“Dinner.”
“Because you liked pets?”
“I wanted to own a lizard farm.”
I covered my mouth with my hands and nodded solemnly. “All little boys have dreams.”
“A bully crushed mine when he told me lizard farms don’t exist.” He shook his head. “In second grade I was voted least likely to succeed, on account that I didn’t speak for the entire year.”
“Why’s that?” I took another step toward him.
He took another step in my direction and shrugged. “It took me a while to get over the lizards.”
“So you stopped speaking?”
“It was more of me trying to make the public aware of my outrage.”
“Ah, like lizard strike.”
“I made shirts.”
“Tell me, professor, is that when the label-making started?”
“No.” He nodded toward the door and started walking. I followed, genuinely interested in what he was going to say and hating that it was possible he was stringing me along only to go all cold-crazy-psycho on me again. “That was an entirely different situation.” He pulled the door open.
“What? No more stories?” I asked.
“Dinner.” He shrugged, his eyes a stormy gray. “I’ll tell you at dinner.”
“Bribery.”
“My trump card. Label-maker stories. You know, I do actually know how to romance a woman.”
“Well...” I cleared my throat and broke eye contact. “…since I’m your student, I’ll just take your word for it.”
“Right,” he said quickly then repeated, “Right, shall we?”
“Lead the way.” I forced a smile and tried to remember that this was dinner, nothing romantic, just my very sexy professor once again apologizing for being a jackass during class.
The halls of the building were pretty empty. As it was, I should probably have been walking a bit faster, considering I still had a class to get to.
When we reached the end of the hall where we’d most likely part ways, I felt someone watching. I turned around. Nothing. But the feeling remained. Fully creeped out, I fell into step beside Tristan and turned around again. Only he’d stopped, meaning I tripped against him and almost had a really embarrassing incident where my lips met his — by default.
“Whoa!” He didn’t push me back, just braced my shoulders and gazed at me with those gray swirling eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “I was just… sorry, I thought I saw something.”
Slowly, he released his grip and stepped back. “So tonight? Six?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Sounds good. Should I meet you there?”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“But won’t that look… bad?”
“A student eating with her professor? I’m sure there are worse things for the faculty to be gossiping about than a professor taking a student out to dinner to apologize for being an ass. You know, school shootings, drugs, rapes, things like that.”
My edgy feeling continued, but I found myself nodding in agreement. “You’re right.”