Crazy in Love - Lane Hart Page 0,4
and smell are thankfully intact, as I get a whiff of his fresh and sharp masculine mint scent that reminds me of the Cool Water cologne my dad used to wear. Oh, fuck. I obviously have some bizarre daddy issues that have twisted into a freaking crush on my professor.
My ability to speak like a normal human being has long since scurried right out of the building, leaving me to only mutter various sounds that an infant might make.
“Wow, Reagan, way to make an entrance,” Josie says with her approach from the back of the restaurant. “Ooh, nice. New take on tossing a salad?” she asks with a laughing snort when she’s standing next to my professor and me. I lock gazes with her amused blue eyes, silently begging my best friend not to stick her foot in her mouth, which would be the equivalent of me sticking my own in my mouth, since I still have a week of classes and then exams before I escape the semester with this gorgeous man. One who I’ve overheard plenty of female classmates talk about visiting in his office after hours for “extra credit” with a wink, and then their grades magically improve on the next assignment. Honestly, I should’ve already been to see him for actual help or plea for a passing grade since social media and I are not friends. Now, I have a paper due in a week about the social media revolution’s effect on journalism, and I don’t know shit about twerking, following or anything else online since, as Josie would say, I’ve opted to live in the Dark Ages.
“Sooo,” Josie drawls, looking back and forth between Professor Daughton, who's plucking veggies off himself and me. “Why don’t you two go have a seat right over there while I fetch some napkins for clean up?” she asks, pointing to a quaint little table in the back corner.
“No, no, that’s okay,” I say at the same time Professor Daughton replies with “Ah, sure.”
I glare at Josie until she makes a shooing motion with her hands. Now I have two choices --- run out of the restaurant and then try to explain my departure to my professor tomorrow in class, or sit down with him and try to salvage the semester.
Reluctantly, I follow the man of many of my most erotic fantasies to the table and sit my tray in front of the seat to his left. Being so close to his hotness and delicious smell is pure torture, like the medieval kind, before there was any such thing as cruel and unusual.
“So, how’s your final paper coming along?” he asks after we sit in awkward silence for several long seconds.
I finally gather the courage to lift my eyes to the face God made with the sole purpose to be in front of a camera for the world’s viewing pleasure. I’m not sure what he’s doing teaching, sitting behind a boring desk all day. What a waste of physical perfection, not to mention he’s brilliant. And at the moment, I’m sitting here alone with him, watching in absolute humiliation as he continues to pluck tomatoes and lettuce off his ruined shirt.
“Reagan?” he prompts, his long, manicured fingers pausing in his salad decontamination.
“Ah, yeah?” I ask, meeting his eyes, dazzling indigo eyes that are almost too clear and hypnotic to be real. “I mean, what was that, sir?”
“I asked how your paper is going,” he responds with a smile.
“Oh,” I mutter, ashamed that I forgot his question so quickly. “Almost finished,” I lie.
“Good. I can’t wait to read it,” he says, causing a brighter flush to color my cheeks.
“Here we go,” Josie says when she sits down in the empty seat across from me and offers a handful of napkins. It’s funny that just a week ago I was handing her the same item for cleaning up her own roadside mess.
“Thanks,” I tell her as I grab a stack. I lean forward and start swiping the napkins over the mess I made on my instructor’s shirt before I catch myself. Holy shit, what’s wrong with me? “Sorry,” I say again, shoving the napkins against his chest for him to take over.
“Please, Reagan, it’s my fault.”
“You two know each other?” Josie asks, raising her blonde eyebrows with a grin.
Shit. Once I tell Josie who he is, she’ll probably plow through him like a bulldozer, but there’s no way to avoid it.
“Oh, um, yeah,” I start. “Josie, this is Professor Daughton, my digital