Her expression said phew before she forced her forehead to line. “So you not only delight in skipping classes that, if you were to calculate based on the exorbitant annual tuition we pay in exchange for a piece of paper at four years end, cost nearly two hundred dollars per class,”—the number didn’t hit me like it hit her. I had a dresser drawer full of boxer briefs that cost that much apiece and they were far sexier and more practical than a college education. Obviously—“you also have a sick addiction to driving the dagger of guilt deeper in a girl’s back when she feels absolutely awful already?”
“Wow,” I said, keeping my hand planted over her arm. She didn’t seem uncomfortable with it, although I was as uncomfortable as I’d been in awhile.
This wasn’t me. I wasn’t the guy that went all googly-eyes over a girl. I’d always thought head over heels was for chumps, but here I was . . . the newest member of the chump club. “Either you’re a psychic or my reputation precedes me.”
She laughed again, pulling the pencil holding her hair into a bun free. An avalanche of more brown than red auburn hair tumbled midway down her back. As she wrote down the date on the right margin of her notebook, I noticed that, other than me, she was the only student who didn’t have a shiny new laptop. Old school—I liked it.
“But since you already have me pegged, you better be careful. Daddy will take away your black credit card and enroll you in an all girls’ school if you fraternize with bad influences like me,” I said, nudging my shoulder into hers, purposefully jolting her arm and, along with it, her pencil.
She shot me the sweetest scowl I’d ever seen as she scribbled her eraser over the pencil mark streaking across the page.
“Emma’s dad bailed on them when she was five,” a male voice that was three shades of pissed announced, taking the seat on the other side of her. I didn’t know his name, didn’t care if he’d won a Nobel Prize, didn’t care if he was going to find a cure for cancer. I didn’t like him. “I’ve filled the role of douchebag and jackass detection for the past six years. Along with her four brothers.” I knew he was eyeing me with that male testosterone kind of intensity, but I wasn’t interested in him and his bloated ego. This room wasn’t large enough to hold two male egos the size of ours. “Her four older brothers who could squash a little pissant like you with their thumbs.”
Okay, frat boy on a head trip was starting to irritate me. Especially since Emma had pulled her arm away from my hand the moment he’d arrived like I was electrocuting her.
“That’s beautiful,” I said, looking at him for the first time. Looked just like he sounded. A bulky meathead with a buzz cut and a cleft chin who thought fitted tees and loose-fit jeans were the height of fashion. “Shakespeare, is it?”
“Excuse me?” he sneered, his face wrinkling.
“You’re excused.” I waved my hand in the direction of the door, looking back at Emma.
But she wasn’t the same Emma I’d met two minutes ago. The smile had vanished from her face, her eyes were forward, the irises bouncing from side to side, and she was so tense I could have broken her if I grazed her with my hand.
“Is this your personal body guard or something?” I asked her, trying to lighten the mood because that’s one of the few things I did best.
When she stiffened further, her eyes growing wider, I knew I’d only done the opposite of lightening.
“Try her boyfriend, metro,” he said, and while I guessed he meant the name-calling to be an insult, I took it as a compliment coming from someone like him. Whatever he was, I wanted to be the opposite. “Also known as Ty Steel. Ask around. You don’t want to mess with me.”
I gave him a salute and would have given him much more had the professor not decided to get class rolling. “Eager young minds, time to end your captivating conversations and open your gray matter to something even more captivating,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “Pavlov’s Law.”
There was a communal groan, giving me my window. “Boyfriend?” I whispered over at her, scanning Ty head to toe as he logged onto his laptop. “Desperate much?”
She choked back the snicker surfacing, covering her mouth with both hands. I swear I would have cut off my right arm to watch her eclipse from the dark to light in the frame of a few seconds, but her face gained all its former composure back when Ty glanced over at her. This guy had territorial boyfriend written all over his unibrow topped forehead.
The moment the professor started going off, something about a bell and dogs salivating, she began scribbling down notes furiously. Like she was writing down every last word of his bore-fest. She was a lefty, and I took full advantage of her recessive gene trait.
I folded my arms over my desk area, scooting them over far enough so her elbow was continually rubbing against mine as she continued on her note taking warpath. I’d never enjoyed being elbowed by someone more.
“Do you mind, lefty?” I whispered, grinning at her from the side when Ty was distracted by his malfunctioning computer. He looked like a caveman trying to beat it into submission. I didn’t care if he caught me conversing with his girlfriend, but it obviously made her uncomfortable. “I’d appreciate it if you’d respect my personal bubble and keep your elbows to yourself”—one of the biggest lies I’d told to date—“I’m not that kind of guy.”
Her eyes rolled to the sky and, taking a sideways glance at the caveman beating his laptop and scratching his head, scribbled something down in the margin of her notebook. Moving her arm aside, I read, That’s not what I hear. Every word was underlined.
So Emma had a sense of humor. I felt the smitten setting in so deep it would take some serious digging to weed it out. So I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. Flirting was like white blood cells—I couldn’t survive without it.
Since I didn’t have a notebook to scroll flirty little notes in, I leaned in closer, having to restrain myself from brushing the hair covering her ear to the side. “Would you like to find out for yourself?” I whispered in my lady killer voice.
Before I could gauge her response, a crumpled piece of paper hit me dead in the nose, bouncing onto my desktop. I didn’t need twenty guesses to know who it’d come from. I flicked it off my desk, plastering on my most unimpressed face. If the best effort Ty could muster up was rebounding paper off my face, he was a more immature boy than I’d taken him for.
Another forty-five minutes, or hour, or something must have passed because before I’d nearly gotten enough of watching Emma absorbed in her note-taking, the professor was excusing us. Unlike everyone else, I wasn’t in a hurry to get up and out the door.
It felt like Emma was stalling as she concentrated on putting her notebook away and twisting her pencil back in her hair. I was definitely stalling, and Ty was glowering.
“I’m on the volleyball team and we’re playing a big game tonight,” Emma announced suddenly, looking at me. “You should come. I’m sure you’re the kind of guy that loves a girls’ volleyball game.”
I grinned, not able to keep it in check or adjust it. She was going out of her way to invite me to something with her boyfriend sitting a seat away.
“Emma,” Ty hissed his warning, throwing me a look of challenge.
Too bad the boy didn’t know I never backed down from a challenge. “Now that sounds like my kind of Friday night. What time?”
“Seven,” she answered, crossing her arms nonchalantly when Ty reached out for her elbow. The movement inched her sleeves up, revealing a smattering of bruises on one of her arms.
“Whoa there, killer,” I said, letting out a low whistle. “You moonlight as a mixed martial arts fighter or something?” I trailed my fingers over her forearm, ignoring the further clenching of Ty’s jaw.
Tugging at her sleeves, she pulled them back into place and laughed a few notes. “Volleyball isn’t exactly a sissy sport,” she said, shouldering her bag. “It keeps me freshly bruised the majority of the year. I look like a purple spotted Dalmatian whenever I go to the beach.”
A flash of heat ran through me when my mind went there. “Now that’s a sight I wouldn’t mind beholding.”
“All right, if you’re done shamelessly hitting on my girlfriend, I’ve got to get Emma to her next class,” Ty said, pulling on her elbow.
“I wasn’t, but I guess I’ll be able to pick up where I left off tonight,” I replied, grinning like the smitten fool I’d become as I watched Emma and her soon to be ex climbing the stairs out of the auditorium.
CHAPTER FOUR
Volleyball night at Stanford was like fight night in Vegas, minus the glitter and plastic, light-up heels. The campus was packed, nowhere to park, barely anywhere to walk, so I entrusted my first baby—my cherry red, vintage Mustang—to a valet at a swanky hotel nearby. I gave the attendant a bill to ensure nothing happened to one of the few loves of my life and used this handy dandy mode of transportation, known as teleportation, to land just outside of the auditorium.
I couldn’t have timed it better. I had the cover of twilight to shield me and I was ten minutes late, so other than the inebriated frat boys staggering into the auditorium, no one was around to witness my space bending gift.
Jogging up to the doors, I narrowly missed the worst of the staggering frat boys folding over and heaving violently. Had I been two steps farther, my designer shoes would have been a lost cause, but no harm, no foul.
“Keep up the good work, soldier,” I said, saluting as I weaved around him, making sure to give him a wide berth.
My attempts at humor were lost on Drunk of the Night Award guy, as they had been more often than not here. I wasn’t sure if it was the California or the college student in them, but this place didn’t find my staggering humor as humorous as the whole world had before. Not a good thing for a guy who eats sarcasm for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“Ugggghh,” a voice that screamed its owner had her nose curled called out. “You’re him, aren’t you? She said you were a hottie-patottie. However, she failed to mention you were fully aware of that genetic superiority.”
Hottie-patottie? Who talked like that? Unable to resist, I turned to find out.
The girl tapping her fingers over crossed arms inspired a discreet lunge backwards and then another one when her eyes narrowed as she took a step in my direction. She looked like a thrift store had thrown up on her, had that emo, black cracked nail polish look that screamed femininity at its finest, and to top it off, a look in her eyes that was so neurotic I couldn’t tell if she wanted to kill me or just bite my head off after mating with me.
I suppose eccentric was a nicer way of putting it.
“I moonlight as a hottie-patottie, but by day I’m an ogre named Sven,” I said, fighting instinct and crossing the space between me and the bra-burning, man-hating president of the women’s lib movement.
A tugging on one side of her mouth erupted. “You too? I thought I was the only one with the fairy tale curse. I’m a princess in pink by day and a black wearing bitch every night,” she said, rolling her eyes over princess or pink, I wasn’t sure. It was probably both. I could tell from ten seconds with this girl she’d never been a Cinderella wannabe.