of it. A man like him?
“Well…” Her eyes flicked over him, her cheeks growing even pinker. She liked what she saw; that much was obvious. “I mean, if you’d come in here claiming to be a model, now that I would have believed.”
Ronan couldn’t help but puff his chest out a little. First a sex robot, now a model. He’d never thought it was possible to be so flattered while someone was accusing you of theft, but here he was. “How am I supposed to prove to you that I’m a professor?”
This wasn’t about the discount. Not at all—Ronan didn’t need to save a dollar or two on his morning snack. His bank account was perfectly fine. But he was far too intrigued by this woman to walk away now.
“Ummm, what’s something only a professor would know?” Audrey tapped a finger to her chin, and Ronan felt the curious stares of the entire café behind him. “What is pi to the first ten decimal places?”
“Three point one four one five…” Hmm, she had him there. “Well, I’m not a math professor.”
Her green eyes searched his, mischievous and sparkling. “Okay. Which letter doesn’t appear in any U.S. state name?”
That seemed almost too easy. But Ronan’s mind whirred as he scrolled through state names, finding all the letters he thought of. He was stuck on blond hair and full, smirking lips, and his brain whirred like a tire bogged in mud.
“Are you trying to trick me, Audrey?” He leaned against the counter and folded his arms.
“I’m not,” she said, planting a hand across her ample chest. She was having far too much fun with this.
“I don’t trust you. It’s a trick question.”
“No, it’s not,” someone piped up from the back of the café. “There’s no Q in any state name.”
Crap. Ronan was officially rattled.
It was this woman—this gorgeous, quick-witted woman. Ronan’s personal catnip was humor and a curvy figure, and Audrey had both dialed up to ten. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had gotten under his skin so damn quickly.
“I’ll give you one more shot. Everyone deserves a third chance, right?” She planted her hands on the counter and leaned a little forward. “What is the official term for the hashtag or pound sign?”
Ronan shook his head. He should know this one, but she’d turned his brain into a pile of sludge.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said with a charming smile. “I’ve just flown in from Cambridge, and the jet lag is affecting the part of my brain responsible for storing trivia.”
“Cambridge, huh? Fancy,” she teased. “I’m going to put that in the same category as the elbow patches. A good call, but a little cliché. You would have been better going with something less well-known.”
As he opened his mouth to fire a comeback, the front door of the café opened and a young woman walked in, wearing an identical outfit of a pink polo shirt, blue jeans, and a red apron. Lana. She was the younger sister of one of his former colleagues when he was still working as a TA before he moved overseas. They’d asked him to keep an eye out for her on campus.
“Ronan, so nice to see you,” Lana said with a big smile. “Sorry, it’s Professor Walsh now, isn’t it? I heard you were teaching here.”
The café erupted in titters and whispers, and Audrey’s face slowly drained of color until she no longer resembled the perky pink polo shirt that hugged her figure perfectly. And maybe it made Ronan a grade-A bastard, but damn if he didn’t feel a little smug about the whole thing.
He greeted Lana and then turned back to Audrey. “That’s right. I do go by Professor Walsh these days.”
“The guest psychology professor,” she said, scrubbing a hand over her face. “You’re teaching the Wednesday night Brain-Changing Positivity class.”
Ronan hadn’t been sure the moment could have gotten any better, but he was more than pleased to be proven wrong. This was the gleaming, chocolate-dipped cherry on top of the sundae. “I take it that means I’ll see you next Wednesday night.”
She nodded, sucking on the inside of her cheek. Now her cheeks weren’t simply pink—they were bordering on being as red as the lip prints he’d already spotted in the half the business logos around town. “Yes, that’s right. I’ll be there on Wednesday.”
“See you then,” he said as he handed a few bills over to pay for his snack. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
Later that night, Ronan