Perfecting the Odds (12 page)

Harnessing some control, s
he turned and rolled her eyes at him. He shrugged. As if he didn’t frickin’ know his effect on females and probably most males! He prodded her toward stage with a concealed pat to her ass, and she glared back at him. She cleared her throat and with a cheesy fake grin made her way to the podium. He followed, filling his empty seat.

“Woo
hoooo, Mrs. Bennett,” bellowed through the crowd of teenagers and faculty.

“
It’s always nice to be appreciated, Mr. O’Brien,” Karis responded immediately, prompting laughter from the crowd and the sexy nuisance behind her. She knew her students well, every last one of them. After adjusting the microphone, she palmed the podium with two hands.  She looked over her shoulder briefly, narrowed her eyes, willing Michael to read her mind.
Leave. Please.
Impervious to her desperation, he smirked and lifted his chin.
Deep breath, Karis.
Out of sight; out of mind. Let’s get this shit show going.

“Thank you for the kind introduction, Mrs.
Winston.” Her voice wavered. She had spoken in public often, but damn if Michael’s presence changed everything. She never cared what others thought, but a compulsory need to impress him took over everything she
thought
she was. With one more steadying breath, she continued. “I think all of you will be pleased with the group of speakers we’ve arranged for you today.” The audience clapped along with her. She could feel his eyes washing over her and she swore she could smell that musky combination of coconut and him. Feeling like a cat in heat, she shifted and fidgeted, breaking all the public speaking rules she had hammered into her students’ heads. Collecting what little resolve remained, she cleared her throat and continued. “These individuals behind me are representatives from a variety of professional areas such as higher education, graphic artistry, technology, agriculture, culinary arts, and even the military. My hope, scholars, is that you keep an open mind to the wide possibilities available in the ‘real’ world. Once you graduate, you may plan to enter the work force, enroll at a college, or even join a military branch, but we all have one commonality. Everyone wants the opportunity to follow his or her own passion. My father once told me passion sustains life, and if you feed that passion, your life will always be full. Imagine, for a moment, your life as the scale of justice. If you find and nurture your true passion, it doesn’t matter what’s on the other side of that scale—your life will have balance because your passion will always be enough to steady the scale.”

***

Michael listened attentively to Karis’s speech. Confident and well-spoken, she demanded attention without asking for it. He smiled to himself. She would have been a great Marine. Despite his better judgment, he allowed his eyes to move from her nude patent-leather pumps up her smooth legs. Her calves flexed as she fidgeted under his perusal. Her lush ass shifted back and forth beneath her fitted knee-length skirt, as if trying to shake his eyes from it.
Uh-Uh, not gonna fucking happen
, he thought.

At the bar, she’d been sassy and sexy, but here, in her element, Karis was absolutely captivating
. He wondered how her students could learn a damn thing with that much temptation in the front of the classroom. He’d have to tease her about that later.

***

“Perhaps one of these individuals shares a similar passion, or perhaps one will introduce you to an option you never thought existed. I hope that they interest you, challenge you, and encourage you to begin this decision-making process. And without further ado, let us begin our Career day. Please take out your passes and head to your assigned rooms.”

Without waiting for the applause to subside,
Karis made a beeline for the steps opposite of Michael. She had to get to her classroom before he did, if only to collect herself. If it had been anyone else, she would have escorted the person to her room, but she didn’t give two shits today. Let the bastard ask everyone in the damn building where her room was. At least that would buy her some time. She’d deal with the backlash from her colleagues later.

And then suddenly, r
ealization settled like an ominous cloud. She would be in the same room with sex incarnate. All day. In front of a hoard of walking, talking hormones, no less. How in the hell would she stop her inevitable blushing? The cracking connection that surged between them? She fantasized whenever she thought at that mouth. Now she had to look at it, watch it move and curve. And then he would wet his lips, or for the love of hot Greek gods, take a sip of water. Shit! As she weaved through students in the hallway, she ran through a variety of scenarios. She could lock the classroom door? Stupid. Fake an illness? Would require sub plans. Jump out the window? Appealing but painful and would most likely, with her shitty luck, leave her children orphans.

Running into her classroom, she
shut the door quickly and flopped down in her desk chair, expelling a loud puff of air. Okay, figure out a plan. One: Just act like you don’t know him. Two: Ignore how he makes you feel. Three: He’s just another guest speaker. He’ll be gone by the end of the day. Those three thoughts resonated in her brain just as she heard a tap on the door.

Her stomach
dropping low into her pelvis, she jumped up and placed her hands flat on her steel desk and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. The swinging door delivered a waft of his scent, a heady mix of coconut and man. She leaned on her desk to steady the overwhelming dizziness as images of hot, sandy beach sex invaded every corner of her mind.

Get
your act together, Karis. You’re at work.

As he
walked toward her, he brought with him an air of unspoken arrogance and natural virility. God, he wore that shit well. Her plan resonated in her head-- Just act like you don’t know him, Karis. Forget how he makes you feel. Those two were shot within his first two steps into her room.  And he hadn’t even spoken to her yet. He’s just another guest speaker. Who was she kidding? If guest speakers looked like this, more students would probably pay attention.

He stood in front of her, the desk their only barrier, but their mutual tension
slid across it like a knife through butter. She couldn’t help her indulgent eyes. From afar, his tailored suit fit his body perfectly. Up close—holy shit, Batman. The jacket gripped his biceps desperately. The crisp white collar of his shirt circled his muscular neck, fitted with a crimson red tie. How archetypal of the sexy asshat. And she didn’t think his eyes could have gotten any more beautiful, but the deep navy shade of his coat elevated his eyes to a new level of decadence.

Marines
should not look like this. Professors should not look like this. There should be laws against it.

When she met his gaze, she jolted a bit at what she saw…
something different. She searched his eyes for that charming, kind-hearted man, but what she saw was odd... a coldness? No. Remorse? That may be it, and damn if it didn’t pull at her heart. But Michael’s remorse didn’t convey weakness; rather, it expressed genuine sincerity and infused perfectly with his confident, sexy persona. And, well, that thought irritated the crap out of her.

“Hello, Karis.” God, she loved watching his tongue lift on the ‘s’.

“Hello, Mi-chael
,” she stuttered then cleared her throat.

“Nervous
?” He smiled wickedly at her, slowly pushing one hand into his pocket. Her eyes followed its path. Holy hornball! She gulped and yanked her head up.

“No
.” She snorted to complement her bogus disbelief. “Why would I be nervous?” she asked and began rearranging papers on her desk. She stopped immediately, catching her hands tremble.

He smiled knowingly at her.
“You clear your throat when you’re nervous, darling.”

Darling. Be still my frickin’ shattered heart
. “No, I don’t,” she scoffed. “I think I’m coming down with something.” She proceeded to fake cough then glare, hoping it would cover her pathetic reaction to him. “
Professor
Finn, I’m going to wait outside and greet the students as they walk it. You can go ahead and take your place at the front of the room.”

“Yes,
Mrs. Bennett
,” he purred wryly. Her pace to the door stunted a bit, and she heard him chuckle as he walked toward the front of the room.
Just what I need right now. Some damn hot-for-teacher fantasy on loop in his mind. 

Just outside the door, she
pressed her back against the wall, closed her eyes, and let out a slow breath
. Okay, gear up, Karis Bennett. You can do this. You’re a professional. Your students respect you. It’s just like any other day.

“You okay, Mrs.
Bennett,” Jonathon, auditorium woo-hoo-er, O’Brien said, startling her. “‘cause you’re lookin’ pretty pale.”
I would have been better if you’d have pulled the fire alarm.

She forced a smile. “I’m fine,
Jonathon. Thank you for your concern. Go ahead in and find your seat.”

“Your speech wa
s great, really great, Mrs. Bennett,” he said and grinned hopefully.

“
Thank you,” she replied, and he walked inside. “And Jonathon?”--he turned—“It doesn’t matter how many times you compliment me, you’re still not getting that A unless you earn it…But keep the praise coming. Warms your English teacher’s cold heart.” She watched his head drop dejectedly and heard the sexy asshat’s laughter from the front of the room. She may have heard him whisper, “doesn’t work for me, either.” She growled inwardly.

She greeted the remaining seniors
at the door and watched them file in. She was the last one in and closed the door behind her. Immediately, a hushed conversation between two girls in the back of the room distracted her.

“That has got to be the
hottest professor I’ve ever seen.”

“I know, and he’s supposed to be a Marine, too
. Sooooo flippin’ hot.”

“
And he’s so big, too. Jeez.”

“I
bet I know what else is big.” A snicker ensued just as Karis nearly fell backward into the bulletin board.

“
Quiet, please,” she hollered.

Every mouth shut, including
Michael’s, who had already began chumming it up with two male students up front. She cleared her throat and began. “The gentlemen in the front of the room is a colleague of Professor Jason Lewis, the English professor I told you about last week. Professor Lewis couldn’t be here today, so he sent Professor Michael Finn, who is also a Marine like Professor Lewis. Ple—“

“You mean
ex Marine?” Abigail LaCoste interrupted.

Karis
scowled at both her interruption and ignorance. “No, Abigail, we don’t refer to Marines as former. Once a Marine, always a Marine. And, Abigail, please raise your hand if you want to speak.”

Karis
gave Michael a nod of apology. He flashed her that knee-weakening grin and a nod of approval. Why did all of his smiles have to hit her square in the heart and other fluttering places? She felt her face burn as she sat at her desk, as far from Michael as possible.

Michael went on to share his story of being a trouble-maker in school. If his nose wasn’t in a book, he was fighting. He had honed his boxing skills during high school and relished the opportunity to have real life matches at least twice a week when one of his class mates
pissed
him off. The students laughed at his slip of the tongue. The boys were intrigued by his personality and skills. The girls were glassy-eyed and all but drooling. He continued to tell them that as soon as he graduated high school, with a 4.0 GPA—which didn’t surprise Karis--- he entered the Marines, just as his father wished. But he’d always loved literature and writing, so after the Marines, he enrolled in college, receiving grants from the government because of his service in the corp. He went into great detail about pursuing his passion, seventeenth-century British literature.

At the end of his autobiography, he opened the presentation to questions. 
Karis had made the students all prepare a list for Jason, so she was sure it would run smoothly.

Michael
called upon Jenny Upton first. “Before I ask my question, I have one for Mrs. Bennett.” Jenny turned toward Karis. “You said your father gave you advice about passion…I wondered what you’re father’s passion is?”

Karis blinked once, twice. It was such a personal question, a topic so dear to her, but she’d opened up the conversa
tion herself, so she felt obligated to answer. “Um, he always said his passion was my mother.” The girls in the class gave a simultaneous aww.

“Is it
still
his passion, Mrs. Bennett,” Jenny prodded with the urgency of a hopeless romantic. Surely the girl wanted to know if the man was as wise as his words, or like the rest of the couples in the world who professed unconditional love and then called it quits when things got too tough.  Karis’s face must have exuded her answer.

“I’m sorry, Mrs.
Bennett,” Jenny whispered. “I didn’t know.”

“No apologies, Jenny.
His passion was by his side.” She gave the class an appeasing smile, but she could see the pain in their faces. Most believed that teenagers lacked the capacity to understand beyond their own selfish needs. Those people are wrong. Teens are so in tune with emotion, it’s terrifying. She felt their pity like a wave crashing on shore.