She pushed through the café doors and out into the corridor, clutching her latte, letting the hot liquid burn through the paper cup and into her palm. So much better to concentrate on that small pain than on the other, far more dangerous heat down low inside her.
“You okay?” James, who taught international law and was one of the few people in the faculty who wasn’t a fuckwit, looked at her curiously. “Or were you stunned by the magnificence of Lucien North?”
Of course James would notice that. He’d always had an eye for handsome men.
Eleanor gave him a filthy look. “Are you kidding me?”
James shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first. You should see Carly.”
Carly was one of the criminal law professors and a sucker for a good-looking student, though, since she was nearly sixty-five and married, with her it was purely a visual-appreciation thing.
“She’s like that with everyone.”
“Luc is a little different, though.”
He had that right. Eleanor didn’t say anything for a moment as they strolled down the corridor toward her office. Then, when a decent-enough amount of time had passed, she said, “Is he in any of your classes?”
“Yeah. International law is his thing.” James grinned. “I’m not complaining. Whenever he comes to one of my lectures, everyone else shows up too. Especially the girls.”
“Popular then.”
“Extremely. And a brilliant student too. Wrote me the most fabulous essay on—”
“Thanks, James,” she interrupted gracelessly as they stopped outside her office. “Got a mountain of assignments to mark.”
She wasn’t curious about Lucien North. She wasn’t.
Yet when Thursday rolled around and she stepped into the lecture theatre for her legal history class, her gaze went straight to the desk where he normally sat, in the front row, right in the center. And found his seat empty.
The sharp point of an emotion she refused to call disappointment needled at her.
Shit. What the hell was her problem?
She’d kept away from men for a long time after her divorce from Piers. For years the thought of another relationship—hell, even just sex—was too much to contemplate and though she’d broken through that little block with a couple of guys since, in the end she’d found being single easier. Her career at the law school was much less complicated, even with the usual university/faculty politics that sometimes drove her round the bend. She liked teaching, enjoyed the interactions she had with her students and found the intellectual challenge of law stimulating. That was all she needed. That and an excellent vibrator.
Lucien North was nice eye candy, but that’s all he’d ever be.
Eleanor gave the lecture, irritated with the way her attention kept going to the place where Lucien normally sat and catching the eye of the young woman who was sitting there instead. Which probably weirded her out as much as it did Eleanor.
After the lecture was over and the usual crowd of students and their questions had vanished out of the door, Eleanor was sliding her laptop into its bag when she noticed someone standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe.
Lucien.
The irritation and annoyance gathered in a small, hard knot in the center of her chest.
He had one arm against the doorframe, the posture drawing attention to the sharply defined lines of his biceps, left bare by the black T-shirt he was wearing. It was…distracting.
“I’m sorry I missed the class today,” he said. “I had an appointment.”
Eleanor looked away from him, fussing around with the laptop cords. “That’s okay. You didn’t miss much. I’ll be putting the notes up on the class web page anyway.”
“Well, that’s good.”
A small silence fell. Then his voice, much softer and much closer this time. “Did you even notice I wasn’t there?” He’d come into the lecture theatre proper, was now standing not far away from her, hands thrust casually in the pockets of his jeans.
She glanced at him but all he did was stare back, a strange, intense glint in his eyes.
Christ, what did he want from her? If he thought she was going to admit to the fact that, yes, she had noticed, he needed to think again. Something told her that admitting any kind of weakness around this man would be a mistake.
Feeling threatened, Eleanor turned away, resuming tucking the cords away into her laptop bag as if nothing were bothering her in the slightest. “That’s an odd question to ask.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. And no, I didn’t notice, but thanks for letting me know.”
There was a weirdly taut silence.
She continued to fuss with the cords, feeling the weight of his stare on the back of her neck like the touch of a hand. Jesus, he really needed to go the hell away.