James: A College Girl Romance (5 page)

“Are you hurt?” I demanded.

“Y-you have a gun,” she sputtered.

“And a concealed weapons permit. I know how to use the gun, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Actually, that
is
what I’m worried about. Why the hell do you have a gun and know how to use it?”

“That, lovely, is a story best left for another time.”

I’
d had bad nights at the club before. Tonight, though, was a record low. All I’d wanted was fifteen fucking minutes away from that smell. The mix of sweat, desperation, cheap cologne, and cheaper alcohol. Fifteen minutes with nobody yelling, away from the grating music, just some time to unwind and eat a fucking granola bar on the curb.

I knew better than to hang out alone outside, but usually I could make it to my car and back unmolested. Just the thought of that guy’s hands around my throat and over my mouth made my stomach heave.

“Pull over,” I said, gulping for air. “
Do it!
” I screamed when he looked over at me.

He pulled over, and the second the car stopped, I wrenched open the door and threw myself out of the passenger seat. I made it a couple of steps before doubling over with my hands on my thighs for support. I retched until there was nothing left in my stomach, and then I continued to dry-heave.

Finally, I raised my head and saw James McDevitt holding out a towel and a bottle of water. I took both, wiped my mouth, and then took a swig of water before turning and spitting it out.

“Thank you.”

I quickly looked around. We were sitting on an empty strip of I-80 between the club and the university.

“You’re welcome. Now do you think you can make it the rest of the way?”

I nodded and followed him back to the car, taking his hand and letting him help me into the passenger seat. A few seconds later, he was behind the wheel and pulling back into traffic.

“What were you doing back there alone? Smoke break?” he asked in a tone more highhanded than I liked.

“I don’t smoke—and who are you? My mother?”

He glared over at me, the oncoming headlights illuminating the dark look in his coal-black eyes.

“Apparently your mother doesn’t care what you do if you’re working in a strip club.”

My eyes stung as I looked down.

“I’m almost twenty-four,” I muttered. “Which means I’m an
ahhh
-dult. I make my own choices.”

He made a sound between disgust and disbelief.

“What do you know about my life?” I snapped.

“Enough to know a girl like you shouldn’t be working in a club off I-80. That’s what I call terminal parental failure.”

“A girl like me?” I repeated in disbelief.

“Yes—a girl like you.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence. When he took the exit toward school, I felt a wave of relief that Jessica wasn’t home. At one point in time, I would have been wishing the opposite, because she would have sat on the floor with me all night eating ice cream and commiserating.

Now I dreaded the moments she was home. We had been friends since freshman year. I had met her parents a few times, and they had always seemed like pretty decent people. Her mom was some kind of county administrator, and she always sent Jess jars of homemade jam. Her dad was a sales exec for a pharmaceutical company—and Jess hated him with a vengeance. I had never figured out why, other than Jess had always been kind of angry in general.

During what should have been my senior year of college, Jess’s parents had paid for her to take the year off—because she had been too “stressed out” to handle school. In reality, she’d had a massive fucking breakdown when some guy she was obsessed with never noticed her. Finally, her doctor had put her on happy pills, but instead of getting better, she had just gotten angrier at everybody, including me. Eventually, she had gone completely psycho on me—accusing me of all kinds of bizarre shit when I had just been trying to stay out of her way. At that point, I had just checked out. If I’d had enough money to move out and pay first and last month’s rent, plus a security deposit, I would have done it by now.

Now all I wanted was to make enough cash to finish my last year of school and apply to graduate programs—that, or at least find a job that didn’t involve naughty-schoolgirl outfits.

“I live off Cowell,” I said, pointing.

Ignoring me, he kept driving toward the alphabet streets.

“Where are you taking me?”

He reached for his phone and handed it to me.

“Call someone at the club and tell them you’re sick. Better yet, tell them you’re quitting.”

“Are you serious?”

“Would you like
me
to do it?” he asked in a supercilious tone.

“Why? So you can bury my body somewhere?”

“Exactly. That’s why I saved you from BTK back there.”

I shivered involuntarily. I had read about Dennis Rader in my abnormal psych class. Serial killer from Kansas who had murdered ten people.

“Thanks for that image,” I mumbled, sinking lower in the seat. “Definitely not sleeping tonight.”

“Really?
I’m
the reason you’re not going to sleep tonight? Not the guy who was about to leave your dead body somewhere off the freeway? Now—call the club. Before I do it.”

He reached over, unlocked his phone, and handed it back to me. I found the club’s number online and placed the call. When Jerry picked up at the bar, I exhaled. At least it hadn’t been Bob.

“Hey, Jerry. It’s Cass. I was feeling sick, so I had to take off. Can you ask Jenna to take my section and keep my tips?”

“You okay, Cass?”

“Yeah. I think I’ve just got really bad food poisoning or something. Tell Jenna I’ll make it up to her.”

“Bob’s not going to be too happy you took off in the middle of your shift.”

“Yeah. I know. I’ll see you tomorrow night if he doesn’t fire me.”

I forced a laugh, but Jerry had already hung up.

“Great,” I muttered. “I probably don’t have a job now. Shit! And the keys to my apartment are in my locker.”

I looked around and saw that we were parked in the driveway of a modest one-story house with white trim and a neat lawn out front. A second later, my door opened. I looked up at James McDevitt as he offered his hand.

“You live
here
?” I asked, taking his hand.

He pulled me up, and in a daze, I followed him to the front door and watched as he retrieved a nondescript box. He looked back at me.

“I own the house; it doesn’t mean I live here.”

“Oh god. You’re not a professor, are you?”

He laughed, like I had just told him the punch line to the greatest joke.

“What’s so funny?”

“Another long story.”

“Right,” I muttered. “You’re full of those. Why are we here?”

“You said your keys are at the club, so—”

“Whoa! I can’t stay
here
.”

“Why not? I promise to be on my best behavior,” he said as he opened the front door.

“Why does that
not
inspire confidence?”

“Are you saying I get no credit for saving you?”

He entered a code into a keypad and turned on a light as I stopped to look around the living room. Distressed hardwood floors, a large chocolate-colored leather sofa in front of a stone fireplace. Expensive looking art on the walls. An antique liquor cabinet with a display of alcohol bottles—whisky or bourbon from the looks of it. All of it expensive.

Everything here looked like it belonged in a penthouse in San Francisco or New York. Not some Podunk college town where the big joke was that all the girls looked like cows.

“What are
you
doing
here
?” I asked, looking him up and down. “And wait, where’s your suit?”

This guy in a suit and tie definitely made sense in this house. Clad in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt with the name of
my
university on it, he almost looked like he could be a student—but not quite.

“My suit? Well, I’m like a Ken doll. You can take off my clothes, and—well, yes, you can take off my clothes.”

I smirked at him even as my skin prickled with awareness.

“In your dreams.”

“Absolutely.”

Even though nearly everything that came out of his mouth was tinged with innuendo, I wasn’t afraid of him—which probably had to do with the fact that
he
hadn’t tried to abduct me from a strip club parking lot. He also had a boyish charm, muted by something darker, a world-weariness that didn’t seem to match his age. Suddenly I froze.

“How old are you?” I asked abruptly.

“Thirty-two as of July fifth—and don’t look at me like that.”

I laughed.

“Like what? Like you’re an old man?”

“Let me guess—you’re used to boys.”

I wasn’t used to anything as far as the opposite sex, but I didn’t correct him. I watched as he walked to the liquor cabinet, picked up a lowball, and poured from a distinctive bottle with a large silver “M” on the front.

“Whisky?” he asked.

I wrinkled my nose and cocked my head.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?”

He smiled and shook his head.

“Definitely not. I need you at your sharpest to hear my proposal.”

“Proposal? Now
that
should be interesting.”

“A glass of wine, then?” he asked, absolutely unperturbed by my sarcasm.

He opened an epic refrigerated wine cabinet with rows and rows of wine bottles. I’d had wine with Mom and Michael when I was home—but I wasn’t stupid. I knew that my stepfather locked up the really expensive stuff and took out the bottles he had gotten at some big-box store. He wasn’t about to let me drink his hundred-dollar-a-bottle
good
wine. No fucking way. Hell, his wine collection was probably the reason they had stopped paying my tuition.

“Sure,” I nodded. “Red.”

“Cab? Pinot? Zin? Syrah? Bordeaux? Malbec?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t know much about wine.”

He removed a bottle and an opener. Seconds later, he had the foil stripped and the cork removed. He smelled the cork before pouring a small glass and walking over to me with the whisky in his other hand. I looked over at the wine bottle.
Bennett Family Cellars
. It sounded familiar.

“Why does that sound so familiar?”

“
Bennett Hall
?”

“
This
is the family that Bennett Hall is named after?”

“It is, it is.”

He held out his glass and touched it to mine.

“To narrow escapes,” he smiled.

Reminded of the psycho from earlier, I cringed and took a bigger gulp of wine than I’d intended, which caused me to cough before recovering.

“Wow. Oh my god. This is amazing.”

“Excellent. I’ll tell Bennett the next time I see him—stripper approved.”

My cheeks flushed.

“Are you always such an arrogant dick?”

“Pretty much.”

“Figures,” I muttered.

It also figured that even my knight in shining armor would turn out to be a colossal ass, but at least I was sticking to my track record. Now I could add kidnapping psychopath and hot asshole to the list of deranged men I attracted. As I tried thinking of ways I could get back into my apartment without my keys, James gestured toward the couch.

I shrugged again and walked to the couch before realizing that I was still wearing the goddamned ridiculous outfit from the club. The minute I took a seat, the skirt rode up to the tops of my thighs. I tugged at the hem with one hand while holding my wine in the other. James McDevitt sat down across from me in an oversized leather chair that looked like it belonged in a gentlemen’s club on the East Coast.

“Your proposal?” I reminded him nonchalantly.

“Yes, my proposal.” He set the whisky on an end table and leaned toward me. “You quit the club and come work for me for the rest of the summer, and at the end of it, you’ll have enough money to finish school.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He was offering me the solution to all my problems—but at what price?

“Come work for you? You mean
have sex with you … for money
. Look. You obviously got the wrong idea. I’m not even a stripper—and I’m definitely not a prostitute.”

He smiled, like he had anticipated my response.

“I wouldn’t be paying you for sex.”

“Really?” I asked skeptically.

“Really. But would it be so bad?”

“Would
what
be so bad?”

“Pleasure like you’ve never felt before
and
enough money to finish school.”

I jumped as he reached out and took my wine from me before setting it on the end table. A second later, he was sitting on the couch and drawing me into his lap. It didn’t even occur to me to stop him as his thumb began tracing circles on the inside of my wrist. My breathing was sharp and quick by the time his other hand slipped around my neck and slowly drew me toward him, his eyes burning into mine. His mouth dropped to my neck, and I felt his lips skim across the sensitive skin beneath my jaw, sending a wave of longing through me. When I whimpered, he pulled back.