“I’m guessing whatever music helped you express that couldn’t be said might be the same thing that caused you to have those out-of-control years.”
“Am I that transparent, or are you that good at reading people?”
His eyes studied mine. “Neither. Let’s just say I can relate well.”
I nodded. “What about you? Did you want to be a rock star?”
“Something like that.”
I grinned before shoving the burger into my mouth. “Wow. Thanks for sharing. You’re an open book.”
Caine chuckled. “Are you always such a wiseass?”
“Are you always so vague and dodgy when asked a direct question?”
He stared at me while he chewed and swallowed. “Alright. I wanted to be a rock star when I was younger. Is that a straightforward enough answer for you?”
I grinned. “Do you sing or play an instrument?”
“I played the drums.”
“Play or played?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Does that bother you?”
He chuckled. “And there’s another one. Eat your burger, Ms. Martin.”
After that, we ate in relative quiet. But it was a comfortable kind of quiet. Caine cleared his plate, and I was still picking at my French fries when his cell phone rang. Looking at the name on the screen, he excused himself, saying he needed to take the call, and he left the table to speak in private. We weren’t on a date or anything, but it made me wonder if he was married and didn’t want his wife to know he was with someone. Cheater Owen was still fresh in my head.
When he came back, Caine apologized. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem.” Yet for some completely unwarranted reason, I was annoyed. “I’m done eating. We can get started. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”
Once the busboy cleared the table, Caine took a folder out of his bag, and we began to go through the syllabus. We did some rough lesson planning for my first lectures and talked about meeting after the next class to finish going through the rest of the planning we needed to do. I’d be sitting in on three of his five classes and teaching one of my own. Caine asked about my work schedule and scheduled the extra-help sessions I would hold around my hours at O’Leary’s, which was thoughtful. When we were done, he ordered a coffee.#p#分页标题#e#
“So, what rumors have you heard about me?” he asked, leaning back in the booth.
“Do you really want to know?”
“I’m sure I’ve heard most of them. But let’s lay them on the table, and I’ll tell you if they’re true or not.”
“Okay. Well, for starters I heard you were a stickler for punctuality. I guess I don’t really need to ask if that one’s true.”
“I guess not.” He smiled. “Anything else?”
“You fired your last TA because she wouldn’t grade hard enough.”
He nodded. “That’s true, too. Although you’re missing part of the story. She wasn’t grading her boyfriend hard enough. Unless she was grading the things he wanted to do to her…because those were pretty well thought out. I’d know since that’s what I found he was writing on his tests. No actual music answers, yet he was getting all As.”
“Oh.”
“Anything else?”
I have no idea why, but I decided to embellish the last rumor to satisfy my own curiosity. “You’re married and you almost got fired for sleeping with your students.”
The look on his face told me I’d hit a sore spot. Caine’s jaw clenched, and his full lips thinned as they drew into a line. “Not married and stopped sleeping with my students after the first year.”
I crinkled my nose. “So you used to sleep with your students?”
“I was young and stupid. The first year I taught, I spent almost all of my time on campus. It was the only place I met people.”
“Ever hear of match.com?”
“Of course, wiseass. But people are rarely what they seem online.”
I scoffed. “Tell me about it.”
Caine raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you know from experience.”
“Just last night in fact.”
“And…”
“And he only had one thing on his mind.”
“Sex?”
I nodded. “Men can be such assholes. No offense.”
That damn lip twitched again. “No offense taken. Unless of course you’re calling me an asshole—clearly it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Do you spend weeks talking to a woman and telling her you’re looking for a relationship and then show up on the first date wanting nothing but sex?”