“Just shut up and leave me alone!” he bellowed.
“Are you going to study?” Charlie asked coolly.
Portman stared, stony faced. Finally he bowed and shook his head.
“Fine, fine, but I’m going to need some help.”
“Julie’s probably the best one for that,” Averman commented. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to help.”
Julie came around to Portman’s room that afternoon.
“Hey, Averman said I should give you a hand?”
Portman nodded and let her in.
“Thanks,” he replied ruefully.
Julie stepped in and wrinkled her nose.
“Wow… I can really tell this room belongs to a couple of teenage guys. PU.”
Portman decided to ignore the comment and cleared a space for her at the desk. Clearing a space as in pushed everything that was in the way on the floor. Julie shook her head with an amused smile, as if to say she should have seen that one coming.
“Okay, where’s the test you did?”
“Here.”
Julie glanced at it.
“All righty then. I think the best place to start is to go through the test and figure out where you went wrong okay?”
“Okay,” he sighed.
“And Portman? If I catch you even looking at my shirt, I will kick your butt whether your X-ray vision has come on or not.”
“Okay, okay.”
They got started on reviewing the test. About an hour later, Julie felt Portman’s hand on her leg.
“Portman…” she warned.
He removed it and gave her a small grin.
“You know, you’re a lot more fun when you’re in Heat.”
“Trust you to say something like that. Really, sometimes I think you have more hormones than all the other guys in the team combined.”
“Could be,” he grinned fiendishly.
Julie stood up.
“Maybe next time I help you study, we should meet in the library.”
“What? You’re going now?”
“I’ve been here for an hour,” she pointed out. “Why don’t you let me know when you’ve done those questions and I’ll help you work out where you got them wrong - assuming you get any wrong.”
“Oh, okay,” he agreed reluctantly.
Julie left and headed back to her own room.
“How’d it go?” asked Connie.
“Oh fine until he decided to start flirting again,” Julie rolled her eyes. “Can’t he take a hint?”
“Portman? Take a hint? He wouldn’t get it if it reared up and bit him on the butt.”
“He’d probably enjoy that.”
Connie laughed.
“Okay, fell over it in the street then. Whatever.”