Their gazes immediately zipped my way. Everyone at East Ellamore High knew my relationship to Brandt. Faces flushed scarlet, the girls started gushing in unison.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Gamble,” they started together, speaking over each other. “We didn’t mean any disrespect.”
I shook my head and waved them silent. “Don’t worry about it. I can’t help but agree with you.” I winked. “He is pretty hot.”
As Brandt snorted, the girls laughed out their relief and hurried for the exit, only to nearly collide with the topic of our conversation as he appeared on the doorway.
“Sorry about that, ladies.” He stepped aside gracefully and swept out a hand for them to pass through first. They giggled and chorused, “Hi, Mr. Gamble,” as they fled.
Brandt and I shared a look, and rolled our eyes in unison.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been called Mr. Gamble by so many people in one day before. It kind of skeeves me out,” Noel admitted, oblivious to everything that had just happened.
He reached out and ruffled Brandt’s hair as he passed his brother. But his eyes were focused on me.
“Hi.” His voice lowered to a husky pitch as he leaned in for a kiss.
“Hi.” My toes curled in my flats as his lips lingered on mine. I reached up and clutched the tie he wore, amazed by how permissible it was to kiss him so openly inside a school building. But a lot had changed in the three years we’d been together. As he pulled back, slicking his tongue over his bottom lip as if to relish the lingering taste of me on him, something fluttered deep in my belly.
I was the luckiest woman on earth to be married to this man.
“Noel,” Brandt’s sharp voice cut into our moment. “Aspen gave me a freaking C on my paper.”
Instead of scowling at me in irritation, my husband chuckled. He winked at me before telling his brother, “Well, she gave me two D’s, so I don’t feel sorry for you.”
From the back of the room, what sounded like a pile of books clattered to the floor. The three of us turned to find one student struggling to make her way from the class. As one of the spokes on her wheelchair caught on a desk she was passing, it managed to jerk the pile of books right off her lap.
Noel and I moved to help her, but my sixteen-year-old brother-in-law leapt in front of us.
“Here. Let me get those for you, Sarah.” He bent and scooped them up in one graceful swoop.
Sarah pulled back in surprise and ogled him a moment before she ducked her face, letting her dark hair spill forward and cover her scorching red cheeks.
“Thank you,” she said in her shy, low voice. She reached out her arms to retrieve her things, her fingers quivering slightly as she did.
But Brandt tucked them under his arm instead of handing them back. “I’ve got them. You headed to your locker?”
Her head snapped up, eyes wide. “I...” When her mouth opened and a few garbled sounds came out, she snapped her teeth together and blushed even harder. “Yes,” she finally answered.
Brandt sent her a friendly grin. “I’ll walk with you. My locker’s only a couple down from yours. Oh, here.” He quickly reached out and shoved aside the desk that had tripped up her wheelchair, giving her more than plenty of room to pass.
Face lighting up, Sarah beamed at him as she rolled through, once again thanking him for his consideration.
“So how’d you do on your paper?” He continued to smile down at her. Sarah’s answer was muffled as they moved into the hall together.
Noel and I shared a glance. His eyebrows lifted. “Is it just me, or did it look like Mason Lowe’s little sister has a crush on my brother?”
I laughed. “Well, half the girls in school have a crush on him, so I’d say it’s highly possible.”
He groaned. “Really? He’s popular here? That’s so not fair.” His scowl was adorable.
I leaned up to give him a quick kiss. “He fits in very nicely.”
Noel sighed as if disgusted. “I guess it’s better than him almost getting jumped into a gang like he’d been at that other place that shall not be named.”
All of his siblings had adjusted nicely to Ellamore. They hadn’t even seemed upset when their mother had granted Noel guardianship of them without a single protest. Caroline, Colton and Brandt had frankly bloomed under Noel’s care, even though it’d taken Colton a good year to warm up to us.
“So how was your first day of teaching, Mr. Gamble?”