Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(21)

Her guards are already stomping toward me.

"Leave him alone," she says, her sweet voice ringing crystal clear across the lecture hall.

They look at each other and step back.

Anastasia reads the note, looks at me, and then crumples it in both hands, mashing it into a tiny ball so tight I swear if she choked it any harder, it would turn into a rock. Then she casually tosses it into the wastebasket next to the lectern.

"Three points," I yell.

"Leave me alone," she shouts back.

"You're too beautiful to be alone. Marry me."

Ana scowls and turns around, pointedly ignoring me.

"Boy," Giganto Guard Number One warns.

"I'm not your boy, Ragnar," I tell him, then sit back in my seat.

More students file in, filling the hall. Grandolf arrives two minutes after the official start of class, and half the male students watch her prodigious endowments bounce as she walks down the steps on ridiculous spike pumps. The other half crane their heads to watch her hips sway from side to side.

She drops her briefcase on the table and looks around with a grin, but it flickers a bit when her gaze passes over Princess Anastasia.

Did I imagine that?

Her TAs, who are coincidentally all male and fit, run up and down the lecture hall distributing papers. I'm one of the history majors, so they know me by sight. I look over my assignment, see the A+, and I am completely unsurprised. It's junior varsity crap, review questions from the textbook so all the non-majors taking the class as a requirement can pass. I've already studied this in more depth in more advanced courses.

Anastasia happens to catch my eye.

Okay, I'm staring at her.

She holds her paper in trembling hands. The same assignment I did. No plus, no minus. An F is just an F. There is no qualifier.

It's hard to see from four rows up, but a little wet spot appears on her paper, then another. Then it's sealed when she balls up her sleeve in her hand and dabs at her eyes.

She's crying. She's f*cking crying.

Oh no, that will not do. That will not do at all.

Grandolf turns to address the class. Or rather, face the class. She's watching Ana, and I see that faint hint of a wolf grin on her lips. Not the "I want Jason's cock" wolf grin, the other one. The mean, nasty one she gets because she enjoys humiliating students.

That's kind of her thing. Guy? Potential moustache ride. Girl? Especially a young, pretty one? Grandolf probably fingers herself when she flunks them. Ana would be a prime target.

I grit my teeth and clench my fists.

While Grandolf grumbles to herself about the overhead projector, I bag up my shit and walk down to the front row, then down to where Ana sits.

"Hey," I say in a soft voice. "There's a couple empty seats in the sixth row. Come sit with me."

She looks up with red eyes, her face an icy mask. "I'm fine where I am."

"Come on. Please?"

She seems a little shocked to hear me use the magic word. She blinks, and makes a half turn, without actually looking at the Viking Twins.

"Look, I didn't ask you to go to a hotel room with me. It's over there." I point at the empty seats. "Follow me if you want."

I turn, and, like Orpheus leading Eurydice out of hell, I dare not look back. I don't have to. I smell a cool, wintery berry scent and know Ana is following me to sit beside me, joining me as I sit. She takes a moment to arrange her stuff in silence.

"If we're done playing musical chairs"—Grandolf scowls—"might I begin my lecture? We have a lot to cover today. We'll be looking at the roots of the Spanish-American War."

Ana starts to type.

I assume it's notes, but then notice she’s typing in caps.



WHAT DO YOU WANT



I slink down in the seat. I murmur, "I can help you. Let me ask you something. Are you any good at math?"

"Yes," she murmurs.

"Like, geometry?"

"Perfect score."

I slip out my last assignment and hold up the grade so she can see it. Her eyes widen a little.

"I'm a history major," I whisper, barely mouthing the words. "What do you major in, anyway?"

Her voice is very small and soft. "Business."

"Excuse me," Grandolf cuts in from fifty feet away. "Miss DeVries."

Ana bristles as Grandolf addresses her without her royal style. She swallows, hard. Her throat bobs. She glances at me as if begging for help.

Oh that is it. That is just it. I'm starting to get mad.

Calm down, Jason. Don't tilt at this windmill.

I take a deep breath.

Grandolf hides neither her contempt nor her malice with her expression. She stands, one foot out, like a conquering general, hands on her hips, chest out, chin tipped back.

"Tell us, what role did William Randolph Hearst play in the buildup to the war?"

Ana clears her throat, and I brace myself.

Her voice is clear and high. "Hearst used his newspaper network to spread propaganda that the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor was Spanish sabotage. Most historians today agree it was an accident and the Spanish were blameless. Hearst instigated the war to benefit his partnerships with—"

"Yes indeed," Grandolf snaps, annoyed. "If only you were so eloquent in your assignments. As I was saying, Hearst's business connections allowed him to profit from his manipulations of public opinion through leading and biased news stories, which today we refer to as 'yellow journalism'…."