Ride with Me

“This should only take another minute,” she said as she applied disinfectant with a piece of cotton.

Don’t hurry on my account, he wanted to say, but wisely kept his mouth shut. He suspected she’d take offense at his smart remark, accuse him of behaving no better than the horny boys in her classes. And she’d be right.

Still, he couldn’t seem to stop his thoughts from wandering into dangerous territory, not as long as she was standing where she was. And certainly not as long as her hip brushed against him each time she twisted to the side to reach for another cotton ball.

He wondered if the kids in her classes had any idea how lucky they were to have her for a teacher. If he’d had Miss de Bieren standing in front of his class when he was in high school twenty years ago, he would have given his best shot at becoming the teacher’s pet. And probably would have spent a good deal less time in detention.

“Okay, now for a dressing,” she said cheerfully, obviously oblivious to his errant musings.

With one hand holding his hair off his forehead, she leaned closer to him and reached for a bandage, stretching toward the open box on the counter. Before he realized what was happening, she swayed too far to the side and lost her balance.

Instinctively, his hands shot up to her hips to try to prevent her fall. He wasn’t quite fast enough.

She fell against him, her right breast skimming across his mouth in deliciously slow motion.

A white-hot blade of desire pierced him, its intensity startling him. Reflexively, his fingers dug into the firm flesh of her fanny, and he sucked in a deep breath, unintentionally drawing in the material of her soft cotton T-shirt as well.

When the oxygen finally reached his brain, he was able to take note of several fascinating facts. One: This day was turning out a whole heck of a lot better than it started; two: The schoolteacher might be a tiny little thing everywhere else, but the part of her nudging his lips wasn’t small at all; and three: Her nipple had instantly beaded into a tight knot beneath her shirt, which made him wonder if she was enjoying this little mishap as much as he was.

A definite possibility, he decided, allowing several more pleasure-filled seconds to pass before he convinced himself to set her away from him and back on both feet.

It seemed like a long time before she finally tipped her head down. He looked up at the same moment and found himself staring into a pair of eyes as blue as the uniform shirt he’d worn every day of his life for the first five years he’d been on the force.

Slowly, he lowered his gaze to her lips. They were glossy as glass and pink tinged, like the pink spreading up her neck and over her cheeks. It occurred to him that if he leaned forward and let himself sit an inch taller, his mouth would be even with hers. He’d be able to kiss her.

A voice inside his head warned him he had no business even considering such an action. But he’d spent too much time pondering the scent of her perfume, worked up too great a curiosity about the smoothness of her skin, fantasized too real a picture of her wonderfully naked in a tub full of bubbles. All he wanted was a taste, just one little taste. What could it hurt?

“Sorry,” she said. She added a half smile and a nervous giggle to her apology as she took one step back, effectively nixing his experiment. Her hand quivered as she ripped open the bandage she’d managed to snag.

“No problem,” he automatically replied, letting his hands fall to his lap as her warm fingers positioned the bandage over his wound and pressed gently against his skin.

No problem? he repeated silently. Then why are you having to use both hands to hide the physical evidence to the contrary? He was as shocked by his unexpected reaction as Miss de Bieren would be—if she discovered it.

And why the hell was he getting so turned on by a pint-size blonde with hardly enough hair to grab hold of? His taste in women usually ran toward long-legged brunettes with lush shoulder-length manes he could sink his hands into.

A one-word explanation came to mind immediately: Overtime. The string of eighteen-hour days he’d been putting in for three straight weeks might be great for his bank account, but it was murder on his social life.

Murder.

Suddenly he remembered what had brought him to Benito Juarez Middle School that morning.

“All done,” she said, her tone overly bright as she stepped out from between his legs. She scooped up the handful of soiled cotton balls and tossed them in the wastebasket, then picked up the steel bowl and carried it to the sink. “You’ll probably want to take an aspirin or two for pain,” she added, her gaze riveted to her hands as she washed and dried them. “I can get you some if you’d like. And I’m really sorry about the accident. As you might have noticed, we’ve had plenty of rocks thrown through the windows here. But no one’s ever been standing in the line of fire before.”

“I guess it was just my lucky day,” he said quietly. His left hand strayed up to test the damage done to his head, but his eyes watched every move Miss Rebekah de Bieren made.

She was doing it again, he observed, putting on the same nonchalant facade she’d worn in her classroom. Only this time she wasn’t pretending to be unaffected by a broken window or the blood streaming down his face. This time, she was trying to convince him she hadn’t noticed the sparks that had flashed back and forth between them like lightning in an electrical storm.

Or maybe, he amended, recalling the telltale trembling of her hands a minute earlier, maybe she was trying to convince herself.

Read on for an excerpt from Jean Stone’s Ivy Secrets

Chapter I

Charlie Hobart packed the suitcase, unsure whether she should feel happy or sad. Peter’s overbearing mother was dead—reason, certainly, to celebrate—but Jenny would be leaving tomorrow to visit Tess. The absence of her fourteen-year-old daughter always unsettled Charlie and evoked more than a little guilt.

She sighed and tucked a pouch of maxipads into the inside pocket. Though Jenny was mature for her age, Charlie still worried when she went off to visit Tess: Tess, after all, had no children, not even a husband. And though Charlie knew, from their years together at college, that Tess was able to take care of herself, she wondered if her long-ago friend was capable of looking after another human being. The summers Jenny spent with Tess still had not quelled Charlie’s fears, for, at thirty-seven years of age, Tess had seemingly forever dodged responsibility, sequestered in her glassblowing studio, doing God only knew what. Yet Jenny loved her “aunt” Tess, loved spending summers with her in Massachusetts. And Jenny’s absence enabled Charlie and Peter to come and go as they pleased—to the Hamptons, to Newport, to the Berkshires. So far, they had all survived the arrangement.

“Don’t you think Jenny’s old enough to do that?”