I waggle my eyebrows at him, and he laughs.
“Yeah. Well, any of it. All of it.”
I look at him for a moment. “I think you’re doing great.”
“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“But that’s the thing. You do. It’s why I find you so attractive. You are calm and competent and gentle and honest and awkward and a little bit neurotic, and that’s really doing it for me.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re not only the horniest person I’ve ever met, but also maybe the most direct.”
“You make it easy. You’ve unlocked a new kink for me, after spending time with you.”
His eyes darken, and his eyes flick down to my mouth. “What’s that?”
“Competency kink.”
Dom bursts out laughing. “I think that’s the lamest thing anyone has ever said about me.”
“And I like that you’re selfless. I like that you make sacrifices for your daughter. That’s incredibly attractive.”
He nods, looking at the table, going back to tracing the grain. “I like all the same things about you,” he says eventually. “I like that you care. I like that you’re amazing with my daughter. I like that you work your ass off, and you’re good at what you do.”
“We’re both so competent, could you imagine what it would be like when we actually fuck? Everyone would come a million times.”
It’s there again, that flash of filthy heat in his eyes before the inevitable blush.
I pause, sad about what I’m going to say next. “But I get it, if you want to stick to that line in the sand. I know how much Frankie means to you. And it’s okay, too, if you don’t know what you want.”
He meets my eyes with quiet confidence now. “I know exactly what I want,” he tells me, and I feel it deep in my core. “I’m just afraid.”
I shrug. “That sounds like a you problem. But I’ll be here and ready to bend over whenever you say the word,” I say, very sluttily, wanting that look in that face again, delighted when I get it.
He blows out a breath. “I need to change the subject.” I’m tickled. “What are you doing?” he asks, indicating at my laptop with his chin.
“School stuff.” I wait, afraid he’ll do something like close my laptop when he finds out I’m working, presuming he knows better than I do or what’s good for me, but of course he doesn’t.
“Anything I can help with?” he asks instead, and how can I not be into this man?!
“Actually, maybe. I’m working on budgeting stuff. Deciding how to allocate funds for supplies and programs and extracurriculars. Could you take a look, oh Serial Entrepreneur?” I shift the laptop over to him.
His eyes scan the awful Department of Education budgeting website that hasn’t been updated since the nineties. “Wow. Is this what our tax dollars are going to? An HTML coded interface to control the distribution of millions of dollars?”
“And million dollar contracts with the chancellor’s buddies and a two-hundred-thousand dollar a year salary for a no-show education job for the mayor’s girlfriend and general and widespread corruption and embezzlement throughout the entire Department of Education?” I add cheerfully.
“I’m not sure these funds are being used efficiently. Is there any way we could streamline the supply chain?” he finally asks, after several long minutes.
I shrug. “The superintendent’s assistant probably did this in absentia of a principal. But we can change it. He’s given me the green light.”
He scrolls. “Why are all these school supplies paid for separately? Is there a way we can consolidate these orders? Or purchase in bulk or something? Like it says we’re buying five hundred separate ten packs of pencils. That’s insanely expensive.”
“Let me go to the ordering website.”
We spend the next hour freeing up some funds. Enough that we could potentially use for the air conditioning in the lobby we’ve been trying to get for years, since Oliver was the principal.
“I’m annoyed for you,” he tells me.
“I know.”
