“Well, I should get ready for work,” he said.
As the three deserters stood simultaneously, I lifted my gaze toward Ethan, who was glancing expectantly back at me.
“You going to leave now too?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nope. I can’t. This is the only night I have time to study. And I need to get this stuff done.”
I let out a relieved breath. “Good.” Great, actually. Ethan was the only group member I liked to study with…even if he did work faster than me. “It’s the only free night I have, too.”
He studied me with a slight smile before shaking his head and looking at his homework. “Uh…did you find the answer to number eight? I had to skip it because I couldn’t find anything.”
Tickled he actually needed my help, I checked my work. “Oh, that one was in the worksheet Professor Chin passed out in class last Thursday.”
Ethan muttered something irritable under his breath. Propping his arm on the table, he buried his face in the crook of his elbow with a defeated groan. “I knew I should’ve gone to class that morning, but I was so tired after working late I couldn’t even drudge up the energy to turn off the alarm clock.”
I grabbed my copy of the worksheet and passed it across the table to him. “You can use mine.”
There was a pause before he lifted his face, sent me a mystified stare, and then slowly slid the sheet from my hand. “Thanks.” A second later, he asked, “Mind if I make a copy of this?”
“Hmm?” I glanced up and wow, he looked so studious and…yummy, sitting there, looking at me.
Ethan had sandy brown hair with natural blond highlights. He must not have been a big supporter of his barber, because his locks usually looked pretty shaggy. And his glasses gave him that sexy, young professor look.
I blinked, taken aback. Wow. Ethan wasn’t bad looking. How strange. I used to know whenever a guy was attractive the second I met him. But ever since Mason Lowe had entered my sphere, my hot-guy meter had bleeped out. It was as if no other male existed.
“Umm…” Brain, Reese. Use it. “Uh…yeah,” I mumbled, furrowing my brow as if to let on that he’d broken my homework concentration. I ducked my face and pretended to read a passage from one of the two huge volumes in front of me.
“Yeah, you mind?” he asked. “Or yeah, I can make a copy?”
“Huh?” I looked up and gave a slight shake of my head. “Why would I mind if you made a copy?”
Belatedly, I noticed the amused glimmer in his gaze a split second before he full-out grinned. The magnetism of his smile didn’t quite reach off-the-chart Mason levels, but it was pretty darn cute.
“You have personal notes in the margins,” he said. “Some people would mind.”
I stared at him a moment longer before saying, “I don’t mind.”
His smile warmed, rising his looks a couple of notches on the Richter scale. “Well…thank you.”
I watched him stroll away, considering the possibilities there, and surprisingly enough, they didn’t totally suck.
“Hmm.” That was nice to know. There might still be life for me after I’d totally ruined myself over a certain psycho stalker ex-boyfriend and then become completely hung up on a non-retired gigolo.
When Ethan returned, he set my worksheet down to the side of my books. “Here’s your original.”
“Thanks. Have you looked at number nineteen yet?”
“Just a sec.” Ethan dropped into his chair and consulted his worksheet. “Yeah, I remember reading about this.” Morphing out of sexy co-ed mode and back into bland study partner, Ethan flipped through one of his own numerous textbooks. “Here.” Quoting a passage aloud, he read, “‘Human diseases that are believed to be caused by prions are…’”
As he spoke, I scooted my chair around in order to sit next to him. He faltered in his reading to glance at me. Then he grinned, his cheeks flushed, and he kept on until he’d quoted the entire paragraph.
“There it is,” I murmured. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He cleared his throat and focused on his assignment.
“Oh, hey. And what Baltimore classification type did you put down for Parvoviridae?”
“I put down group two.”