Not the flirty smile I’d seen her use on him before. The smile that said she was a very naughty girl and needed teacher to discipline her.
And not the smile that she gave to people just before she sliced them a new vein with her sharp words.
It was a smile that perhaps only Lily and I ever saw.
And now Montrose.
My heart fell to my stomach. They’d reached some kind of…truce, I guessed. Would there be more?
I knew Montrose was out of my league, that I could never make myself flirt with him, having idolized him for five years.
But that didn’t mean I wanted Jane to be with him.
She gave him a playful punch on the arm and turned and walked away. “See ya back at the room later, Syd,” she said, not turning around, but waving a hand to me over her shoulder as she slipped her coat on.
“See ya,” I said to her back as I made my way over to my seat.
I looked to Montrose who turned his attention from Jane leaving back to me. “Now, Ms. O’Brien,” he said, “your turn.”
Chapter2
“Didyou want to talk about this?” I said to Montrose, holding up my paper.
“No. I mean, that’s not why I asked you to stay. But if you want to talk about it, that’s fine.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m happy with my grade.”
“You should be. It was the highest in the class. All sections of the class.”
That fact made me extremely happy, but I didn’t let it show. I didn’t want anyone to know how badly I wanted to do better than these rich kids.
“So, not the paper?” I said, putting it in my backpack, then turning back to him.
He moved around to the front of the desk and leaned against it, crossing his legs at the ankles. Putting his hands behind him on the desk he stared at me. Sort of. His focus was on me, but he had kind of a far off gaze, like he sometimes got during class, before he got rolling.
He did an actual shake of his head, like he was trying to get rid of the cobwebs. “Sorry. Umm…”
“Why you asked me to stay?” I said, trying to remind him.
“Right. Right. Well, they’ve added another section of my class for next semester. Which I didn’t take very well. There are alotof papers to read for this class.”
“Yes, I know. It was a lot of papers to write.”
He smiled a little. “You managed it, though, right? Even with your other classes, and working in the admin building?”
“How did you know I worked there?”
“You mentioned it in one of your papers.”
“I did?” I didn’t remember that.
“Something about how you likened working in the admin building with being an Orwellian character.”
I barely remembered writing that, but he, who read how many student papers this semester, pulled it out of his—seemingly—far-away brain.
“Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot.”
He looked dead on at me, his gaze for once focused and, I have to admit, a bit disarming. “I didn’t forget. It was a great line. Very fitting, very visual.”
