Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,163

I saw it all. Girls with bad period cramps, a broken limb or two, boys with bloody noses or split lips from exchanging punches over a girl. I had the diabetics I doled out insulin to, the students who needed their inhalers or meds throughout the day, and those kids who almost cut their fingers off in shop class.

My late husband, Travis, decided to join the military at the ripe old age of eighteen, and we were married shortly after he went through basic training. During his first deployment, I was pregnant with our first son and knew I needed to do something to contribute and keep my mind off every possible scenario of him dying while he was gone. So, I enrolled at the community college in the nursing program, and two years later had my RN degree. Because the prior school nurse just happened to be retiring the year I came out with my RN, Fawn Hill High School allowed me to take the job without a bachelor’s degree. And I’d showed them, over the last eight years, why I didn’t need a higher degree and was fully capable of mending teenage hearts and scars.

“Good morning, Olivia.” I smile at the young Spanish teacher whose turn it was to facilitate morning bus drop off.

“Hey, Penny! Beautiful day, at least I got stuck on this duty while the sun’s out.” She was a little too sunshine and rainbows for my sarcastic tastes, but that was better than a sourpuss.

Plus, better her than me. I already wrangled three boys this morning, I am not up for herding hundreds more.

But when I walk into the front entrance of the high school, I almost wish I had just stayed out near the bus duty station. Because standing at the plexiglass window to the school receptionist and administrative office, is Forrest Nash.

I stop in my tracks, speechless for one of the first times in my life. As if on cue, as if he feels my presence, the infuriating man turns away from where he is talking to Georgia, the receptionist who has worked at Fawn Hill High since before I was a student here.

That iridescent blue gaze locks in on me, rising from the tips of my toes to the top of my dry-shampooed hair. It lingers on my hips, my breasts, my lips … and each time his eyes stop to assess their targets, I tingle in those places. By the time Forrest is done drinking me in, my nipples are hard and I try to conceal my panting breath.

A smirk graces his full lips, and I want to smack it off his olive-toned cheek. All of that smugness contained in such a gorgeous package … it’s honestly fucking annoying. This man has long, lean limbs … the body of a swimmer with wiry muscles and a tapered waist. His face is something out of Roman art. Maybe not as classically handsome as Keaton or broodily attractive as Bowen … but Forrest is a pretty boy with a dark edge just underneath his skin. I know that underneath that plain gray T-shirt is a set of abs to fawn over and that he’s not wrong for the cocky strut he puts on because he’s more than packing down below.

And those hipster glasses he wears, thick-rimmed and black so that his baby blues and cheekbones seem even more intense … God, they just do it for me. Not that I’d ever tell him that.

“What are you doing here?” I blurt out, rather harshly.

“Good to see you, P,” Forrest says in the tone of a man who has seen you naked.

No one called me by the first letter of my name, and it annoyed me that Forrest did.

“Wait a minute, are you still in high school? That’s right, I didn’t remember you graduating.” The comeback is elementary, but I haven’t had my coffee yet and I’m shocked by his occupying my workspace.

Lowering his voice so that the woman sitting on the other side of the plexiglass can’t hear, Forrest walks two steps toward me and says, “Now, if I were young enough to still be a student here, that would not be good for you. You know, because of the whole sex thing.”

I swear, I try to stop the blush that breaks out on my cheeks and chest, but I’m a blonde who hasn’t seen the sun all winter so it doesn’t work.

We slept together twice, and both times had been under the influence