Reed follows behind me and reaches around to push the door open. I bat his arm away. “A little late to be playing the gentleman now, isn’t it?” When I stomp down the steps and look around, trying to determine where we’re going, I noticed Reed’s cheeks blush.
Reed Pendergraft blushing?
He looks sheepish as he glances down. “I’m sorry. That was … unlike me. I assure you that I don’t normally attack random women like that.” He clears his throat, his face now red.
I’d give him kudos for forging ahead if I weren’t so furious.
A scowl darkens his face. “I’m not sure what came over me. I won’t it happen again.”
I should confess that I’m not sure what happened with me either, and I’d be lying if I said his announcement didn’t fill me with disappointment. But instead, I grasp onto one of his phrases, because anger is safer than the wanton lust flowing through my veins. “Random women? You’re calling me a random woman?”
Confusion fills his eyes before he realizes what I’m talking about. “It’s not how it sounds.”
And while I know that, I don’t really care. I need to vent these strong emotions somehow, and if I can’t make out with him, I’ll verbally attack him instead. “How many women are you in the habit of kissing anyway?”
“Not many. I’m usually more selective.” His anger returns. His hands fist at his sides.
“Was that a slam against my character?”
He takes a step toward me, and we’re less than a foot apart. “Should it be?”
Reed looks like he’s about to kiss me again, and to my shock, or maybe not, I want him to.
But I can’t forget that he made a fool of me before. Who’s to say he won’t do it again? I take two steps back and swivel my head around, trying to figure out where Lexi and Evelyn went. I need a chaperone, and I need one quick before I do something I’ll regret. “Where are we supposed to go?”
I expect a sharp retort, but the fight seems to have left Reed as well. “We need to go to the building on the left.” He waves his hand toward a house. “It houses the afterschool program.”
As I walk the concrete walkway behind the houses, I try to pull myself together. My reaction to Reed is a combination of hormones and seeing the photo of myself. I’m emotionally vulnerable. All the more reason to stay away from him.
When we reach the door, Reed lightly touches my arm. “Caroline, wait.”
I shiver from the cold, but Reed blocks the wind. The heat of his body draws me toward him, and I can’t resist looking up.
He lifts his hand toward my face and as he leans closer, I’m mesmerized by his dark brown eyes.
I wait for him to kiss me, but his fingers brush my hair on the back of my head. “Your hair was messed up,” he murmurs, his lips a mere six inches from mine. His fingers tangle in the strands, and he slowly rakes them down, taking longer than necessary, yet I can’t seem to find the will to stop him.
“Thanks,” I finally say.
His gaze has fallen to my lips. He leans closer, but the door opens, and he jumps back as though he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing.
Which of course he has.
Evelyn’s back is to us as she faces into the building. When she turns around, she’s missed our strange behavior.
“Oh, there you two are. I was about to send a search party out for you,” she laughs.
Reed gives her his stick-up-his-ass smile, not that she notices. “No need. We spent a lot of time checking out the photos.”
“Well, come in.” She pokes her head outside to look up into the sky, then backs out of the way for us to come in. “I do believe it’s getting colder.”
Reed studies me. “Funny, I hadn’t noticed.” Then he motions for me to go in.
That’s the first time he’s actually acknowledged that I do something to him, even if his body— and his mouth—has told me otherwise.
I follow Evelyn into a 1970s-era kitchen, gold appliances and all. She stands in the middle of the room and holds out her hands. “Since our headquarters are here in Greensboro, we have on-site services. We have the children dropped off by bus for our afterschool tutoring program. In other areas where we have a tutoring program, we usually run the program on the school property. With the Monroe Foundation donation, we’re hoping to open more programs, especially in more rural areas where state funding is stretched to the limit.” She looks over her shoulder as a young woman comes in and grabs several small paper cups and a pitcher of juice from the refrigerator. “We also provide snacks. They’re usually starving after school.”
We follow her down a hall to a room with a table and several children that look to be ten or eleven years old. They’re huddled over papers and notebooks. A college-aged woman sits at the table with them. She looks up and smiles.
Evelyn stands in the doorway. “We’re fortunate that Southern’s school of education sends students to help with our kids.”
Evelyn continues down a hall to what looks like it used to be a large bedroom. A teacher kneels down on the floor talking to a small child. There are about ten other children in the room, some sitting at tables working on homework. Others play with board games or work on puzzles. “This is the room for our first-and second-graders.” I walk into the space, suddenly transported back fifteen years, to a particularly rough financial time when my father was laid off for twelve months. That year my older brother and I went to a program exactly like this.