by Linda Kage
My mouth fell open. I scrutinized her an entire minute before snorting out a laugh and shoving at her shoulder. “Oh, my God. You are such a liar. Jeez, E., you totally had me going for a second.”
“What?” Eva managed to look insulted. “I swear to God, I’m not lying. Do you want to go ask him?” She hooked her arm through mine and tried to stand up, dragging me with her.
Um, yeah. Not going to happen. I’d internally combust from hormone overdose if I went anywhere near Hotness right now. Like getting too close to the sun, he’d probably burn me with one of his deadly testosterone rays. And I so wasn’t wearing enough SPF for that kind of action.
I yanked both our asses back down. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just go up to someone and ask him if he’s a gigolo?” Gah!
Eva responded in typical Eva fashion. She shrugged and tossed her hair. “Why not? I doubt he’d lie about it. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a secret.”
I threw my head back and shouted out a laugh. But, wow. Sometimes Eva was just too much. The things she could think up were, well…they were outlandish. I kind of loved that about her, and yet it also embarrassed the heck out of me. Sadly, I wasn’t quite as outgoing as my vivid counterpart. I was much more prone to moments of horrified blushing than feats of extroverted greatness. I mean, I wasn’t shy by any stretch of the imagination, but I was by no means an Eva Mercer.
As if he sensed I was blushing over him that very second, Hotness—or as Eva had dubbed him, Mason Lowe—glanced in our direction and made eye contact. With me.
I stopped laughing. Stopped smiling. Pretty much stopped breathing. Gawd, but the boy sure knew how to hold a heated stare.
“Lord have mercy,” Eva murmured next to me.
I didn’t respond—couldn’t if I’d wanted to. I was too busy being electrocuted from the inside out. My fingertips sizzled and toes curled as if an invisible, kinetically charged bolt tethered me to the hunk fifty yards away, who seemed to bind us together with his stare alone.
Yes, the chemical current between us was exactly that powerful. I’m not even exaggerating. Okay, maybe a little. But not much.
He broke the connection by shifting his attention to Eva. I gasped from the release as if someone had just ripped a Band-Aid off my soul.
Not that I could really tell, but I swore his eyes narrowed when he focused on my cousin. He sent me another quick dart, which suddenly seemed full of accusation, and swiftly turned back to his group, dismissing us both entirely.
Never before had a mere glance rattled me so deeply.
Blowing out an unsteady breath, I set my hand against my wildly thumping heart. If I had just flatlined and someone had used a defibrillator to bring me back to life, I don’t think I would’ve felt more jolted than I did now. “Whoa.”
“Yeah,” Eva murmured, sounding similarly affected. “I think I need a cigarette.”
I turned to her and blinked. “You don’t smoke.”
She rolled her eyes. “I swear, sometimes, we cannot possibly be related. You weren’t supposed to take that literally, ReeRee. Gah.”
My rational cognition was still too fried for me to think properly, so I merely murmured, “Oh.” Then I shrugged. “Well, my sparkly ballet flats still kick your sandals’ ass.”
“Dream on.” She snorted. “Sandals are so in this season.” And with that, she chomped her gaze back on my piece of man candy.
“Whatever,” I mumbled with a petulant sniff, battling this insane urge to pull her hair and scream that I’d seen him first, or at the very least remind her she had a boyfriend. “Chillax, E. I was just looking anyway. It’s not like I want to get married and set up house with him. I am so not ready for another relationship right now.”
“Whatever,” Eva repeated right back, but in a much nastier tone than I’d used. “I told you he was unattainable.”
Damn, what had crawled into her Wheaties and died? And why did she keep staring at him? Seriously, it pissed me off something crucial, because now I couldn’t sneak another peek. Two girls eye-gushing over the same guy was just plain pathetic.
Oh, hell, it didn’t matter if she wanted to hog all the ogling to herself. I was a little too intimidated to look at him again, anyway. I mean, what if he looked back? I wasn’t sure I could take that kind of shockwave twice in one day.
I assume no one had ever actually overdosed from a lusty glance before, but with Hotness around, I had a bad feeling I’d probably be the first.
So, I focused my attention on my class schedule I’d pulled up on my cell phone two-point-five seconds before becoming intensely aware of Mason Lowe’s existence. Draining the rest of my latte, I looked up the room number for my first class. The heat and steam from the drink burned all the way down, but I kind of welcomed the pain. It kept me distracted from you-know-who.
Gasping out a silent gulp to cool my inflamed esophagus, I blinked back tears. “So…” It took me a few tries before I could add, “You said you had Brit Lit with me, right?”
“Right,” Eva answered. From her breathy reply, I could tell she was still busy staring.
“Well, it starts in…three minutes. Maybe we should get going.” At this point, anything to get her to heel and take her eyes off my hunk would do, even attending Early British Literature.
Spotting a trashcan nearby, I took aim and sank my empty cup, nothing but net, thanks to three years on the high school basketball team. “So let’s do this,” I announced, gathering my backpack and getting ready to stand.
But Eva slid over, slamming her body into mine until she smashed us together, hip to hip. “Wait.” Her voice went hushed and serious as her hand landed on my leg, holding me in place. “He’s coming this way.”
Drawing in a sharp breath, I glanced up. He’d abandoned his bronco statue and was strolling down the sidewalk by himself toward the main entrance of the school. Problem was, the bench Eva and I inhabited sat along the edge of that very path. He was going to walk right by us.
Nothing but ten feet of dead air was going to separate him from me.
Dear Lord in heaven, please deliver me. Could I survive such close proximity? I honestly didn’t know. My chest heaved from the sudden unsteady rhythm of my breathing.
“Watch this,” Eva whispered in my ear.
I glanced at her, hoping to find some kind of direction, for her to tell me what to do. But she didn’t look a bit aware of my approaching panic attack. The girl looked damn mischievous.
I grabbed her wrist. “Oh, God. What’re you going to do?”
Eva merely smiled her infamous Cheshire cat grin as she settled her gaze on the passing hottie. “Good morning, Mason,” she called.
Every muscle in my body tightening, I dug my nails deep into her wrist, warning her to shut it. But her greeting had already captured his attention.
He glanced over, his gaze indifferent. Jerking his chin in that way guys had of greeting someone with their head, he nodded. “Sup?”
I melted, and a dreamy whimper oozed out. But, wow, he had a compelling voice to go with that compelling body. It was deep, yet smooth, and entirely too sinful to belong to someone so pretty. It made me want to close my eyes, and just…liquefy.
“Looking good today,” Eva told him, her tone full of feminine wiles and not-so-hidden invitation. Tipping her face just enough for the sunlight to catch her flawless complexion, she let her beautiful mane of platinum blonde hair spill over her shoulder to bounce down her sizable chest. She couldn’t have said come-and-get-me-big-boy any more flamboyantly than if she’d shrieked it aloud. “What say we skip class this morning and do something…fun instead?”
Mason Lowe snorted out his disinterest at the same moment I gasped, “E.!” I really was going to have to remind her she had a boyfriend, wasn’t I?
At my reprimanding hiss, Hotness zipped his attention to me, and suddenly his expression was no longer unresponsive. His intense gaze burned into me, and yes, I was going to need a whole vat of Aloe Vera to soo
the the delicious sting it left behind.
Again, our immediate connection held me prisoner. His heavy stare cemented me into place as if it made every organ in my body weigh a million pounds each. I could do nothing but gape back. Like a punch to the solar plexus, he left me breathless. I sucked in air, seeking oxygen.
He looked even better from ten feet away than he had fifty yards away. Separating himself from his guy-pack hadn’t even diminished his appeal.
And that face. I swear, angels sprouted up around him and began to sing in harmonious worship of that glorious face. Straight nose, prominent brow, über-defined square jaw, dimpled chin. He had every alpha male feature a guy could possibly possess. Even his eyebrows were thick and rugged. There was simply a hallowed kind of masculine perfection about him.
When he tore his gaze away, I felt wrung out and abandoned. I watched him pass by us and stroll all the way to the front door. Then I watched him disappear inside. Licking my parched lips, I turned to my cousin in a daze.
“Okay,” I heard my own voice say, the tone a trifle faint to my ears. “Maybe I could believe women paid him for sex.”
“Hells yeah,” Eva purred. “If I had the cash, I’d definitely do him.”
She sounded a little too invested in her statement, so I nudged my knee into hers, aghast. “What about Alec?”
She gave me an empty stare. “Hmm? Who?”
I lifted one eyebrow. “Your boyfriend.”
“Oh.” Blinking, she seemed to return to herself. With an airy shrug, she pushed to her feet and swung her bag over her shoulder in a fluid, graceful way only a supermodel could accomplish. “Mason is only a pipe dream. Like I said, we could never afford him.”
Something about the way she worded that made me think she’d actually tried. It worried me, but I didn’t question it. Guys were the very last thing I wanted to get tangled in right now. And true gigolo or not, Hotness had sticky mess written all over him. Eva obviously had some kind of prior claim.
For once in my life, I let my curiosity lie dormant. Silently, I trailed Eva toward the front doors of Waterford County Community College and into my new life as Reese Alison Randall.
CHAPTER TWO
A year ago, I’d had grand plans of attending the local university in my hometown. It had a wicked, awesome medical program, and I’d dreamed of becoming a virologist, one of those surprisingly cool lab geeks you see on NCIS or some such TV show, who’s always studying bacteria under a microscope and solving the crime of the day.
Anyway, nearly four months ago, my plans for that perfect future had changed. Drastically.
I blame my psycho stalker ex-boyfriend. I mean, sure, I’ll take some culpability by saying I was a little too open about telling everyone where I wanted to go to college and what I wanted to become. He would know exactly where to look for me, meaning I could no longer go there. And yes, if I’d turned Jeremy down flat that fateful day my freshman year of high school when he’d first asked me out, we never would’ve dated, he never would’ve become obsessed, and I would’ve been able to avoid all of this. Sure.
But other than that, he was the sole reason I’d lost my big dream.
Because of him, here I was, hiding out halfway across the country, attending a no-name, small-town, lame-ass community college and living above my aunt and uncle’s garage. Talk about major suck zone. My life in the past couple of months had been nothing as I’d imagined it would be for my first year of college.
But seriously, no one had tried to kill me here, so I guess I couldn’t whine and complain too much.
Pity party cut short.
After Brit Lit with Eva, I had a free hour before my calculus class started. I spent that time stopping by the library. Since I’d been hired there as a work-study assistant, I still needed to talk to my new supervisor about a schedule. So we did, and I was pleased to learn I could weave all my work time in during the day between classes. I left my impromptu meeting with ten minutes left to find my math class.
I found it in five. Whoosh!
My calculus professor dove right into numbers and equations as soon as he skimmed over the syllabus. He was passionate about his numbers and equations too, which reminded me a lot of my dad, and made me a teensy bit homesick. But Dr. Kolarick kept us almost five minutes over, which my time-conscious father would never do. By the time he let us go, the next class had gathered outside in the hall and was ready to pile in.
I rushed, trying to hurry from my seat and get to Humanities next. But as soon as I stood and took two steps up the aisle between desk rows, one of the dangling straps on my book bag caught on a nearby chair and tipped the pack upside down, spilling all my belongings to the floor.
Horrified, I bent down and fumbled frantically to gather notebooks, texts, pens, and stray little pieces of papers with embarrassing doodles on them. Haphazardly shoving stuff into my bag, I was so busy watching what I was doing that I didn’t pay attention to where I was going. As I surged to my feet, I totally missed the guy coming down the aisle to find a seat for the next class.
That is, I didn’t notice him until I plowed into him, ramming my bag into a very taut, very sturdy stomach.
He grunted in pain, and I screeched in surprise.
I’d like to say I’m usually much more graceful. But I’m not the best liar in the world either, so yeah, I confess; I’m a total klutz.
Losing control of my book bag, I spilled everything inside onto the floor. Again.
Note to self: Zip my freaking backpack closed next time.
“Oh, my God. Sorry,” I said, instantly falling back to my knees. “I didn’t see you. I’m so sor—”
I glanced up and forgot what I was going to say.
From fifty yards, he’d taken my breath away. From ten feet, I’d been ready to have his babies. With a bare foot of nothing separating us in that cramped aisle between desks, there I was, on my knees in front of him.
Need I say more?
“Holy crap,” I squawked.
What the hell was he doing here? He wasn’t supposed to be here. Okay, maybe he was. I didn’t know his class schedule. But I certainly wasn’t supposed to be bumping into him…or sitting on my knees in front of him with my face mere inches from his—
Good God, how mortifying.
Hotness stared down at me, looking as startled as I felt.
“I…sorry—sorry.” I rushed out the words and blindly reached for my things, inadvertently shifting closer to his crotch as I snagged a handful of stray papers.
He lurched backward, dislodging two of my textbooks that had landed on his sneaker.
“Are you okay?” I bit my lip as I looked up, hoping I appeared as apologetic as I felt. But looking at him was always such a distraction. I was so breathless, I probably sounded like a one-nine-hundred operator when I said, “I’m so sorry.”
He had the look of a lifeguard with his lean build but wider upper body and defined muscles covered by some deliciously golden, sunbaked skin. His face was the most appealing feature about him. His incredible tan made the whites of his eyes and his perfect teeth stand out. It also drew more attention to his full lower lip, his dimpled chin underneath, and the gray intensity of his eyes above. Insert dreamy sigh here, because their brilliant pewter color reminded me of a cloudy sky right before a gentle rain shower.
“I’m fine.” He gave me a tight smile. A get-away-from-me-because-you-smell-bad kind of smile.
Oh, God. I repulsed him.
He finally bent down and retrieved the books that had been lying on his feet. When he handed them to me, I mumbled, “Thanks.” I was determined not to bawl in the presence of the gorgeous gigolo I repulsed.
Unintentionally—yes, unintentionally, jeez! —my hand brushed his as I took the books. Sparks of electricity shot up my arm. I gasped and jolted backward, shocked—both literally and figuratively—by the current that crackled between us. It nearly made me drop my books again.
Needing to know if he’d felt it too, I glanced
up and shoved my hair out of my face, only to discover how strained and uncomfortable he appeared. His face had darkened to a dull red as if he were holding his breath to keep from smelling me. Every female instinct in me wanted to reach out and trace the wrinkles in his brow he was making as he frowned.
Must. Soothe. The hottie.
But really, why was he scowling? Did I honestly stink that bad? Or did he just not like making sparks with me?
Both options sucked.
Then it struck me. Maybe he hadn’t felt the sparks. Maybe he thought the way I’d yanked my hand away from his magnetic touch was rude. It would certainly appear rude if he had no idea what was going on in my head, which, wow, he really didn’t have a clue, did he?
Oopsie.
I opened my mouth to apologize, but he turned on his heel and slid into the nearest chair, avoiding me as well as giving me an open path to the exit—so I could leave him alone.
I blinked, deciding he was even ruder than I was. Would a forgiving pat on the arm or a simple it’s-okay, no-big-whoop have killed him? I really was sorry for bumping into him.
“Jerk,” I muttered to myself as soon as I lit out of the classroom and escaped.
Okay, okay, I suppose I could give him the benefit of the doubt. All hotties deserved a second chance, right? So…he might not be a jerk. I had been the one to plow into him and spill a load of books on his feet, and he’d actually been kind enough to bend down and pick them up for me. And just because a guy wasn’t big on the whole communication and I-forgive-you thing or obviously couldn’t smile did not automatically make him a jerk.
But it stung to consider the possibility that he just didn’t like me. Thinking of him as a jerk settled my ego much more nicely.
So, yeah. He was such a jerk face.
I lifted the collar of my shirt and sniffed. Smelling nothing but clean laundry detergent, a hint of my Sweet Pea lotion, and Fresh Breeze deodorant, I scowled. I did not stink.
He was definitely a jerk.
As luck would have it, the rest of my day was spill-free. I didn’t spot Hotness, the jerk face, again. And no one tried to stab me to death.
