Rush (3 page)

Chapter 3

Caroline

I had a girl date with my best friend,
Paige, and I was going to be late again. I’d never hear the end of it if I kept
her waiting, so I grabbed my bag and ran out the door of my dorm room. In my
head I could hear her telling me that if I’d moved into the sorority house with
her, like she’d wanted me to, then I wouldn’t be late at all. We’d be walking
over to the cafe together.

Lateness was a chronic problem with me.
In that way, I took after Aunt Jo. She’d always been late, too, but she used to
say it was better to stop and notice the small and beautiful details of life
than to be in such a rush that you’re always on time.

I charged down the ugly tan and brown
hallway, passing knots of staring freshman girls on the way. No time to talk. I
didn’t know any of them yet anyway.

Luckily, the student union was only
about a block away from my dorm and I made it in record time. I ran up the
steps and into the building, then up the broad, sweeping marble stairs that led
to the second floor and the huge lounge that always reminded me of a castle’s
great hall. The cafe was right across from the lounge.

“Caroline.” The male voice greeting me
echoed slightly in the hard, cold stairwell.

I skidded to a stop and turned. Oh, no.
Max. He wore a pair of faded jeans and a white t-shirt so tight it showed every
muscle in his torso. There were a lot of muscles. My mouth went dry.

Why had he called my name? He knew Trent
wanted him to stay away from us.

I watched him stalk up the stairs toward
me, something vaguely predatory in the graceful motion of his body. The beaded
necklace still hung around his neck, and I still couldn’t see what the pendant
on it looked like because it was hidden beneath his t-shirt.

“Um...hi, Max,” I said lamely.

“It’s nice to see someone I recognize
around here.” He smiled with a hint of bashfulness.

“Is it?” God, I sounded like an idiot.

“Yeah. I don’t know anyone on campus,
really.”

“I thought you knew Talbot,” I said.

“Not well.”

He didn’t know me well, either.

“Um, well, it was nice seeing you.” I
edged up one stair step.

“Where are you headed?”

“I’m on my way to meet a friend for
coffee.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking
even more sheepish. “Is it all right if I join you?”

“Uh...” How did I get out of this one?
There was no polite way to say no to him. “Sure.”

He smiled. “Thanks. That’s really nice
of you.”

Yeah, sure it was. I hadn’t been able to
think of a way to get out of it, and he knew it.

“Well, we’re right up here.” I pointed
up the stairs.

“Are you a junior like Trent?” he said
as we started climbing again.

“Yes.”

He leaned closer to me. His proximity
made my heart race and my palms start to sweat. I could almost feel his body
heat, he was so near.

“He probably told you to stay away from
me,” Max said in a low voice.

My face heated and I knew I was turning
pink. “Yeah, he did.”

“I’m surprised you’re talking to me.”

I glanced sidelong at him. “I like to
make up my own mind about a person.” Also, I was too polite for my own good.

He aimed one of those lazy smiles at me.
“I’m glad to hear it.” His smile broadened into a grin, which brought out
dimples in his cheeks. Damn it. He had to have dimples, too? “Everything he
told you about me is probably true.”

I stared at him openly. “Huh? Why would
you say that?”

He shrugged. “I’m a terrible person. You
should stay away from me. Far away.”

“I expected you to tell me how wrong he
is about you.”

“What would be the fun in that?”

I shook my head. “You’re very strange.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

We reached the cafe. It had little
bistro tables at the edge of the long, wide second-floor hall with its rows of
international flags. Ever since I’d started at Central Willamette, I’d wondered
why we had a hall filled with those flags.

I stood at one of the tables and scanned
for Paige, but couldn’t see her. “I guess my friend isn’t here yet,” I said.

“Get a table and I’ll pick up your drink
for you. What do you want?”

“I’ll have a sixteen ounce mocha.” I
opened my bag and started digging around for my wallet.

“Don’t worry about the money. I’ve got
it.”

He walked off before I could protest. I
really didn’t want him buying me anything, even a coffee. However, I also didn’t
want to run after him and argue about it in front of all the other patrons. I
sat down at the table to wait. When he came back, we’d discuss the money.

Paige still hadn’t arrived when Max
returned with the drinks. He set mine in front of me and took the other chair.
I had the money ready and I pushed a five dollar bill across the table at him.

He jerked his head back slightly, as if
affronted. “I told you I’ve got it.”

“I can’t let you buy me a drink.”

He slid the bill back toward me. “I’m
not buying you a drink. It’s just coffee.”

“You know what I mean. I need to pay my
way.”

“I’m not taking your money, Caro. Put it
away.”

“No. I need to pay for my drink.”

“If you won’t put it away, it’s going to
stay on the table. I’m serious.” He narrowed his eyes at me.

Was he really offended that I wouldn’t
let him pay? I sighed and took back the fiver.

“Okay, fine. You can pay.”

“Thank you.” He leaned back in his
chair. “Now, what would you like to know about me?”

Why does your dad hate you?
But I couldn’t ask him that. “Did you really run away when you were sixteen?”

“Yep.”

“Where’d you go?” Trent’s family was
from Billings, Montana.

“I hitchhiked to Seattle.”

“That’s dangerous.”

“No shit.” He gave a careless shrug. “I
came through okay, though.”

“I’m glad.”

“Are you?” His gaze sharpened.

“Yeah. I hate thinking of kids living on
the streets. Runaways...it’s scary, that’s all.”

He held my gaze a lot longer than was
comfortable. I flushed, but for some reason I couldn’t understand, I didn’t
look away. His eyes were blue. Dark, deep-ocean blue. There was pain in
them...but then it disappeared, so quickly I wasn’t sure it had ever been
there.

“It’s nice of you to care,” he said
dryly.

“Well, I do.”

Awkward silence. I took a sip of my
mocha. He drank whatever it was he’d gotten. I glanced around, looking for
Paige.
Rescue me, best friend.
But she wasn’t in sight. I was on my own
with this strange, intense man I wasn’t supposed to like.

“So, what’s your major?” he said.

Ah, the quintessential college
ice-breaker. “French.”

“Really, French? That’s different.”

“Yeah. Not too practical.” My parents
and Trent were always bugging me to change it to something “normal,” like
education. But I didn’t want to be a teacher like my mom. I didn’t know what I
wanted to be.

“What’s yours?” I said.

“Business.”

My brows rose. “Business, huh? I never
would have tagged you as a business major.”

“I own a business. I thought it might
help my career to spend a few years in college.”

“Wow.” My brows rose even higher. “You
have your own business?”

So not what I’d expected from him.

“Yeah. I’m a graphic designer.”

Again with the surprises. I’m not sure
what I thought he’d major in or do for a living, just that owning his own graphic
design business was not it. Did Trent know about this?

“That sounds really interesting,” I
said.

“Don’t get me started, or I’ll talk your
ear off.” He gave me a self-deprecating smile.

“You’d have to start from the beginning,
because I don’t know anything about either graphic design or business.”

“What do you plan to do with that French
degree?”

“I have no idea.”

He grinned at me. “Good plan.”

“I like to think so.”

I shouldn’t be sitting here with him. My
stomach was full of hysterically panicking butterflies, and the rest of me
ached in weird places. Intimate places. He made me feel things that, honestly,
I’d never felt for any guy before. Not even Trent. I’d never had such a
powerful reaction to anyone else.

His hand moved a few inches toward mine
where it rested on the table. Was he going to touch me? I wanted him to, and I
felt bad for wanting it. This was not me. I’d never cheated on any of the guys
I’d dated. I was a committed serial monogamist.

Max’s hand stopped, then retreated back
into his own space. I lifted my coffee to my lips, pretending I hadn’t seen.
Maybe I’d imagined him reaching out to me. Part of me hoped I had and the rest
of me wished he’d kept going so I could feel his skin against mine again.

I glanced up, trying to ease the sudden
tension, and saw Paige coming toward us, looking like an Asian-American fashion
model, as always, with her long, slender legs and ultra-chic dress. She had a
big smile on her face and I wasn’t sure what that meant. She wasn’t the most
discreet person in the world, and now that she’d seen me with Max, the news
would probably be all over our sorority house by this evening.

“Paige, this is Max, Trent’s
stepbrother,” I said by way of greeting.

Her dark, almond eyes widened. “Trent’s
stepbrother? Wow. I didn’t know he had any brothers at all.”

“Max, this is my best friend, Paige Lin.”

He offered her a hand. “Nice to meet
you.”

“And you.” She shook hands with him.

I watched her closely, to see if she had
any kind of unusual reaction I could detect. As far as I could tell, he didn’t
affect her at all. Not the way he did me, at any rate.

Paige dragged an extra chair to the
table. “Did Trent introduce you two?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

Max just smiled blandly.

“Well.” Paige looked from me to him and
back again. “I’m just...really surprised.”

This was going to get icky fast unless I
changed the subject. Paige could be obnoxiously inquisitive and she didn’t care
who knew. She wouldn’t hesitate trying to pry Max’s family history out of him.

“Max is a business major,” I said in my
perkiest tone. “He owns his own graphic design business.”

Her eyes widened even more. “Do you? I’m
a design major myself.”

Oh, boy, here we go. I’d made a bad
choice of subject change. They’d be off in design land now, talking in their
special language no-one else could understand. I got this from Paige all the
time.

But Max only said, “do you two share an
apartment?” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one looking for another topic.

“I live in the sorority house,” Paige
said. “And Caroline, for reasons no-one understands, still lives in the dorms.”

I rolled my eyes. “I like the dorms.”

“No-one actually
likes
the dorms,
Caroline,” she said. “You’ve been brainwashed or something.”

“Whatever.”

“Hey, dorms can have some advantages,”
Max said.

“Oh, yeah?” Paige turned to him
skeptically. “Like what?”

“Uh...hmmm...she’s very close to all her
classes,” he said. “That’s convenient. And the library, also convenient.”

Paige just looked at him, her face
blank, as if he were speaking in a foreign language. “She’s away from all the
action.”

“I never miss a party at the library,” I
said.

She snickered and after a second’s
pause, I joined her. Max was looking at me and smiling, and the warmth in his
eyes startled me. It made me hot all over.

Why was he looking at me like that? Why
was he even here? Maybe Trent was right about him and he was trying to get
close to me just to mess with his stepbrother. That seemed so unlikely, though.
I mean, who did that?

***

Explosions were going off right in the
hallway of my dorm. I groaned and pried my eyes open. In the thin light of
early morning, a girl stood by the side of my bed, staring down at me. She had
long, perfectly straight blond hair and wore a white tunic-like top with blue
embroidery around the neckline. Her face, bare of make-up, seemed
contemplative, as if she was studying me.

The explosions resolved into the sound
of someone banging on my door. I blinked and the girl in white vanished. For an
instant, I lay there frowning at the place where she’d been, while the pounding
continued even more loudly than before.