Chapter 6 Gunner
Gunner
The classroom is full, which is a surprise, every seat taken and a number of faces smiling back at me like they’ve been waiting all fucking morning just to be here.
I give them a slight smile back, schooling my face to be as friendly as possible, and let my eyes run across the students.
Mostly girls in this class—in all the classes, if I’m being honest—and they all look far more chipper than I’m used to.
I run my hand over my beard, wondering if I have something on my face, but there’s nothing.
Perhaps they’re just excited that this is the last class before Christmas break starts.
My smile grows more natural at the thought, because the students might be excited, but I bet my excitement beats theirs.
After a full semester of new classes, this time with first and second years, I’m desperate for a break.
I’ve been teaching at Paul Smith’s in Brighton for ten years now, specifically taking on classes on forest management and the biology that goes with it.
I was a biology major myself in college and wanted to become a doctor, but when my mother got sick, I cut med school short and moved home to take care of her.
I didn’t want to leave school. I’d fought it, in fact.
But I’d been the only one who could help.
My younger brother was in the military and off fighting wars or doing whatever he did overseas, and though I called him and asked him to come home, he flat out refused.
Until a few years later when he arrived so suddenly that it caught us all by surprise. He stayed just long enough to get a girl pregnant and then left again.
In short, we hadn’t been able to count on him. When Mom got sick, I was the only choice. So I’d given up on my wish and gone to her, the way a good son should.
By the time she died, it was too late for me to get back into a medical program.
I’d been out of school for too long and had fallen behind on all the most current research and studies.
So I did the only thing available to me: stayed in Hawke’s Wood with my father and took over the family business.
We were forest managers in town, and used the wood we cut to build bespoke, personalized furniture for people.
It had always provided a good living for my family, and though I didn’t feel blessed to take it over—it had never felt as natural to me as medicine—I knew how lucky I was to have it.
When I heard the college at the bottom of the mountain was looking for professors, though, I jumped at the chance.
I didn’t have a teaching certificate but my experience in med school and time as a real-life lumberjack made me a shoo-in for the position, and I quickly found that it fit me better than being a businessman.
The college gave me specific rules to follow.
Dependable hours. A schedule that never changed.
And for the past six years, with the furniture business getting more and more difficult to manage, my salary here has kept us afloat.
This semester has been more difficult, though, due to the age of my students. I’ve never dealt with first-years before and didn’t realize how complicated they were going to be. These kids don’t even know their way around campus yet. Getting them to focus on their studies has been... difficult.
I glance through those students now, naming them in my head as I go. Sally, Jasmine, Sandy, Emily, Jason, Aurora...
My eyes catch on that one, and my smile dies.
Because her hair is a sandy blonde and slightly curly, her wide eyes the color of honey.
Just like Taryn.
I grind my molars together, suddenly angry, and turn my eyes away from her, but the damage is already done. Taryn. The other reason this semester suddenly feels complicated, though she’s only been back in the picture for a few days.
She is, unfortunately, the thing that makes me less excited to go into our Christmas break. Because instead of being the quiet sanctuary I want, my house is now home to a girl I once loved like my own daughter, and now...
Now what?
Now, I think, a young woman has replaced the child I once knew.
And that spells trouble. The girl I remember was a gangly teen, inclined to practical jokes and laughing too hard at my son’s jokes.
She got into enough trouble to make her difficult but always talked her way out of it, and the sweetness of her smile meant I could never stay angry at her for long.
She’d been sunshine in a world darkened by the sudden death of my first wife, and though I’d liked Helen well enough—enough to marry her, at least—Taryn was the one I loved during that marriage.
When her mother left without warning, tearing the girl from my life and leaving a gaping hole, it had nearly killed me.
My son has barely spoken to me since, and I can’t blame him for that. I gave him another family, and they disappeared nearly as quickly as his mother. He blamed me for driving them away.
Hell, I blame myself.
Helen never told me exactly why she left. All I got were the divorce papers and a terse note that if I signed them without any trouble, she’d make sure I could still see Taryn when I wanted to.
I’d signed them without question.
I hadn’t asked to see Taryn.
And now that I have...
Like I said, she’s not the girl I once knew.
Gone are the too-long arms and legs, the toothy smile, and the need for protection.
And in their place is a girl who has blossomed into a woman.
Lips that are too kissable and curves I want to wrap my hands around.
She’s still small, barely coming up to my throat, but she’s grown into herself and looks at the world with a defiance I never would have expected from the girl I knew.
Her warm whiskey eyes hold a fire they didn’t used to, and the shadows under those eyes tell me that she spends too much of the night thinking rather than sleeping.
I want to know what she thinks about. I want to know how she tastes and feels under my fingers.
I want to know a whole lot more than that.
But the girl is my fucking stepdaughter.
I shut my thoughts down and focus on the class, telling myself again that the girl is only twenty and practically related to me.
She needed help and I offered it. And now she’s an uninvited squatter in my home, where she’ll no doubt make more trouble than she’s worth.
She’s not there for me, and I’m not allowed to touch her.
Taste her.
Figure out just how much she’s grown up since I saw her last.
“This is our last class before break, so let’s make it an efficient one,” I say firmly. “If we can get through the material quickly, I’ll let you go early. How does that sound?”
The class murmurs in delight and I catch two very inappropriate smiles from girls in the front row, who shift to show more of their legs.
I refuse to look. I’m not the type of man who admires his students in that way.
Instead, I turn to the whiteboard and start writing the lesson for today, trying to figure out how I can get through it more quickly. Because I might not want to go back to the house, where Taryn waits. But I do want to get the fuck out of here.
* * *
“But have you seen the way he runs his fingers through his beard?” Jasmine says, her voice breathless with something that might be laughter but isn’t. “God, I’d kill to know how those fingers feel.”
“On your beard?” the girl next to her asks, smiling.
Jasmine punches her. “No, Sandra. Someplace a little more sensitive. And wet.”
The girls all break out into laughter and I turn immediately and walk the other away.
Jasmine can wait until after break to get her paper back.
I don’t want to be involved in that conversation.
Hell, I don’t even want them to be talking about me that way.
If the college administration even suspected that my students had fantasies that included my fingers touching places that were in any way inappropriate. ..
I’d be fired, and no one would fight for me. Those girls can’t be older than nineteen. Twenty, at the oldest.
The same age as my stepdaughter. Or rather, ex-stepdaughter.
Twenty. Christ, she’s young. Just a baby, still. Not even legally allowed to drink. She’s been my daughter, for fuck’s sake.
And yet I spent most of last night thinking about the fact that she was in the bedroom next to mine, laying in her bed with her new curves and that fuckable mouth. I wonder if she still sleeps with it slightly open, the way she did when she was a kid. And if she still has those nightmares.
I spent all night hard as a rock at the memory of her eyes lighting up when they saw me and threatening myself with death and dismemberment if I dared to act on the fantasies rushing through my brain.
All of which made me even angrier with her for arriving at my house so changed.
Where is the little girl I missed for the last four years? When did she grow up, and who the fuck did she become that she now gets arrested and has to call for help in the middle of the night?
Her mouth and curves are none of my fucking business.
I brought her here because she needed my help.
That’s all. And if I’m lucky, she’ll figure out whatever she needs to figure out and be out of my hair and on her way back to New York City sooner rather than later.
I don’t need the distraction of her in my house, and I sure as hell don’t need the trouble.
I’ve had enough of troublesome women to last a lifetime.
And that’s starting to include Gabby. She was an easy person to date at first. Very few boundaries, that one, so if I didn’t want to be close, she didn’t argue with me. But lately, things are getting complicated.
Her midnight lecture last night about how I needed to send Taryn home didn’t help.
Neither did my reaction to her statement. Because my first and only thought was that Taryn had more right to be here than Gabby herself. That having Taryn home again feels very wrong... and also right enough that it makes me distinctly uncomfortable.
I grind my teeth and look for my car. I need to get back to the shop and start working on some new marketing ideas.
The business is losing money so fast I can’t keep track of it, and we need more clients ordering pieces.
We need the business to make more money.
And with school out for Christmas and an interloper staying in my house, I’m hoping I can spend most of my break in the shop, figuring out how to make that happen.