“Hey, Jason.” Ryan went up to him. “I…I’ll try to pay attention. Let’s talk about Tom Sawyer.”
Jason’s dark eyes met hers, catching her gaze and holding it. An invisible thread tugged between them, drawing her to him. Why was he looking at her like that? Like she’d sprouted wings out of her back or something.
He kept staring at her even as Ryan went back into the class.
“What?” she hissed at him.
He said nothing, but followed her back into the class. He sauntered over to Ryan and they started talking and she went back to the other kids, but had a hard time dragging her gaze away from him.
Why had he followed her out into the hall? Why did he look so pole-axed?
He was so patient with Ryan, even though Ryan was having a bad day. He made the boy laugh at something, and her chest constricted. She blinked and tried to focus on the other kids. Her throat felt tight and achy and she just wanted this to be over, much as she loved spending time with her students. She was going to go throw herself in Jason’s lap in a minute.
She tried to breathe, in and out, until finally the clock on the wall said the reading program was over.
The kids were in no rush to leave, though, talking to Jason, taking their time getting their belongings together. “Don’t forget your homework!” she reminded one.
And Jason seemed in no hurry to leave either.
Finally the classroom was empty and quiet except for the two of them.
Jason sat on one of the small desks. She hoped it would hold his weight.
“Thanks,” she choked out. “Again. You were great with them. Especially with Ryan.”
“He’s a good kid.”
He was still looking at her strangely. She put a hand to her hair to make sure it wasn’t sticking up or something. “Yes, he is.”
“You told him he’s smart.”
She blinked. “Yes. He is. He’s a very smart kid.”
“He has ADHD.”
“Yes.” Her brow tightened. “How’d you know that?”
“Never mind. Remi.”
“What?”
“Don’t push me away, Remi.”
Her body went soft and hot and her ears buzzed. She swallowed through a painfully tight throat. And then she was in his arms, climbing up his body, kissing him, feeling the wetness of her tears on his face. “Oh, Jase. How can this be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. It just is. Just let it happen.”
He held her face in his big hands and kissed her so gently, so tenderly, she trembled. “Come home with me.”
“Yes.”
Remi could not believe Jason had talked her into this.
It was Saturday morning and she was getting off a plane at LAX. Jason’s last road game had been last night against the Kings and he didn’t have to be back in Chicago for a practice until Monday, so he’d convinced her to fly to Los Angeles for a weekend with him.
Jesus. Who did things like that? Flying to L.A. for the weekend.
Apparently she did.
She couldn’t even imagine how much the airfare had been. She tried to put that out of her mind.
She walked out of the gate, pulling her small carryon, which was all the luggage she’d brought, looking around for where to go. Follow the crowd seemed the best plan. Everyone was heading for a set of long escalators. This was all new to her—despite her parents having travelled the world, she never had. New and scary and exciting because deep down inside she realized she’d always wanted to travel. She’d never been able to, never had the money, never been able to leave Kyle and Jasmine. Even when she’d had the opportunity when they were older, there was always that fear that if something happened to her, like what had happened to her parents, she’d be leaving them all on their own and the fear of doing that to them had been paralyzingly powerful.
But here was she was in Los Angeles and her stomach quivered with excitement. She turned her cell phone back on in case Jason tried to call her as she rode down the escalator, then searched the crowd at the bottom for him.
There he was. A smile broke across her face at the sight of him, taller than everyone else, broader than everyone else, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt. Bare arms in early April. Awesome.
He spotted her too, sending her a big grin, and caught her at the bottom of the escalator in a big hug.
“Congratulations,” she said to him after he’d kissed the wits out of her. “You won last night.”
“Yeah.” He grinned. He took her suitcase in one hand and her hand in the other and started toward the exit. “I got two goals.”
“That’s all?” She lifted a brow at him mockingly, and he growled.
“Whaddya mean, that’s all?” Then he laughed and lifted her hand to his mouth to kiss her knuckles.
They stepped out into sunshine and warm humidity. “Oh, that feels nice,” she said.
“Bring a swimsuit?”
“Yes.”
“Good. There’s a nice pool at the hotel.”
He led the way across roads crazy with speeding cars, taxis, limos and noisy shuttle buses to the parking garage. “I got a rental car for the weekend,” he told her.
“This?” She stopped in front of the little black convertible. She looked across the roof of the car at him and smiled.
“Yup. Sweet, huh?”
“Perfect.”
He put the top down and they were soon leaving LAX, the warm wind tossing Remi’s hair around her head, and she sat there with a feeling of warm contentment mingled with excited anticipation. As they drove along Century Boulevard, her cell phone rang in her purse.
With a small frown, she pulled it out. Kyle.
“Hey,” she said into the phone.
“Hi, Remi,” Kyle said. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m okay.” She grinned at the thought that he had no idea where she was just then. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got a bit of a problem.”
“What is it?”
“I kinda…missed an exam yesterday.”
She glanced at Jason, who was glancing at her as he drove. “What do you mean, kind of? You missed it or you didn’t.”
“Okay, I missed it. It was totally an accident. My alarm didn’t go off and I slept in.” His words picked up pace. “But if you could call the dean and tell him that I was sick, they might let me rewrite it.”
“But you weren’t sick.”
“But if you say I was, they’ll let me rewrite it.”
She paused and stared at passing palm trees and billboards and big hotels.
“You want me to lie about it for you?”
“Well…yeah. Please, Remi. If I can’t write the exam, I flunk the whole course. I’ll have to do it all next year. That’s going to set me back.”
Shit. It was hard enough paying his tuition without tacking on an extra year—term? Whatever.
“I don’t know, Kyle.” She nibbled her lip. “Are you sure that’s all I’d have to do?”
“Yeah. I think so. But you have to do it Monday.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Where are you, anyway?”
“I’m …uh…actually in Los Angeles.”
“Whaat! What are you doing there?”
She sent another sideways glance at Jason, this time smiling. “I’m having a little weekend vacation.”
“Huh? Who’re you with? What’re you…”
“I’ll call you back later. Bye, Kyle.”
She snapped her phone shut.
“Your brother?”
“Mmm. He has a little problem he wants me to fix.”
She told him the story and he frowned.
“He does want you to lie for him. How old is he?”
“Eighteen.”
“Shit.”
“He’s just a kid.”