Seeing Red (22 page)

Also by Holley Trent

Hearts and Minds

Saint and Scholar
 

Calculated Exposure

Lyrical Press books are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2014, Holley Trent

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

First Electronic Edition: June 2014

ISBN-13: 978-1-61650-546-2

Saint and Scholar

Holly Trent

Excerpt from Chapter One

“Carla!
Carla!
Wait.”

The bewildered young woman hesitated in the middle of the brick path. She gave her apologies to the torrent of undergrads forced to step around her at the last minute and stood up on her tiptoes trying to see over moving heads and shoulders. Extra bodies seemed to come out of the woodwork on campus during final-exam time. Any other Thursday Carla would have been able to make her appointment without a single jostle. Many students spent Thursday mornings recovering from the Wednesday night special at the pub. She sought out a familiar face, but couldn’t make out anyone she knew. Perhaps he’d been calling some
other
Carla.

“Carla Gill! Wait there, please,” the man called out once more in his low tenor voice.

No, he was yelling for her for
sure
. Carla was a rare enough name for a twenty-five-year-old, and the chance of there being another woman on campus at that moment with the same surname was infinitesimal. It wasn’t one of her friends or coworkers. The accent, a lilting, gentle brogue, was far out of sync with the Southern drawl her friends and family were prone to falling into.

The stream of bodies on the walkway broke just long enough for a man of athletic build around six feet tall to cut through and loop his right arm around her left one. He smiled brightly and nudged her forward to move and clear the path for the harried students. “How are you?” he asked, picking up the pace and navigating her smoothly through gaps of slower-moving bodies.

She couldn’t answer. She was paralyzed by some odd combination of arousal and shame. Seeing him caused her pulse to speed, her breath to catch. She knew this man, but even with him being a pale Adonis and so familiar, she couldn’t remember his name. Worse, his scent stupefied her, triggering memories of another man she hadn’t seen in ages. She hadn’t smelled that brand of soap since her father died.

He turned his head to look down, raising one black brow.

“I’m well.” She turned her face forward once more. Of all the flaws she pitied herself for, her tendency to blush at the drop of a hat was by far the most embarrassing. She started reciting the alphabet in her head, pausing at each letter to try to prompt her memory. She’d just
seen
the man six months ago at the bar and they’d chatted for a full thirty seconds before she was pulled away by her friend Meg. She’d been stupefied then, too, staring at his face as if it was some kind of hypnowheel. She’d done the same two years before that when they’d run into each other at the student store. They’d been next to each other in line. He was buying printer paper, and she was buying art supplies. He’d turned around and asked the same question: “How are you, Carla?”

“Fine, fine,” was all she could manage, nodding like a bobblehead doll. He’d smirked and completed his transaction, then touched her arm gently before walking away. She hadn’t known what to make of it.

She made it up to
G
in her head as he deftly steered her around a clump of girls who’d paused to ogle a smartphone screen, and took the fork in the path to the right. Grant. His name was
Grant
. He was a graduate student and teacher’s assistant who taught English Composition, or at least he
had
been when she was in his class. That was going on eight years ago.