At 11:30 on the dot, she sat up straight in her chair and leaned forward, waiting for Sheldon to take a breath. “I’m sorry, but I have another meeting. If you have a reasonable explanation for the missed classes and your late paper from this semester,” Deja stressed the words, “you’re always welcome to come back.”

“So…” Sheldon let the word dangle for a second or two, his eyes boring into Deja’s. “You aren’t going to accept my paper?”

Can a person feel their blood pressure rising? Because Deja could have sworn she felt her blood pressure shooting through her proverbial roof. Her jaw clenched, and she snapped her lips shut to stop from screaming. She was just so tired. Once she’d collected herself, she pulled her mouth into the best smile she could muster and spoke her single word answer slowly and clearly. “No.”

Sheldon’s brows furrowed in confusion, and Deja took a deep, calming breath. She was about to elaborate — even though she knew that no was a single word answer, and she’d spent the last half hour explaining her simple policy — when a knock at her office door interrupted her. She and Sheldon turned. Deja swallowed the lump in her throat at the sight of Alejandro standing in her doorway.

“Damn,” Sheldon muttered under his breath. Deja could absolutely relate.

Alejandro was leaning against her door frame in a light gray suit tailored to fit his body like a glove. And even better, he had a bright smile on his face and a paper coffee cup in each hand. Usually, Deja’s fantasies about Alejandro veered on the side of raunchy, but the domesticity of a man showing up at her office dressed like he’d just stepped out of a fancy watch advertisement with a cup of coffee for her? This was a whole new dimension of her erotic fantasies.

“Ale—” Deja cleared her throat and stood, pushing her chair back hard enough to slam into the wall behind her. She cringed, and her face warmed. “Dr. Mendoza, what are you doing here?”

“We have a meeting,” he said, lifting an eyebrow at the same time as he tilted his head toward Sheldon.

“Yeah. Y-yes, right,” Deja stammered. She turned to Sheldon, motioning him toward the door. “We’re just wrapping up here. Sheldon, I’ll see you in class on Monday?” She asked the question deliberately first to remind him that they had class on Monday and that she expected to see him there.

Sheldon seemed startled by the question or the way Alejandro’s cologne seemed to be filling Deja’s office with a delicate, spicy sent that made Deja’s mouth water.

“Um, yeah, sure,” Sheldon mumbled as he left.

Deja sighed sadly.