by Mia Carson
“I suggest you all do as I said before,” Ashford announced after he called out the final two names. “Meet with your partner between now and Wednesday and start going over plans for the semester. Good day to you all, and try to stay dry,” he added with a wink, the rain battering loudly against the windows.
Reider shoved his notebook and pen back in his leather messenger bag and picked up his jacket. Several other students approached Ashford first so he grunted while he waited for them to go away.
“Man, you have to work with a Chadwick?” Tommy said, shaking his head. “How are you going to handle that?”
“I’m not, that’s how,” he spat. “My name means something in this damn town. I’m not letting a professor think he can do whatever he wants to me. I’m not working with her. I refuse. He’ll have to switch us with other people.”
“There are a few other hotties in the class,” Tommy said, tilting his head to study several of those girls’ rears as they exited the class. Reider’s brow lifted, and his lips twitched in a grin. There were quite a few good-looking ladies he’d be more than happy to spend quality time with. Anyone except—
“This is total bullshit,” an angry voice snapped nearby, and Reider turned to see Johanna moving towards the front of the room, a girl at her side. “I can’t believe he would be so stupid as to pair us together!”
Reider slung his jacket on, wondering if she realized he stood so close. When she finally did turn his way, his body paused and his mouth slackened. He’d seen Johanna before, numerous times at functions, but had never really paid much attention to her. The last one had been nearly six months ago, but he’d be damned if he didn’t notice how different she looked, glaring openly at him.
Her curly hair hung long over her shoulders, framing a soft face with smooth skin. He felt a sudden, ridiculous urge to reach out and run his fingers down it. She gripped one hand tightly around the strap of her tote, and the other held a pen in her fist, the cap looking like it’d been through hell and back. But it was her damn eyes that drew him in and froze his body in place. They were filled with anger, but beneath that was a simmering fire burning a hole right through him.
“Can I help you with something or do you want to keep staring?” she snapped when she reached the ground level beside him.
He forgot how tall she was, not matching his six-foot-three frame but tall enough she didn’t have to tilt her head back too far. He leered at her. “No, nothing at all. Just wondering how I got stuck in this class with you.”
“Likewise,” she seethed. “A problem I’m going to soon remedy.”
“Right behind you,” he said and followed her up to Ashford’s desk.
The other four students left, and the bald professor stared at Reider and Johanna over his glasses. “Ah, and what can I do for you today?”
“I’m not working with him,” Johanna stated before Reider could even open his mouth. The vehemence in her words made his jaw drop, and he shifted on his feet. “I refuse to do it.”
Ashford nodded once, glancing from her to Reider and back again. He removed his glasses with a sigh and tucked them into his suit jacket pocket. “And Reider? You feel the same?”
Reider gritted his teeth as Johanna shot him another burning glare. He was willing to admit he didn’t want to work with her, but he was at least trying to be civil in his refusal to do so. He shoved one hand deep in his pocket and glared just as hotly back at Johanna. “Yes, I do.”
“Then I guess you both leave me with no other choice,” Ashford said and let out a heavy breath. “You either work together, or I fail you both—right now.”
Chapter 2
Johanna’s hand tightened painfully around the pen. “What did you say?”
Ashford crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. “I said, work together or fail. Those are your two options, Ms. Chadwick. I think I made myself clear.”
She sputtered for words, not used to anyone being ignored, and glowered at Reider. “I can’t work with him! It’s impossible. You do realize who we are, right? There is no way in hell we can even remotely make this successful for sixteen weeks! He’ll purposely screw it up so I fail.”
“That’s stupid,” Reider snapped. “Who says you won’t do the exact same to me? You are a Chadwick. Everyone knows your whole family are liars and con-men.”
“They are not! Those accusations were never proven, and you know it!”
“Says your family,” Reider replied tightly.
Johanna cursed and shook her head, sending her curls flying. “I won’t do it. I won’t work with him. Please, Professor Ashford, you’ve been here long enough to know we can’t possibly do this.”
“I don’t understand why not,” he said, and his smile widened. “There is absolutely no reason the two of you cannot partner for the semester. I actually think it will do you some good, give you an edge over the other students.”
“An edge?” Reider repeated. “Yeah, it’ll take me to the edge of insanity and throw me over a cliff! Or she’ll steal my work,” he added in an undertone.
Her blood boiling, Johanna lifted her hand with the pen to point at him, but the second his eyes shifted to the chewed-on cap and the anger slipped away to reveal curiosity, she dropped it and shoved it in her tote. She didn’t want to admit having him so close to her was more thrilling than she believed possible with a Marquette. He’d bulked up over the summer, and his piercing green eyes would’ve had her fawning if he was any other man. But he wasn’t any other man. He was a Marquette, the sworn enemy of her family.
“We did not steal anything,” she finally managed to scoff. “Your family simply did not know how to hold onto their land.”
“Maybe your family should’ve used legal and ethical business practices,” he shot back, straightening to his full height. To anyone else, it might’ve been intimidating, but Johanna was tall and she didn’t step back an inch. “Everyone knows it was your family that started the feud, amongst other things.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped and poked him hard in the chest.
“Alright, that’s enough,” Ashford said and, gripping both of their arms, gave them a gentle shove away from each other. “Do you hear yourselves? You’re not behaving like adults.”
Johanna sniffed hard and crossed her arms over her chest, biting back the urge to say he started it.
“Now then, I have assigned you as partners for the entire semester,” Ashford continued. “And unlike everyone else in this town, I will not baby you simply because of your last names. Either accept the inevitable and find a way to cooperate or drop the class. I have a feeling your parents would not be happy with the latter,” he added.
Johanna knew this class was not offered in the spring so if she did drop it, she’d have to wait until the fall to take it, meaning she’d be there longer than she was supposed to be. That would not go over well at all.
“I suggest you both look at this as an opportunity to learn something from one another—and yes, Mr. Marquette, I’m being serious, so I advise you not to scoff at me again. I am your professor and the almighty controller of your grade,” Ashford said, picking up his leather bag. “Act like the adults I know you can be and figure it out. I expect to see you both in class, sitting together, on Wednesday. Good day.”
Professor Ashford hurried out of the lecture hall, leaving Johanna to glare at Reider. “You could drop, you know,” she suggested. “Take the class next fall.”
“So could you,” he retorted. “Go on, you know you want to. This is only going to make you miserable.”
She stared him down and frowned as her gaze drifted to his sharp cheekbones and stoic chin and the way his black hair revealed the intense green of his eyes. Shaking her head and cursing, she tugged on her tote strap.
“This is ridiculous. He’s right,” she stated. “We are adults, and if we have to work together, then so be it.”
His face went blank, and he rubbed his hand over his jaw, scratching at his
beard stubble. “You’re agreeing to this? An entire semester of working with me? Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“I need this class to graduate, and I’m assuming you do, too.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, he’s not going to give, and it’s not offered again until the fall,” she said, biting her lip. “We don’t have a choice, and honestly, we can’t let our feud keep us from surviving one damn class together. We’re seniors. Now is not the time to screw things up.”
He paced away from her, his boots stomping heavily across the floor. He muttered under his breath and hung his head. “Fine,” he said, turning back around. “Fine, we do this, and we work through it the best we can.”
“Agreed. But,” she said, holding up a finger as thoughts of her family finding out hit her hard, “we can’t let our families know. The drama this little project would cause is not worth it. Agreed?”
She held out her hand without thinking, and Reider didn’t hesitate to shake it. His skin was warm against hers and his palm rough, nothing like what she expected. She knew he worked on the ranches, but it had to be more than she thought for his hands to be so calloused. She waited for him to let go first, but he didn’t, and a strange look passed over his face until he cleared his throat roughly and stepped back.
“Agreed,” he added quickly. “See you Wednesday. We can discuss our plans then. I’m late.”
“Right, me… too,” she said lamely as he ducked out the door and let it slam shut behind him. Johanna sagged against the desk, staring at her hand. She felt his in hers still and wondered at the sensation twisting in her gut. “It’s nothing, absolutely nothing,” she told herself and walked out the door. If she kept her brothers waiting too long, they’d come looking for her, and unlike their little sister, they despised the rain. She didn’t want to hear them bitching the whole ride home.
***
James Ashford whistled as he wandered down the hall to the faculty offices, not surprised to see the headmaster sitting in his chair, waiting for him. “Ah, good evening, Greg.”
“Don’t good evening me,” the old man stammered, his white hair combed back from his face and his beady eyes narrowed behind thick glasses. “It’s all over campus what you did. Are you insane? Do you have any idea what those two families could do to us?”
“Not you, too? Come on, you’re too old to give a shit what their families think,” James scolded as he set his leather bag on the desk. “I didn’t do anything except partner two students together, completely at random.”
Greg’s penetrating stare over his glasses said he wasn’t buying it. “Undo it. Now.”
“No,” James said definitively. “I’m not going to let them dictate my classroom, for God’s sake. They’re adults, they’re in college, and sooner or later, they will have to know what it’s like to work with someone they despise.”
“Still, did you have to do it now?” Greg said, sounding exhausted.
James sat down across from his own desk. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s their senior year, and their parents are breathing down my neck about them passing and graduating.”
“Last I checked, this was your university,” James reminded him. “Stop answering your phone.”
“They donate quite a bit of money each year,” he said, tapping his chin. “I can’t just ignore them and hope for the best.”
James shook his head, laughing, and pulled out a handful of papers from his bag. “Listen, if it looks like they’re going to kill each other in class, I’ll make sure they don’t spill too much blood, alright? But how old is this feud, really? Do they expect it to continue forever? It’s ridiculous!”
Greg pushed out of the chair with a grunt and, leaning on his cane, limped to the door. “No one said it made sense, but when they own half the state, what else can we do but bend to their will? Don’t let it get out of hand. I like you. The students like you. I’d hate to lose you,” he warned and sauntered out the door.
James sagged in his chair, waiting until the tapping of Greg’s cane disappeared before he switched sides and plopped down in his chair behind the desk. He knew exactly what he was doing with those two students. He had grown up in this town and was subjected to the same hatred the rest of them were because of the Marquettes and the Chadwicks. Knew it better than most. Even if nothing changed, at least he could say he tried to end a feud neither family even knew the truth about. Hell, anyone who might have was long dead and buried. James was an optimist, and he hated seeing this city at odds and the land divided by two ruling hands who refused to work together.
As he got to work, planning his next few days, he whistled, hoping what he began would end better than it had started.
***
It’d been an hour since they reached the house, and Johanna heard her brothers bitching about the rain not letting up. They’d gotten soaked walking halfway across campus to look for her when she wasn’t exactly on time and then more when they’d parked and had to run for the house. She tugged on a curl and tried to tune them out, focusing on the assignments already handed out that day.
All her classes were on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so it made for busy days but gave her two off during the week. She didn’t plan her schedule like that for herself, but for her sister so they could be home together on the same days. Since her dad, Ben, had hinted that he and their mom, Lucy, would be taking a step back in the family business sooner rather than later, the twins had acted as if they were in charge of the household. Meaning they were more controlling than their dad ever was with their sisters.
Johanna knew why her father did it, in all honesty. He wasn’t the original Chadwick, their mom was, and he had agreed to take her name when they married. She saw it in the worry lines etched onto his face, in the way he overcompensated. He worried he wouldn’t live up to being a true Chadwick. Even now, after so many years, their grandparents were hard on him. Their dad could’ve stepped back and looked at what he did to his kids instead of charging blindly ahead, driven by the constant need to prove his worth.
Johanna tried to forget the conversation in the car on the way home, wanting to deck both of her brothers for plotting out the rest of her life for her as if she wasn’t even there. Because to them, you’re nothing but a pawn, she thought bitterly, chewing angrily on her pen. Nothing but someone for them to marry off to improve the family business and increase the net worth.
She wanted to ask them why they hadn’t married yet but bit her tongue. Her brothers rolled in the family money and flashed it around as if it was nothing, going out with a new woman every weekend and acting like they were God’s gifts to the world. She was amazed they didn’t have bastard children running around already.
“Jo? You busy?”
She turned in her desk chair and smiled at Isabel. “Nope, what’s wrong?” she asked when she noticed her sister’s red eyes. “Izzy?”
“I… uh, I had to change my major today,” she said, sniffing hard, and sat down on Johanna’s bed. “Dad found out what I switched it to, and I spent all day with the counselors redoing it with him and Mom.”
Johanna’s hands curled into fists. “I’m sorry, hon.”
“I know. It’s okay,” she said, trying to smile as more tears filled her eyes. “I thought he said it was fine before I did it, but he saw a copy of my schedule and flipped out.” When the tears slipped down her cheeks, Jo got up and sat beside her sister, pulling her close. “What’s so wrong with what I want to do? I don’t want to be in the family business.”
She kissed the top of her sister’s head. “Neither of us do.”
Izzy was an artist, despite what their parents said. Her paintings were masterpieces. A lot of her pieces were good enough for a gallery, but each time she brought it up, their parents shot her down—except over the summer when their dad had been in a particularly good mood. Izzy asked about becoming an art major her sophomore year, and their dad had said yes. Guess his good mood didn’t extend to seeing
his daughter happy.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to cry all over you,” Izzy said, muffled against Johanna’s shoulder.
“That’s what big sisters are for. You won’t get any comfort from our brothers,” she snapped, remembering her own tough Monday. “I wish I could get us out of here.”
“Me too,” she said. “I wish I could find a guy who would whisk me away from this life, drive us to Alaska or fly me to Hawaii—as far away as we could. Never come back.”
Johanna smiled at her sister’s ever hopeful dreaming. “You’re such a romantic.”
“One of us has to be. It's not like you ever date anyone.”
“It's not that I don’t want to,” she whispered.
Johanna wanted to date more than anything, but as her brothers kindly reminded her today, they expected her to date who they chose and eventually marry someone who walked in their social circles. Several of their friends from their Ivy League days were apparently single and looking for a wife who met their standards. Johanna, sadly, fit exactly what they were looking for.
There was a charity event coming up soon, and the twins told her quite plainly they expected her to speak with all their friends there and decide which one she’d be willing to date.
Izzy squeezed Johanna’s hand and smiled sadly. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way out of this someday, right?”
Johanna wanted to tell her they would and that eventually their lives would be their own, but she couldn’t lie. “Remember, no matter what happens, I’m here for you, Izzy.”
