“That’s not all you’re trying to do,” Tiana said. Acid dripping from each syllable.
He sat back. Had he overplayed this? “No,” he said. Slowly. Deliberately. Holding her gaze. “It’s not.”
Her cheeks darkened and she sipped her martini with her eyes lowered. The kiss hung, unspoken, between them. She was attracted to him. She’d kissed him back. She had to know he was attracted to her. Wanted to get to know her.
Vivian looked from him to her. “Well. Thank you for the treat, DeShawn. It was a pleasure to meet you. Lily, come on. We need to get home.”
Lily whined a bit but attainment of a to-go cup appeased her. Tiana remained stony. Vivian gave him a quick peck on the cheek with a whisper in his ear. “She’s stubborn. Don’t give up.”
* * *
HE WAS WAITING on the sidewalk in front of his apartment. Tiana pulled into an empty space. She still wasn’t quite finished being angry about the whole dessert thing. Nor was she sure she liked the way Lily had taken to him. But she was a hundred percent certain she was furious at DeShawn for being so damned perfect that her mother was probably planning the wedding already.
Frowning, she powered down the window as he approached the driver’s side.
“We can take my car. I feel bad using yours every time.”
She eyed his decidedly elderly Ford. “No offense, but no. Get in.”
“I’ll pay for gas then,” he said as she powered the window back up. He climbed into the passenger seat and put on the seat belt. “It’s a perfectly fine car. Just old. And paid for.”
“I’m sure it is,” Tiana said archly as she maneuvered out of the space. “We ready for today?”
“I think so,” he said, rubbing his palms along his thighs. “Quick talk about our background. Then the fish paper chronicles.”
She cut her eyes at him briefly before focusing on the road. “You sound nervous.”
“You aren’t?”
Her laugh was a harsh bark. “DeShawn, I survived nursing school. Nothing scares me anymore.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” he said.
“You had plenty of confidence last night,” she said.
He was silent long enough for her to look over at him. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. I should have cleared the ice cream thing with you.”
Slightly mollified, she nodded. “Thank you. And don’t go through my daughter ever again.”
“I know. It was wrong. I didn’t think it through. I really wanted to meet your mother.”
“My mother? What on earth for?”
“The way you talked about her. How she supported you and fought for you to get through college. How she took care of Lily so you could do it. She’s a good mother.”
She gave him a long look. Couldn’t tell if it was more DeShawn charm or something real. “Didn’t your grandmother do the same for you?”
“Yeah, but...” His voice trailed off as he turned his head to look out at the passing farmland. “Never mind. I am really nervous about today.”
“You really are?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I am. I still feel like I’m faking it. How am I going to stand up in front of those kids? Them looking to me for answers?”
“You aren’t faking. These kids don’t expect you to be perfect. They expect you to be real.”
“Real,” he said with a small laugh.
Tiana looked closely at him. He really was nervous. Strange to see him like this. She wanted to reach for his hand, fall into her role of caregiver. But she knew what touching him did to her. It led to all sorts of crazy feelings and longing. It was the smile that did her in. A weak, wavering smile in place of his cocky grin. She reached out and lightly touched the back of his hand. “You have a good heart, DeShawn. The kids will see that.”
He curled his fingers around hers and squeezed. “Thank you.”
She pulled her hand free, trying to beat the warmth his touch kindled. A race she lost.
* * *
HIS NERVES INTENSIFIED as they checked in at the school office. He followed Tiana down the hall as he peeled the back of his ID label and pressed it to his shirt. The door to Henry’s classroom was open and a wave of excited chatter rose when Tiana peeked in.
“Settle down, kids,” Henry called out as he waved them in.
Tiana leaned against the front of the desk, her hands clasped while Henry introduced them to the class. DeShawn followed her example and looked around. There were maybe thirty young people crammed into the small space. The kids were looking back at them with grins and eyes shining with excitement. He suppressed a smile. He remembered that feeling. Anything that broke up the monotony of the day, anything new, was welcome.
There was a brief awkward moment after Henry finished the introduction. He and Tiana looked at each other. After all their planning, they’d never discussed who would take the lead. He grinned at her. “Ladies first.”
But she didn’t miss a beat. She turned to the kids and lifted her hands, palms up. “I just wanted to thank y’all for inviting me to speak to you today. I grew up about thirty miles inland from here and went to schools exactly like this one. Now I have a bachelor’s degree in nursing and work as a nurse in an emergency department.” She turned to him. “DeShawn?”
“I grew up just outside of Charlotte,” he said. “Lived with my grandmother most of my life. Now I have a degree in engineering and work for the Army Corps of Engineers, which in spite of the name, is not a part of the army.”
“Instead of us standing up here and telling you about our experiences,” Tiana continued, “DeShawn and I got together and talked about things we wish we’d known before we got to high school and college. We’re going to talk about each item and answer any questions you have.” She motioned toward the chalkboard. “Your handwriting is much neater than mine, DeShawn. Why don’t you write?”
At the chalkboard, he drew the number one and circled it. “First,” he said. “The guidance counselor is your friend.”
Tiana nodded. “I know at my old high school, there was one counselor for several schools so she was only there once a week. But when you get to high school, go talk to the counselor when you are a freshman. Don’t wait until your senior year!”
Henry raised his hand from where he was sitting in the back of the class. “Can you explain what a guidance counselor can do for them? We don’t have them until high school out here.”
“Sure,” DeShawn said. “The counselor is the person who will help you with picking out colleges, and applications not only for colleges but financial aid and scholarships also.”
“And that’s why you should start talking to them when you are a freshman,” Tiana said. “So you have four years to plan. Planning is the key to succeeding.”
DeShawn nodded, but inside he was grinning. He half expected her to suggest index cards. She glanced at him and he gave her some side-eye just to see if she’d get it and—yep—there was the scowl. Brief, and on half power, but there it was.
Several hands shot up. DeShawn pointed to the girl whose hand had gone up first. “Yes?”
“Do you have to know what you want to be before you start college?”
“That is an excellent question,” he told her. “And the answer is no, you don’t. You can take different classes and see what you are interested in.”
Tiana pointed to a boy on the front row. “You had a question?”
“Where do you live when you are in college?”
The question took DeShawn by surprise. The knowing look Tiana shot him made him realize how big this project was. College was so foreign to most of them that they didn’t know about dorms.
“There are dormitory rooms,” Tiana answered. “Most people just call them dorms. And then there are sororities and fraternities,
which are like girls’ and boys’ clubs that you might get invited to join. They usually have a big house and you stay in a room there. And a lot of people who have jobs while going to college rent an apartment with several other people.”
“Where did you live?”
“Raise your hand, James,” Henry said from the back.
James lifted his hand.
Tiana grinned and winked at the boy. Her smile about took DeShawn’s breath away. Finally, a tiny chink in her armor. That’s how she smiled with her family and friends, he just knew it.
“I lived in a dorm room for the first two years. Then when I got a job at the hospital, I rented an apartment with two other nursing students.” She looked over at him.
“Dorm room all the way through,” he said. “I had a job but I tried to put most of the money in savings.”
A girl in the back waved her hand and Tiana pointed to her. “How did you find out you wanted to be a nurse?”
Recapping the marker, DeShawn put it down and moved to sit on the desk with Tiana. These kids wanted to talk, not for them to lecture them on what to do to prepare. That could come later.
“When I was six,” Tiana said, “my grandmother gave me a doctor’s satchel. Do you know what that is?”
The kids all shook their heads but one tentative hand crept up in the air. “Is it like a fat bag where the doctor puts his doctor things?”
“Yes. Exactly that!” Tiana said. “My grandmother found one at a yard sale. And it had an old stethoscope and the blood pressure cuff. Some bandage scissors. And a first aid book. I must have listened to every heartbeat and belly gurgle of everyone in town, including cats and dogs and a couple of my momma’s chickens.”
The kids all laughed at that and DeShawn felt himself smiling. He could picture a tiny, determined Tiana, stethoscope in one hand, chasing down fleeing chickens. It was as if another bit of armor had fallen away.
The smile dimmed a bit as the picture widened. Her family lovingly submitting to being doctored on. An entire community letting their heartbeats be listened to. A slight chill trying to raise goose bumps on his arms. She came from a place of love and support. They might as well have come from different planets.
“The idea of being a doctor was something that never occurred to me but by the next year, I knew I wanted to be a nurse.” She turned to him and smiled. “How about you, DeShawn, did you always want to be an engineer?”
Her smile. Being this close to her. The warmth in her dark brown eyes. He could smell a trace of some perfume. A little tittering laughter from a corner of the room alerted his brain that he’d been staring at her a little too long.
“No,” he said and cleared his throat. “I didn’t. That was one of the things my high school counselor helped me figure out. She asked me a question—when I was a little kid, what was it that I liked to play or do more than anything else in the world. I told her, ‘Build things with Legos.’ She said, ‘Engineering.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ and she got me books to read.”
Tiana shifted on the desk beside him, putting her hand down on the desktop, her fingers brushing against his. “And now he’s building a road,” she told the class.
She said it with such pride. His entire world shrank to the slight touch of her fingers. Did she feel that heat? How could she not? Another titter of laughter from the class snapped him back to the here and now.
“I’m planning where a road will go,” he clarified. “Not actually building one.”
Henry rose from the back. “We’re running out of time,” he announced as the questions from the kids finally slowed down, creating a chorus of boos. “Settle down.”
Coming forward, he shook both their hands. “Thank you so much for coming out. Class, tell Ms. Nelson and Mr. Adams thank you.”
DeShawn grinned at the group thank-you. “It was really fun,” he said. “You guys are great. You’ll be seeing us again.”
As they stepped out into the hall, Henry put a hand on DeShawn’s arm. “Your story gave me a great idea. We can talk about when later because if I leave them alone too long, it’ll be chaos, but I’d like to do what your counselor did as a homework assignment. Then the kids can read out loud what they chose and we can brainstorm careers that follow that interest.”
Tiana gave him a friendly bump and his skin came alive at the contact point. “It really is a great tool for getting them thinking. Good work.”
He nodded. “We’ll make it happen then.”
* * *
AS THEY WALKED back to her car, Tiana felt like her feet never touched the ground; she was completely amped up on the energy and hopefulness of the kids. DeShawn had a goofy smile on his face but she couldn’t say anything about it because she knew she was wearing one too.
“That was amazing!” DeShawn exclaimed, holding a fist up.
She tapped his fist with hers. “It was. My heart is going like a million miles a minute.”
As she cranked the engine and backed out of the parking space, she tried to put a word to what she was feeling. Happy, yes. But there was something else lingering there. More than happy, more than the high she was riding off the energy of the kids. She glanced over at DeShawn. He was staring out the passenger window, but his knee was bouncing in his own excitement.
“That was more than amazing,” she said.
“I know. It was...fulfilling.”
Fulfilling. That was the word she was searching for. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I wasn’t sure how the kids would respond but...”
“They were so hungry!” DeShawn interrupted.
“Exactly! They want to learn. To do better. And they get written off because they’re poor.”
DeShawn twisted in the seat to face her. “I was trying to figure out what I was feeling. My grandmother always believed in me. But I always thought on some level that was a given, your grandma has to be on your side. It wasn’t until I was in high school and my guidance counselor showed me that she believed in me too that I began to start to believe in myself. I feel like that’s what we did for the kids.”
Tiana nodded. “We told them we believe.”
DeShawn reached out and took her hand. “Now we have to show them we believe.”
The rest of the ride was spent in alternate long moments of silence and bursts of conversation as they plotted out the next move. As the euphoria ebbed, it began to be replaced with a less exhilarating but no less exciting feeling of commitment. As she pulled into a parking space outside DeShawn’s apartment, she put the car in Park.
“Come inside. I’ll make you lunch. We can plan some more.”
She turned a skeptical face in his direction. “What are you going to make? Bologna sammies and chips?”
He grinned. “On white bread with yellow mustard.”
“Gross.”
“Seriously. Do you have to go to work or get your daughter? I have some leftover lasagna I made last night. It’s too much for one meal, perfect for two.”
“You made lasagna?”
“Hand-shredded parmesan. Ricotta cheese, not cottage cheese. Sun-dried tomatoes.”
“You can cook?”
He laughed and opened the door. “Come inside and see. Unless you’re still into the whole running away from me thing.”
She hesitated. She really wanted to keep the conversation going about their next visit. And the lasagna sounded amazing. The memory of last week’s kiss rose in her mind and she felt her cheeks go hot.
“We can talk about that too,” he said in a low voice.
“Don’t need to talk about that,” she snapped as she unhooked her seat belt and turned off the engine. “But this lasagna better be as advertised, Man Maid.”
“I would never lie to you, Nurse Ratched.”
He hadn’t lied. The mere scent of the lasagna rewarm
ing in the oven attested to that. Tiana sat at on the barstool at the kitchen island and watched as he moved around the small kitchen space. A glance around revealed a life in transition. Some very nice pieces of furniture side by side with college dorm make-dos.
“So what is next?” She asked.
He peeked into the oven and turned to her. “I really like the private Facebook group idea, but worry they might be too young for that.”
“That’s true. Didn’t think of that. I got permission from the nursing school to do a tour of their teaching lab. It just can’t be during a scheduled class, so I need to work that out.”
“Yeah, I still need to talk to my boss about taking one or two kids out with me on the field. Show them how math works in the real world.”
As he spoke, he reached into cabinets and set plates and silverware on the island. “What can I get you to drink? I’ve got water or water.”
“Water is fine.”
He filled two glasses with ice and poured water from a pitcher. As he set the glass in front of her, she grinned. The ice maker had churned out the small pebbled ice chips. “Oh, fancy ice.”
Pulling on oven mitts, he held his hands up. “Only the best for you, Nurse Ratched.”
It made her laugh. She studied his back as he turned to pull the baking dish from the oven. Wide shoulders that tapered down to a slim waist. The dress shirt he wore was a dark silvery gray, neatly ironed and tucked into black pants. The sleeves were rolled up over nice-looking forearms. Her stomach rumbled.
“That smells amazing,” she said as he slid a plate across to her.
“That’s because it is amazing,” he replied as he came around to sit beside her.
She took a bite and closed her eyes as the heavenly combination of cheese and tomato filled her mouth. Spicy Italian sausage. She might have moaned a bit. “It’s good.”
“You sound shocked. I am a man of many talents.”
She shot him a scowl only to notice he was looking at her mouth. Heat flared instantaneously. His gaze moved to her eyes and he smiled a slow, sexy smile. “Eat your lunch, Tiana.”
She forked more lasagna into her mouth and chewed before she said something stupid. What are you doing? Alone in his apartment with him? Eat this and leave before you do something. Because this was bad. She could feel him right there. As if the air between them was vibrating. Say something about the kids. Anything. Get this back on track. But her brain ignored her command. Probably too busy spewing out hormones.
The Littlest Boss Page 11