Page 3 of No More Bad Boys
“Yeah—I was just coming to see her about it.”
“I think she’s confused. Idogo to Georgia Tech, but I’m not here to go out with the reporters.”
Oh God.Talk about your Freudian slips.
“I mean—out onstorieswith the reporters. I’m just passing through the newsroom, heading back to engineering. To see Frank. My boss.”
“You sure?” Blake smiles at me again. “No mercy for the new guy? I could use some expert navigational advice. I hear that campus is like a maze.”
He tilts his head to the side and raises his brows in a pleading expression.
I laugh at his attempt to appear helpless. “You’re a big boy. I’m sure you can manage it alone.”
“I’m not sure I want to.” His tone is playful and flirty, and those dimples are doing their best to persuade me.
An unfamiliar spark of excitement riffles through the center of my body, leaving a chill in its wake. I take an extra breath.
“I… have to get back to work. And you have to go. Doesn’t that say five o’clock?” I gesture to the paper in his hand.
Without looking down he answers. “It does.”
Then he does look down—at his feet—and back up at me. “You’re not a freshman are you?”
He does this funny little wince-grin, waiting for my answer.
Now it’s my turn to blush. I know I look young. I don’t wear makeup, and I’m usually dressed like I’m ready for a pickup game of soccer or lacrosse. I shake my head.
“No. I’ll be a senior in the fall.”
“So that makes you…” He squints his eyes, studying me, trying to guess my age.
“Twenty,” I say.
His grin spreads like the sun setting over the ocean at Tybee Island.
“Twenty. Okay, Miss-Cadence-who’s-twenty. You’ll be here tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I say, smiling, stepping back away from him as he turns to leave the newsroom and wondering why he cares.
He stops and turns back. “Sorry if I spooked you earlier. I can’t believe how much you look like my friend.”
“Is that… a good thing or a bad thing?”
He shakes his head, smiling over a good memory. “A very good thing. She was the prettiest girl I’d ever met.”
He pauses then adds with a dip of his chin and another flash of those incredible dimples, “Was.”
Then he spins and leaves the newsroom, and I draw on every sensible fiber of my being, trying not to melt into an uncharacteristic puddle of bliss right there in front of the assignment desk.
TWO
A Good Match
Great. I’m totally sunburned.
I’m studying my crispy red face in the mirror of our apartment’s guest bathroom when Kenley comes in from work.
She steps into the powder room doorway, and her face contorts in horror. “Oh Cadence. Your skin. Did they have you working on the surface of the sun today?”
