moved to the open doorway, standing half in the hallway, leaving Kenzie and Myles in relative privacy.
“Good lesson today,” Myles said from his seat at a table, his tone serious. But his eyes and wicked smirk mocked her from his semirecumbent position.
She heard Mac’s advice to not respond when there was no good counter, but ignored it, blurting, “You have no idea—You just don’t get—What is your problem?” She charged at him, fists clenched at her sides. She certainly had no intention of hitting him, but his one little comment and snide sneer riled her beyond reason.
Just as she reached the table where he sat, he stood. Forced to crane her neck just to look at his chin, her anger boiled hotter. How dare he try to intimidate her with his size? With those broad shoulders and muscular arms?
One call to Larry would have Myles in solitary confinement for a week.
Only one other inmate had ever tried to intimidate her. That was well over a year ago. That time she had crumbled, calling for the guard on duty, having the inmate permanently removed from her class. Fearing that the other inmates in her classes would think they could overrun her, Kenzie had grown braver, stronger. She had read somewhere that kindness could be mistaken for weakness. She let her students know right away after that incident that that was not the case with her. But now she was faced with another inmate who wouldn’t back down. She should have been angry or frightened, but she wasn’t. Inexplicably, she felt safe with him. Oh, he might infuriate her, but for some reason, she felt he’d never hurt her. Was she a fool to trust him so much?
Those terrible, beautiful blue eyes never looked away, never broke eye contact as Myles put his hands around her fists and held them gently.
“I meant it as a compliment,” he whispered. “The polite thing to do would be to say ‘thank you.’”
She should have wrenched her hands from his, stepped back, put at least three feet between them. Instead she took a tiny step toward him, closer to the strength he exuded.
Finally able to look away from his hypnotic eyes, she noticed a bruise forming around his right cheekbone. “What happened?” she instantly demanded. Of their own volition, the fingers of her right hand gently probed his cheek, feeling minor swelling. Was this from an inmate? Or worse, a guard?
That offending smirk returned as he gently pushed her away. Just then JB and Larry had charged into the classroom, pushing desks out of their way as they appraised Myles.
Today Kenzie hung her head low, still too embarrassed to exit her car. While nothing really tangible happened between her and Myles, they both knew that rules had been broken. She was to have no physical contact with any inmate. And she certainly wasn’t supposed to enjoy the feel of his hands briefly holding hers.
He simultaneously irritated and intrigued her. Along with her trust in him came more emotions than she wanted to own up to at the moment. Was she crazy? She didn’t even know what he was convicted of. How could she think that he was safe, that she would be safe with him?
God, why does my heart skip a beat every time this man, who is so clearly off-limits, comes around? she prayed. I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me! He’s an inmate, and yet I can’t help the way my stomach drops to my toes when I see him. He makes me so angry, but he makes me feel so safe. Please take these feelings away from me. I don’t want them anymore.
Glancing at her watch, she realized she was already five minutes late for her first class of the day. “See what you made me do, you…you…blue-eyed man,” she grumbled to herself as she hurried from the car to the security checkpoint. “You made me late!”
The rest of the morning and the first part of the afternoon sped by in a blur.
When three o’clock arrived, she said goodbye to her second class and began preparing for her advanced class, which would arrive in just thirty minutes. Myles would arrive in just thirty minutes. Her heart gave a telltale flutter at the thought of his grin. That sometimes-teasing, sometimes-kind, sometimes-devastating grin.
Devastating? Are you kidding? Kenz, what is wrong with you? Too many romantic daydreams. Get your head in the ball game!
Pushing aside her own inner monologue, Kenzie began doing the physical chores to prepare for the class. Scooting chairs behind desks and wiping off chalkboards required little mental activity, and for the time being she thought it might be best to wipe everything from her mind.
Especially Myles Parsons.
But her heart betrayed her when the inmates in her third class began walking into the classroom. It leapt excitedly, as she anticipated seeing Myles’s face. She watched each man intently as he entered. Nineteen orange jumpsuits, nineteen men, nineteen faces. But no piercing blue eyes.
Where could he be, just a few days before the exam?
A body slammed Myles out of line as he walked toward Ms. Thorn’s classroom. He had managed to maneuver his way to the very end of the line. If he was completely honest with himself, which he really did not want to be at that moment, he had finagled his way to the end of the line of prisoners, hoping to have some opportunity to connect with Ms. Thorn.
As he hoped every day during class. Only because of the mission, of course.
He knew the rules, knew that breaking them meant solitary confinement. And while he had no desire to spend a week alone in a hole—that would defeat the purpose of keeping an eye on Kenzie—neither could he deny the strange effect she had on him when they were in the same room. He knew he needed to keep his contact with her in check, but she made it awfully difficult to keep his mind on his assignment.
Now bright spots flashed before Myles’s closed eyes. He rested his aching head against the block wall, leaning the rest of his body heavily there, too. He felt like a bulldozer had just rammed him into a brick wall.
Peeking out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the rest of his class was already in the classroom along with the new guard. He and the bulldozer were alone in the hallway.
Venturing a peek at the other man’s uniform shirt and brown pants, Myles mumbled, “Did I do something wrong, boss?”
The guard—what was his name?—Whitestall, didn’t say anything for several seconds. He just smacked his open palm with the enormous flashlight that doubled as a nightstick.
“Do you think I’m stupid, Parsons?”
“No, sir!” Myles jumped. Whatever this was, it was not going to go in his favor.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice you cozying up to the teacher?”
Myles bit his lip and kept his mouth shut. Nothing he said would improve this situation. He wanted to know what Whitestall was after, what he was trying to hunt out. Silence was usually the best provocateur.
“You know that if I turn you in to the superintendent for inappropriate conduct with a female state employee, you’ll be spending the next six months in solitary.”
“Yes, sir.” It was best to agree with anything the guard said, though six months seemed a bit extreme. Likely he was just trying to intimidate Myles.
“Do you want to spend six months in solitary?”
“No,
