by Penny Reid
Not that she wasn’t grateful for the intervention. But it was also possible she’d just leapt out of Jabba the Hutt’s barge and into the sarlacc pit. So, as soon as they were out of sight of the creep at the bar, Melody let go and took a big step back, putting a few feet of distance between them.
Her benevolent savior shoved his hands into the pockets of his madras shorts, sidestepping a party of four as the hostess led them to their table. He was wearing boat shoes and a polo shirt with the collar popped, like he’d stepped out a Ralph Lauren ad. “Are you okay?” His brow scrunched in concern as his eyes dropped to her arm. “That guy didn’t hurt you when he grabbed you, did he?” He had unusually kind eyes for someone who dressed like a prep school douche.
“No, I’m fine.” Melody clenched her hands into fists, resisting the urge to rub her forearm where the creep had touched her. “Thanks for the assist, though.”
“Do you need a ride home?” As if he’d just realized how that sounded, he added, “I mean, I can call you a cab if you want.”
She shook her head. She was a girl with a hole in her shirt and a thrift-store jacket—no way could she afford cab fare on her work study salary. “Thanks, but I’m good.” She’d get herself home on the T—the same way she got there.
“All right,” he said. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
He nodded and sauntered off toward the back of the restaurant, without even hitting on her or expecting anything in return for his good deed. Huh. Apparently, chivalry wasn’t dead after all.
Melody’s phone buzzed in her hand. It was a text from Victor.
Sorry got hung up and can’t make it.
Great. Wonderful. Perfect.
“Hey!” she called out, hurrying after the Cute Guy. “Wait.”
He turned around, eyebrows raised. His sandy hair flopped across his forehead, and he reached up to push it back, smiling at her. He had cute dimples when he smiled. She’d always been a sucker for dimples. They were her kryptonite.
Melody took a deep breath, ignoring the hamsters running nervous laps in her stomach. All she had to do was talk to him. She could do that. It wasn’t like it was rocket science or anything.
No, it’s way worse. Rocket science, she could handle. Talking to cute guys, on the other hand—that was intimidating. Especially heavenly smelling, well-muscled paragons of kindhearted chivalry.
Flo Rida blared from the bar’s speakers as a group of people in Sox jerseys pushed through the space between Melody and the cute dimples, trying to get to the bar. She elbowed her way past them, giving dirty looks as good as she got, until she was standing right in front of him.
“What’s your name?” At five-foot-six, Melody was hardly what you’d call short, but he was tall enough she had to tip her head back to look at him when they were this close.
“Jeremy.”
“Well, Jeremy, I think I owe you a drink.”
He shook his head, and his hair flopped onto his forehead again. “You don’t owe me anything.” He paused, running his hand through his hair. “But if you’re propositioning me of your own free will…” There was that smirk again. How dare that kind of sass be so sexy? A smirk like that had no right to make her feel so swoony, but it did. It really, really did.
“Let’s not get carried away,” she said, unable to control the smile on her face. “I’m offering to buy you a drink. That’s all.”
He did that head tilt thing again, which she was starting to love. Then there was the matter of his eyes, which were outrageously blue, now that she was looking at them up close. Cerulean blue, like that X-Files episode about the guy who hypnotized people.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” Jeremy said, gazing at her with his preposterously blue eyes.
“Melody,” she said, trying to pretend like this was totally normal for her, like she went around offering to buy drinks for cute guys with hot smirks and adorable floppy hair all the time.
He grinned. “In that case, I accept your offer, Melody.”
Chapter 2
Over the next hour, Melody learned the following things about Jeremy:
He was from Los Angeles.
He’d just flunked out of Syracuse, which was the second college he’d flunked out of in four years (the first was Brown).
Instead of telling his parents he’d flunked out (again) he’d decided to drive to Boston for the weekend to hang with one of his buddies who went to BU.
He was rich. Like, super rich, apparently.
He and Melody had absolutely nothing in common.
“Okay, how about the last movie you saw?” Jeremy asked, reaching for his bottle of Shock Top.
They were sitting at a table in the far back corner of the Cask ’n Flagon, playing one of those get-to-know-you games where you take turns asking each other questions.
“Princess Mononoke,” Melody said as a cheer rang out from the direction of the bar. Something exciting must have happened in the Red Sox game on all the TVs. She wasn’t facing any of them, so she couldn’t tell what, but there’d been a lot more cheering than booing, so she assumed Boston was winning.
Jeremy’s eyes flicked to the screen behind her head, then immediately back to her. “Never heard of it.”
The question game had been her bright idea, but she already regretted it. It had only served to highlight how very much they were not each other’s type.
“It’s an animated film from Japan.”
Jeremy made a face. “Like anime?”
“Yeah, but it’s amazing. Trust me.”
He looked skeptical. “If you say so. What was the last movie you saw in a theater?”
“Still Princess Mononoke—it was a Miyazaki film festival.” Melody reached for the pint she’d bought with her fake ID. She’d been nursing it for over an hour, so it was lukewarm and going flat—kind of like her whole night. “Last TV show you watched?”
“Does Monday Night Football count?”
“No, scripted television only.”
He reached up and pushed his hair off his forehead while he thought about it. It flopped right back down again as soon as he let go of it. The guy needed a haircut badly. “What’s that one about the nerds with the hot neighbor?”
Melody winced. “The Big Bang Theory?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Of course it was. The show that made people like her into punchlines, like her very existence as a human who was good at math and liked sci-fi was a hilarious joke. The show that promoted “awkward nerd boy meets hot girl” clichés while clinging to the stereotype that comic book superheroes were the exclusive domain of hardcore male geeks instead of a mainstream pop culture sensation.
“The last book you read for fun?” she asked, changing the subject even though it wasn’t her turn.
He shook his head. “I honestly can’t remember. I don’t really read for fun.”
Of course he didn’t. And given his academic record, he probably didn’t read for school either.
His eyebrows jerked up. “Wow, you’re totally judging me right now, aren’t you?”
“I’m not!” Melody protested, her cheeks growing hot with embarrassment.
Jeremy laughed, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “You’re a terrible liar, you know that?”
“In my defense, I do actually know that,” she said, unable to resist smiling back at him.
“So, why MIT?” Jeremy asked after they’d exhausted most of pop culture and moved on to autobiographical topics. “Why not Harvard or some other smarty-pants school?”
Melody took a sip of her beer. They were on their second round, this time courtesy of Jeremy’s black AmEx card. “It’s the best for what I want to study.”
“What’s that?”
“Computer science.” Her fingers traced a lopsided heart carved into the surface of the table. Next to it was a vaguely demonic-looking smiley face. “Why’d you choose Brown originally?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I didn’t. It’
s where my dad went. He got me in.” He was trying to sound casual, but the way his fingers tightened around his beer bottle spoke otherwise.
“You didn’t want to go there?”
“To be honest, I was never that interested in college in the first place.” He shrugged again. “I didn’t much care where I went.”
Leaning back in her chair, she rested her forearms on the table and cradled her pint glass. “What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. My dad will probably give me a job at his company.”
Melody couldn’t help sounding sour. “Must be nice to have everything handed to you without ever having to work for it.”
Jeremy made a noncommittal noise. “Yeah, I guess.” He reached for his beer and took a big swallow. His fingernails were all bitten down to the quick, and she wondered what someone with his cushy life could possibly have to be stressed about.
“What, like it’s not?”
He shifted in his seat, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “Look, I know I’m lucky, okay? I’m not trying to act like it’s a hardship to have money. It’s just…no one’s ever bothered to ask me what I actually want to do. I’m just expected to follow whatever path my parents lay out for me. Makes it kind of hard to get too excited about it, that’s all.”
“So, what do you want to do?” Melody asked, since apparently no one ever had.
Shaking his head, he stared down at the table. “I don’t even know. How’s that for pathetic? I have no fucking clue what I want, which is sort of the whole problem, I guess.” He looked up, and a tingle ran down her spine when his eyes found hers. He had this way of looking at you like you were the only one in the room. “Do you know what you want to do?”
She’d known since she was ten, when she got her first computer, an old Compaq Presario—a hand-me-down from one of her mom’s friends. “I want to be a software developer.”
“Why that?”
“Because I’m good with computers. Because I love puzzles and losing myself in code. Because it pays well, and it’s a field with a lot of job growth, so I won’t have to struggle to get by like my mom always did.”
“What’d your mom do for a living?”
“What didn’t she do? Cashier, waitress, esthetician, retail. She’s always hopping from job to job, chasing the next big break—which never seems to materialize.”
Jeremy nodded, as if he understood what it was like living with that kind of financial insecurity, even though he couldn’t possibly. “What about your dad?”
“I never knew him. He took off when he found out my mom was pregnant.”
“That sucks.”
It was Melody’s turn to shrug. “It’s easy not to miss someone who was never there in the first place.”
Jeremy leaned forward, his eyebrows drawing together. “Don’t you ever wonder about him? Or how your life might have been different if he’d stuck around?”
“Not really.” The cut-and-run routine didn’t exactly speak to stellar parenting skills. Whoever he was, she figured she was better off without him. Child support might have been nice, though.
“Sorry if I’m being too nosy.”
“It’s fine,” she said, waving her hand. It shouldn’t have been, but it was.
She’d avoided talking about her background since she’d come to Boston. Most of the students at MIT came from more affluent households with better educated parents, and she didn’t want to stand out as the poor kid whose single mom hadn’t even finished high school. But she didn’t mind talking to Jeremy about it, despite their difference in pedigrees. Maybe because she knew she was never going to see him again, so she didn’t have to care what he thought of her.
He tilted his head and smiled that dazzling smile again. “And here you are, putting yourself through MIT, doing exactly what you want to do with your life.”
It was hard to look directly at him when he was smiling at her like that. Casting her eyes downward, she concentrated on rubbing the condensation off her glass with her thumb. “I guess, yeah.”
He reached across the table and touched her on the arm. His fingers were soft and warm on her skin. “It’s impressive,” he said. “You’re impressive.”
Guys this rich and good looking weren’t supposed to be this nice. She didn’t know what to do with it. She’d never been good at taking compliments anyway. Her instinct was always to argue, which was a habit she’d been trying to break to improve her adulting skills. But that just left her with the urge to hide her head under a blanket and pretend it hadn’t happened.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been good at anything in my life,” he said, sounding wistful. “You’re lucky.”
How crazy was that? A guy with a million-dollar trust fund thought she was the lucky one. She would have laughed out loud, except he seemed completely earnest, like he really wanted her to believe him.
The strange thing was, she did.
Melody had no idea where the time had gone. How had it gotten to be midnight already? Somehow, she and Jeremy had been talking for hours. She was surprised how much she’d been enjoying herself—and how much she actually liked him.
Which was insane. Jeremy was so not her type. They had nothing in common. Like, seriously, nothing. But he was easy to talk to. He made her feel like he really cared about whatever she was saying. Like she was the most interesting person he’d ever met.
It was possible Melody was a bit smitten. Okay, sure, on the surface, he was exactly the sort of pretty, spoiled rich boy she usually despised. But she couldn’t help feeling like there was more to him than that, like there were hidden depths under the boyish charm.
Maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part. Or a byproduct of the three beers she’d had. Or the way her knees went weak whenever he smiled at her…
Whatever. He was cute. She would 100 percent sleep with him if he asked. Which he hadn’t, even though she’d been making her best heart-eyes at him for the last hour.
Seriously, was she not doing this flirting thing right? He wouldn’t still be here if he wasn’t interested in her, would he? Should she come right out and tell him she wanted to sleep with him? Or would that freak him out? What did she need to do to close this deal? Because she was ready to bag him up and take him home.
The best part was it didn’t matter that they had nothing in common. He was only in town for the weekend, so there were no issues of compatibility. No question of commitment. No awkward encounters on campus for the next three years. It could just be one night of hot sex with a cute guy, then they never had to see each other again. Win-win.
Jeremy drained the last of his beer and gestured to her almost-empty glass. “You want another?”
“I think I’ve had enough,” she said, shaking her head.
He looked at her for a long moment, long enough for her to feel self-conscious.
“What?”
“I’m trying to figure out how drunk you are.”
“I’m not drunk, I just don’t want another beer.”
When he smiled, she could have sworn his eyes actually twinkled. “In that case, do you want to get out of here?”
Another tingle ran down her spine. “Okay.”
Chapter 3
As they stepped out of the bar, Jeremy reached for her hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
This is it, Melody thought, squeezing his fingers between hers. I did it.
She felt proud of herself. Gleeful, even.
That must have been what made her stop on the sidewalk in front of the Cask ’n Flagon, hook her hand around Jeremy’s neck, and drag his mouth down to hers. Which was so not her. She was not that girl, but there she was, being that girl.
She didn’t have any explanation for it other than the fact that she’d spent the last couple hours screwing up her courage to put the moves on him, and now that he was hers for the taking, she didn’t want to wait any longer. She wanted to make sure he knew she was all in. Because she was. All in.
&nbs
p; After a brief moment of surprise, Jeremy kissed her back with enthusiasm. His lips were warm and delicious. And soft. Like pillows, with just a hint of prickle around them from his stubble. If she weren’t careful, she could melt right into them.
“Sorry,” she mumbled when they came up for air. She wasn’t actually sorry, not even a little. “I guess that was kind of forward, wasn’t it?”
His mouth curled into that smirk again—the one that made her feel so swoony. “I hope there’s a lot more where that came from.” His voice was low and breathy, and the sound of it made her toes curl in anticipation.
They were already standing close, but he moved even closer, pressing his chest against hers as he held onto her waist. His hair had fallen across his forehead, and she reached up to push it back for him. He had a perfect nose. Perfect teeth. And deep crinkles around his eyes from smiling, like he smiled all the time. God, he was gorgeous.
His hands came up to either side of her face and slid into her hair. His breath was warm on her cheeks, and she couldn’t help rising onto her tiptoes, like a sunflower straining toward the sun.
He smiled a slow, warm smile, like he was looking at something beautiful, then kissed her again, so deeply, she could feel it all the way down to the soles of her feet.
She’d thought their last kiss was good, but this one was something else altogether. Melody had never been kissed like this before. Not by the guy with the butt chin during freshman orientation, or either of the boyfriends she’d had in high school. They were all rank amateurs compared to Jeremy. He was in the big leagues. By far the best she’d ever encountered in her not-so-extensive experience. She could go on kissing him forever, basically. He was that good.
When his lips moved away from hers, she let out an involuntary whine of protest—which quickly dissolved into a contented sigh as he mouthed a trail of kisses along her jaw and down her neck. Her hands roamed over his shoulders, then his arms, then his hips. She couldn’t get enough of touching him. She pressed her thigh between his legs and was rewarded with a low growl, which was just—wow. She’d actually made a guy growl. That was a new milestone for her scrapbook.
