"Maybe you should take a drive with me." His voice dropped low. "Then you can make up your mind about both." His gaze scanned down my face, pausing briefly on my mouth.
Woo-boy.
If only to break eye contact, I dragged my gaze past his shoulder toward the side of the street.
Lilah stood there, watching us, hands on hips. She was flanked by a pair of her sorority sisters wearing matching tight red cardigans. The glare she was shooting at me could freeze fire. To her, I couldn't imagine what Knightly and I looked like, less than arms-length apart, leaning toward each other, me flushing lustful red like a girl talking to the boy she was crushing on.
Frack. Frack. Frack.
Lilah broke from her group and sauntered our way, death and destruction in her eyes.
I lifted my hands. "I'm out of here," I announced, backing away.
"Spring."
Hearing him call me by name muzzled my anger, tripped me up momentarily. There was something in his tone, something unfinished. But I kept walking, not wanting to give us time to finish.
Chapter 6
"You look very pretty," Julia said.
"Don't sound so disappointed," I replied, looking up at her from my bedroom floor.
"I'm not disappointed."
"Sorry, disapproving, I meant."
"I'm not … " Julia broke off when I smiled. "Are you really going out with him?"
"If by him you mean Alex, then yes. My shift at the restaurant ran late, he'll be here any minute."
She didn't say anything as she watched me slip on my shoes, but she was humming. In Julia's case, that was worse than outright complaining.
"Do you have something you'd like to share?" I asked.
The humming stopped. "No," she said, but the timbre of her voice was unnaturally high. "Where's he taking you?" She was behind me now, fingering my braids.
"Dinner."
"Hmm."
"Disapproving again," I said as I rolled to my knees then stood, reaching to turn off the radio on my desk and simultaneously shut my closet door.
My room was uber-tiny, but I loved it. It used to be an attic, but the owners decided to squeeze one more rental fee out of the house the year I moved in. The one and only downfall was that the attic stairs were supremely loud and creaky. Last year, I paid an engineering student a hundred bucks to construct a retractable rope ladder outside my window so I could come and go without waking my roommates. To keep out any unwanted visitors, I secured a padlock on the outside of my window when I was out, and when I was in, the ladder was retracted, window locked from the inside.
Before lowering the blinds, I made sure the ladder was down and the window was padlocked, in case Alex and I were out late.
"I wish you were hanging out with us instead," Julia said. There was a slight pout in her voice. "We're watching a movie over at Dart's."
"I told you, there's no way I am hanging around that person."
A few days after the street party, I'd told Julia what had happened between Henry Knightly and me, the things I'd heard him say. By then, I was talking to a brick wall. She'd been hanging out with Dart every day and she just knew there had to be some kind of logical explanation. After all, any friend of Dart's couldn't have possibly said such mean things about me.
I grabbed my purse and hooked the strap over my head and shoulder.
Julia flopped down on my bed, humming again, but lifted her head when we both heard the doorbell two flights down. Following that was the sound of Anabel's high heels rushing to answer. I moved toward my door, half worried that Anabel would find a way to steal my date right from under my nose.
"When will you be home?" Julia asked.
I was halfway through my threshold when I said, "When will you be home?"
She exhaled a dainty giggle. "I hope you have a really nice time, Spring," she said sincerely.
I waved good night and hopped down the stairs.
"Hi, Alex."
"Hey, you. Ready to go?" He was wearing that same attractive, carefree swagger from the party. "Looking good."
Personally, I thought Alex was the good-looking one as he stood under the porch lamp. His light brown hair was a little damp and messy, and his face had a glow that looked liked he'd just come from the gym. His hooded blue eyes sparkled as I advanced toward him.
"Are you checking me out?" I asked, arching my eyebrows.
He knocked his shoulder against mine. "It's any man's natural instinct to check you out."
"Try a little subtlety next time," I suggested.
We strolled down the walkway toward his car. It was a modest little gray Accord.
"Sorry," he said as he opened his door, "my, ahem, Bentley is being detailed." He pointed across the street to where that odious black Viper was parked crooked in the driveway. Alex lifted his middle finger, making a universally known gesture in that car's direction.
I smiled in agreement and climbed in the passenger seat.
"You two looked pretty cozy the other night," he said after we'd pulled away from the curb. "I saw you talking."
"Who?"
"Henry."
"He was talking, not me," I corrected. "Uninvited."
"I wish I'd known that," he said, watching the road. "I would've swept in and whisked you away with me. Far away."
Obviously, Alex was a big flirt. Perhaps that was why we didn't hook up freshman year. By going out with him now, I was breaking my rule about not dating past the second week of the school year. I smiled at him, already at peace with my justifications for accepting the date. Something about him was too charismatic to pass up.
"Don't worry." I patted his shoulder. "Your classes will get busy soon and you'll forget about your obsession with me."
"That's what you think, gorgeous." He downshifted and revved the engine. "I've never let a little thing like school get in the way of a good time. You'll see." He shot me a grin that I felt in my toes. "So, what's the story with you two?"
"What two?"
"You and Henry."
Him again?
"There's no story," I said. "I met him the night of the street party, we're neighbors, that's it."
"Hmm." Alex fingered the patch of hair on his chin. "Bet he's the big cheese already?"
"Doubtful." I rolled my eyes and gazed out the window. "But you know him, right?" I bit my bottom lip, wishing I could suck the words back down my throat. I shouldn't have asked a question like that. By the way the guy had been glaring daggers at Alex the other night, it felt way too personal, and probably something Alex didn't want to talk about.
My date turned to me. "I guess you caught what happened at the party?"
I nodded hesitantly, not wanting to make him feel uncomfortable, especially about something Knightly did. The guy and his Viper nearly ran me over this morning. Okay, so maybe I'd been walking too slowly through the crosswalk, and maybe I didn't really have to tie my lace-less shoe in the middle of the street, but there was no need for him to lay on the horn like that. Was he trying to piss me off? Well, I was trying to piss him off, so I guess we're even.
Alex turned his attention back to the road, staring forward. "The thing is, he and I go way, way back. But between you, me, and the bedpost, I'm probably the last person who should talk about him."
That was fine with me-I didn't care about gossip, even Henry Knightly gossip. Right now, I was only interested in Alex. He was a business major, that I did remember. Maybe he might know a thing or two about the economics of sustainability.
Hold on. Oh, buddy. How sweet would it be if the one person who could help me with research for my thesis, the one person whose brain I would have to pick clean, the one person who I was going to have to stick to like a conjoined twin for the next few months … was Alex Parks?
"We practically grew up together," Alex continued. "But we haven't spoken in years."
I opened my mouth to ask who he was talking about, and then remembered. Knightly was already becoming a tired subject.
"Guy just won't bury the hatchet," Alex said. "Hopefully he's changed, but there are some things a man can't forgive. Live and learn, right? Like I said, I'm the last person who should be talking about him."
Alex did talk, however. As we drove downtown, I learned that Knightly and Alex had attended the same prep school in Los Angeles. For two years they were "thick as thieves," as Alex put it. But at the beginning of their senior year something happened.
"I got expelled, thanks to that guy." His voice was harsher than I expected, his long fingers gripped tightly around the steering wheel.
I pictured the way Knightly had looked the other night. Part egotist, part sexy beast. It was easy for me to ignore the sexy part, harder to block out the jerk.