The Boy Who Has No Belief - Victoria Quinn Page 0,30
He’s a professor at NYU, so he’s used to teaching students.”
“Uh, genius students. Not seventh-grade math. You asked him, didn’t you?”
“No. He offered.”
“How did he even know I’m a bad student?”
“You aren’t a bad student,” I said defensively. “And I talk about you all the time. He wants to help. It’s really not a big deal, Lizzie.”
She took a few more bites of her food as she considered everything I’d said. “I’m just surprised, I guess.”
“Well, we’re very good friends.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right…”
“Lizzie.”
She smiled. “Just teasing. But I don’t want you to get fired. He might get so frustrated with me that he’ll want nothing to do with either one of us again.”
“That would never happen, Lizzie.”
“When is this happening?”
“I thought we could do it two nights a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
She shrugged. “Alright. I got a C- on my last test, so…”
And that would mess up her GPA big-time. She wasn’t in high school yet, so those grades didn’t really matter, but they would start to matter once she got to high school. I wanted her to be prepared for that. “I think that’s about to change, Lizzie.”
We sat together in the back seat as we drove to work.
He turned to me, leaned over and kissed me, and then gave me a nice smile before he opened his bag and pulled out his paperwork. He was in a black hoodie and dark jeans, his muscled physique stretching the cotton fabric of his sweater in sexy ways.
My eyes lingered for a bit, my body sexually awakened by this man. I wished our nights were spent together in naked passion, and then in the morning we had another round before we got ready for the day. It was something lovers took for granted, and while I loved my daughter more than anything in this world, she was the reason we couldn’t fully be together. “Did you have fun with Dex?”
“Yeah. It was nice to spend time with him. I wish I got to see him more.”
“I bet. Where is his residency?”
“Johns Hopkins. Maryland.”
“Oh wow. He came far to see you.”
“Yeah, that was nice of him.” He gave a slight smile before he looked down at his paperwork.
“You did great on Saturday.”
He turned to look at me but didn’t respond.
“I missed you…” Whenever I looked at his handsome face, I fell deeper, craved that closeness that I couldn’t get anywhere else. It wasn’t a sense of lust, more than affection, something I couldn’t describe. I just wanted his arms around me, to bury my face in his hard chest, to feel his fingertips glide into my hair before he pressed a kiss to my hairline. I wanted that—all the time. I’d wanted to spend our weekend in bed, celebrating his book signing, just living in the moment together.
His stare lingered, and slowly his eyes softened as he processed the admission I’d made. “I missed you too… I always miss you.”
When I finished at his executive office, I walked into the lab to see Derek working alone, staying after hours like usual. He had large schematics everywhere as he sketched his ideas. Then he had me print them when he assumed they were final, produced by a computer, and then made his marks and printed it again…over and over. Nothing was ever good enough, and this part of the project seemed to be most intense because it was the foundation of the entire thing.
His head was bowed as he stood over his work, his hand moving over his jawline as he stared at the gibberish on the page. It wasn’t a bunch of mathematical equations, but labeled parts…stuff I didn’t understand.
I shut the door behind me and walked toward him.
The sound of my heels made him lift his gaze and look at me. “Hey, baby.” Then he bowed his head again.
I felt the smile move into my lips but also my heart because I loved it when he called me that, not caring who was standing there at the time. It could be his colleagues, his parents, or his brother, and he didn’t care. For a man who hadn’t been in a relationship in a really long time, he knew exactly how to be a committed man—and that was really sexy. “Hey.” I set my purse on the table and glanced down at one of his schematics. “How’s it going?”
“The wheel rotation should allow the rover to maneuver out of a dip, but it interferes with the brakes and trips the wires