Book of the Month CHAPTER 2: BEFORE I FALL

Book of the Month Chapter 2: BEFORE I FALL

Beth

It doesn’t take me long to figure out who Noah Warren is. He’s a little bit older than the rest of the fresh-faced underclassmen I’ve gotten used to. I’m not even twenty-one, but I feel ancient these days. I was up late last night, worrying about my dad.

I can feel him watching me as I hand out the syllabus and the first lecture notes. My hackles are up – he’s staring and being rude. I don ‘t tolerate this from the jocks but right then, I’m stuck because Professor Blake has asked me to tutor him. I can ‘t exactly cuss him out in front of the class.

Which is really frustrating because the rest of the class is focused on Professor Blake, but not our soldier. Oh no, he’s such a stereotype it’s not even funny. Staring. Not even trying to be slick about it like the football player in the front of the classroom who’s trying to catch a glimpse of my tits when I lean down to pass out the papers.

Instead, our soldier just leans back, nonchalant like he owns the place. Like the whole world should bend over and kiss his ass because he’s defending our freedom. Well, I know all about that, and the price is too goddamned high.

And wow, how is that for bitterness and angst on a Monday morning? I need to get my shit together. I haven’t even spoken to him and I’m already tarring and feathering him. Not going to be very productive for our tutoring relationship if I hate him before we even get started.

I take a deep breath and hand him the syllabus and the first lecture worksheet.

I imagine he’s figured out that I’m his tutor.

I turn back and head to my desk in the front as Professor Blake drops her bombshell on the class.

“There will be no computer use in this class. You may use laptops during lab when Beth is instructing because there will be practical applications. But during lecture, you will not use computers. If your phones go off, you can expect to be docked participation points, and those are a significant portion of your grade.”

There is the requisite crying and wailing and gnashing of the teeth. I remember the first time I heard of Professor Blake’s no computer rule. I thought it was draconian and complete bullshit. But then I realized she was right – I learned better by writing things down. Especially the stats stuff.

I look up at Noah. He’s watching the class now. He’s scowling. He looks like he might frown a lot. He looks…harder than the rest of the class. There are angles to his cheeks and shadows beneath his eyes. His dark hair is shorter than most and he damn sure doesn’t have that crazy-ass swoop thing that so many of the guys are doing these days.

Everything about him radiates soldier. I wonder if he knows how intimidating he looks. And why the hell do I care what he thinks?

I’m going to be his tutor, not his shrink.

He shifts and his gaze collides with mine. Something tightens in the vicinity of my belly. It’s not fear. Soldiers don’t scare me, not even ones who look like they were forged in fire like Noah.

No, it’s something else. Something tight and tense and distinctly distracting. I’m not in the mood for my hormones to overwhelm my common sense.

I stomp on the feeling viciously.

I’m staring at him now. I’m deliberately trying to look confident and confrontational. Men like Noah don’t respect weakness. Show a moment’s hesitation and the next thing you know they’ve got your ass pinned in a corner while they’92re trying to grab your tits.

He lifts one brow in response. I have no idea how to read that reaction.

Noah

I had to swallow my pride and ask some perky blond directions to The Grind. I hadn’t expected Valley Girl airheadedness but then again, I didn’t really know what I expected. I managed to interpret the directions between a few giggles and several likes and ahs and ums . I imagined her briefing my CO and almost smiled at the train wreck it would be. We had a lieutenant like her once. She was in the intelligence shop and she might have been the smartest lieutenant in the brigade, but the way she talked made everyone think she was a complete space cadet.

She’d said like one too many times during a briefing to the division commander and yeah, well, last I heard, she’d been put in charge of keeping the latrines cleaned down in Kuwait. Which wasn’t fair but then again, what in life was? Guess the meat eaters in the brigade hadn’t wanted to listen to the Valley Girl give them intelligence reports on what the Kurdish Pesh and ISIS were up to at any given point in time.

My cup of coffee from The Grind isn ‘t terrible. It certainly isn ‘t Green Bean coffee, but it’s a passable second place. Green Bean has enough caffeine in it to keep you up for two days straight. This stuff…it’s softer, I guess. Smoother? I’m not really sure. It isn ‘t bad. Just not what I’m used to. Nothing here is.

I wonder if there is any way to run down to Bragg and get some of the hard stuff. Hell, I am considering chewing on coffee beans at this point. Anything to clear the fog in my brain. But I need the fog to keep the anxiety at bay, so I guess I’m fucked there, too. Guess I should start getting used to things around here. No better place to start than with the coffee, I guess.

The Grind is busy. Small, low tables are crowded with laptops and books and students all looking intently at their work. It’s like a morgue in here. Everyone is hyper-focused. Don ‘t these people know how to have a good time? Relax a little bit? There are no seats anywhere. The Grind is apparently a popular if silent, place.

The tutor walks in at exactly twelve fifty-eight. Two minutes to spare.

“You’re not late.” I’m mildly shocked.

She does that eyebrow thing again, and I have to admit on her, it is pretty fucking sexy. “I tend to be punctual. It’s a life skill.”

“Kitty has claws,” I say.

She stiffens. Apparently, the joke’s fallen flat. Guess I’m going to have to work on that.

“Let’s get something straight, shall we? My name is Beth, and I’m going to tutor you in business stats. We are not going to be friends or fuck buddies or anything else you might think of. I’m not ‘Kitty’ or any other pet name. I’m here to get a degree, not a husband.”

My not-strong-enough coffee burns my tongue as her words sink in. She’s damn sure prickly all right. I can ‘t decide if I admire her spine or I think it’s unnecessary. Hell, it isn ‘t like I tried to grab her ass or asked her to suck my dick.

The coffee slides down my throat. “Glad we cleared that up,” I say instead. “I wasn’t sure if blowjobs came with the tutoring.”

She grinds her teeth. There isn ‘t much by way of sense of humor in the tutor. She has a no-nonsense look about her. Her dark blond hair is drawn tight to her neck, and I can ‘t figure out if she is naturally flawless or if she is just damn good with makeup.

There is a freshness to her, though, that isn ‘t something I am used to either. Enlisted women, the few I’ve been around, either try way too hard with too much black eyeliner downrange or aren ‘t interested in men beyond the buddy level.

But this academic woman is a new species entirely for me, and as our standoff continues, I realize I have no idea what the rules of engagement are with someone like her. At least not beyond her name is not Kitty and she’s not here for a husband. Oh and can ‘t forget the no blowjobs thing. She made the rules pretty clear.

She is fucking stunning and I suddenly can ‘t talk.

She clears her throat. “So are we going to stand here and continue to stare at each other, or are we going to get to work? I have somewhere to be in two hours.”

I motion toward the library. “Lead the way.”

Beth

He’s watching my ass as I walk in front of him. He’s just the type who would do something like that. The blowjob comment caught me completely off guard. I hate that. I hate that I couldn ‘t come up with any brilliant, sarcastic response, either. I always think of smartass comebacks fifteen minutes too late.

So now I am even more irritated than I was when he’d been staring at me class. What the hell had Professor Blake been thinking?

I lead us to a small table out of the way, where there won’t be a lot of disruption. Stats is one of those things that takes a lot of concentration. At least it did for me until I learned the language.

I pull out the worksheet from class. Homework and lessons. “So let’s get the business stuff out of the way,” I say. I hate the tone in my voice. I’m not normally a ball-busting bitch, but he’s set me off and if being cold and curt is the only way to keep him in line then so be it. “I’d like to be paid each meeting. Cash.”

“What’s your rate?”

I sit back. How the hell did that question catch me off guard? I don ‘t know. I work part-time at the country club next to campus, but the tips are hit or miss. The thing about the wealthy? Some of them can be downright stingy. Most of the time, I make okay tips. When it isn’t, I tried not to be bitter about how they don’t need the money like I do.

I just smile and take their orders.

I’m stuck. Noah is not my first tutoring job, but my other jobs were paid for by the university. I have no idea how much to charge for freelance work.

“Fifty dollars an hour, three times a week,” he offers abruptly.

I cover my shock with my hand. “Huh?”

“Fifty dollars an hour. I saw a sign in the common area charging that much for Spanish. Figure Stats should be at least that much, right?

My voice is stuck somewhere in the bottom of my chest. Fifty bucks an hour is a lot of groceries and medication. It feels wrong taking that kind of money, even from Mr. Does-the-Tutoring-Come-with-Blowjobs.

“Will that be a problem?”

I shake my head. “No. That’s fine.” There’s a stack of bills that need to be paid. The electricity is a week overdue. I’m counting on tips tonight to make a payment tomorrow to keep them from shutting it off. Again. Between that and the money from tutoring – I could keep the lights on. I can feel my face burning hot. I turn away, digging into my backpack to keep him from seeing my humiliation, not wanting him to see my relief.

“Same time, same place? Monday, Wednesday and Friday?” My computer flickers to life.

“Works for me. How much pain should I be prepared for?” He sounds worried. He should. Professor Blake is one of the top in her field, and that’s no small feat considering she came up at a time when women were still blazing trails in the business world.

Depends on if you do the work or not, I say. I can ‘t quite bring myself to offer him comfort. I’m still irritated by the blowjob comment. “So let’s get started.” I lean over the worksheet. “What questions do you have from class today?”

I look up to find him watching me. There’s something in his eyes that tugs at me. I don ‘t want to be tugged at.

He looks away. He’s strangling that poor pen in his hands. Clearly, I’ve struck a nerve with my question.

I wish I didn’t remember how that felt. The lost sensation of not having a clue what I was doing. I didn’t even know what questions to ask.

I don ‘t want to feel anything charitable toward him, but there’s something about the way he shifts. Something that makes him vulnerable.

I run my tongue over my teeth. This isn ‘t going well. “Okay look. We’ll start with the basics, okay?”

I open my laptop to the lecture notes.

He finally notices my computer. “I haven’t seen one of the black MacBooks in years,” he says.

He’s not being a prick, but I bristle anyway. “It might be old but she’s never failed me.”

“It can run stats software? Isn’t that pretty intense processor-wise?”

I don’t feel like telling him that to run said stats program, I have to shut down every other program and clear the cache. I don’t want to admit that there’s just no money to buy a new computer. I can’t even finance one because I don’t have the credit for it.

Business school is about looking the part as much as it is about knowing the game, so none of those words are going to leave my lips.

“It gets the job done,” I say. “Now, the first lecture.”

“I get everything about what stats is supposed to do. I got lost somewhere around regression.”

“Don’t worry about regression right now. We’re going to focus on understanding what we’re looking at first up. Basic concepts.”

I look over at him. He’s scowling at the paper. I can see tiny flecks of gold in his dark brown eyes. He drags one hand through his short dark hair and leans forward. He’s practically radiating tension, and I can feel it infecting me.

Damn it, I don’t give a shit about his anxiety. I don’t care. I can ‘t.

“So the normal distribution is?”

I take a deep breath. This stuff I know. I draw the standard bell-shaped curve on his paper. “The normal distribution says that any results are normally…”

Noah

She knows her stuff. She relaxes when she starts talking about confidence intervals and normal distributions. Hell, I can’t even spell normal distribution.

But she has a way of making things make sense.

And her confidence isn’t scary so much as it is really fucking attractive.

I’m watching her lips move and I swear to God I’m trying to pay attention, but my brain decides to take a detour into not stats-ville. She’s got a great mouth. It’s a little too wide, and she has a tendency to chew on the inside of her lip when she’s focusing.

I look down because I don’t want her to catch me not paying attention. I need to understand this stuff, not stare at her like a lovesick private.

I’m focusing on confidence intervals when something dings on her computer. She frowns and opens her e-mail. It’s angled away so I can’t look over her shoulder, but something is clearly wrong. A flush creeps up her neck. She grinds her teeth when she’s irritated. I tend to notice that in other people. I do the same thing when the anxiety starts taking hold. At least when it starts. It graduates quickly beyond teeth grinding into something more paralyzing.

I glance at my watch. It’s almost time for her to go. I have no idea how I’m going to get my homework done, but I’ll figure it out later. I’m meeting a couple of former military guys some place called Baywater Inn in a few hours. Plenty of time for me to get my homework done. Or at least attempt it. Because, of course, LT put me in touch with these guys, too.

But watching her, something is clearly wrong. I want to ask, but given how our history isn ‘t exactly on the confide-your-darkest-secrets level, I don ‘t.

She snaps her laptop closed and sighs. “I’ve got to run and make a phone call. Are you set for your assignment for lab?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

Her lips press into a flat line. “You can always look it up online.”

“Sure thing.”

She’s distracted now. Not paying attention. I watch her move. There’s an edge to her seriousness now, a tension in the long lines of her neck. A strand of hair falls free from the knot and brushes her temple. I want to tuck it back into place, but I’m pretty sure if I tried it, I’d be rewarded with a knee in the balls. And I like them where they are, thanks. I’ve come too close to losing them to risk them now.

I pull out my wallet and hand her two twenties and a ten. She hesitates then offers the ten back. “We didn’t do the full hour.” I refuse the money. “Keep it. Obviously you’ve got something to take care of. Don’t worry about it.”

She sucks in a deep breath like she’s going to argue but then clamps her mouth shut. “Thank you.”

She didn’t choke on it, but it’s a close thing. I am suddenly deeply curious about what has gotten her all wound up in such a short amount of time.

Maybe I’ll get a chance to ask her some day.

I definitely have the impression that Beth Lamont isn ‘t into warm cuddles and hugs. She strikes me as independent and tough.

And I admire the hell out of that attitude, even as she scares the shit out of me with how smart she is.

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