“I’m sorry. I didn’t … I wasn’t aware.”
“It’s all right. It happened a long time ago.” It did, when she was fifteen to be exact, and the way the creepy old men had treated her at her mother’s funeral had made her about as uncomfortable as Kayne was now with how comfortable Maria was about telling him her mother was dead.
Walking over to the student desk closest to his, she took off her nude, faux fur jacket, revealing that to-die-for suede, mauve dress underneath before sitting down at the tiny desk that she had once been forced to sit at. “But I’m here,” she let him know with a wave of her hand that this “parental figure” was as good as he was going to fucking get.
He went around his desk, still a bit off guard by her presence. “Sorry, this is very unusual. Any way I could possibly reschedule with your fath—”
“He’s very busy, so how about you tell me what it is Leo’s done and I promise”—she held up two slender fingers and twirled them together—“to tell him. I’m sure he’ll either call you or carry out the correct punishment.”
“All right.” Clearing his throat again, he took a step back to casually sit on the edge of his desk. Yes, exactly the way you dreamed of a hot teacher doing it.
Oh, hell yes, she liked the scenario she was in now.
Staring up at the sexy AF teacher from her desk, she took in the view in all its glory, from his buzz cut hair that barely revealed the slight blond tint to it that was missing, to his close shaven, darker beard, all the way to the white button-up shirt that showed the muscles he was hiding underneath when he moved. It was like the beginning scene straight from a cheesy porno. The only thing missing was the trashy school girl outfit, because the sexual tension was definitely there, at least from her end.
“Now, what is it my brother has done, Mr. Evans?” Maria had been unable to resist from calling him that.
“Please, call me Kayne.”
The way he said it as he smoothed his navy tie down his abdomen just confirmed a few things. One, they were indeed on a first name basis. Two, the sexual tension was very much on his end, too. And three, he wasn’t comfortable with her calling him by his last name as she sat in this desk. Telling her that he wasn’t into the teacher/student role play shit, and she kind of liked that. A lot. It not only showed respect to his profession but to the fucking law that teens and his students weren’t his thing.
When she had first met Kayne, she had been disappointed, wondering why the hell she couldn’t have been lucky to get him as a teacher when she’d attended school. Hell, her attendance would have been through the fucking roof. In fact, she would bet every pair of her Louboutins on the fact that the rise in the attendance of female student at Legacy Prep had soared after Mr. Evans was hired. But now Maria counted her blessings, knowing that the door of whatever the hell “this” was between them would have been shut, locked, and bolted.
“Leo seemed to be preoccupied with texting a girl in my classroom today. I confiscated his phone for the day and would appreciate it if he kept it in his pocket during my class.”
Maria slightly furrowed her brows at finally hearing what it was that got her baby brother in trouble enough to warrant a visit. Never knowing what to expect from a Caruso, it was honestly … nothing, considering her and her brothers’ track record at this school had warranted every faculty member to despise the name Caruso until their last dying breaths.
Her oldest brother, Lucca, had set them up for failure the day his psychotic-teen-smoking ass walked through Legacy Prep’s door. Then, when she finally entered high school, well … she wasn’t much different, just less secondhand smoke. She was followed by Nero, who had every girl crying underneath him or crying to get under him. And now Leo. He might have been cursed with beauty like the rest of his siblings, but that was where the similarities ended.
Seeing her confusion, or lack thereof, he stood and walked back behind his desk to open the drawer to take the phone out from its jail cell. “It’s now policy here that the parents must come to retrieve confiscated phones in hopes of keeping cell phone usage down.”
“Oh, okay.” Somewhat understanding, she couldn’t help laughing at the attempt to keep teens, who were obsessed by the little five-inch screens, off it. “Is it working?”
“Well, it’s certainly made it a pain in the ass, not only on the students but the parents.”
Maria laughed again, this time harder at his joke, along with the little curse he let drop. Oh God, she never laughed at a man’s joke.