The fact that a fling would also fulfill her secret desire for Cal was purely coincidental. Could she help it if the perfect man for the job happened to be someone she fantasized about on a regular basis?
Madeline unbuttoned the top button of her oversize men’s shirt and took a deep breath. She could do this.
Once the noise had died down and her digital watch flashed 6:01 p.m., she eased open the frosted-glass door and stepped inside the faculty’s inner sanctum. Foam cups littered all three round tables, along with leftover napkins and doughnut crumbs. The only person left in the faculty lounge was Cal.
For a moment Madeline gave in to the pure pleasure of staring at the man who didn’t know he held her future in his calloused hands. Seated in a back corner with his elbows on the table, he wore a gray T-shirt depicting the school’s mascot—a Louisville Cardinal. The T-shirt stretched over mouth-watering muscles, making him look more like the mechanic he used to be than the successful entrepreneur and business instructor he’d become. Of course, Tuesdays weren’t his night to teach. He usually came to the university to review lesson plans and read student papers, even after long days of overseeing his chain of car repair shops, Perfect Timing.
Madeline savored the broad lines of his shoulders, the intriguing cut of sinewy forearms. When she reached his solemn profile, she was unsettled by the chiseled jaw and sharp angles of his face. Without his customary grin, Cal looked less like her good-natured friend and more like the campus wolf.
Perhaps he heard the catch in her breath.
He turned from his grade book. “Hey, gorgeous.” He smiled the killer smile that had probably broken hearts from Cincinnati to Nashville.
Madeline hadn’t known knees truly could knock until that moment. What had she been thinking to come here like this? She closed her eyes to steel herself, knowing she’d lose her nerve if she didn’t ask him right off the bat.
He waited patiently, his hazel eyes turning her knocking knees to something more akin to jiggling Jell-O.
Don’t talk like a textbook, she schooled herself. Act casual.
“I know you’re busy and all, Cal.” She gulped for air and courage, her heart pummeling her chest in a fit of rebellious nerves. “But what would you say to getting out of here and setting the sheets on fire back at my place?”
For one painfully endless moment, the words hung there, echoing over and over in Madeline’s mind.
She slapped her hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to staunch the stupid question she’d already voiced. She lowered her hand, ready to flee if only her feet would cooperate.
Cal blinked back at her, silent. Slowly he closed the grading book in front of him, as if hoping to stall his response.
She hadn’t known a moment of such keen mortification since she—the scientist’s daughter—had flunked twelfth-grade physics.
“I think all those years on the Harley have started to affect my hearing.” He flashed her a rueful grin, complete with the dimple that sent female coeds into swoon mode. “Could you run that by me again?”
There wasn’t a chance she would repeat that hideous proposition. “It was nothing really, I—” Unsure what to say, she shuffled backward. “I’m just going to head on back to my building now.” She inched further away, eager to escape and disgusted with herself for losing her nerve at the same time.
“Wait a minute.” He rose from the chair.
Maybe, if she had been in the company of an average man, Madeline would have made a break for the door. Instead she could only stand there and gape at six-feet-plus inches of impressive male.
He took full advantage of her immobility as he sauntered over to her. Did he know how disarming that dimple could be?
“I thought I heard a very interesting offer just now.” A hint of backwoods Tennessee still softened an occasional vowel, lending his words a pleasing drawl.
She shook her head so hard her glasses rattled against her nose. “All those years on the Harley, remember?”
“Maddy, how long have we been friends?” He reached up to cup her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length.
Heat stole through her at the contact. “Four years and two months.” She recalled every time they’d touched during that time, too. And none of those idle brushes of hands exchanging coffee mugs could compare to the way he held her now. Cal’s undivided attention intoxicated her.
“That sounds about right.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “And during those four years and two months, I have heard you ask me about my garages, my lesson plans, my teaching ideology, and maybe a time or two about my students. But in all that time, not once have you asked me back to your place to set the sheets on fire.”
Heat suffused her cheeks, her limbs, her chest…she’d bet even her fingertips were blushing bright red. Obviously he’d heard her question just fine.
“The funny part is, I used to flirt outrageously with you just to get you to crack a smile.” He cradled her cheek with one palm and lifted her chin.
Heady sensation clouded her brain cells. She’d had a boyfriend or two since high school, but the emphasis had been on “friend” and those relationships hadn’t compared remotely to this. Ever since she’d come to the university, she’d been absorbed in her work, obsessed with succeeding in the academic world and following in her father’s footsteps. There’d been no time for a man—until now.
His hand slid away, landing on her shoulder once again. “But no matter how much I teased you, you always turned me down cold.”
She blinked up at him, more tongue-tied than usual around Louisville’s bad boy. She might be able to quote complex sociological theory and speak in front of a lecture hall full of hundreds of students, but she had no clue how to converse with a man on an intimate level.
“So why don’t you explain to me what’s going on?” He maneuvered her toward the office chair at the lounge’s lone computer terminal, then gently pushed her into the seat. Pulling over another chair, he plunked down in front of her and waited.
Maddy sighed. “I guess that means no?”
There was something unbearably sad about having your best friend turn you down, even though Cal surely had no idea he rated as the closest friend she’d ever had. He probably had other people off campus who were more important in his life with his chain of garages, but Madeline’s world of geeky scholars and tenure-obsessed assistant professors brightened whenever Cal was around. She valued the evenings they’d sit together comparing problematic students, the demands of the administration, the joys of the classroom.
Cal lifted his hand to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “It means that if the Lady Scholar is propositioning a guy from the wrong side of the tracks like me, then her world has obviously been turned upside down. So out with it.”
The soft scrape of his fingers against her cheek imparted a pleasure that went far beyond the thrills she found in a successful day of research. Cal’s work-roughened hands, the same ones that had wrestled blowtorches and solder guns, caressed her so gently.
Yet she knew that physical pleasure was only temporary, even if she’d never fully experienced it before. Her career field—sociological studies—had always been the one constant in her life. She had to find a way to get her project approved. If only Cal would help.
Cal watched Madeline take deep breaths. She was an odd bird, his Lady Scholar, but he’d had the hots for her since laying his hands on her engine and his eyes on her up-tipped nose four years ago. Intelligent, diligent, and already respected for her contributions to the sociology department even at her young age, Maddy embodied the qualities he most admired in a person.
The fact that she also epitomized the absentminded professor