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“I won’t be alone. I’ll be with your adviser. She’s been assigned to me by the powers that be who want donations. You know how that goes—I’m sure she has orders not to leave my side.”
The idea of Cassie Walker’s company pleased him more than he wanted it to. More than it should have, given the fact that it would be against her will. Which, admittedly, was a downer. And yet he was still happy to be going into the evening knowing he would get to see her again.
Then, because he couldn’t stop himself and this seemed like a way of doing it without raising undue suspicion, he said, “So, tell me about her.”
“Her? Cassie?”
“Yeah.”
Alyssa frowned slightly at him. “I can’t tell you anything about her because I don’t know anything about her. She’s been nice. Like I said before, she got me out of that chemistry class I hated when the instructor wouldn’t sign my drop form. She talked to him for me and persuaded him to do it after all. But beyond that—”
“Do you at least know if she’s married? Or single? Or engaged? Or involved with someone?”
Alyssa reared back slightly and took a closer look at him.
Joshua knew he was no good at fooling her, but he had his fingers crossed that she might not see through him this time.
No such luck.
His sister grinned ear to ear suddenly, made fists of her hands, raised them and did a little upper body dance, making circles with her fists as she sang, “You like her! You like her! You like her!”
Still hoping to put one over on her, he rolled his eyes. “Jeez, you can be obnoxious.”
Alyssa’s answer was more of the same torso dance to accompany the second chorus of “You like her! You like her! You like her!”
“I just want to know if I’m stepping on anyone’s toes by keeping her away from them. Husbands, boyfriends, fiancés tend to get bent out of shape if their women are having to hang out with me for the sake of work. And if that happens, significant others could take a closer look, realize who I am—and who you are—and wreck this whole thing.”
His sister didn’t buy it for a minute. Instead, she did the dance and the song for the third time.
“Okay, that’s getting really annoying,” Joshua informed her when she was finished.
“It’s true, though.”
Younger sisters could be such pains in the neck.
“I don’t even know her,” he insisted.
“You know she’s cute.”
“She’s just okay,” Joshua understated, playing it cool when that one word—cute—was enough to bring Cassie Walker’s image vividly to mind again. And that vivid image made a ripple of something that almost seemed like delight run through him.
“She’s nice, too,” Alyssa pointed out.
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Suddenly Alyssa’s expression sobered considerably. “But Cassie’s kinda like Jennie. Only worse. At least Jennie was…I don’t know, not from Northbridge. But Northbridge is like really, really removed from the kind of stuff that happens around you.”
“Which is why we chose the school here.”
“And the people are all so…you know, regular. Normal—”
“I do know,” Joshua said, feeling a twinge of regret that he and his sister even had to have this conversation, that normal and regular had become novelties to them.
“You wouldn’t risk another Jennie mess, would you?” Alyssa asked as if it worried her that he might be considering it.
But he wasn’t. He wasn’t considering it at all. Which was why he absolutely would not act on this interest or attraction or whatever it was that Cassie Walker had set off in him.
“No. Of course I wouldn’t risk another Jennie mess.” Especially not when just the mention of that name was enough to make him feel guilty and angry and hurt and just plain rotten. “I told you when it happened that that was it for me. That I’d never do that to anyone else ever again.”
“You swore,” Alyssa reminded him, letting him know she was holding him to it.
Joshua understood. The entire ordeal had scarred Alyssa.
“Because I liked Jennie,” his sister added. “And I like Cassie even if I don’t really know her. I wouldn’t want—”
“Relax. It’s not going to happen. I just wondered what you knew about her so I could go in armed. Like if there’s someone special in her life, I’d encourage her to bring him along, make friends with him.”
That was a lie. Well, the excuse he was giving for wanting to know if there was someone special in Cassie Walker’s life was a lie. The rest—the determination not to let anything happen with Cassie Walker—was the truth. Joshua was nothing if not determined to make sure of that.
“It’ll be okay,” he assured his sister.
But Alyssa didn’t look convinced.
“It will,” he said more forcefully. “Believe me, after Jennie, I know better. I don’t want to go through that again and I sure as hell wouldn’t let you go through something like that again, either.”
Alyssa nodded, but she no longer looked as carefree and confident as she had earlier. Now she looked very, very young to him again.
“Hey,” he cajoled. “Have I ever let you down?”
That made her smile, if only slightly. “No,” she answered as if the question were ridiculous.
“And I’m not here to start now. So relax.”
She seemed to. Although not completely.
“I want you to be happy,” she said then. “It isn’t that I don’t. I want you to be with someone nice—like Cassie. Someone who would like you for you and be good to you. I just don’t—”
“I know,” Joshua cut her off once more. “And I’ll find someone nice and things will work out. But that isn’t what this trip or Northbridge are about. They’re about you and your going to college without any hassles. That’s all I’m paying attention to right now.”
Another lie since the image of Cassie Walker popped into his head yet again.
But still, he meant what he said. This trip and Northbridge were about his sister, about his sister’s finishing out her education like any other person her age. It wasn’t about his hooking up with anyone. Let alone with someone who had too many similarities to the second-to-the-biggest catastrophe that had hit his and Alyssa’s lives.
So pretty or not, spunky or not, even dimples or no dimples, Cassie Walker was—and would remain—nothing but the woman Northbridge College had appointed as his guide through Parents’ Week.
But if things were different, he thought as he and his sister finally decided to return to the small town, if things were different, things might be a whole lot different…
Chapter Four
“On behalf of myself as chancellor of Northbridge College and our entire staff, we want to welcome students, family and friends.”
It was the opening line of the chancellor’s speech to kick off Parents’ Week at the meet-and-greet Monday evening. But as Cassie sat on the auditorium stage with the rest of the advisers and administrative personnel, she wasn’t paying too much attention. She’d heard the chancellor make the same speech several times, and she had other things on her mind. Like taking a mental inventory to make sure that tonight—unlike the previous night—when she connected with Joshua Cantrell, she looked her best.
She had on her favorite navy blue pantsuit with the asymmetrical front-button closure on the short, round-necked, collarless jacket, and the matching slacks that she’d been told more than once made her rear end look fabulous. Three-inch heels with peekaboo toes completed the outfit that always made her feel confident. Which was exactly what she wanted.
She’d had her hair trimmed this morning—not too much, just enough to shape it so it fell to an inch below her chin and swept under at the ends in a way that was neat and professional but had a bit of bounce, too. Plus the style was softened by the bangs that swept over her left eyebrow to add some intrigue.
She’d also been careful to apply a neutral-toned eye-shadow to highlight but not overwhelm her eyes, and two layers of mascara that promised to lengthen and curl her lashes.
The blush she’d brushed across her cheekbones made her look as if she’d spent a day at the beach, and a sort of pink, sort of tawny lipstick had finished her up a mere fifteen minutes before the beginning of the meet-and-greet when she’d left home and come across to the campus.
Maybe not model material, Cassie decided, but she knew she looked better than she had Sunday evening. And that made her feel better about herself—which was her goal tonight, even though she was sure it was obvious that she was dressed to impress. To impress Joshua Cantrell.
Not for any personal reason, of course, she insisted to herself. She simply wanted to put her best foot forward for the sake of the school and the town.
Because if she was going to be forced to represent them both with Mr. Megabucks—whether she liked it or not—she was going to do it at the top of her game. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’d gone home last night and dug through her boxes until she’d found a magazine she’d recalled packing, searching for pictures of him. When she’d discovered one—of him pre-woolly-mammoth stage at some benefit with a drop-dead gorgeous underwear model on his arm—she’d torn out his half of the photograph and spent much too much time looking at it.
Paying special attention to her hair, makeup and clothes tonight didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’d gone to bed thinking about him being right here in town. A block and a half away in the chancellor’s cottage.
It didn’t have anything to do with imagining how she was going to spend the coming week squiring him around. Getting to know him. Getting to see if he was everything he was touted to be when it came to charm and charisma and intelligence and sexiness. Getting to be the woman on his arm, so to speak…
No, none of that was the cause for making sure she felt good and comfortable and confident about her appearance today.
Where was he, anyway?
She scanned the auditorium, locating Alyssa Cantrell sitting about six rows back. But Alyssa wasn’t with her brother. She had a girlfriend and the girlfriend’s parents to one side of her, and a male friend and his father to the other.
Had Joshua Cantrell left Northbridge before the week had even begun? Cassie wondered.
He could have. He could have been called away on business. Or someone could have recognized him and he might have decided to leave before the media got wind of his being here. Or he—or someone he knew or was related to—could have become ill.
Or he could have hated Cassie on the spot and fled before he had to spend another minute with her.
Cassie shied from that notion because it was too demoralizing to consider. Besides, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few words last night, and the time they had spent together hadn’t seemed to go that badly.
But even if she didn’t allow herself to take any kind of blame, the idea that Joshua Cantrell might have left Northbridge made her feel as if she’d been let down.
Had he left town? she kept wondering as she continued to search for a sign of him in the audience while the chancellor gave the school’s mission statement and outlined its goals. Had Joshua Cantrell found a mere matter of hours in Northbridge and minutes with her to be too tedious, too pedestrian, too provincial to tolerate?
He wouldn’t be the first man….
But just when that letdown feeling was really taking over, Cassie spotted him.
He was sitting in the very last row, in the very last seat to the left of the stage. Alone.
And that one sight of him lifted her dejection and replaced it with relief and something Cassie didn’t want to believe was excitement.
He was sitting off, away from everyone, so she had an unobstructed view of him. For the most part, at any rate—because he was seated, his lower half was hidden. But he had one foot on the armrest of the seat in front of him, causing an upraised knee to be within view where it braced his arm propped on top of it. She could also see that, unlike her, he hadn’t gone to any lengths to dress up for this evening. The leg that poked into the air was encased in denim and it occurred to her that it was possible he was wearing the same butt-hugging pair of jeans that he’d had on when he’d arrived in town yesterday.
He had changed what he was wearing on top, though. He had on a tan sport coat over a rust-colored shirt with the top collar button casually unfastened.
Cassie also noted that he was still clean shaven and that his black-as-night hair, while in slight disarray on top, was in an artful disarray that she thought he might have put some small effort into.
Basically, he just looked good. Relaxed. Rested. Sure of himself. And the very essence of cool.
Everything she felt less of now that she’d laid eyes on him again.
But she wasn’t going to let him do this to her, she lectured herself with what she’d decided through an entire night and day of thinking about him. She wasn’t going to be a basket case around him just because he was some kind of great-looking, sexy celebrity. She was going to remember that she was a well-educated, respected person in her own right, and that he was nothing more than a tennis shoe manufacturer, regardless of how successful a tennis shoe manufacturer he might be.
Still, the reminder didn’t keep her heart from beating faster when he seemed to meet her eyes from the distance. It didn’t keep her from looking away in a hurry. And it didn’t keep her from thinking that this was going to be one very difficult week to get through…
The chancellor wrapped up his speech then. The dean took the podium to read from the handout that everyone had been given as they’d entered the auditorium, outlining the week’s events. Once he’d finished that, he invited the audience to have cookies and coffee or tea in the auditorium’s lobby.
If Cassie had had any thoughts whatsoever about delaying her second encounter with Joshua Cantrell, it was nixed when the dean’s return from the podium brought him directly to her.
“Do you see him?” the dean asked in a confidential voice.
Cassie knew exactly who him was, and didn’t bother playing dumb. “Yes, I see him.”
“Don’t leave him cooling his heels. He’s important to us,” the dean told her needlessly.
“I know, I know,” Cassie said, standing with everyone else and following her coworkers off the auditorium stage.
A few people were waiting to talk to someone on the stage as they descended, but most of the parents, friends and family were filing out to the lobby. Joshua Cantrell, on the other hand, had left his seat to stand behind it, but didn’t seem intent on going anywhere else, not even to be with his sister. And his eyes were honed in on Cassie as she made her way from the stage to the rear of the room.
“Hi,” she greeted as she joined him, sounding somewhat reserved to her own ears and regretting it.
Joshua Cantrell responded by giving her the once-over from head to toe and then smiling with only a single side of his mouth. “I see we didn’t pull you away from moving today,” he said with appreciation in his voice.
“Monday is a workday,” she countered, wanting him to believe she dressed like that every day rather than realize that she would ordinarily have done herself up with such meticulous care only for something much bigger than a Parents’ Week meet-and-greet. But she regretted that her reaction to what had been a subtle compliment made it seem as if she were reminding him that being with him was only her job.
Which, of course, was the truth. She just didn’t want to offend him by almost blatantly saying that if that wasn’t the case, she wouldn’t have gone within ten miles of him. So she added, “And you know, tonight is the kickoff to Parents’ Week, so we want to make a good impression.”
“Done!” he decreed, apparently not having taken offense.
Cassie didn’t know what to say to that and opted for moving on. She glanced in the direction his sister had been sitting and said, “Alyssa was over there. Were you late getting here and missed connecting before the chancellor’s speech started?”
Cantrell shook his head and Cassie tried not to notice how knock-’em-dead terrific his facial features were. “I wanted to get the lay of the land first, see if anyone seems to know who I am, before people start to associate her with me,” he said in a voice that was soft enough for Cassie alone to hear.
“And if someone does realize who you are?” Cassie asked equally quietly, recalling one of the thoughts she’d had when she’d wondered if he’d disappeared suddenly.
“I’ll take off and hope I get out before too many people have put us together.”
“Ah,” Cassie said. Then, because he seemed in no hurry to go out to the lobby to mingle, she ventured the question that had been on her mind since the dean had made his comment about there having been distractions arranged to keep reporters and photographers from knowing where Alyssa was. “Is the haircut and shave part of throwing people off track, too?”
As if just a low tone might not be enough if they were going to say more about this, Joshua glanced around to make sure no one was near enough to hear them. No one was. They were in the far rear corner of the auditorium where no one else had even been seated. And the place was quickly emptying anyway.
But only when he was sure they wouldn’t be overheard did he answer her question. “It’s something I’ve done in the past—although not to the extent I’ve done it this time. We’ve been planning this since last January when we decided Northbridge might be a place where Alyssa could have the chance to be a normal college kid. I let my hair and beard grow—”
