Page 37 of The Exception

A beat passed and he was sure they were both thinking of that bed.

She turned away, shrugging. “I can help you.”

“Yeah?”

“My place is kind of quiet too,” she said, and it felt sort of like a confession. She held up her fork with a bite of steak. “Consider it payment for the food.”

“The meal’s on the house, but I won’t turn down tutoring from the smartest woman in the class.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

His eyes dropped down her front involuntarily at the wordeverywhere. Leave it to him to make that dirty. Luckily, she didn’t catch the slip. She took the seat beside him and pulled the book out of his hands.

“The thing about stats is, it’s just a tool. A complicated one, but like all tools, its sole purpose is to make your life easier. To learn it is to love it.”

“Sure,” he said, trying to keep the playfulness in his voice, but damn. School Teacher Sonya might rival Nurse Sonya for fantasy of the month.

He wondered if, when all of this was over, he might have a shot at a drink with her. Maybe a nice dinner. The idea had been stewing in the back of his head since their treadmill run, when his attraction to her had morphed into an actual desire to get to know her. And of course, there was the bed shopping where his head had filled that desire in with all sorts of fantasies as to how that could turn out.

She’d probably shoot him down anyway, given his less than stellar first impression, but she’d seemed to have forgiven him for that. She hadn’t asked him if he wanted a glass of orange juice in at least two weeks.Maybe…

Then again, even if he hadn’t made an ass of himself, he’d heard through the grapevine that her ex-fiancé was a commercial airline pilot who took her on fancy vacations and had a house in Georgetown.

Trav was an ex-medic who was training for a job that would most likely require moonlighting just to pay his bills. And the only traveling he’d done was between warzones. They might be friends now, but when it came to anything else, she was way out of his league.

“Are you even going to take notes?” she asked.

He snapped to, nodding. “Yup. Definitely. Can you just repeat that last part for me?”There I go proving my own point.

Sonya handed him a pen. “Pay attention,” she said, grinning. “This is going to be fun.”

Seventeen

“Hey, good call back there,” Sonya said, pointing to the patient’s room where Trav had just caught a potentially problematic discrepancy in the man’s chart.

Trav smiled to himself and allowed Sonya’s compliment to wash over him. Their working relationship had been on the same trajectory as their friendship recently but he still felt like a kid getting an “A” on his report card whenever she praised him for his work.

He rubbed the back of his steadily warming neck and glanced over at her from the corner of his eye.

“Not bad for an almost paramedic, huh?”

That secret smile he’d only seen in more relaxed situations stretched across her lips and he wished he could see it full on instead of in profile. That smile felt like sunshine on a warm day and he wanted to bask in it.

“You’ve still got a lot to learn. I mean, I’m almost 5’5” and I still can’t reach the plates in the cabinet over my refrigerator.”

He chuckled. “You help me learn what I need to know and I’ll help you reach those plates.”

Sonya stopped walking and turned to him, hugging the charts she was carrying to her chest. Her smile had dimmed to a smirk but amusement still danced in her eyes.

“What do you think these heels are for?”

It was an invitation to look at those legs and he accepted without a second thought. When his eyes found her face again, he knew he’d been caught but she didn’t seem offended. He’d have to unpack that later.

Something had shifted between them ever since they’d started spending evenings studying in the break room, but he didn’t want to think about it too much. He didn’t want to risk getting his hopes up about them possibly being more than friends at the end of his rotation.

“Good point,” he said. “But we’re still a good team.”

Sonya cocked her head to one side. “You think so?”

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