The ride back had been exceptionally quiet, neither he nor Gianna knowing what to say. For the first time since connecting with the woman, he felt as if she was a stranger, and he couldn’t begin to understand why. He turned back to the textbooks that lined his kitchen table. He needed to finalize his teaching plan for the first semester, but his mind wasn’t on the curriculum. Donovan was feeling out of sorts about what had happened between him and Gianna. Or more accurately, what wasn’t happening. He hadn’t wanted to push, sensing that she would have felt as if she was being backed into a corner. And then it had dawned on him that what he had hoped for between them was probably not meant to be. He sighed deeply as he moved back to the table and took a seat. As he pored over the documents before him, he was desperate to focus his attention on anything that would take his mind off Gianna. But time seemed to drag as he tried to fix his mind on the numbers he so loved to manipulate.
