“That’s not fair, Beth,” Adam protested. How had the conversation gotten away from him so quickly? “I’m always thinking about what you want. Why are you getting so uptight about this?” He lowered his voice. “If that’s all I wanted, it’s not like I couldn’t find it somewhere else.”
Oops.
He knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that it had been the wrong thing to say. The absolute worst possible choice. But if he hadn’t, the blood rising to Beth’s face, the thin, angry line her lips made pressed together, and the haste with which she was backing away from him would all have been a pretty decent tip-off.
“If that’s how you feel—”
“I’m sorry!” he pleaded hastily. “Come on, please, can we talk about this? Can we just have lunch and talk about this?”
“I’m not hungry anymore. But don’t worry, I’m sure you can find someone else. Someone less uptight.” She spit out the words and stalked away.
“I don’t want someone else—I want you,” Adam said plaintively.
But there was no one left to hear him.
By the end of the day Beth had pretty much calmed down—though every time she thought of Adam, her muscles tensed and her breath quickened, the anger surging through her once again. She couldn’t decide—was she angrier at him or at herself? Either way, she was doing her best to keep her mind on something else.
Like, say, Mr. Powell.
Jack.
Okay, so it wasn’t a total coincidence that she’d labored for an hour over her hair (silky, straight, and hanging free, with two thin braids pulled around from the front and tied together with a light blue ribbon), experimented with some new makeup, and donned her cutest miniskirt on the day of her one-on-one meeting with the newspaper adviser.
“Deep in thought already?” Mr. Powell asked, stepping into the tiny newspaper office. “Hope I haven’t missed any strokes of genius.”
Beth laughed and blushed.
“No, Mr. Powell.” He gave her a stern look. “I mean, Jack, don’t worry, the genius is waiting for you.”
“Well, then, wait no longer. Your inspiration has arrived! Let’s get to work.” He sat down next to her and began talking animatedly about his—no, their—plans.
They were supposed to be putting together a new layout for the paper, figuring out which fonts and photo borders they wanted to use, where to stick the comic strips and the lunch menus. They were supposed to be debating how large the headlines should be and whether the column “A Day in the Life of a Cheerleader” really belonged in the sports section. Supposed to be, but Beth wasn’t having too much luck with the whole concentration thing. She sat in front of the computer, an old Mac from the nineties that she had persuaded the school to donate to the floundering newspaper, even though it could barely run the design program they used for the layout. Mr. Powell stood behind her, close enough that she could smell his cologne—something mysterious and European—close enough that she could feel his presence without having to turn around. And then there were the moments when she needed him to look closely at something on the screen, and he would lean down, sometimes placing his hands on her shoulders for balance, and peer over her shoulder, his stubbly cheek only inches from hers. He would stare at the screen, and she, out of the corner of her eye, would stare at his angular profile, wishing the moment would never end.
Beth knew she was being silly, that despite all the joking around, despite the whole first-name-basis thing, despite the fact that last time they had ended up talking together for hours, not just about the newspaper or French class, but about politics, movies, life—despite all that, he was a teacher and she was a student. He was an adult—worldly, cosmopolitan, brilliant, handsome—and she was just a kid. Nothing would ever actually happen. Of course not. So there was no reason whatsoever to feel guilty about having a little crush—or occasionally wishing that her boyfriend would be a little more like Mr. Powell and a little less like, well, Adam.
Besides, it’s not like she was some pathetic twelve-year-old drawing hearts around his name in her notebook or dreaming about how good their names sounded together (although “Beth Powell” did have a nice ring to it …).
Okay, so she was being ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. She should forget about the whole stupid thing, focus on her work, on the newspaper, on her real relationship. She should stop wasting so much mental real estate on juvenile fantasies.
But still, she thought, crossing one leg over the other in what she admittedly hoped was a seductive shift in position, she was glad she’d worn the miniskirt today.
After all, it never hurt to look your best ….
chapter
6
There must have been something in the air.
Harper stared down at her French quiz, the letters swimming on the page, as she struggled to focus on the subjonctif tense instead of on Adam.
She’d been having just a little problem with that all day long.
She’d seen him the night before, shooting hoops in his driveway.
No shirt on.
God, she wanted him.
She had been about to go to sleep when she heard the rhythmic pounding of the ball on the cement pavement—and when she looked out the window, there he was, barely visible in the dim light of the full moon.
Racing back and forth across the driveway, his muscles straining with the effort, his hair wild, his movements fluid, one sculpted pose melting into the next.
So lean and taut, so graceful. His large, warm hands, his supple fingers massaging the ball.
She liked to imagine those fingers grazing her body, climbing through her tangles of hair, stroking her legs. Too bad it was only her imagination; too bad his fingers were, for the moment, taken. Just like the rest of his body, from his thick calf muscles to his tight pecs to the light sprinkling of freckles across his nose.
Her memory was far from photographic, but when it came to the minutiae of Adam’s body, in all its curves and spots and ripples, she had total recall.
Harper forced herself to scrawl down a couple of answers and then lay her pen down and closed her eyes for a moment, imagining the warm pressure of his arms wrapped around her, his lips kissing their way down her neck, her shoulder, her breasts ….
Her body was tingling, and she raised a hand to her breastbone, lightly grazing her fingers across the bare skin.
If only …
If only she would just trust him. If only she would just get over whatever it was that—
No.
Adam shook his head. It’s not that sex was all he wanted. He wasn’t that kind of guy. (Not that Beth seemed to notice.)
But he was a guy, for God’s sake. He was eighteen, he loved his girlfriend—was it so wrong that he wanted to be with her?
Did it bother him that all his friends just assumed that he and Beth were sleeping together? That they would probably laugh him out of the locker room if they knew the truth? That half the cheerleading team would be happy to jump him and tear off his clothes—and yet he was still a virgin?
Okay, yeah, maybe a little.
Enough that he couldn’t look at Beth without thinking of sex.
Hell, he couldn’t even think of Beth without thinking of sex—and sex was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about while sitting in history class staring blankly at his middle-aged teacher and her poorly bleached mustache. But he couldn’t stop himself. It was like he was fourteen again—totally out of control.
It wasn’t a status thing, it wasn’t about his reputation. He loved her, and he wanted her—those slim arms wrapped around him, her lithe body tangled up in his, her hair splayed out on his bed. He wanted her—all of her.
And she wanted him, too—he could tell. So what was holding her back?
She didn’t trust him. That was obvious. And completely unjustified. He was absolutely, totally devoted to her. And if he thought about other girls sometimes, well, that was normal too, right?
No harm, no foul.
Now there was a girl who knew what she wanted and went for it.
His dream Kaia smiled mischievously.
“I want you,” she said silently to him, licking her lips and peeling off her damp, clinging shirt.
With horror, Adam realized that he—or at least, his body—wanted her, too. He shifted around in his seat and surreptitiously pulled a notebook onto his lap to cover up, a move he hadn’t had to make since the hormonal nightmare that was eighth grade.
And in his mind’s eye, the dream Kaia tilted her head back and laughed, chest heaving. And then she went back to the task at hand: stripping off her clothes.
It was just a fantasy, right?
No harm in that.
Just a fantasy, Beth told herself. No harm in that. She’d whipped through her quiz in a few minutes and was now left with nothing to do but stare at the front of the classroom, where Jack Powell was relaxing, feet kicked up on the desk and hands clasped behind his head. What was he thinking about, she wondered. Parisian cafes? African safaris?
When they’d last met, he told her all about his travels around the world, and it set her mind on fire. And his voice—she could listen to those words spilling over her, the impeccably crafted sentences and delicious accent, for hours. For days.
She pictured the two of them sitting across a breakfast table from each other, exchanging sections of the New York Times (she’d once seen this in a movie, and it had since seemed to her the epitome of sophisticated romance). Or maybe they’d be working their way through a crossword puzzle together … in bed.
Beth blushed furiously, and Mr. Powell looked up, as if he’d somehow sensed that she was picturing what he looked like beneath his chambray shirt and khakis. Their eyes met, and he grinned at her and winked.
God, she loved that smile.
Kane always had a hint of a smile on his face. It was one of the things Miranda loved about him. And that perpetual smirk in his voice—as if all of life was a joke, and only he knew the punch line.
Which, Miranda supposed, was enough to make most people think he was a jerk. And he was. Cocky, pampered, self-centered, lazy, a confirmed believer in “never walk when you can ride” and “never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.”
But it was all part of his charm.
She loved watching him in class, the way he leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the rim of the seat in front of him, as if he were kicking back in an armchair after a long day’s work, rather than suffering through forty-seven minutes of American History. Sometimes he scrawled something on the single piece of paper atop his desk, sometimes he tipped his head back and closed his eyes—occasionally, he even sat up straight and looked at the teacher, though the smoldering disdain never left his eyes. And the cocky smile never left his face.
He was a jerk, all right. A slimy asshole who sailed through life on his good looks, who probably, if asked, would tell you he had never truly cared about anything or anyone but himself. And he would probably be telling the truth—or at least he’d think he was.
But Miranda wasn’t fooled. She’d watched Kane for years now. Laughed at his jokes, insulted his attitude, admired his effortless skill at almost everything—noticed the way, every once in a while and only when they weren’t looking, he would actually be there for his friends.They didn’t see it, they weren’t looking for it; but Miranda paid attention. She was an A plus, Phi Beta Kappa student of Kane Studies—and she was convinced that beneath the smirking curl of his lip and the chiseled abs and the perfect tan, there was something else. Something real.
You just had to be willing to look.
Long and hard.
Looking for love was hard work.
There was Ilana: all body, no brains.
Shayna: all brains, no body (but a great sound system—and TiVo).
Julia: all boobs, no ass.
And, of course, Katie: all mouth. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But even that got old.
Sometimes Kane felt like Goldilocks (a tall, goodlooking, straight male version of Goldilocks, of course)—nothing he tried out ever quite measured up.
Not that he didn’t love the variety—forget too hot, too cold, too tall, too short. It was all a beautiful rainbow of possibility as far as he was concerned, and he had no complaints.
Okay, he had one: He was bored. Even more bored than usual.
Whatever happened to the thrill of the chase, the lust for victory? That was the problem, actually. Most of these bimbos didn’t give chase—just head.
Of course, there was one girl who might present quite the interesting challenge. One girl he’d been waiting a long time to get a taste of.
That blond hair, those blue eyes, all that innocence crying out for a little corruption.
There were, of course, a few stumbling blocks in his path.
His supposed best friend being a not inconsequential one.
Her supposed love for said friend being another.
So it wouldn’t be easy. Kane smiled. He was done with easy. Easy was boring.
Difficult? Challenging? Messy and emotional and violent and dirty?
That was more his speed.
That was fun.
It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt—and then, Kaia thought with a grin, that’s when the real fun starts. Now that things with Adam had been set in motion, it was really only a matter of time—which meant it was time to start thinking about what would come next. Adam was, after all, just a diversion. He couldn’t be expected to hold her attention for long.
No, she had her sights set on a much bigger fish.
An older, more sophisticated, British fish.
She glanced up at the front of the classroom where Jack Powell had stretched himself out in his chair. He looked bored out of his mind.
She knew the feeling.
And she decided that it was time to answer both their prayers.
She knew every girl in the room was thinking the same thing, every girl wanted the same thing—she could see it in their hungry eyes, hear it in the way they tittered as he brushed past them on his way to the front of the room. But it didn’t matter what they wanted. Because of all of them, Kaia was the only one who had the nerve to act. These pathetic small-town girls could fantasize about him, long for him, want him all they liked—but that’s all it would ever be. A silly fantasy. As far as Kaia was concerned, fantasizing was a waste of her time—when you saw something you wanted, you took it.
She looked down at the quiz in front of her. Still blank. Subjonctif? She snorted. Give me a break, she thought. As if she hadn’t covered this stuff in tenth grade. This place was so backward.
She grabbed her pen, thought for a moment, and then began to write: large, deliberate letters, the words spanning across the width of the page.
VOULEZ-VOUS COUCHERAVECMOI?
(En anglais: “Would you like to sleep with me?”)
A little hackneyed, perhaps, a little cliché—but he’d get the message.
Kaia, after all, didn’t believe in being subtle.
She believed in getting the job done.
chapter
7
Harper picked up the phone on the second ring. Thanks to caller ID, she knew it was him and—irrationally—felt the need to smooth down her hair and do a quick mirror check before saying hello. As if he would be able to somehow hear her beauty through the phone. Ridiculous, she knew. But still—every little bit helped.
“Adam, what’s up?” she greeted him, lying back on her bed and relishing the sound of his musical voice in her ear.
“Great news—I think I may have found a spot for the party. I just need to drive over and check it out.”
It was just what she’d been hoping to hear. She and Miranda had already spent hours burning CDs (no way were either of them risking their personal CD
collections on a roomful of drunken teenagers), and Kane had promised them that the drinks, courtesy of his older brother—and a number of mysterious other “connections”—were a done deal. But all the beer and hip-hop in the world wouldn’t be enough to make this party work if they didn’t find somewhere to hold it, and so far every possibility—the golf course, the gravel pit on the edge of town, some kid’s dingy basement—had been a major bust.
Harper knew she should have been somewhat worried, but she had other priorities right now, and one of them—the only one, really—involved getting some quality alone time with Adam. So if he’d found some suitably large, deserted outpost with ample facilities for drinking, dancing, and doing … whatever, it seemed only right that in her capacity as leader of this little party squad, she help him with his final investigations. And whatever else he might need help with, of course.
“Cool,” she said, as nonchalantly as she could. “Do you want me to—”
“Kaia and I are heading over tomorrow afternoon,” he added.
Oh.
She should have known. Since when did Adam go anywhere without Kaia by his side? She shut her eyes tight and tried not to picture the two of them creeping through a deserted building together, hand in hand. She supposed that she should be able to assure herself that Adam was too much of a stand-up guy to ever cheat on his girlfriend—but it was a little late to make that case, given that she’d spent the last couple of months convincing herself that, under the right circumstances and with the right girl (read: Harper), he’d have no trouble doing exactly that.
“So, should we all meet tomorrow night?” Adam continued, after it was clear that Harper wasn’t going to be squealing in enthusiasm any time soon. “Hopefully, we’ll have some good news.”
We. Great.
Harper sighed quietly and sat up in bed, digging her day planner out from beneath a stack of books and papers on her night table. Saturday night was free and clear—plenty of time for sitting around, staring at Adam, or aiming death glares (or at least some finely honed sarcasm) at the girls who kept standing in her way.
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