Two Week Seduction by Kathy Lyons

playing by teacher rules. And in those, the teacher asks the questions.”
    He leaned back and folded his arms. Under that tee, his muscles flexed and stretched the material. “And I’m the student in this scenario?”
    “You can be whomever you want so long as you start talking.” Then she softened her expression. “Come on. Call it a sleeping-with-me-tax. I don’t care. Just—”
    “What do you want to know?”
    She was stunned. She didn’t think he’d give in so easily. But then again, he hadn’t really given in, had he? He’d thrown it back to her in a question. That was probably an interrogation tactic or something, but she was game to try.
    “Let’s start with your regular day. What do you do on base?”
    “It’s pretty routine most of the time. Some of it’s classified.” He stopped. Grabbed his coffee and drank.
    “That’s it? Geez, it’s like pulling teeth with you. Tell me what you can.”
    “I protect the people who protect this country. I make sure the base is safe, the planes and personnel are safe, and the supplies are safe. I do whatever’s necessary to make sure—”
    “That stuff is safe. I got it.”
    “Not stuff. The people . Without food, the personnel don’t eat. Without planes, they don’t fly. Without a safe place to land, they get shot down or killed in their sleep.”
    She nodded. So it was all about the people for him. Got it. Just as teaching was all about the kids to her. Not the words, not the test scores, not even their future colleges, but about who they were as people.
    “So have you arrested people?”
    He snorted. “Lots.”
    “Terrorists?”
    His expression sobered. “Yes.”
    “And do you like your job?”
    “Yes.” More emphatic.
    “Does it make you happy?”
    He blinked at her. Once. Twice. And then he rolled his eyes. “That’s such a female question.”
    “That doesn’t make it a bad question.”
    “It’s not about happy, Alea. It’s about doing a job that needs doing.”
    “Serving your country, patriotism and all that?”
    He shrugged as if embarrassed. “Yeah.”
    “But it’s not all about that, is it? I mean, it’s got to be more than just serving your country. There are a thousand ways to serve without being an Air Force cop.”
    For the first time in this conversation, he looked away from her. Not just away from her face, but away from her whole body. He looked at his coffee mug and didn’t move.
    “John?”
    “Being security was all that I could manage. Couldn’t hack it as a pilot.”
    “Because of your eyes?” That’s what Sam had told her. That his eyes just weren’t good enough to fly and he couldn’t afford the surgery to try and fix them. So he got contact lenses and dropped out of flight school.
    He nodded, but then he shook his head. “It was more than the eyes. There’s complex mathematics and a ton of other schooling that didn’t work for me.”
    Now the teacher in her was kicking into gear. Whenever someone said a subject “didn’t work for me” it usually meant something different. Something deeper.
    “It didn’t work in what way?”
    He glared at her. “It just didn’t work.”
    She arched a brow. “I school teenagers for a living, soldier. If you think you can intimidate me with a look, then you don’t know kids these days. Or teachers. Now come on. Didn’t work how? You didn’t understand the material?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Bull. I know you. Once you set your mind on something, you find a way to get it done. Your mom’s car stopped working, so you traded yard work with a mechanic to learn how to fix it yourself. Your bike was stolen so you found a way to borrow one cheap until you could buy a new one.”
    “I never bought a new one. I had to borrow Sam’s until we reported to basic.”
    Oh right. She’d forgotten that. “So that only proves my point. If you’d wanted to be a pilot, you would have found a way.”
    “I wanted it.”
    “But maybe it didn’t fit. Not enough to make sure it