Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
S ome people believed you made your own luck in life. Charlie figured luck was a bastard determined to screw with her every chance it got. Case in point; Mr. Tall, nerdy, and sexy standing ten feet away, sinfully deep brown eyes locked on her, filled with humor.
Luck could kiss her very fine, Pilates-toned ass.
“If everyone would please take a seat.”
People shuffled to the circle of chairs, everyone whispering to their neighbors. Charlie chose a seat directly across from where Luc Woolf stood. The name suited him. There was an air about him, predator like. As if he might pounce on you at any moment.
Depending on the clothing, or lack thereof, that situation sounds like a whole lotta fun!
No! No, it did not. Bad self. She was off men. Men were jerks and liars. Assholes who got her into this situation in the first place. Okay, one man did that, but she’d had enough bad exes to know all men sucked. Of course, her brothers would say she just had terrible taste in men. Whatever. The Jackassons could stuff it.
“Who’s Professor Hottie?” Apple asked, taking the seat next to her.
She shrugged. “No idea. Must be new in town.”
Very new if Apple didn’t know about him. The Blithe sisters were the honorary Grande dames of Kismet. They saw and knew all.
“Well, I hope there’s more like him coming in. We could do with a good bit of fresh eye-candy in this dusty old town. Hope he’s single.”
She glanced to the side, grimacing at the lecherous look on the old woman’s face. “He has to be at least thirty years younger than you, Apple.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of a May December romance, my dear?”
An image tried to pop in her head of Apple making out with Luc. She groaned, rubbing at her eyes to banish the thought. Apple cackled—honestly cackled—beside her.
“You’re welcome for that by the way.”
The woman was a cantankerous, loud, nosy, brash menace.
Charlie wanted to be just like her someday.
“You are awful,” she chuckled.
The corner of Apple’s lips curled up in a sly smile. “I try, dear. I try.”
They settled down as Luc lifted his clipboard—had he been carrying that this whole time?
“Okay, I’d like to take roll first. Make sure everyone is here. As you all know these are court appointed classes. You need to complete the entire course, but you are allowed to miss two classes due to illness or family emergency. Just shoot me an email to let me know if you’re going to miss. Any more than two classes and you’ll have to complete a makeup class.”
From there he went around the room calling out names. Being Kismet, the group was small. Apple Blithe was in for throwing homemade soap at the Dooley boys. A couple of seniors from the local high school who got in a fight had been put in here because they were eighteen and it was either anger management or suspension. Kim Holt had been placed in the class for “allegedly” TPing the Stine household after their daughter got the lead in the school play over her “precious” Bella.
“And that leaves us with…” Luc trailed off, glancing up from his list. Dark eyes focused on her, full lips curving in a knowing grin. “Charlie Jackson. Care to tell us why the judge placed you here, Ms. Jackson?”
Ooooooo, she’d tell him all right. Better yet she could show him and his smartass grin. Just show her to his car and let her grab her keys—
“She keyed her boyfriend’s car,” Kim said, eyeing Luc with a hungry smile.
Carefully manicured hands crossed on her lap. Kim’s arms were doing their damnedest to push her B cups into some resemblance of cleavage. Ha! Charlie would gladly give the desperate housewife half of her annoying shoulder boulders if she could. She’d never understand why women actually paid for bigger boobs. Damn things were annoying as hell and got in the way of everything. She’d give hers up in a heartbeat.
“ Ex boyfriend,” she replied.
“Oh right, he dumped you, poor thing.” Kim’s lower lip pouted out sympathetically, but her eyes gleamed with delight.
She and Kim had never gotten along. The woman was only a few years older than her and still harbored anger at the entire Jackson family. Kim and Ace dated for a few weeks way back in their high school days. Seemed Kim still had her panties in a twist over Ace dumping her. At least he did it after the Prom and not before. Pretty decent of her brother Charlie would say.
“Actually, I dumped him.” Today had already gone to hell, no way would she take any of Kim’s crap on top of it. “When I discovered he was a lying, cheating ass I ended it. I’d rather be alone than stay with a cheater. I don’t need a man to sustain me.”
A low dig since everyone in town—including Kim—knew Mr. Holt had a thing going on with his secretary for years now. Apple chuckled beside her.
“Bringing the claws out today, dearie.”
“She started it.” The witch of a woman had, still, Charlie felt a tiny prick of guilt seeing the red flush of embarrassment creep over Kim’s face. Crap. Now she would have to apologize. Maybe she could just buy the woman a round of drinks at Jacks. No better way to say sorry than with alcohol.
“You’re all here for the same reason,” Luc spoke, taking control of the room. “You all have issues with anger.”
He glanced pointedly at Kim then Charlie. She tried not to squirm in her seat, but the man had one powerful gaze. Like he could get a person to spill their deepest, darkest secret with nothing more than a raised brow.
Good luck with that, buddy. I’m not telling you anything.
“My goal in this class is to give you the skills to cope with your anger. We want to explore what’s really making you mad. Find the root of your unhappiness and work on fixing it. Because that’s what anger is. A volatile reaction to circumstances beyond our control that make us unhappy.” He glanced around the circle. “Ask yourself this, what makes me unhappy?”
Being forced to spend one hour a week listening to some Dr. Phil wannabe spout crap about feelings and unhappiness.
She was plenty happy. She had a great little house, a kick ass job running the restaurant and distillery with her brothers, an awesome best friend who was now her sister-in-law. Who wouldn’t be happy with all that? This guy had no idea what he was saying. Ugh, all this hippy-dippy feelings shit was making her head pound.
“I’ll be giving you some exercises to help calm you down, but those are just a bandage for the real meat of the issue. To really deal with your anger you’re going to have to go deeper.”
The high school boys laughed at his choice of wording. Luc sent them a sharp look that had them sitting up straight, chuckles immediately vanishing. Really though, the guy should know better than to say something like “go deeper” in front of a bunch of adolescent boys. She’d bet he would have laughed at a phrase like that only a few years ago. Hell, she was laughing over it in her head.
“If you hope to achieve anything from this class, you’ll take the time to figure out the root of your unhappiness. Once you figure that out, you can start to heal. Anger shrivels and dies without misery to feed it.”
Had she joined some kind of cult or something? What the hell was he spouting about feelings and misery? This was court appointed anger management. Everyone was here so they wouldn’t have to go to jail or pay a huge fine. No one wanted to connect with their inner pain or whatever nonsense this guy thought he could help them with. Luc must have come from OZ because the guy was seriously somewhere over the rainbow.
“For today, we’re going to go over a few breathing exercises.”
Yay, breathing. The thing she’d been doing since she was born. Who knew it was some magic cure all for dealing with the assholes of the world.
Luc walked them through three breathing exercises. Apple complained, between bouts of coughing, about all the deep breaths making her crave the cigarettes she gave up years ago. The teens puffed their cheeks, making faces—whenever Luc wasn’t looking of course—taking this whole thing about as seriously as she felt about it. Kim followed Luc’s instructions like a little lap dog, calling him over often to “make sure she was doing it right.”
“Pouring it on a little thick, that one.”
She agreed with Apple’s observation, but Luc didn’t seem to be taking the bait. In fact, the guy had been pretty damn professional the entire class. Dealing with the teen’s obnoxious attitude and Kim’s blatant come-ons with a gentle firmness. She had to admit, he was the perfect example of controlling one’s anger. If she had to deal with this group, she’d have lost her shit a dozen times by now.
“Good. Good everyone. Now use one of these exercises the next time you feel yourself ready to explode. Close your eyes, count backwards from ten, and breath in and out. Deep breaths.”
Her eyes closed of their own accord.
“Good. Breath in and out. Let your anger float away as the breath leaves your body.”
His rich voice wrapped around her. She knew he stood feet away in the middle of the circle, but the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The acoustics in the room bouncing his voice off the ceiling and walls to make it seem as though he stood right behind her. His sexy tone caressed her, musical in its cadence. A delicious shiver wracked her body, and her eyes snapped open.
Oh. Hell. No.
She did not find this man attractive. Lie. Okay, she did find him attractive, no denying he was one hot hunk of a dude, but she was not hot for teacher. Charlie Jackson did not go for brainy, strait-laced men who talked about feelings and shit. No matter how sexy they were. She preferred the bad boys. A pretty face who wouldn’t get too emotionally deep with her.
And how’s that been working out for you?
Ugh! Bad enough her brother’s harped on every guy she’d ever dated. Now they’d made it into her mind. Would she never be free of their relentless meddling?
“All right everyone,” Luc clapped his hands. “We’re out of time for today, but I have some homework for you.”
“Aw, man.” The teens complained, glaring at Luc like he’d just taken away their skis for the winter.
“Yeah, dude. We get enough of that at school.”
Luc shrugged. “Part of the package, guys.”
Crap. She didn’t particularly want to do homework either. Especially because she was sure it would be some annoying feelings exercise.
“I want you to all write down what you hope to gain from this class. What do you want to accomplish?”
She wanted to accomplish not going to jail. End of story.
Apple leaned in close to her to whisper, “I wouldn’t mind gaining a night in the teacher’s bed, if ya know what I mean.”
“Apple!” She did and she was equally disgusted and entertained. The old woman’s salacious comments about the “young studs” in town—as she liked to call them—was hilarious. More hilarious since, for once, the woman wasn’t referring to Charlie’s brothers. Ew!
But Apple had a point. She couldn’t stop her own mind from conjuring up images of her and Luc pressed skin to skin, sweat glistening on their bodies as their mouths met in a delicious kiss guaranteed to blow her socks right off.
As if he sensed her thought, Luc turned his head right at that moment. His stare clashed with hers. She sat stock-still, captured by his gaze, body flushing. Dark eyes heated, as if he knew where her mind had been. He didn’t move, didn’t do, or say anything inappropriate. But then again, he didn’t have to. Her imagination had all kinds of inappropriate thoughts going on right now. Under her thick, black-knit sweater her nipples hardened into sharp points, threatening to poke through the heavy fabric.
Sonofabitch!
This could not happen. She could not have the hots for this man. Or any man. She was on a man embargo. Men were nothing but trouble. They sucked. Every last one of them. Her brothers excluded—most of the time, anyway. Men lied to you, cheated on you, died without every saying goodbye…
She didn’t need a man. She had a job, family, friends, and a perfectly good BOB at home with five different speeds. Who needed men? Not Charlie Jackson. All she needed to do was get through this class without losing her cool and she’d be fine. Luc Woolf could just stay in her spank bank. Once this class was over, she never had to see him again.