She bent her head forward, and as her hair fell across her face, she cast a furtive glance sideways through the curtain of blond strands. Felt her heart leap when she confirmed that he was, indeed, looking at her, and not in that disdainful way that all the other boys in school did, those mean boys who made her feel slow and dim-witted. Whose ridiculing whispers were always just out of earshot, too soft for her to make out their words. She knew the whispers were about her, because they were always looking at her as they did it. Those were the same boys who’d taped the photo of a cow to her locker, who mooed if she accidentally brushed against them in the hallway. But Elijah-he was looking at her in a different way altogether. With smoldering eyes. Movie star eyes.

Slowly she raised her head and stared back, not through a protective veil of hair this time, but with frank acknowledgment of his gaze. His test paper was already completed and turned facedown, his pencil put away in his desk. His full attention was focused on her, and she could scarcely breathe under the spell of his gaze.

He likes me. I know it. He likes me.

Her hand lifted to her throat, to the top button of her blouse. Her fingers brushed across her skin, leaving a trail of heat. She thought of Tony Curtis’s molten gaze on Lana Turner, a look that could make a girl go tongue-tied and wobble-kneed. The look that came just before the inevitable kiss. That’s when the movies always went out of focus. Why did that have to happen? Why did it always go fuzzy, just at the moment when you most wanted to see…

“Time’s up, class! Please turn in your test papers.”

Alice ’s attention snapped back to her desk, to the mimeographed test paper, half the questions still unanswered. Oh, no. Where had the time gone? She knew these answers. She just needed a few more minutes…