Hot Number (34 page)

Okay, landing another casino job wasn’t
exactly his dream. Nick didn’t want to work in casino security
forever, not even as the top man. But the new position would
provide a good income while giving him the time he needed to build
toward the career he really wanted—something where he could work
with the military. That was all in the future, and the future was
looking a whole lot brighter.

But he still had one more thing to set
straight.

Nick headed to his desk in the living room
and booted up his computer. It took only a few minutes to find what
he needed.

* * *

Sadie let her eyes roam over the twenty-eight
young souls in her Fundamental Mathematics class. The group had
been with her since the beginning of the January semester. A
talented and enthusiastic bunch, she had enjoyed every moment with
them and had high hopes for their success. But until last weekend’s
discussion with Alex, she’d rarely stopped to reflect on the
complicated but thrilling business of turning young minds on to the
incredible beauty of high-level math. She wondered now how she
could have missed something so obvious, but she wouldn’t let it
happen again.

All weekend, Sadie had mulled over the
implications of Alex’s startling recommendation. Not that she had
any doubts about the wisdom of taking on the challenge. That had
felt right from the moment the words reached her ears. No, the
remaining issue was how to deal with her father. She no longer
feared confronting him, but she had to work everything through in
her own mind before she even let him know she was back in town. She
had sworn Alex to secrecy on that score.

By Sunday evening, she had finally felt ready
to beard the lion in his den. She hopped into a taxi and showed up
at the door of her father’s downtown condo with a confident smile
and a bottle of Knob Creek, his favorite bourbon. When she broke
the news that she had every intention of concentrating in future on
teaching instead of research, his dignified features went slack.
He’d sunk down into the sofa as if the life had been sucked out of
him.

But this time, Sadie had refused to give in
to the guilt and apprehension that had predictably washed over her.
It had taken three difficult hours of talk and almost half a bottle
of bourbon between the two of them, but she finally convinced her
father that her happiest moments had always been in the classroom,
not buried in her office, grinding through research or churning out
yet another academic paper. By the end of the long evening, her
father had even managed to shock the hell out of her by admitting
he regretted not putting more energy into his own teaching. Though
a grudging admission, it signaled the first step on the road to
understanding, and to building a new relationship with him—one
based on mutual respect for each other’s choices.

She’d left her father’s apartment feeling
more contented about her career than she had ever been. As for the
rest of her life, though, she still had the hollow ache in her
chest whenever she thought of Nick. But she had to believe that the
pain would pass in time. Even if she never saw him again, she would
always be grateful for the way he helped her see herself in a new
light—as a strong, gutsy woman willing to take chances. That was a
life lesson she would never forget.

The class period was drawing to a close, so
Sadie wrapped up her lecture by urging the students to see her for
help during her new, expanded office hours. She gathered her
papers, shoved them in her briefcase, and started to follow the
last of the kids out, stopping behind three girls who had clustered
at the classroom doorway. They seemed to be in a tizzy about
something.

“Oh, my God,” one of them said in a loud
stage whisper. “That guy looks like a cop, but is he ever hot.” The
young women giggled like teenagers as they furtively stared across
the corridor.

The hairs lifted on the back of Sadie’s neck,
but she shook her head, mentally chastising herself. Nick would
never come to Chicago. And if he did, he sure as heck wouldn’t come
looking for her on campus.

Murmuring a farewell to the students, she
brushed past them and into the hallway. Then she stumbled to a
halt, stunned into abject idiocy as she took in the tall, gorgeous
man who leaned against the wall opposite her classroom, apparently
indifferent to the admiring looks of the dazzled coeds. Even if she
hadn’t been able to see his face, Sadie would have recognized the
sheriff merely by the way he stood—as if he owned the territory and
was keeping an eye out for bad guys on the loose.

A few seconds later, both her feet and her
brain came unstuck. She wanted to run to him and throw herself into
his arms, not caring whether she made a spectacle of herself in
front of her students. But then the brutal, vivid memories of their
last time together came flooding back. Nick had banished her from
the casino and from his life, and had walked away without so much
as a goodbye hug.

Clutching the briefcase defensively to her
chest, Sadie turned and blindly strode back into her classroom,
heading toward the lectern...to do what? She hadn’t a clue.

Carefully putting the case down with
trembling hands, she forced herself to turn around. Nick was now
leaning against the doorjamb, his long, muscular body looking
perfectly at ease. Even as she silently cursed him for surprising
her, she couldn’t help absorbing him with a greedy gaze.

He’d forsaken his usual business suit for a
burgundy sweater and a black leather jacket over faded jeans, soft
enough and tight enough to showcase everything he had to offer.
With a pair of Ray-Bans over his eyes, he reminded her of a hero in
a cop movie—the tough-as-nails, sexy detective that every woman
wanted to entice into her bed. Although a small smile played around
his lips, the fact that his eyes were hidden made it impossible to
read his expression. What the hell was he doing here?

Nick took off the sunglasses and hung them
from the neck of his sweater. “Mind if I come in, Professor? I’ve
come a long way to find you.”

Sadie swallowed hard, nerves tightening her
throat. “Indeed you have, Sheriff,” she said stiffly. “But aren’t
you well outside your legal jurisdiction?”

Whatever it was he wanted she would
not
make it easy for him. She was done with easy, and with
letting people push her around.

He gave her that killer crooked smile that
had always reduced her brain to mush. “When it comes to you,
sweetheart, my jurisdiction is the whole damn world.”

Sweetheart?
Oh, this was bad. Already
she wanted to give in to whatever he might want from her.

She injected as much frostiness into her
voice as she could muster. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, but
I have office hours now and students are expecting me. Please tell
me what you want in a few brief sentences, or we’ll have to make
arrangements to speak later.”

He snorted, damn him, clearly seeing through
her officious bluster. “What I want, Professor Bligh? Okay, then.
What I
really
want is to take you back to your place for a
night of mind-blowing sex—one where I make you come at least three
or four times. But I suppose that would be a little presumptuous
under the circumstances, wouldn’t it? At least not without taking
you to dinner first.”

Her knees gave a wobble, but she forced
herself to shoot him a look full of razor blades.

He sighed. “That’s what I thought.” He
glanced out the open door into the corridor. “Maybe it would be
better if we went somewhere for coffee or a drink?”

Sadie shook her head. “I’m going to be late
for my office hours,” she lied. Truthfully, she didn’t know what
she wanted, except for a few minutes by herself so she could get
her wits into some kind of working order.

Nick gave her a soulful look that battered
through a few more of her defenses.

Score one for the sheriff.

“Come on, Sadie. Please. Let’s at least sit
down.”

“All right. Just for a minute.” She sat down
in a chair beside the lectern. In her prim gray suit, with her legs
and her hands clasped in her lap, she knew she must look the
proverbial schoolmarm. In contrast, Nick looked like the sexiest
man west of the Appalachians. The thought darted into her head that
they could be characters out of some silly porno flick.

Not that she’d really ever seen one, of
course, but now that the image had forced its way into her head,
she couldn’t help thinking about Nick, naked and going—

Stop thinking about sex, you idiot.

He eased his big frame into one of the
student seats in the first row, giving her a tentative smile.
“Sadie, I quit the Desert Oasis.”

Her mind froze. Again. “You did?” A lame
response, but she was so stunned she didn’t know what else to
say.

He nodded. “I told Carson I couldn’t work for
him anymore. Not after what he ordered me to do to you.”

Surprise sucked the air out of her lungs,
forcing her to draw in a deep breath. “That certainly was a
stupendous change of heart. You told me—quite forcefully as I
recall—that you couldn’t possibly quit. That’s why you wouldn’t
fight back even though you knew what Carson was doing was
wrong.”

Nick shot her a grimace. “Right as usual,
Professor. I’d convinced myself that I couldn’t afford to quit. Or,
worse yet, get fired. I was worried about Mom, and how expensive
her care was going to become over the next few years. I hated every
damn day I spent working for Carson, but I didn’t see that I had
much choice. If it hadn’t been for my mother’s situation, I’d have
packed it in a whole lot sooner.”

“I realized that, of course, after I calmed
down,” Sadie said. “But what I don’t understand is why you didn’t
level with me, Nick. Would it have been so difficult to tell me the
truth?”

“That’s a hell of a good question, and you
deserve an answer.” He rubbed his jaw, looking a little bit like a
bad boy sent to detention. “To tell you the truth, I was
embarrassed. I hated myself when I ordered you to leave the hotel.
Knuckling under like that did cost me my pride, just like you
predicted. You were dead right about that, and I knew it, too. But
I didn’t have the guts to face up to it then, so I sure couldn’t
explain it to you.”

She got up and moved to sit across the row
from him. Now only a couple of feet away, she inhaled his masculine
scent and wanted nothing more at that moment than to nuzzle her
face into his chest. “But you had a reason for doing what you did.
Even if I didn’t agree with it, you believed you had to do it for
your mom’s sake. I would have understood if you explained it that
way.”

He shook his head. “There’s never a good
enough reason for treating a person the way I treated you. I just
took the easy way out, and it sucked.”

She shook her head harder. “I don’t buy it.
You’re not a man who takes the easy way out. Not with your
history.”

“Maybe it was the history that made me want
to take the easy way out. Sometimes you just get tired of
battling.”

Sitting so close to him, she could see the
shadows under his eyes and the fatigue that scored lines around his
mouth. Her heart still ached, but this time with sympathy for him.
Nick had a difficult life, much more difficult than hers.

“That I do understand, Nick Saxon. Believe
me. But what made you change your mind and quit, then?”

The hard line of his mouth morphed into a wry
grin. “An eccentric and unbelievably hot math professor, that’s
what. When you threw down that challenge for me to fight Carson and
the casino alongside you, it took a while for it to sink in. But
when it did, it seemed to snap me out of my paralysis. Here you
were, turning your life around, ready to stand up for yourself. And
there I was, doing Carson’s dirty work and hating myself for it. I
couldn’t live with that.”

She started to laugh. “Come on. You’re
seriously telling me I was some kind of role model for you? The
bimbo you dragged into the gulag because she couldn’t walk ten feet
without falling flat on her face?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “What can I
say? Underneath the wild woman act, I discovered a person of
character and genuine heart. A woman willing to take risks and make
changes, and to stand up for what she believed was right.”

Sadie raised her eyebrows in exaggerated
disbelief. “My God, how long did you practice that stirring speech,
Sheriff?”

“The whole way up here on the plane.” He gave
her another of the smiles that made her melt from the inside out.
“And it didn’t hurt that the woman is as hot as a welder’s torch,
either.”

Sadie punched him lightly on the arm. “You
sweet talker, you. I’ve never been compared to a construction tool
before. How creative.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t think of anything hotter
on short notice.”

He fixed her with an open, honest gaze that
cut her to the quick. “Sadie, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for
what I did to you. A heartfelt apology doesn’t seem like enough,
but it’s all I have. I hope you’ll be able to forgive me.”

Nick eased out of the chair and stood. “I
know you’ve got to go. Maybe we can talk later. You still have my
cell phone number?”

Sadie nodded as she instinctively rose in
response. “Wait, Nick. Don’t go.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to, but you have
your office hours.”

She waved that away. “Forget about my office
hours. I might have been exaggerating a bit for effect,
anyway.”

He snorted. “Okay, Professor. What is
it?”

She reached out and pressed a hand to his
chest. The hard muscles and the heat of his body felt so welcome
under her hand. Shyly, she raised her gaze to meet his. “Actually,
it
is
enough, Nick. Your apology, I mean. The best apology
you could have given me was to stand up for yourself against
Carson, and you did it.”