvious ways but sitting down to talk with him showed Jamie the parts that weren’t evident at first sight.
“Maybe I’m being stupid. I just got divorced a few months ago, and I could just be out of my mind. I don’t even know if she likes me. It’s just that we were arguing in the file room the other day, and she pulled me into a kiss. I just didn’t know if it was the kind of thing she did on a regular basis or what?” He held up his hands in a shrug when he didn’t know what to say anymore.
“She kissed you?” Reid’s eyebrow went up on one side in a questioning expression that Jamie couldn’t make heads or tails of. “And you were arguing? Ok. I think I’m going to need more details here.”
Jamie really had no other choice than to elaborate and fill Reid in on everything that had happened between the two of them since they’d met. How Debbie had expected him to be a woman just based on his name and resume and how the two of them had been at each other’s throats for the entire first morning until things ended in that kiss.
“So what you’re telling me is that she kissed you, and all you could do was let her go and walk away?”
Jamie groaned when Sam put it that way. Of course, she’d chilled towards him. He might have returned the kiss, but he’d given her no hints that he had any interest in her since then. Part of it was his struggle to remain professional at a new job. The rest was him being awkward and not remembering how to be romantic with a woman. It had been a long damn time since he’d had any reason for it. His wife had ceased being interested in that with him years ago. Maybe that should have been his sign that things were over, but he always had been a thick one in that department.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Jamie moved to rest his face in his hands as his elbows pressed into the desktop. “I don’t know if I was insane or what, but it was my first day at a new job and I’d just met the woman. I had no idea what I was doing. I still have no idea what I’m doing so not much has changed in that department.”
“Dude, I don’t know exactly what to tell you, but I’ll tell you this. I let Sam go once. I let her go back to the city and leave me behind. And then I came to see her and walked away again. It wasn’t until she came to me that I realized I was a fucking idiot and shouldn’t have let her go in the first place. Not everybody gets three chances at something like I did, so when you want something, when you can’t get it off of your mind, the only thing you can do is go for it.”
He had barely gotten the last word out of his mouth when the office door behind him opened, releasing Samantha’s last client into the foyer, followed by Samantha herself. This effectively cut off the conversation between the two of them for now. The last thing that he wanted right now was for Sam to get a clue about what he was going through. Though, now that he’d told it all to Reid, he had no idea how much Sam was going to find out.
“Hey man, it was good to meet you.” Reid stood up from the chair with a nod. “And don’t worry about all that before. It’s just between you and me.” He kept his voice low so that the rest of the people in the room didn’t hear. Sam was too busy saying goodbye and congratulating her clients on buying their first new home to hear him. She didn’t even get a chance to say hello to him until he walked up behind her, sliding an arm around her lower back to tug her in for a kiss in the same moment that the clients were walking out of the front door.
Jamie just watched them for a moment before he realized he was being weird and went back to his work. He missed having someone in his life, but he hadn’t wanted to settle for just anyone. He had been down that road before. He’d been in the kind of relationship where him pulling his wife in to steal a kiss at work wouldn’t have been welcome, and now he needed the exact opposite of that. He needed what Reid and Sam appeared to have. He just had no idea how to get it.
He was interested in Debbie, but he didn’t know if she wanted him back. Reid had told him to go for it, but he was still second-guessing himself. Debbie might have been the one to kiss him first, but he was still in doubt about what she really wanted or if getting involved with someone he worked with was the best idea.
Sam and Reid said their goodbyes and walked across the street to the cafe for lunch while Jamie settled into the desk, pulling a brown paper bag he’d packed with a couple of sandwiches for his lunch. He was alone in the office for the next hour. No one was due in until after one, and they didn’t usually have clients just walk in off the street. He was pretty sure that Sam and Reid were going to take their time with lunch across the street, so that left him alone with his thoughts and his sandwiches while he tried to figure things out. He had a lot to think about.
Chapter Thirteen
Debbie sat outside the front door of Joshua Brennan’s office with her hands shaking, staring down at the stapled stack of papers in her hands with a bright red ‘F’ written on the top sheet in blazing red ink that looked like blood spilled on the white page. The note scrawled beneath it requested her to meet him during his office hours later that day.
She’d made it a point to avoid Professor Brennan for the better part of the last two weeks, just like she’d been giving Jamie his own space around the office whenever she was in it. Instead, she’d focused on her studies and classwork, making sure that everything was done impeccably before she turned it in. That was why the fact that she’d failed this paper flabbergasted her to the point that she was trembling.
Joshua’s secretary knew she was here, and she’d sent word in through the intercom system to tell Joshua she’d arrived. He was keeping her waiting, and Debbie knew it as the rage started to build in her. She was going to have to struggle to keep it in as the minutes ticked past. It wasn’t going to help her in the slightest to go off on him the moment she walked into the room. She’d been here for fifteen minutes, waiting, and growing more and more frustrated.
She knew she’d put her full effort into the work and it deserved a lot more than an F, but she was going to get to the end of this as soon as she could. Debbie had been sitting there fuming so long that she was shocked when the door to his office opened, and a young, blonde co-ed laughed her way out of the office beyond, blushing as she turne
d to wiggle her fingers goodbye to the man who had walked her to the door.
“Thank you, Professor. Same time next week?” Her voice lilted upwards at the end of the question as she took a short step backward.
“Certainly, Miss Greene. I’ll see you at the same time for your next tutoring session.”
Debbie had no way of knowing what was really going on here, but she’d known she had that same look on her own face at times when dealing with Joshua, and she’d certainly seen the expression on his in the times the two of them had been together. She could feel her stomach in her throat as he showed the blonde out of the office and turned to face her.
“Miss MacIntyre, I’ve been expecting you. Please come into my office.”
Debbie couldn’t read his tone of voice or what he was saying. She understood the need to be formal in front of other people. The two of them shouldn’t have been involved in anything outside of the confines of the class she was taking from him. They definitely shouldn’t have had dinner together, and she was here about her grade, so she could understand why he’d called her Miss McIntyre. She just had no idea what to expect once they got in the office and the door closed behind the two of them.
Joshua moved behind his desk, sitting in the tall leather desk chair and relaxing back into it as she settled into one of the smaller ones on the other side.
“So, I’m assuming that you’re here about your grade?” He raised an eyebrow, though his expression remained nonchalant.
“Yeah.” She placed her term paper on the desk in between the two of them passing it over. “I’m just not certain why I got an F on it. I worked pretty hard on it, and I followed all the instructions.”
Professor Brennan took the paper and grabbed his glasses from the desktop to slide them on and give the paper a once-over glance.
“Ah yes, I’m sure you put a lot of effort into it, but I found it lacking in insight and a real understanding of the finer points of constitutional law.” Debbie could feel her face falling. She knew she’d done good work on that paper, but here he was telling her it just wasn’t good enough. “But maybe there’s something you can do to help improve your grade.”
He passed the paper back across the desk towards her, leaning his elbows on the desk as she took it from him, shoving it into her bag. Debbie wasn’t sure she liked the way this conversation was going.
“And what is that, Professor?” She was keeping her guard about her just in case this was going to end the way she’d thought it was heading.
“Can I ask you something first?”
“Of course.”
“Why did you leave the restaurant so abruptly the other evening?”
Of course, he was asking about that evening they’d spent together. She was starting to think that she should never have gone to dinner with him in the first place. That experience was coming back to bite her in the ass right now.
“Because we shouldn’t have been there. You’re my teacher, and I’m your student. We should only have a professional relationship…”
He cut her off by standing up at that moment and walking around the edge of the desk to stand next to her chair and lean over her.
“Have you ever considered the fact that maybe you need to live a little, Debbie? Your paper could have been improved with a little real-world experience, the kind that I’d be more than willing to provide you. Besides, this could be a mutually beneficial situation. You need help with your classwork, and I need to be entertained.”
Debbie caught herself holding her breath. This was going exactly the way she’d thought it was going. Clearly, he was only interested in something physical and something taboo to boot. The both of them could get in trouble for the things that had happened since they’d met, but this had gone to a place where suddenly she felt uncomfortable.
“Let me guess.” Debbie looked up at the man who was half looming over her as she felt her face heat up. She wasn’t sure if it was anger, embarrassment or a mix of both that she felt at the moment, but whatever it was kept her fueled to stand up to him for the moment. “You gave me an F on this paper just to bring me in here after I didn’t succumb to your charms at dinner the other night, right? Do you use this tactic a lot or am I special for some reason? You know what? Never mind all that. I don’t really want to know. I’m leaving, and you can consider yourself reported to the dean of the law school.”
Debbie moved to stand up, but Joshua blocked her path as she started the movement, forcing her to remain seated.
“Fair enough, Miss MacIntyre, but you might want to be careful who you report what to. When the dean hears about how you threw yourself at me before class on the first day of school and reads all the flirtation that you’ve done in text messages since then, I’m certain he’ll understand why you have to be removed from my classes immediately. And since I’m the only professor who teaches Constitutional law which happens to be a required class to earn your degree, I’m certain you understand that means you’ll also be unable to continue on as a student here at Plains State.”
The expression on his face had grown dark. It wasn’t anything like she’d seen from him since the two of them had met, but maybe this was the real Joshua Brennan, the one he’d been hiding from her since the two of them met. On the first day, he had just been paying attention to a pretty co-ed. Now, he was propositioning one of his students with the offer of a grade and the threat of being kicked out of school if she didn’t comply.
Debbie didn’t know what to make of this. The entire situation made her want to cry, but there was no way she was going to give into that urge in front of Professor Brennan right now. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had gotten to her. In reality, she was breaking in half right now. She didn’t see any way out of this without exposing herself to being kicked out of school, but the last thing she wanted to do was give in and sleep with her professor, which was what he seemed to be propositioning.
“And just what exactly would this real-world experience involve?” Maybe it was too much to hope for that he was just asking her to come and do an internship in his office or work with him on a case.
“Well, you know that kiss that you gave me the other night?” She nodded, her heart in her throat so firmly that it was beginning to be hard to swallow. “I’d like to start there and then see where the rest of this goes. I promise you-you're going to enjoy yourself.”
“And did the young lady who was in here before me enjoy herself?” This entire situation was starting to make Debbie feel sick to her stomach, and if the answer to this question was what she suspected it to be, then she was going to have to leave this office before she couldn’t handle it anymore.
“Several times.” The cockiness in his voice was just too much. It pushed her over the edge, and in spite of the fact that he was standing right in front of her to block her path from leaving, Debbie pushed up from the chair anyway. Professor Brennan was knocked back a step or two in the process, but she didn’t care.
“I have to go.” Debbie moved to head towards the door and let herself out into the waiting room beyond where Joshua’s secretary sat waiting.
“Don’t forget what I told you. That advice was very serious. I’d hate to see you let your grade go for a frivolous reason, my dear girl.” Debbie froze with her hand on the doorknob. This was the turning point. She could either go through with this, or she could walk out of this office and never come back. Her career as a law student was probably over if she turned that knob, but in the end, she knew it wasn’t going to matter. She could go back to her job as a paralegal for Samantha and just give up on her dreams of being a lawyer if this was what it was going to take. She just had no idea how to reply to what he was saying right now.
All she could summon up as a response was a simple nod as she let herself out into the sweet relief of the room beyond. The air in Professor Brennan’s office had seemed stuffy, so stuffy that she wasn’t able to even take in a full breath. Out here, the air was different,
and for the first time, she took a deep inhale of cool air that hit her lungs. It should have made her feel better, but all it did was bring the tears she’d been holding in since he started talking. At least she was beyond the point where he could see her.
The secretary didn’t pay her much attention. Maybe a lot of students came out of professors’ offices crying around here. Debbie had no way of knowing if that was a common occurrence. She was just pretty certain that they didn’t come out with the same heavy heart that she had at this moment, at least not for the same reasons.
She’d been an idiot to think she could get out of the situations she put herself in unscathed. This was the price she was going to have to pay for keeping up a flirtation with her professor when she knew that she should have done anything else. She could have ignored his texts or blocked his number. Maybe that would have helped, or maybe she would have still been in the same situation. Really, she shouldn’t have slipped her number to a total stranger on the first day of classes. That was where all of this had gone wrong in the first place.
There was only so much kicking herself she was going to do. Now she just had to decide if she should even bother with still going to classes after this point because he was right. If she couldn’t pass his class, then she wasn’t going to even be able to begin her second year of law school. There was no point in trying to wait to take it until summer school. She’d just run into the same problem. This was a small university, and each year’s crop of law students was just enough to make a single set of each class. The first year students all had practically the same schedule with only a couple of sections of each class available to work around jobs and home schedules of the older students and those who needed to work. There was no way she was going to be able to avoid him. There was no point in trying to transfer out at this point. It was too far into the semester to make anything work. She would have to withdraw from every class and take the failures on her transcript. She could keep on going to class like nothing happened, but she was certain that Joshua was good for his word when he’d implied she wasn’t going to pass without doing him the favors he was requesting.
