Her Imaginary Husband (Contemporary Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page B

unnecessary.”
    “Just being friendly, Mrs . Fallon,” he said with a wink, and he turned to strut away.
    Nikki scuffled back into her room and got behind her desk—to hide her feet, of course—and sifted through the stack. Under the announcements and the cafeteria menu was a small, handwritten note. I hope you’ll still let me take you out to lunch sometimes. W.C.
    Nikki stared at the note. W. C. Will Carlin?! He doesn’t care that I’m married?! She slammed the papers down with disgust and caught sight of her hands. The ring! I forgot to get a ring! She closed her eyes and put her head down. This was going to be a long day.
    “Do we need to go running, Ms. Fallon?”
    “Is that you, Sammi?” asked Nikki, not moving.
    “Yeah.”
    “How about you just crack open a window?”
    “That works, too.”
    Nikki smiled at the students entering and turned away to face the corner while she applied the rest of her make-up. A few minutes later, the final bell rang. The kids seemed to be in a pleasant enough mood, and she hoped that meant she’d done all right the first day. She crooked a finger at Robert, and he approached the desk warily.
    “Robert, you seem to be a responsible sort. Is it likely that you’ll get beat up if I ask you to take roll for me every day?”
    He pushed his glasses further up his nose and shrugged. “I’m a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, so I doubt it.”
    Nikki’s jaw dropped open, which was preferable to snickering.
    “I get that a lot,” he said.
    “I would love to watch the security cams when someone tries to bully you. I bet it’d be YouTube worthy.”
    Robert gave what passed for a smile. His was not an expressive face.
    Nikki managed to direct the class through a study of the first chapter of Elements of Fiction without leaving her desk. However, eventually, someone asked, “Aren’t you going to get up today?”
    “She’s feeling sick,” whispered Sammi. “She had her head down before class. It’s probably that time of—”
    Nikki shot to her feet so fast that her rolling swivel chair banged into the wall and knocked her decorative photo frame askew. “All right, let’s get this party started!”
    A loud scream came from a seat by the window, and three of the fluffier girls started batting at the air hysterically. “A bee! There’s a bee in the room!”
    Nikki’s heart jumped, but she forced calm into her voice. “Is anyone allergic?” Inside her head, she was screaming, too.
    “I am,” whimpered a very large boy in the middle of the room.
    Nikki snatched the yardstick from the tray of the classroom chalk board. “Let’s try to usher it back out the window, shall we?” She lifted the stick, wielding it like a sword. “Mr. Bee, sir. You were not invited.”
    “That’s not a bee. That’s a wasp!” said Robert, stepping a little closer to the door.
    Crap.
    Kids squealed and scraped back their chairs, tipping and leaping to get away from the Two-inch Terror. It circled low over their heads once and then drifted up into the fluorescent lights that hung down on rods from the twelve-foot ceiling. Shaking the yardstick to one side of the wasp, Nikki tried to scare it into moving back towards the window, but it just went higher. Determined to get rid of the wasp, she stepped up onto one of the newly vacated chairs, and from there climbed up to the desk top.
    “Go, Ms. Fallon!” shouted one kid.
    “Be careful! Don’t fall!” called another.
    “Thanks, Mom,” answered Nikki, grimacing in effort. She stepped from desk to desk, knocking a few binders and a Starbucks cup to the floor before she finally caught up with the wasp. Swinging up into the lights, she hit the bug so that it buzzed angrily against one of the suspending cables. “Ha! You’re no match for me!”
    The class roared with laughter, and Nikki dropped her arm to look at them. “Oh, come on. It’s not that funny.”
    They weren’t looking at her. They were looking towards the door