For a moment she gave him that look again, the one that made him want to laugh, then she laughed herself. “Okay. I don’t know why you’re so interested, but I’m also taking English lit and algebra. With your class, that’s nine hours. I’d love to take more, but with the boys and my work schedule and everything, that’s about all I can manage.”
“I think it’s incredible that you’re able to take anything when you have children,” he said honestly. “Do you have any time at the end of the day to just sit down and put your feet up and relax with your husband?”
Something flickered in her eyes, but she only said quietly, “The husband took a hike a long time ago, but yes, I do get to put my feet up once in a while.”
So that was what had put the shadows in her eyes, he thought. Obviously, there was more to the story, but he didn’t intend to push. “If you find time to relax when you’ve got sons, then you must be better organized than my mom was when I was growing up,” he said easily. “Most of the time she was running from daylight to midnight.”
“Oh, I can handle that.” She chuckled. “Algebra is another matter completely.”
He grinned. “Not your thing, huh?”
“God, no! The only math I’ve done in the past eighteen years is balance my checkbook, and sometimes, I don’t do that well. Give me your class any day. It’s a piece of cake compared to algebra.”
“Really? Maybe I need to toughen up the curriculum,” he said dryly.
Only just then realizing what she’d said, she gasped, “Oh, no! I didn’t mean—”
Laughing, he sat back to grin at her. “I was just kidding. The class is hard enough as it is. So tell me what else you’ve been doing besides taking care of your kids, working and studying. Have you joined a sorority yet?”
“Yeah, right.” She chuckled. “Somehow, I don’t think I would fit in very well with the eighteen-year-olds.”
“I think you’d fit in with just about anyone,” he replied honestly. “What about football games? Dances? I know it’s early in the semester, but you are planning to get involved in the social scene, aren’t you?”
“Oh, no,” she said, horrified at the very suggestion. “I’m thirty-six years old—”
“So?”
“I’ve got kids!”
His mouth twitched. “I know I sound like a broken record, but…so? And don’t say you won’t fit in,” he added quickly. “You’ve obviously waited a long time to go to college. It should be about more than studying, don’t you think?”
He had a point, one that Natalie hadn’t considered. She had waited years to go to college. Why shouldn’t she enjoy it? Just because she was a little older and had children didn’t mean she couldn’t be a part of university life like the rest of the freshmen in her class.
“I’ll think about it,” she promised.
“Good.” Glancing at the clock on the wall across from their alcove, he said, “I hate to break this up, but don’t you have to get to work?”
Natalie took one look at the clock and gasped. “Oh, my God! Where did the time go? I’ve got to go!”
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he called after her as she snatched up her things and ran for the door. “Have a good day!”
Never looking back, she waved and disappeared from sight. Chuckling, Max sat back with a smile on his face. As a quiet stillness settled over the small alcove, he should have turned his attention back to the reading he’d come to do. Instead all he could think of was that he’d never be able to sit in his favorite alcove again without thinking of Natalie.
Racing down Main Street, every tick of the clock echoing in her head, Natalie groaned when the traffic light thirty feet in front of her abruptly turned red. She had no choice but to hit the brakes. She was going to be late. Resigned, she knew she had no one to blame but herself. She’d lost track of the time talking to Max.
No, she corrected herself as she raced into the parking lot of Finn’s, the restaurant where she worked. She hadn’t just lost track of time—she’d forgotten about it altogether. When Max turned his blue eyes on her and grinned, he made her forget her own name. Did he realize that? Just thinking about it mortified her.
When she pulled open the back door of the restaurant and stepped into the kitchen, she wasn’t surprised when Sam Finnegan, her boss, immediately spied her. His office had a wall of windows that gave him a bird’s-eye view of the kitchen, and it didn’t matter how busy he was at his desk, he saw everyone who came and went.
Looking up from his paperwork, he drawled, “Well, as I live and breathe, if it isn’t my star waitress. I was beginning to wonder if you were going to put in an appearance today. What’s the matter? Couldn’t tear yourself away from your sorority?”
Well used to her boss’s caustic, teasing remarks, Natalie stepped into the open doorway of his office and said dryly, “I’m not the sorority type, Sam. You know that.”
“So where you been?”
“I had to do some research at the library before work and I sort of lost track of time. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, tossing her one of the company aprons that all the waitresses wore. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. You get your head stuck in a book and you’re on another planet.”
She couldn’t deny it. Everyone who knew her knew she loved to read. She never went anywhere without a book in her purse. “Isn’t it awful?” she said with a grin. “I’ve got a whole new library to explore. I’m loving it.”
When he just sniffed and gave her his patented scowl, she wasn’t surprised…or fooled. At first glance, Sam Finnegan appeared to be one of those men who didn’t have a soft bone in his body. He was gruff and sarcastic, and no one in their right mind would ever mistake him for a teddy bear…until they got to know him.
When Derek had suddenly walked out on her and left her penniless when she was pregnant, Sam had turned out to be her knight in shining armor. He hadn’t asked her why a woman who was big as a house needed a job or where the hell her husband was. He’d simply looked at her with those piercing brown eyes of his, told her he had an opening for a waitress, then asked her if she could start immediately. Then he sat her in a corner and had her do book work for him so she wouldn’t be on her feet all day. When the boys were born, he gave her maternity leave and refused to let her return to work until her doctor gave the okay. That kind of generosity in the restaurant business was unheard of in a college town where there were always students looking for a job.
She’d accused him then of being a sweetheart of a man, and he’d flat-out denied it. But over the years he’d given himself away time and time again. Whenever the boys were sick or had a doctor’s appointment or needed her for anything, he grumbled and complained…and let her off with pay. And when she’d approached him about going to college, he pretended to be totally against the idea, then he told her that he’d been thinking about changing her shift so that she worked every other day. He’d claimed that he was going to change everyone’s hours—it would make the running of the restaurant more efficient—but he never changed anyone else’s but hers.
“You know it’s all your fault,” she said lightly as she stepped further into his office and dropped into the chair in front of his desk. “If you hadn’t changed my hours and made it possible for me to go to school twice a week, I never would have had access to the university library.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he growled. “You’re not blaming this on me. I had nothing to do with you going to college. All I did was change your shift. And I’m going to change everyone else’s as soon as I have time to work out a new schedule.”