Dad’s eyes were so shrewd and calculating that I knew what was going to come out of his mouth before he even said it.
“You live on my land, and since your house is gone, you’ll be living underneath my roof. I sure as fuck can tell you who you can and can’t see,” he informed me.
I gritted my teeth.
“Tommy is a…” I started to say, but he interrupted me with a raise of his hand.
“Stop,” he demanded. “I don’t care what that man is. I know what I know, and what I know is that he’s no good. And now that I know he’s your teacher at the college, I’d be delighted to inform them of the criminal they have on their hands.”
I growled. “Give me her and leave me alone.”
Dad handed Tallulah to me, not one to hold my daughter against me.
At least he had that going for him right now.
That was one of his better virtues…allowing me to raise my child without his interference, even though I could tell many times throughout my so far short stint in motherhood that he wanted to intervene.
He let me make my own mistakes…but apparently he wouldn’t let me make the Tommy mistake.
Too bad I’d already made it, and it was glorious.
Now I just needed to find out what exactly he did to piss off my father, one of the most easy-going men I knew.
Chapter 15
I would eat healthy, but tacos.
-Every woman’s secret thoughts
Tommy
I let her have her space. I also was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to be able to continue to allow her that space, but I’d give it the good old college try.
Today had been a lesson in restraint.
Literally and figuratively.
It’d all started out fairly simple.
I was in the simulation lab with our students when I asked for a volunteer.
“Who wants to volunteer to try out these restraints?” I asked the class.
I looked at everyone, even Tally, and waited for someone to raise their hand.
Nobody did.
So I grinned and said, “Now, I don’t want everyone to step all over each other to get to the bed,” I teased them. “Come on, now. Someone has to do it. Don’t make me choose for you.”
Still nobody rose their hands, and I sighed.
“All right,” I said. “When’s your birthday?” I asked the girl who was at the front of the class. The little stuck up bitch who tried to kiss my and every other teacher’s ass in the entire building in hopes of getting a better grade.
“June twelfth,” she answered instantly.
“And you?” I asked the next girl. “August first.”
“Who here has a birthday after August first?”
The only person to raise her hand was Tally, causing me to grin.
“All righty, then,” I grinned. “You’re up.”
Tally’s eyes flashed, and I had to resist the urge to grin at her like a lunatic.
It was apparent as she walked to the front of the room that she didn’t want to be doing this, especially not with me.
It’d been a full two weeks since we’d held a conversation—one that didn’t have something to do with school during class— with each other, and I was beginning to wonder if it was intentional.
Her mother had somehow gotten her shifts changed so that she was on when Dr. Wild was there, and since there were only two doctors who worked the small ER at any given time, that meant that I never saw her, even if I had wanted to be there.
I knew it was a possibility, but luckily there was nothing that the judge and his wife could do about the class I was teaching. If there had been, they’d have already done it. But I knew they did try.
And clearly, since Tally was sitting in my class—well, now walking towards me while practically dragging her feet—it was apparent they hadn’t accomplished what they’d set out to accomplish, which was to keep her as far away from me as they could possibly make happen.
“Where do you want me?” she asked.
I gritted my teeth and refrained from saying ‘on your knees.’
Her husky voice had my cock hardening behind the zipper of my jeans, and I moved to where the fake hospital bed was between me and the rest of the room.
They didn’t need any more ‘Dr. Bones’ ammunition to use against me.
“On the bed,” I cleared my suddenly dry throat. “With your arms out at your sides.”
Or to the headboard. Whichever works for you.
I bit the inside of my lip, trying really hard not to say what I really wanted to say.
Which wouldn’t get me anywhere good.
Tally followed instructions while the rest of the room snickered, and I glared at two of the most obnoxious offenders.
“Would you like to volunteer, Hadley and Elba?” I asked the two with a growl.
Hadley and Elba clammed up, of course, not wanting to bring their show on the road.
“Sorry,” Elba apologized.
Hadley, of course, didn’t.
I didn’t see what Tally saw in that girl, and I wondered if she was aware of the jealousy that raged through Hadley any time Tally answered a question correctly.
Tally cleared her throat, and I turned my gaze back to her.
“This is something you’re going to do only when you have a doctor’s order,” I told the class. “You can’t put restraints on a patient without one, understand?”
“What if they’re harming themselves?” someone broke in.
I answered at the same time as I reached for the restraints.
“There is always a doctor on staff,” I informed the kiss ass. “And if not, you call them. In the interim, you do what you need to, doing everything in your power to not hurt them or yourself in the process.”
Tally tested the restraint I got on her left hand, and then started to struggle when I moved to her other one.
“Hey!” she snapped, pulling at her hand.
I stopped, raising my brow at her.
“What?” I asked.
“That hurt.”
I blinked.
Then she grinned, and I rolled my eyes just as a chuckle rose from my lips.
“When the patient struggles like this, it’s best to have another nurse with you,” I informed the class.
“What if she starts to kick?” someone from the back asked.
I finished securing her other hand and then looked up at the class.
“You secure their legs, too. But only if…”
“You have a doctor’s order,” the class droned.
I grinned. “Good. Don’t let that come back and bite you in the ass.”
Someone—Hadley, of course—snorted and murmured something snippy under her breath, but I chose to ignore it instead of bringing the girl any more attention.
She thrived on it, and I knew that before she even stepped a foot into my class.
“Any questions?” I asked, leaning into the bed.
Tally lifted her leg, drawing my attention to her for a fleeting second, before I returned it to Little Miss Kiss Ass who had just asked something stupid.
I’d just started to explain the benefits of listening to your patient’s cues when Tally’s hand brushed my cock.
I jolted, stiffening slightly, and continued speaking only with a short pause in my explanation, thinking that it’d been an accident.
But when it happened again, I narrowed my eyes at the class.
“All right,” I said abruptly. “Break time. Be back in fifteen minutes.”
The class dispersed, the solid door closing behind them all so quickly that I nearly laughed.