“Since when?” he asked, prodding playfully at her silence. In barely five seconds, his voice had dipped from happy to aroused, deeper and warm, and Deja could feel it across her skin.

“We promised we wouldn’t do that here,” she whispered. Her mouth was suddenly dry.

“Do what? It’s just a question.”

Deja turned to her desk, swiping at the sweat on her upper lip. “I need to turn the heater down,” she muttered to herself.

Alejandro laughed softly behind her.

She grabbed the water bottle on her desk, sipped, and then walked across the room to turn the heater down. When she turned back to Alejandro, she avoided looking him in the eyes. The last thing she needed was to let him make her horny before a meeting where all eyes would be on them.

“Shouldn’t we get to this meeting?” she asked.

He stepped to the side and nodded at her office door. “After you,” he said.

“Alejandro,” she whispered, walking toward the door.

“Deja,” he whispered back as she passed him.

Deja opened the door to Marie’s hand, raised as if she was about to knock.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” Marie sang as her eyes lifted to see Alejandro behind Deja.

“We’re just heading up to the meeting,” Deja said defensively.

“Mmmmhmm,” Toni replied from the hallway.

Deja rolled her eyes and stepped into the hallway. “You two could have gone to the conference room without us. Why are you here?” She closed and locked her door after Alejandro exited.

“Us,” Marie whispered to Toni with a smug grin.

Alejandro laughed. Deja let out a frustrated breath.

“We went to the conference room, but Mike was there with Layla Morgan. Hard pass,” Toni replied.

“You two left Mike with Layla?” Alejandro asked.

“If he wanted to be saved, he should have said something,” Toni said with a shrug.

“Why is she even on this committee again?”

Deja rolled her eyes and turned to Alejandro. He raised his hands in supplication. “She overheard Dean Ward talking to me about it last month and asked to join. I couldn’t say no, especially not in front of the Dean. No one asks for more service.”

Deja sighed. “What’s done is done. Let’s just go,” she said, a knot of tension forming in her gut.

Meetings go south every day in so many ways, but Deja had assumed that a first meeting just to put all the committee members in the same room for a brainstorming session would be the easiest meeting of her day. Certainly easier than going through a student’s essay draft line by line. And while there were still so many things Deja still didn’t know about how the university functioned, apparently expecting a smooth meeting was the height of naïveté.

She was surprised into speechlessness. Shocked at first, and then angered.