Boyfriend Bargain (Hawthorne University #1)(18)

“Mostly. There’s nothing to be done.” My tone isn’t optimistic. Very few waitlisted students manage to secure a spot. I have to accept the truth. “I’m a reject.”

“You’re not a reject.” I hear her rustling papers and imagine she’s looking up at the poster of Clint Eastwood on the wall. Whenever she doesn’t know what to say, she always looks at him for guidance. I smile. She loves that man, swears she ran into him at a bar one night and they had a thing. It’s possible. She’s a beautiful woman.

“It doesn’t have to be Vanderbilt,” she says, and emotion tugs at me.

“I know.” My voice is subdued.

“Fuck a duck with a bowtie. It’s because George went there, isn’t it?”

I sigh, cringing at my father’s name. “I just want to prove I’m just as good as they are.”

“You have nothing to prove!” She exhales, obviously pulling out a smoke by the sound of the click of her lighter. “Want me to make you a cake? Or pie? You love that lemon icebox one.”

A smile ghosts over my face. Mara thinks the cure to all my ailments is sweets. She’s not far off, and I don’t blame her. Mama did the same. I cried a lot when I first moved here, a whole new world for a girl from the trailer parks of a small southern town. Kids made fun of my accent, and even the teachers didn’t know what to make of my sadness. I didn’t fit in here, and even now I sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land. I chew on my lip. Perhaps that’s a tiny part of the reason I want to head back to the South for law school. Even though I don’t have any family to speak of, it’s still…home. It reminds me of Mama.

“Sugar? You there?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

My brow wrinkles as I recall reading Zack’s bio online last week where he mentioned his favorite things. An idea stirs around and takes hold, and for the first time since I woke up this morning, I’m thinking there might be a way to thank him for returning my coat.

“Hey, do you have the stuff to make a cherry pie at your place?” She lives with her longtime boyfriend Luis in a small apartment above the club. “And do you happen to have a good recipe for cherry pie?”

“Not really, honey. Cherry pie is disgusting. It’s just gloopy fruit salad mixed with some dry crust. No thanks.”

I grin. Mara is firm about her pie opinions.

She takes a hit of her cig and I hear her blowing the smoke. “I thought you liked lemon icebox. That’s the one I make better than that Pioneer Woman everyone raves about.”

“No, I do, but I know someone who likes cherry, and I was thinking maybe I might whip one up. He…I…kind of…we had this thing…and then…” My voice peters out. I can’t exactly tell her how I had hot sex with a potential future fake boyfriend.

“Bennett?” Her voice has sharpened, and I grimace. She never liked him—although I didn’t know that until we broke up and she confessed to it after a few too many glasses of wine.

“No.”

“Hmmm, and since when have you ever made a pie?”

“Never, but I thought you might want to help?” I put a pleading tone in my voice.

She sighs. “All right. The club is closed today anyway—but I’m not tasting it. That stuff is gross. Come over after class.”

I smile. “I love you.”





9





Sugar





Zack waltzes into our poetry class, and my stomach flutters.

It’s midday and the auditorium is packed with mostly underclassmen and a ton of athletes, probably because it’s an easy elective and interesting if you dig American poets—which I do. Hello, Emily Dickinson.

He strides in and sweeps his gaze across the crowded lecture hall, moving his eyes up until he finds me, tucked into a corner in the very last seat next to a wall vent, shivering because the heating is shit in this building. My coat is thrown over me like a quilt and he grins when he sees it.

That smile is…devastating to my ovaries.

Shut it down, Sugar.

But then, instead of heading to the open front seats like he usually does, he takes the steep steps up until he reaches my row.

I wonder if he sees the horror growing on my face. I really, really didn’t want to have to face him until I had a pie in my hand and more makeup on my face.

He looms there, looking down the aisle for an empty seat, eyes landing on the one next to me.

“Excuse me,” he says, sliding in to brush past the students already there. He eases past them, uncaring that some of them are having to get up to let him pass. Most of them murmur hellos and “Great game last week, Z!” as he scoots by, and he gives them a brief nod.

He comes to a halt in front of me and my eyes go up and up, taking in the designer jeans, the way his long-sleeved black and gold HU Lions T-shirt clings to his chest. His hair looks damp and disheveled, the ends curling around his shoulders. He’s just had a shower.

Red colors my face.

I had sex with…that…him. My lower body tingles at the memory. My breathing accelerates. He had me pinned against the wall last night. He took me apart and made me come and oh my God— “Hi,” he says.

Dammit.

Why is his voice warm yet so insinuating…as if instead of hi, he’s really saying, I’m sexy and I know it.