Just Like a Man (22 page)

Since then, Selby had first paid her own way through college and graduate school—God forbid Frank Hudson should waste what little money he had on the education of a female—and she'd supported herself since then by living as frugally as she could. She walked or rode the bus wherever she went, bought her clothes in thrift stores, even grew some of her own food in the backyard of the modest apartment building where she lived.

And she worked. Oh, boy, did Selby work. Her job teaching fourth grade at the Emerson Academy constituted the bulk of her income. But she also waited tables on Friday and Saturday nights at Trino's, an upscale restaurant in downtown Indianapolis. And she worked as a salesclerk on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at Mathilda's, a chic boutique two blocks from the restaurant that sold romantic—and sometimes exotic—gifts for women that cost way more than anything Selby would ever be able to afford for herself. And she picked up whatever odd, temporary jobs came her way, too, things she usually heard about from coworkers at the restaurant or shop. Catered parties. Deliveries. Proofreading. Secretarial. Anything that would earn her a few more dollars to sock away in her "Around the World" fund. Because on her thirtieth birthday, Selby intended to embark on a years-long journey of circumnavigation. She would see and do all the things she'd read about as a girl, whenever she could sneak away to the Indianapolis Free Public Library and hide in the reference section, stretched out alongside the
Encyclopedia Britannica.

The job teaching returning ed had been a nice windfall, one she hadn't expected. For six hours a week—plus some late nights planning classes and grading homework—she was stashing a tidy sum into her traveling account. Of course, had she known she was going to wind up with a student like Thomas Brown…

Dammit. Why did thoughts of the man always seem to intrude, no matter what she happened to be thinking about? Only two weeks had passed since their first encounter, but it felt like two years of her life had gone by. She couldn't believe she still had five and a half more months of seeing him regularly. He'd behaved himself a little better after their first encounter, but he still pushed his luck—and Selby's buttons—every night they had class.

Always, he hung back and waited for everyone else in the class to leave, so that the two of them ended up alone. Always, he managed to corner Selby before she had a chance to escape. No matter how hard she tried to get away before everyone else was gone, she was never quite able to make it. Because Thomas Brown always had some question or comment or observation about whatever material they'd gone over that night, and he always needed for Selby to address it before the next class began. She'd try to encourage him to walk and talk at the same time, so that they could exit with the other students. But Thomas would forget something, or he'd drop his notebook and spill his notes everywhere, or he'd find some other way to detain them, or distract her, and suddenly, even though she'd promised herself it wouldn't happen again, Selby would be alone with him.

And once she was alone with him, she lost every scrap of sense she possessed. Because Thomas would look at her in ways that made her blood run hot. And he would say things to her…

Since that first night, he hadn't been as bold or as brazen as he had been with the spanking comment. But he still managed to say…
things,
and say them in…
ways
that made Selby want to go home and stand under a cold shower. And then there was the way he looked at her, as if he wanted to remove every article of clothing she was wearing, piece by piece, then stretch her out on the desk and—

Ahem. There was just something about the way he looked at her, that was all.

She wasn't sure how he did it. There was just something about him that went way beyond Selby's personal sphere of experience. Not that her sphere of experience was especially large, but still. The man just oozed sex appeal simply by being in a room.

So Selby was understandably hesitant about entering her classroom for her fifth session with her returning ed students only two weeks after starting as their teacher. Even though she was ten minutes late, thanks to missing her usual bus and having to wait for the next one, she slowed her steps as she approached her classroom. She heard the voices of her students coming from inside, a jumble of overlapping murmurs, none of which she should have been able to identify individually. But she did identify one. Too clearly. Thomas Brown's rich, deep baritone seemed to rise above all the other voices, in much the same way that he himself seemed to rise above all the other members of the class.

It was odd, that. Selby was very good at reading people, thanks to having worked with so much of the public over the years. And she could recognize traits in each of her students that she was certain had contributed to their to dropping out of high school way back when. Insecurity, perhaps, or a feeling of unworthiness—heaven knew Selby identified with both of those herself. Some members of her class were shy, others sullen, and still others were sort of vague. But Thomas Brown was none of those things. On the contrary, he was utterly full of himself, supremely confident, and appeared to be completely in command of his destiny. He didn't seem like the kind of person who had ever had the sort of social or emotional or life problems that would lead him to drop out of high school.

So why was he in her class? What was his story?

Certainly she wondered about the stories of everyone else in the class, too. In addition to being able to read people well, Selby was intensely curious about them, probably also because she had worked with so much of the public over the years. It was yet another reason why she wanted to see the rest of the world and all its denizens. But she was more curious about Thomas Brown than she'd ever been about anyone. But she
couldn't
read him. No matter how hard she tried.

And it bothered her to realize just how much time she'd spent on that particular endeavor over the last couple of weeks, too. Not just because she was beginning to think she'd never figure him out, but because Selby wasn't normally one to waste time. And time spent thinking about Thomas Brown was definitely time wasted. Because no woman in her right mind would go courting trouble like him. Bad enough she had to try and teach trouble like him.

Hitching a final breath, Selby made herself enter her classroom, speaking loudly as she went so that her own voice would drown out the others and, hopefully, quiet them all.

"I'm sorry to be late," she said as she moved directly to her desk and settled her battered satchel atop it. "I missed my bus and had to catch a later one."

Hastily, she unbuttoned and shrugged out of her oversized, faded denim jacket, then pushed up the sleeves of her cognac-colored sweater, swept her long, denim skirt under her fanny, and took her seat. Although it was mid-October, the weather hadn't yet turned cold. Still, Selby had donned brown cable-knit tights and hiking boots to round out her ensemble. And she told herself she hadn't been trying to minimize her physical appearance when she'd done so. Which was strange, because for the past few years, she'd been really proud of her physical appearance. Mostly because, until a few years ago, she'd been so unhappy about it.

"I'll do my best to keep us on track," she told the class. "We should still get out of here on time."

And they did. Thanks to shortened breaks and Selby's good command of the class, she managed to cover all the necessary material by nine. What she didn't manage to do—again—was avoid being alone with Thomas Brown.

"Hey, Teach," he called from behind her as she bolted for the door, hoping that
this
time she'd make it through before he noticed she had fled. Ah,
left.
Before he noticed she had left.

With a resigned sigh, she halted and turned around. "Yes, Mr. Brown? Was there a question?"

Although Selby may have deliberately dressed to tone down her appearance, she decided Thomas Brown would never even try. Because, as always, his jeans were more rip than denim, and his white V-neck T-shirt bore a faint stain of oil—or maybe blood. She couldn't be sure. Along with the leather jacket and boots, not to mention the five o'clock Mack truck shadow, he looked…

She sighed. Dammit, he looked too yummy for words.

He smiled at her question. "Mr. Brown," he echoed. "It sounds funny when you call me that. Nobody calls me Mr. Brown."

"I can't imagine why not," Selby said, even though she could imagine why not perfectly. He may have been a lot of things, but a
Mr. Brown
wasn't one of them.

His smile kicked up a little at her comment. "Yeah, well, probably because I've never been in the position to be called Mr. Brown," he told her. "Including this one," he added pointedly. "Call me Thomas, please. That whole Mr. Brown thing is just too weird."

Selby neither acquiesced to nor rejected his request. She simply made a mental note to herself not to address Thomas Brown as anything at all.

He must have interpreted her silence as encouragement, however—then again, the man was so brazen, he'd probably interpret a sharp stick in the eye as encouragement—because he grinned that arrogant grin again and added, "I mean, there can't be
that
much difference in our ages. Just enough to make it, you know… interesting."

Selby told herself not to rise to the bait. So instead she repeated, "Was there a question?"

He nodded, but seemed disappointed that she hadn't played along with… whatever it was he was playing. "Can I call you Selby?" he asked.

"That's your question?"

"One of them."

"What's the other one?" she asked, again replying in neither the affirmative nor the negative. Telling him he could call her Selby might make him think she was interested in getting to know him better. But telling him
not
to call her Selby might make him think she was interested in getting to know him better. Which, of course, she was
not.
But he did seem like the kind of man who would buy in to that whole "women say one thing and mean another" propaganda. So it was probably best, when dealing with a man like him, to say as little as possible.

Naturally, though, that didn't work, either. "So can I?" he asked. "Call you Selby?"

Selby was about to tell him no, he couldn't call her that, and Ms. Hudson would be preferable, but he hurried on before she had a chance to say anything. Probably because he'd been able to tell she was about to say no, he couldn't call her that, and Ms. Hudson would be preferable.

"It's an interesting name, Selby," he said. "It's like the kind of name rich people would give to their daughter. Must have been your mother's family name or something."

Somehow Selby refrained from bursting into laughter over his speculation about the vast Hudson fortune. "Actually," she said, "it happened because of a screwup on my birth certificate. My mom meant to name me Shelby, but she accidentally misspelled it. Still groggy from the painkillers, I guess," she added by way of an explanation, even though it was just as likely because her mother honestly hadn't known how to spell Shelby. "But when she realized her mistake," Selby continued, "she decided she liked Selby better, so she kept it the way it had originally been recorded."

Actually, what had happened was that it would have cost her parents money to change the birth certificate, since the mistake had been her mother's, so her father had decided his daughter's name would stay the way it had originally been recorded. But there was no reason Thomas had to know that. Besides, Selby had always liked her name, and had enjoyed being the only girl she knew who had it. Even if it had been the object of ridicule on more than one occasion while she was growing up. Mostly because she was the only girl who had it.

The look Thomas gave her then was mildly speculative, though she couldn't imagine what he might be speculating about. And, really, she was probably better off not knowing.

In an effort to hasten her departure, she made a big deal of checking her watch and said, "Oh, gosh, I have to get going if I'm going to make my bus. It's the last number 6 bus of the day. If I miss it, I'll have to walk six blocks to catch the number 20 instead. And having missed one bus today already, I'm not in the mood to have it happen again."

And why on earth had she told him that? she wondered even as she concluded the announcement. She sounded like she was fishing for a ride home, which she most certainly was not. Not just because she was doing her best to avoid him, but also because she'd seen the vehicle he rode to class, and there was no way she would climb on the back of a motorcycle, especially when the driver was a rebel without any visible means of support. She was adventurous, not suicidal. Plus, by telling him she could take the 6 or 20 bus and still make it home, she had given him a clue as to where she lived. Granted, not a good one, but if he was halfway intelligent—and even after two weeks, she knew he was way above average in that regard, something else that only made her wonder why he'd dropped out of school—he could put 6 and 20 together and find out what neighborhoods they shared in common. Namely, hers.

"I have to go," she said quickly, before he could figure all that out.

"But I need to ask you something about tonight's lesson," he objected. "It'll just take a minute, I promise."

Selby glanced at her watch again. "I can spare five minutes," she told him. "But no more than that, or I'm screwed."

And somehow, she made herself not blush or close her eyes in embarrassment at the double entendre she'd inadvertently made.

Thomas, however, made no pretext of pretending he didn't notice it. "Well, gee, Teach, if you want me to take you home and have my way with you, just say so."

"Don't," she warned him, what little benevolence she'd begun to feel toward him evaporating completely. "Do not start this again. I told you I can have you removed from the program. And I am
not
interested, Mr. Brown."

He held up a hand, palm out, and even had the decency to say, "I'm sorry. Really, I apologize." And he honestly sounded like he meant it. "I have a bad habit of speaking before I think, especially when I'm talking to a beautiful woman. I didn't mean anything by it."