Charmed (Contemporary Romance) by Inés Saint Read Free Book Online

ceiling. She punched him in the arm, and he stuck his tongue out at her. The teacher must’ve caught him because he nodded and sat up straight a moment later. Jamie glanced over at Nick, who chuckled and said, “I’ll pretend I didn’t see that.”
    Jamie smiled and walked back to her seat. “I think I should let them stay. I’ll just wait out front so you can find me if anything else happens. There’s only an hour left anyway.”
    “Fair enough. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you a difficult and personal question before you leave.”
    Jamie knew what it was. She’d never told anyone at school anything about Scott. It dawned on her now they should know what happened to him, in case it ever came up again. But she dreaded the subject.
    She quietly studied Nick before taking in a deep, steadying breath, stating the facts as succinctly and painlessly as possible. “Their father Scott, he suffered a brain aneurism on his way to work. He managed to pull over, but a moment later, he was gone. Michael and Timmy don’t really understand it yet, but they know that what happened to their father happened in a car. And he was, of course, wearing a seatbelt. They’ve actually asked me about that because of all of the public service announcements.”
    “I’m sorry,” Nick said, and she was grateful he didn’t say anything else. Simple was best, speeches were uncomfortable. She got up to leave and Nick followed her lead. Before he opened the door for her, he turned to face her. “Jamie?”
    She looked up, again feeling the slight shock of looking into such clear eyes. They were more of a sea green in the absence of sunlight.
    “Why did you want Claire to stay?”
    Jamie looked down and decided to tell him the truth. She was too exhausted from her earlier emotional distress to come up with anything else. “Because our last two meetings ended badly, and I wanted to have a buffer.”
    “You don’t trust me?”
    Jamie was sure that the fact that she didn’t was written all over her face. Though she was grateful for the caring way he’d handled the situation with her boys, she just didn’t have it in her to trust people who behaved one way one moment, and another way the next.
    “Listen, Jamie, I’m sorry about how our first meeting ended. I know I was out of line. I don’t know what came over me and I would’ve apologized before, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. Really, you have no idea how badly I felt the moment the words were out of my mouth.”
    Jamie had to give him props for apologizing. It couldn’t be easy. “Thank you for apologizing. I didn’t know how to bring it up either, but I assure you I was not coming on to you. You were being friendly and I was just responding in kind.”
    • • •
    Nick looked down at Jamie as she told him, firmly, that she had no interest in him.
    He noticed a tiny birthmark on the right side of her upper lip. Never would he have thought a little detail like that could make an upper lip so enticing. “I knew that,” he answered.
    Jamie raised an eyebrow in disbelief. As much as he wanted her to believe him, there was nothing more he could say. He was about to open the door, eager to get her lips out of his office, when she smilingly said, “I won’t hold your huge ego against you if you don’t hold my father-in-law’s behavior against me.”
    She hadn’t smiled at him since she’d last been in his office, and he realized he’d needed her smile to feel things could be normal between them. “I wouldn’t hold that against you. And I don’t have a huge ego.”
    She smirked.
    “I’m a nice guy with a very reasonably sized ego. I’ll prove it to you.”
    “You don’t need to prove anything to me, Nick. We’re good, okay?” She laughed.
    “Will you stop avoiding me?”
    “I’ll stop avoiding you.”
    “Good, then you’ll have a chance to see how meek and unpretentious I am.”
    “Now that I seriously doubt.” She opened the door and