Heat Up the Fall: New Adult Boxed Set (6 Book Bundle)

by Gennifer Albin

  We went into the kitchen and dragged leftover paper containers of chicken, rice, and vegetables from the fridge, heating them up and chatting about the play and whether or not the rest of the borderline incompetent Shark Girls would be ready.

  Liam and I sat at the kitchen table, pinching food with clean pairs of chopsticks, when he decided it was time to actually talk about something other than sex or theatre. “Even though we’re not public, we’re okay, right? Everything’s good?”

  Dread dropped into my stomach and the pea pods in my mouth turned sour. The dreaded relationship status discussion. The sound of the television droned from the other room, filling the house with white noise, and making me almost wish that girl from The Ring would make an appearance, drag Liam away, and save me from the awkward.

  “Are you asking if I’m your girlfriend?” Maybe that word would scare him. It worked occasionally.

  “I mean, I don’t dig labels, but I like hanging out with you. We’re having fun, right?” His brown eyes watched me, as though he sensed the wall in between us for the first time.

  I might have been close to dropping him, but I wasn’t ready right this moment. I needed time to prepare, and groped for more neutral ground. “You’re not seeing anyone else?”

  “Not at the moment, but I’m going to be gone a few months shooting the film, and you know how things go on set. I don’t think we can really…define anything, or talk about much beyond that.” His dark eyes found mine, pleading. “I thought we were on the same page with the whole casual thing, but just thought…you’ve been off lately and I wanted to make sure.”

  “We are definitely on the same casual page.”

  I forced a smile and slid into his lap, tugging his handsome face to mine. The kissing still exceeded my expectations; Liam had great instincts. His tongue tasted spicy from the food, lit sparks on my tongue, and when his hands slid up my shirt and cupped my breasts, the hope that this would be the time for the great and elusive orgasm returned. His fingers had gentled in the past weeks and his touch knocked a shudder through me the same moment the front door banged open.

  “Liam, you home, dude?” One of his roommates called out.

  Liam sighed into my mouth and tweaked my nipples in a way that left me wanting to murder his roommate, then sat back in his chair. I shifted to straddle him, intent on both getting up and to the bedroom to find a bra and dishing out a little something for him to think about while I did. I took my time, dragging the heel of my hand, then the back of my thigh, across the tent in his shorts as I squirmed very deliberately loose.

  “So, I guess I’ll be going.” I turned to wink at him, pleased at the rakish, borderline desperate lust smoldering in his dark eyes.

  “I don’t think so,” he growled playfully, his handsome face twisting into a grin.

  I squealed and escaped down the hallway as Liam gave chase, tackling me onto his bed. We laughed and wrestled for a while and then he kissed me for several minutes. The anxiety from our conversation eased, slinking back to wherever shit like that came from.

  Probably back into my ovaries.

  Things were winding down, but it was still nice to touch another person and feel wanted for a few hours a week. Relief that nothing had to be decided today relaxed us both, and I left him feeling better about the whole thing.

  ***

  The website boomed; new girls signed up for accounts every day, and by late September it had passed two thousand ratings, with about fifteen hundred guys listed. Most of them had a good balance of ratings, which was nice—it made it clear that at least some of the lows were probably jilted exes. The stars-only decision held as a good one, since it didn’t seem right to splash problems like Noodle Dick’s all over the internet.

  The referrals were the most clicked links, anyway.

  I filtered three more of Quinn’s ratings—annoyingly all five stars, even though the referrals were still no’s—and the second of Noah’s, like I promised. Like he’d promised, they were both five-star referrals. It seemed my resident sexy computer nerd hadn’t been falsely confident about his skills with the ladies. Toby Wright’s were all high, which didn’t surprise me—before he’d played a role in screwing Em over, I’d entertained the idea of spending a few weeks in his bed.

  Without analyzing why, I checked Cole’s current stats. Ten ratings—one of the most on the site, but he was a senior—and they were all one or two stars, with not a single yes to the question of referral. The memory of his attentive green eyes, the way my body heated under a simple gaze, and the electrical charge his presence inspired all argued with the bare numbers on the screen.

  The mystery of Cole Stuart still vexed me, despite all of my mental urgings to ignore it.

  Emilie breezed in the door a minute later and flopped on her old bed. “Hey!”

  I whirled in the chair, happy to see her, and waved a hand in front of my face. “Dude, did you just see all of that dust fly out of your mattress? How long has it been?”

  “Har har, very funny. It’s not like you’ve been here every night either, you little minx.” Emilie turned her messenger bag upside down, dumping a snarl of textbooks, sketchpads, pens, charcoals, and a bunch of trash onto her purple comforter.

  “Time to clean house?”

  “Yeah. Plus I need some fresh wardrobe.”

  I glanced at the door. “Where’s Quinn?”

  “Investor conference call. What are you doing?”

  “Administrating my website.” I grinned. “It doesn’t take much work, honestly.”

  “Then turn it off and talk to me. How are things with Liam?”

  With anyone else, it would have been easy to say fine, smile, and move on, but Emilie was my best friend. If I couldn’t tell her everything, then it would stay bottled up. She watched me without comment while I outlined the good and the bad pieces of Liam Greene.

  I held back my instinct that the relationship would soon outlive its intrigue, wanting her honest opinion before I clouded it with my own.

  She didn’t give one right away, and her lack of reaction bothered me. After she stayed silent for a full minute after I shut up, my irritation spiked. “Well? Advice from the girl who has it all?”

  Emilie sighed, picking up a chunk of silky black hair and studying nonexistent split ends. “You want my opinion?”

  “Now I’m not sure,” I answered, my natural defenses rising into place. It was one thing for me to decide Liam wasn’t worth the effort, but another for her to make a snap judgment.

  “You’re my best friend, so I’m going to give it to you anyway. You’re settling, and I don’t understand why.”

  “Settling?” The word sounded dirty. I wanted to brush my teeth.

  “You set up this website for Whitman girls to find awesome boyfriends, but you’re putting up with mediocre sex and a guy who says dumb shit like I don’t really dig labels, and who’s pretty much planning on boning whoever on the movie set will let him stick it in.”

  Irritation slipped toward anger. Emilie thought what she had was so easily found—it wasn’t. I loved her and she had never made me feel less than her, but there were times she didn’t understand, and this was one of them.

  She’d never grasped my reasoning for giving up on Whitman guys after Michael—partially because any guy at Whitman would take her home without a second thought, and partly because she had the kind of effortless courage that eluded me.

  “I like him.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you spent months pining after him and fantasizing about knocking him into bed, so you want to like him. But even if you did…he’s not good enough for you. You’re booty-calling, hooking up, whatever you want to call it, but you’re not dating.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “Really?” She crossed her arms and gave me a look. “That’s all you want out of a guy?”

  Her questions and accusations pushed buttons I’d tried hard to pretend didn’t exist. Watching her and Quinn together made it
impossible to pretend I wasn’t missing out.

  “That’s all I want out of a guy at the moment,” I clarified, a little too loudly.

  “Ruby. Come on. Are you listening to yourself? I know you convinced yourself after Michael that you want to spend college in a string of flings with no feelings beyond attraction, but Liam isn’t even good enough for that shit and you know it.” She nodded at my laptop. “At least go after someone with the good sense to satisfy you.”

  “So, now you think finding an amazing lay is easy? It’s like you’ve forgotten all of this shit Quinn put you through before it finally worked out—how stupid you looked to other people, including yourself—but you stuck it out anyway. Now you can judge Liam?”

  Hurt twisted her lips and stabbed my heart, but I lifted my chin, daring her to deny any of it. Plenty of people had thought Emilie had lost every last shred of dignity running after Quinn when he’d very clearly and publicly shunned her more than once.

  In truth, Emilie was the strongest girl I knew. She hadn’t done any of it out of desperation, only out of a strange surety that Quinn was the one. I wished I could be more like her.

  If I were, I would have found a way to believe that every rich boy and his family weren’t like the Lawrences, picked myself up, and taken a chance on a guy like Cole Stuart, if his ratings were better. Or even if they weren’t.

  “I get that you’re lonely, Rubes. And it sounds so stupid, what people say. But it’s the truth—when it’s right, you can feel it. You won’t have to try at all, you’ll just know.” Tears pooled in her dark eyes and Emilie pulled her ratty old stuffed polar bear into her chest. “Last year, you told me I deserved everything. You do, too, and you’re not even trying to find it. What if he’s here, at Whitman, and you miss out?”

  She looked like an earnest kid, and guilt swelled against my throat so hard it pressed tears into my eyes, too. I should have apologized, but the words stuck in my throat.

  “I know you care, Em. But believe me, he’s not at Whitman.” I stood up, stretching my legs and slipping my feet into a pair of flats that matched my green and white striped sundress. “Are you going to be here for a while?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to stay over. I have a meeting with a buyer in the morning and she’s picking me up here.”

  The comment churned my stomach harder. I’d been so wrapped up in Liam, the play, the Coterie, and the website, that I hadn’t bothered to ask what was going on with her lately. I’d assumed that her life revolved around Quinn’s bed. Emilie had never been that way, would never give up the things that made her happy, like her art. I felt like a shitty friend.

  “I’m going to grab us a couple of diet limeades, okay?”

  I ran out without waiting for her response, needing some space and some air and a few minutes to calm down. It didn’t matter that what she’d said about Liam hit some chords. I had my reasons for not wanting a commitment, and for all of the trials in Em’s past, she’d never felt like a permanent outsider the way I did. Yes, Quinn had treated her badly for a while, but she’d never been discarded because of her DNA.

  My insides were a confused mess. Anger over Emilie’s too-close-for-comfort accusations swirled into guilt over ignoring her, loneliness, and the deep-down surety that I didn’t want to be Liam’s booty call, but I didn’t want to be alone, either.

  I banged out the front door, everything building into a scream that begged to rip from my lips. This was Whitman, though, and I’d been raised better. Instead, I stood on the front porch with my eyes closed, hands fisted, and counted to ten.

  Then I did it again, because it still felt as though steam boiled out of my ears.

  Halfway through a third count, company interrupted my attempt at calm. When I didn’t open my eyes, it cleared its throat.

  “Ruby, can I talk to you for a wee sec?”

  The accent and weird jargon announced Cole’s presence, but I still opened my eyes. He looked more gorgeous than ever in khaki shorts and a Whitman Swimming T-shirt, his tanned legs tucked into ankle socks and a pair of gray and green team tennis shoes. His T-shirt was thin enough to hint at the muscles the rain had displayed so clearly the other day. The sun had just dropped below the horizon, painting the world with shades of pink and purple. Afternoon faded to twilight, softening Cole’s shower—or maybe pool—wet hair and turning his eyes an impossibly light green.

  I glared to cover up the way the sight of him crushed the air from my lungs, stood every cell in my body at the kind of attention West Point cadets strove for every morning. It brought back the way he had cared for me so effortlessly the last time we were together, and how good it would feel to step into his arms and let him do the same right now.

  “Well, if it isn’t Cole Fucking Stuart.”

  “That’s not actually my middle name, you know.”

  “You probably have like six middle names to honor the generations of Scotsmen who came before you. Where are you hiding your kilt?”

  “In my closet.” He tipped his head to the side like it was a ridiculous question.

  For some reason, the image of Cole in a kilt made me hot all over. The barely beaten storm of negativity whipped back into a frenzy in my stomach. “What do you want, Cole? Is there a problem with the float?”

  The freshman had been working on our Homecoming float. I’d seen texted pics but hadn’t been over to check on their progress in person.

  “No. This is about you.” He ran a hand over his hair, looking unsure of himself for the first time since I’d met him. “I know you’re behind the sex ratings website.”

  Breath wheezed out of my lungs for a different reason this time. If Cole could find out, I needed to talk to Noah about better security. The last thing I needed was trouble with the chancellor over this whole thing. I tried to hide my displeasure at the escape of my secret, but his keen gaze saw everything. “And?”

  “And, while I appreciate the idea that the fairer sex has every right to expect certain things from Whitman men, I take issue with my own referrals.”

  “Or lack thereof,” I corrected.

  I swore I heard his teeth grind together. It seemed as though it was possible to get under Cole’s ruggedly serene exterior, after all. He obviously attached some importance to his reputation. Typical.

  “Exactly. Those ratings are not reflective of any actual complaints about my…prowess.”

  “Oh? Then what are they reflective of?”

  “I’m afraid that’s my business, but you’ll need to take them down.”

  My hackles rose. If I were a dog, all of the hair on the back of my neck would be ruffled. “I don’t need to do anything. You need to get over it. I’m sure with your face and your accent and your money and star swimmer status etcetera etcetera etcetera, that you’re not going to have any issue getting laid, regardless of your wake of disappointed exes.”

  The insult hit home, even sandwiched between more compliments than I’d actually meant to offer, and shame flickered in his typically level gaze. Cole took a step toward me and then another, but if intimidation was his game, he’d come to the wrong place. I didn’t move, defying him with a pissed off expression of my own. The back of my mind whispered that being cruel to Cole to salve my hurt over Emilie’s assessment of my choices wasn’t fair.

  I gasped involuntarily when Cole invaded my personal space. He looked down at me, green eyes blazing, but not with anger. Instead, I glimpsed a battle between desire, regret, and acute fear.

  The first two I understood. The latter befuddled me.

  Soft fingers brushed my cheek, spilling fire over my neck as they ran down my bare arm, and clasped my own. Dizziness appeared from nowhere, like some frat guys had dumped a barrel of trash can punch into me, and the world behind his face blurred. Staring seemed to be a bad habit Cole and I shared, but for long moments, neither of us seemed to notice.

  If Cole had auditioned cold, walked into my theatre without a resume or a single referral, I would have been tempt
ed to take a chance on him. Liam and I weren’t serious, and every cell in my body seemed charged with the certainty that Cole deserved a shot at the starring role.

  He slowly lowered his face toward mine, fiery gaze fastened to my mouth. Oxygen heaved out of me and my heart pounded against my ribs. A tiny voice shouted from the recesses of my brain to remember Michael, and Cole’s ratings, and to push him away.

  I didn’t move. Couldn’t. I wanted his lips on mine again, this time without an audience of ten-year-olds. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, the desire pissed me off, but at the moment, fighting felt impossible. At the last moment, his breath fanning my hot cheeks, our lips less than an inch from connecting, Cole stopped.

  My eyes flew open. When had I closed them?

  “Since there seem to be some things about me that please you, hen, how about you let me prove those ratings are false?” His husky voice hit me in the gut.

  Goosebumps broke out across my skin at the mere suggestion of jumping into bed with him. Then visions of my shattered expectations with Liam came to mind. I didn’t need any more disappointment in my life, and a bunch of my fellow ladies were screaming warnings from the rooftops. What was the point of my website if I wasn’t going to listen to it myself?

  Underneath that excuse lay the memory of the wasteland of the second half of freshman year. I looked forward to bumping into Cole a little too much, and having him leave me after he’d gotten whatever he wanted wouldn’t be easily shaken—I just knew it.

  I liked him. His ease with the kids at the Coterie, his protective confidence, the way he obviously adored his family…it would all be too hard to say goodbye to.

  I frowned, shaking off the lustful stupor that had apparently suspended time for a good five minutes, based on the fact that the sun had completely disappeared. “Nice try. I have a boyfriend, remember? And even if I didn’t, you and I would not work out.”