by Shannon West
DEFINE NAUGHTY
SHANNON WEST
Define Naughty
Copyright © 2017 Shannon West
Published by Painted Hearts Publishing
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Define Naughty
Copyright © 2017 Shannon West
Publication Date December 2017
Originally Published as Badass in June 2012
Author: Shannon West
Editor: Ashley Kain
All cover art and logo copyright © 2017 by Painted Hearts Publishing
Cover Design by E Connors
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
Author’s Note
As an author, I sometimes look back over the body of my work and think that I should have worded something differently here or there, tried to make a character more (or less) likeable, or maybe ended a book in another way. A few months ago, someone asked me if I was going to do a holiday story this year. Initially, I said no. Then I remembered this novella that I wrote back in 2012—the one titled Badass —and started thinking about all the little changes I had wanted to make to the story over the years. So, re-imagining it as a Christmas story (of sorts), I rewrote large parts of the original story, added new content, and even changed up the ending.
I hope you like it.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,
Shannon West
Chapter One
“Hey, watch it!” Nick yelled as the double doors of the large classroom suddenly burst open beside him. Students tumbled out, laughing and jostling each other, knocking his cane out of his hand and pushing him up against the opposite wall.
A few students cast apologetic glances back at him as they barreled their way past him. The boy who had run into him retrieved the cane and handed it back to him with a mumbled, “Sorry, sir.” Nick glared at him and shook his head, pushing away from the wall. The pain in his leg was bad today, making the cane necessary, and he hated using the damn thing. It was probably coloring a lot of his attitude toward the students too. He could remember being just as excited before his Christmas break not that many years ago, so he shouldn’t really be so angry at them.
It was the day before the start of their holiday break at Crawford College, and all week there had been excitement and anticipation in the air as students finished their finals and left for their homes and their families.
The dean had already given him a stern warning about yelling at the students, so he’d been trying harder to control his anger. Obviously, he wasn’t trying hard enough. He tamped down the urge to snap somebody’s head off the next time someone careened into him, jarring his leg that already felt like somebody was jabbing it with a red-hot poker.
Because of the pain, or more accurately, his reaction to it, Nick probably deserved the reputation he was getting for being bad-tempered around this small Southern college campus. His students didn’t understand just how nasty he could have been—at the moment, for example, he was making a considerable effort to refrain from whirling his cane around his head and leaving a path of destruction strewn behind him down the hallway.
Obviously, it wasn’t the students’ fault that Nick was in pain, or anyone’s fault really, other than his own. And the Islamic State in Afghanistan. He had signed up with the Army to defend his country after he’d graduated college six years ago, and he was proud of his service. Over the years, some of his friends had come home in flag-draped coffins, so he had no real right to complain.
Still, the pain could get bad sometimes, and on those days, it seemed his whole world shrank down to just that throbbing, burning misery in his leg. He had pain pills he could take, but they made him feel so drained he could barely get out of bed. Most days he left them off and popped a couple of extra-strength Tylenol and he was able to manage okay. It was the really bad days like this one that made him wonder if keeping his leg had actually been worth it after all.
The doctors had given him a choice. Amputate, or live with pain for the rest of his life from the muscle and nerve damage. He’d chosen to keep his leg. Vanity, he supposed, or sheer stubbornness. Either way, it had made for a very interesting couple of years since his injury. Never a dull moment, that’s for sure.
By keeping his leg and undergoing months of therapy, he’d been able to regain a fair range of motion, although not good enough to pass the physical requirements to stay in the Army. He’d used his G.I. bill to go for his master’s and he had obtained his teaching certification in Political Science just the year before. He’d decided to teach on the junior college level, knowing he didn’t have the patience for younger students, and most days he thought he’d made a good choice. Today just wasn’t one of them.
The morning Nick was wounded had been beautiful, the sun shining, even a hint of a breeze in the usually breathless, arid air. On that particular morning, Nick stopped near the door of the house they’d been directed to clear to adjust his pack while the others in his squad went inside. He had finished and taken one step forward when the blast came, picking him up off his feet and throwing him backward like a rag doll in a punishing, scorching tempest of pain and shock.
In that first adrenaline rush, he’d scrambled back to his feet, vaguely registering his leg dragging behind him and refusing to move properly. He made it back into the hell of fire and smoke inside the house and managed to pull out three of his friends before he collapsed. Nick got a medal for his actions that day, but one of his buddies, Jimmy Aaron, a twenty-two-year-old from Idaho, due to be married as soon as he got home, had already been dead of his wounds. The other two guys he pulled out had been badly wounded, though both of them eventually made it without any lasting effects. Nick hadn’t been quite so lucky.
His leg had been shattered by the explosive, and he’d lost a lot of blood. No one could figure out how he’d managed to keep walking on it, let alone carry out three men. The doctors had wanted to amputate right away, but first he’d refused and then he’d begged them not to take his leg. They agreed finally to take a wait-and-see approach, even though one of the docs told him privately later on that none of them had actually expected he would keep his leg in the long run.
Against all odds, the leg healed, though not before chunks of gravel, iron shards and even a little piece of metal that looked like a small spring gradually worked their way out of the wound. The ugly scars left behind were pretty extensive, especially on his upper thigh, and pain became a daily presence in his life.
He’d gone back home to Georgia, mourning the loss of what he’d thought his life would be, and eventually he’d gone back to school to try to pick up the pieces and move on like everybody told him he had to do.
Crawford was a small, liberal-arts junior college in South
Georgia. It wasn’t what he wanted—but what he wanted was no longer an option, so this was going to have to do. If he found he was good at teaching, he figured he could go back for his doctorate to teach at the university level. If he wasn’t, then he could find something else to do with his life.
The problem was, there wasn’t anything else he wanted to do. The pain and disappointment had isolated him to the point where he had little to get his mind off the career he’d lost or the person he had most wanted to be with—another impossible dream. He sometimes managed to put Carter out of his mind for months at a time. He’d had a lot of practice at it. But then something would remind him and the old throbbing pain in his chest would be back, just as savage and intractable as the pain in his thigh. Nick had spent the last few years taking all the love he’d once felt for the man, rolling it up into a tight ball and then molding it carefully, painstakingly, into a little wad of hatred and bitterness that was lodged in his heart, leaving little room for anything else. It worked its way out, like the metal in his leg, a little at a time, expressed in sarcasm and anger.
On days like these, when the pain was bad, he resented the students and other teachers bustling around him, all on their way to live their happy little lives while his was mostly over, his best years all behind him at the age of twenty-seven. Did he feel sorry for himself? Fuck yeah, he did. Unapologetically.
The next time he was almost knocked down by a young man who pushed past him elbowing his way into a classroom, laughing with his friends, he rounded on the boy, growling in exasperation.
“What’s your hurry?”
The young man flushed hotly as he stooped over to pick up the briefcase he’d knocked out of Nick’s hand. “I’m so sorry, sir. But I’m late for my final.”
“Next time, watch where you’re going.”
“Yes, sir, I will. Sorry, sir. Really sorry.”
The young man disappeared into the lecture hall. Nick stood for a moment glaring after him and heard an amused chuckle behind him.
“Damn, Nick. I thought he was going to pass out or salute you or something. You went all Marine on him.”
“I wasn’t a Marine, Mike,” he explained for the hundredth time. “I was in the Army.”
Mike Johnson, an assistant professor of English, was standing in the hall with a big stupid grin on his face. Because Mike’s office was next door to Nick’s at this small Southern college, where office space was at a premium, Mike had assumed some kind of close connection where none actually existed. Maybe it was because they were both gay, a fact that Mike had wormed out of him at a weak and none-too-sober moment. Nick played poker with Mike and some of Mike’s friends once a week, and they talked occasionally in the halls, but they weren’t exactly close. Or at least, not as close as Mike presumed.
Assistant professors were fairly low on the faculty totem pole, though, so both of them had been given office space in this out of the way hallway more or less halfway between the English the History departments. Nick’s, in particular, was little larger than a broom closet, and had probably served that purpose in a former existence.
Mike came over to stand beside him, still chuckling. “Damn, you really like your badass reputation, don’t you?”
Nick shrugged and rubbed his hand along his thigh. “I guess I was a little too hard on him.”
Mike snorted. “You think?”
He shrugged. “When the pain gets bad, sometimes I start channeling my old drill instructor.” He sighed heavily. “I was up half the night with my damn leg. Some days the pain is worse than others.”
“Don’t you have something you could take?”
“The pain meds make me so groggy I can’t function, and the extra strength Tylenol’s not doing the job this morning.”
“I’m sorry, man.”
Nick shrugged again and jerked his head toward the double doors the student had just disappeared into. “What’s going on in there, anyway? It was like Times Square in this damn hallway up until a few minutes ago.”
“Not what, but who. A new professor named Carter Ford. A lot of students coming by to take a look, I guess. Most of the girls are already crazy about him.”
“What—what did you say his name was?”
“Carter Ford.”
Nick stared at him in disbelief. It couldn’t be.
“Do you know him? I think he’s originally from Atlanta, like you. About your age, too. Like I said, the female students are all loopy about him. I overheard one of mine calling him ‘gorgeous’.” Mike chuckled again and waggled his eyebrows. “I must say they’re right, though.”
He stepped closer to Nick and spoke softly in his ear, “He’s too good-looking to be straight. Wonder if there really is a God and this guy is gay?” He glanced over at Nick and got a concerned expression on his face. “Are you okay, man? You look a little pale all of a sudden.”
Nick took a deep breath. The rush of sheer joy that had swept over him was still making it hard to breathe properly. Carter? Here? A blaze of happiness tried to flare in his chest, but he tamped it down. It couldn’t really be him in there. Could it?
He turned without another word and went over to the double doors of the lecture hall to peer inside one of the small windows on the door. Sure enough, there the beautiful bastard stood—and “gorgeous” didn’t even begin to do him justice.
He hadn’t seen the man who was gesturing toward a smart board on the wall behind him in seven years, but those years had been kind to him. Carter’s blond hair still swept down too far across his forehead in the front and hung down too long in the back, but it was shiny and golden, with white-blond highlights that Nick knew were entirely natural. Carter raised his head to speak to the class, and Nick saw the sapphire blue eyes sparkle, still the most amazing shade he’d ever seen.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Nick whispered under his breath. He still didn’t trust himself to speak out loud. He thought about Carter from time to time. Hell, who was he kidding? He might as well admit he thought about him far too often for his own mental health. Every once in a long while he dreamed about him and when he woke up, his eyes were wet with tears. He’d been with other men of course, but never had any serious relationships. Sometimes he felt like Carter had ruined him for anyone else.
Mike spoke up beside him, startling him for a moment. After seeing Carter, he’d completely forgotten Mike was there.
“He was already set to take over for Mary next semester and when she had to leave early, he agreed to step in to give her finals for her. He’s the new professor in our department—teaching Modern Poetry.” Mary Adams had just left on maternity leave. She’d planned to go after this semester anyway, but her doctors had other ideas. Nick heard there was a new guy subbing for her classes, but he hadn’t heard any details. Until now.
The old bitterness he felt for Carter rushed in to his rescue and he sneered. “That’s about Ford’s speed—any kind of New-Age, liberal bullshit like that would be right up his alley.”
“Wait—do you do know the guy? I’ve only met him a couple times in the faculty lounge, but he seems nice.” He arched a look over at Nick. “What’s the matter? Sounds like you don’t like him.”
Never taking his eyes away from Carter, Nick replied “I wouldn’t say that…exactly. As a matter of fact, we went to school together.”
“Really? Then why don’t I invite him to the poker game tomorrow night at your place? He’d probably love to see you again.”
Nick took one more long, appreciative look at Carter’s ass as he bent over a student’s desk. He turned to face Mike. “Yeah, I’ll just bet he would. Sure, bring him along. Actually, I should pay him a little visit this afternoon. You know, unfinished business, old time’s sake and all that.”
Nick smiled and took off down the hallway to his office. It was so small he could barely fit a desk in there, but he was fortunate to have even that much space near a lecture hall. Apparently, that was the college’s attempt to accommodate his disability.
“See you tomorrow tonight, Mike,” he called back to him. “Seven o’clock, and don’t forget the beer,” he said with a little wave. He turned at the end of the hallway and looked back again to see Mike still standing there looking after him with speculation.
“Hey, Nick.” Mike called out to him. “What do you mean by unfinished business? Are all those girls barking up the wrong tree? Is he actually playing for our team?”
Nick smiled his first genuine smile of the day. “No, not at all. Even though you’ve mixed your metaphors, English professor, Carter definitely doesn’t play for our team.”
He was still shaking his head as he walked away.
****
Carter finished his class and packed up his briefcase. He was sure he’d caught a glimpse of Nick looking through the window of the classroom door earlier and his heart had skipped a few beats. As a matter of fact, he still felt a little shaky. He’d come down to this school for one reason and one reason only—to get Nick back in his life, in whatever capacity he could. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen when he confronted Nick. Actually, he had a pretty good idea, and it scared him to death. But not enough to make him back off.
Once in his office, Carter took out a folder from his desk and began grading finals. He really had little else to do, since the professor whose place he was taking had left everything he needed to finish out the semester. Basically, he was just babysitting until the start of the new one, but he hadn’t turned down the opportunity to come a little earlier than planned when the dean called and asked him if it was possible. He had been anxious, after he’d finally made his decision to come, to get this show on the road.
Trying desperately to keep his mind off Nick at the moment, though, was what he was really doing and it wasn’t working. After seeing him again, all he could think of was talking to him and being in the same room with him after all this time.