Mistletoe Kisses

She finally takes the paper, looking a little like the breath has been knocked out of her. “I don’t understand.”

“The assignment was a critical analysis of Great Expectations, was it not?” I ask, cocking a dark eyebrow at her.

Noelle swallows and nods her head.

“That’s a lovefest,” I state simply, indicating the paper now clutched in her hand.

“Well, I liked the book,” she says, still at a loss. “Critical analyses are subjective, they express the opinion of the writer. So my opinion was favorable—what’s wrong with that?”

Nothing. Not a damn thing. I don’t have a leg to stand on. Her paper probably would’ve been an easy A, but I’ve started digging myself a hole here and I can’t turn back now.

“I’ll give you the weekend to fix it,” I tell her.

Frowning down at the paper, then back at me, she says, “But I don’t even know what I’ve done wrong. I thought this was a good paper. I was really proud of it.”

A tickle of guilt niggles at me, but I ignore it. I hate putting down good work just because my impulsiveness overtook me, but on the bright side, now she’ll spend all of her free time this weekend agonizing over how to improve her paper and not going out with that meathead.

It’s very good work, but even very good work could benefit from improvement.

After all, Noelle could be better than good—she has it in her to be great.

As I sit here looking up at her, an idea begins to form. “How serious are you about improving as a writer?”

Noelle straightens, giving up her momentary defensiveness and focusing her attention on her academic career. “Very serious. My mother says strong writing is the single most important skill you can bring with you to college.”

I agree with her mother, so I nod my head. “How would you feel about private tutoring?”

Her eyes go wide again and she looks completely humiliated. “You think I need a tutor?”

“No,” I say quickly, shaking my head. “Not a tutor. Me.”

The humiliation fades, shock taking its place. “You?”

“Yes,” I say, liking the sound of it far more than I should. “I think you need me.”

Our gazes lock and this time she doesn’t try to flee my intensity. She regards me with a curious sort of skepticism, like some part of her can see right through my bullshit. Like somewhere in that mind I just accused of naiveté, she knows I’m lying my ass off.

I should probably be more concerned. It’s not exactly on the up-and-up, trying to manipulate one of my students into spending time alone with me. If she took this paper and went over my head to anyone in the department, they would agree with her that I’m completely full of shit and that she wrote an excellent paper.

Noelle’s gaze finally drifts away from mine, but not because she’s trying to avoid me this time. Quite the opposite. Her eyes drop quickly to my lips, then the dark stubble along my strong jaw. They sweep across my broad shoulders, skate across my strong chest and arms.

Finally, her gaze meets mine again.

Her green eyes are as warm as a sunny meadow. My blue ones are glacier-cool. As if entirely unaffected by the cold, Noelle smiles like a self-contained sun and warms me right up.

“All right.”

Somehow, I didn’t expect her to agree so easily, so I try to contain my surprise quickly. Her lips quirk slightly, letting me know she caught it, but she doesn’t remark upon it.

“All right. Yeah,” I say, trying to gather my bearings. “Are you free this weekend?”

Her eyes sparkle with a hint of amused delight, but this time it’s at me instead of that stupid asshole Percy Bennett, and it fills me with a foreign sense of excitement. “I am. Sorta. I have a shift at the mall tomorrow, but aside from that, I’m free.”

“You work at the mall?”

“Seasonal, just for Christmas,” she tells me. After the briefest hesitation, she adds with a touch of self-deprecation, “I’m an elf.”

I blink at her. “You’re… an elf?”