Page 25 of The Charade

Which I guess was probably why he kept the smile mostly to himself. He'd never escape the throngs of hormonal girls from our school if he handed smiles like that out like candy.

"You pick that notebook out especially for Stats?" he asked, eyeing the skull-and-crossbones pattern on a light pink background.

"I thought it went well with the subject matter," I said lightly, not letting on that I was happy he'd made the connection.

He chuckled. "You really don't like math, do you?"

"I don't like things I'm not good at." I shrugged.

"Well," he said. "Hopefully, I can help you change your opinion on the subject before too long."

"So you're one of those math tutors who actually likes math?" I narrowed my eyes so he'd know I was judging him big time for that.

It was his turn to shrug. "Math works the same in English and Spanish, so yeah, it's the one subject I didn't suck at when I moved here."

"I guess I never thought about it that way." I found myself even more intrigued by his background and hoped he'd tell me more.

"But I totally get why you don't like it." He rolled up the sleeves of his button-up and it was a treat to see his forearms again. "I felt the same way about a lot of things until my tutors explained them in a way that made sense to me."

So my tutor had had tutors before?

"Is that why you're a math tutor, then?" I asked, because from what I knew about him so far, I really doubted he needed the money he'd earn from working with me.

He shrugged, the fabric of his white button-up stretching across his broad shoulders with the movement. "I guess I like the challenge of taking someone who sees math as an enemy to seeing it on friendlier terms by the time we're done with our tutoring sessions."

"Do you tutor lots of people from school?" I asked, a weird sensation of jealousy forming in my stomach at the thought of him spending one-on-one time with multiple math-challenged people from school.

Which is ridiculous, I know.

Never thought I'd feel possessive over my math tutor…whom I’d just met, by the way.

And yet, here we were.

"I usually tutor a few people at a time, depending on how long my services are needed," he said. "But since I'm enrolled in more advanced courses this year, I told Mrs. Simmons I only had time for one."

"So should I feel special?" I asked. "Or embarrassed that I'm a bad-enough case that I'm the only one to make the cut this year?"

"Let's go with special." He looked down at the notebook he'd brought in with him and pulled a sheet of paper from the front. "Actually, that reminds me. I have a contract that I'll need you to sign before we get started." He slid the piece of paper across the tile tabletop so I could read it. "It's just something I have everyone I work with sign so we can make the most of our time together."

I frowned as I looked at the words printed on the page.

Carter cleared his throat and pointed to the paragraphs he had printed there. "So, it basically just goes over some of the expectations that I have for our tutoring sessions."

"Are you going to grade me, too?" I asked, the whine in my tone coming out more prevalently than it probably should have.

But he shook his head and said, "No, nothing like that." He leaned over the table and pointed to the bullet points about a third of the way down the page.

He had really nice hands for a guy. Long fingers. His nails short and clean. And the veins crawling up from his knuckles and disappearing into the sleeves of his white shirt were very nice to look at, too.

Okay, focus, Ava.

"The first bullet point talks about how I expect you to come to our sessions willing to work hard and learn," Carter said. "Basically, to make the most of our time together, I need you to be cooperative. I don't like wasting people’s money, and I don't like having my time wasted, either."

He lifted his gaze to mine, as if waiting for a verbal agreement. But with him leaning forward with his gaze intent on me, I suddenly found it hard to breathe, because having his face only a foot and a half away was kind of overwhelming.

I'd thought his eyes were just plain aqua-blue before, but now I could see little flecks of turquoise in them, too.

"Do you think you can agree to that first expectation?" he prodded when I didn't say anything.

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