‘Thanks, I’ll take it from here.’ He smiled politely at the older woman who had shown him to the classroom and extracted his mobile from his pocket.
He stood to one side, slanting a glance through the small rectangular glass pane on the door so that he could just about see her, see her as she fumbled in her bag for her phone and then picked it up on the fourth ring.
‘Just want to say,’ he drawled, ‘that chewing pencils can be dangerous for your health...’ He saw the way her face lit up, just for that split second when she recognised who was on the other end of the line, and he knew... She could push him away with one hand but she was beckoning him to come closer with the other. He felt the powerful kick of victory and it was an intensely satisfying sensation.
He pushed open the classroom door and she half stood, mobile phone still in her hand as she pressed the disconnect button. ‘What are you doing here?’
That little frisson she had felt when she had heard his voice was gone. He could see from the tight expression on her face that she was going to do her best to just block him out because as long as she blocked him out she wouldn’t have to deal with the sizzling chemistry between them.
And the harder she tried to block him out, the more he wanted to have her.
His eyes travelled the length of her, from tousled hair to fur-booted feet and then back up, noting the faded jeans and the bright red jumper.
‘Thought I’d come a little earlier. So...this is where you work?’ He looked around him and then strolled towards the pictures and essays that were tacked to the walls.
‘Yes, it is,’ Laura said tersely. She wanted to fling herself in front of the drawings he was inspecting with overdone interest because having him here, in the classroom, felt way too intimate. Or maybe it felt intimate because she’d been thinking about him. Correcting an essay while her mind had played and replayed that kiss. Even when he wasn’t physically present, he could still manage to get under her skin and rattle her and she didn’t like it.
‘Nice. Homely.’ He swung round to look at her. She was so determined to resist him. He felt that she would run for the hills if she only knew how much he relished the prospect of proving her wrong. As if either of them could resist what was between them.
‘Why did you decide to come up here early?’
‘A few things I wanted to run past you so I thought I’d see if you were still here. And you are. Why don’t you stop...marking those books and have a coffee with me? There must be somewhere here we can go...is there?’
‘I still have work to do.’
‘Bring it with you. I can help you mark and then when we’ve finished we can have something to eat and I can talk to you about one or two things that have been on my mind.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, flustered. She smiled weakly past him at Evelyn, the deputy head, who was peering through the open doorway with lively curiosity. ‘Just...er...’
‘Yes, we met! Showed him in!’
Alessandro smiled at the woman who had ushered him to Laura’s classroom and Evelyn blushed like a teenager.
‘Perhaps,’ he drawled, ‘you could convince this stubborn little minx that she can leave with me so that I can take her out for a coffee...or something stronger...’
Laura didn’t pay any attention to their bantering conversation but as soon as she and Alessandro were on their own, heading out to his car, she turned on him furiously.
‘Thanks very much, Alessandro!’
‘You’re welcome. Next time you need rescuing from the monotony of marking books, feel free to call on me.’
‘That’s not what I was talking about!’
‘No? Then you need to be a little clearer. I can’t really follow you just going from your heated expression. Where’s the quaint coffee shop? Or pub? I seem to remember that the town down the road is a little more vibrant when it comes to places to sit and pass the time of day.’ He started the engine and began pulling out of the car park.
Was it his imagination or was the formidable middle-aged woman who had shown him in hovering by one of the windows?
‘You don’t come up here often,’ Laura hissed, ‘so you probably don’t know just how fast the grapevine works!’