Authors: Lauren Blakely
Tags: #contemporary adult romance, #Contemporary, #Romance, #Adult, #New Adult, #Contemporary Romance
Caught Up in Us
Caught Up In Us
Lauren Blakely
Copyright 2013 by Lauren
Blakely
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. This book or
any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of
America
First Printing, 2013
Cover Design by
Josyan
McGregor
This
book is a work of fiction. No part of the contents relate to any
real person or persons, living or dead.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the
express written permission of the publisher except for the use of
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If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person,
living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely
coincidental. The characters and storylines are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Table of
Contents
Caught Up In
Us
Genre: Adult Contemporary
Romance
(NOT appropriate for younger
readers)
Five years ago, Kat Harper fell
into a dizzying summer romance with her brother’s best friend
Bryan. It was a mad, crazy love full of kisses all through the
night — but he broke her heart and she had to move on.
Five years later, Kat is finishing
her graduate degree and building her business as a jewelry
designer, when Bryan, head of his own successful company, walks
back into her life. Bryan has been assigned to Kat as her new
business mentor and the rules are clear. No hanky panky permitted.
That works for both of them. Kat needs to grow her business to help
her parents; Bryan needs to run a clean operation after his former
business partner’s romantic scandal that rocked his
firm.
Kat can handle that because she's
totally over him... right? Except, he still makes her laugh. And he
remembers all the things she likes. And he's more handsome now than
he was then. Then there’s the spark between them — the simply
undeniable chemistry.
Can they resist each other? Or are
they willing to risk everything for a second chance at first
love?
This book is for the
readers.
For all of you —
the lovers of words and romance
.
He was my first favorite
mistake.
I hadn’t seen him in five years,
and now as he walked to the front of the small classroom, every
muscle in my body tensed, and my brain went into hyperdrive as I
told myself not to think of lights going down in movie theaters or
of hot summer nights miles away from here tangled up in
him.
Be strong. Be cool. Be
badass.
I ran my index finger across the
silver charm I made when I left for college, as if the miniature
movie camera could channel steely resolve into me, as it had these
last few years. Even though I’d absolutely moved on. That’s why it
hadn’t even occurred to me that he might be here today, even
though, technically, I suppose I should have known it was a
possibility since he graduated from this same business school. We
even walked around this campus together the last time I saw him, as
we made plans with each other, as we made promises to each
other.
Until he broke my heart and became
a charm on my necklace instead — the very first one, and the
inspiration for my jewelry — a cold, metal reminder that mistakes
can make us better.
But I was safely
on the other side now. I was over Bryan, over the anger, over the
whole thing. I was totally fine, thank you very much. Except, as he
neared the whiteboard with the name of the class,
Experiential Learning
,
scrawled in blue marker on it, I was being educated on a new
definition of the word unfair. Because I so wanted to be the girl
who didn’t even notice he was here, but instead I catalogued every
detail, from the slightest trace of stubble on his jawline, to the
way his brown hair still invited fingers to be run through it, to
how the checked navy blue shirt he wore had probably never looked
quite so good as when it hugged his arms and stretched across his
chest.
Bryan froze when he saw me. His
green eyes hooked into mine for the briefest of moments, and maybe
for real, or maybe just in my imagination, I saw a tinge of regret
in them. But then he recovered a second later, and flashed a quick,
closed-mouth smile to the class. Of course it wouldn’t bother him
to see me here. He didn’t care about me then. He wouldn’t care
about me now.
But I could pull off indifference
too, so I looked away first. There. Two could play at this
game.
Bryan stood next to the professor
at the head of the classroom, along with the other business school
alum who would be matched with my fellow graduate students for this
mentorship program. In his trademark three-piece suit, spectacles
and a silk handkerchief, Professor Oliver was his usual peppy self
as he introduced the mentors. One of the gals ran a venture fund
she’d started herself, another had been a superstar skateboarder
then launched a line of skatewear that was now hugely popular with
teens, one of the guys oversaw a firm that had designed some of the
most successful iPhone apps, and another founded a health video
service.
Then there was Bryan Leighton,
five years older than me, and I already knew what he did for a
living. I knew other things about him too. I knew what his lips
tasted like. How his arms felt under my hands. How his kisses went
on and on and I’d never wanted them to end. And like a snap of the
fingers, I was back in time, no longer a graduate student, no
longer in the first row of the classroom. I was just a girl fresh
off high school graduation, wrapped around her brother’s best
friend. Bryan was running his hands through my hair, and kissing my
neck, and I shuddered. Everyone else, everything else faded away.
He was the only one there.
I could have stayed trapped like
that, beholden to the memory of the way he felt, the things we
said. The words only I said.
I gripped the charm to break away
from the past. I let a tiny kernel of latent anger in me start to
come out of hiding. I needed that anger, because I needed to focus
on the present, and there was no room for him, or those kind of
memories, in it. I was a different person now. I was a savvy
twenty-three. I’d already earned my bachelor’s degree from NYU, and
now I was finishing my master’s degree from the same school and
growing a business, all while paying the rent in a Chelsea
apartment. I wasn’t that lovestruck teenager anymore. Besides,
there was just a one-in-five chance I’d be paired with him.
Wouldn’t it make the most sense for my professor to match me with
the skatewear gal since we were both in the fashion business? I was
a jewelry designer after all, with a line of necklaces already
selling well online and in several boutiques around the
city.
Professor Oliver rocked back and
forth on his wingtips, full of energy, while he rattled off names
of my classmates, then the mentor they’d work with. The first
student was paired with iPhone guy. Okay, there was a
one-out-of-four chance now. I crossed my fingers. Venture Girl was
partnered off next with a different student. One in three. I made a
quick wish on an unseen star. Professor Oliver read off the names
of another student and the health video service guy. I took a deep
calming breath. Clearly, the professor was saving me for the
skateboard gal. She looked so cool too, so hip with pink streaks in
her black hair and cat’s eye glasses. Yes, she’d be a perfect
mentor and I’d learn so much about a business that wasn’t that
different from mine.
I held my breath and hoped. But
Professor Oliver called out someone else’s name for skateboard gal.
My heart dropped, and I felt my insides tighten.
“And that means, Ms. Harper, that
your business mentor for this semester will be Bryan Leighton.
Allow me to officially introduce you two.”
Bryan held out his hand, as if it
were the first time he was touching me.
“It’s a pleasure.”
“All mine,” I said, wishing there
weren’t some truth to my words.
One of the
reasons I’d wanted to attend New York University’s Stern School of
Business was for this class. Today would be our only day in the
classroom. The rest of the semester we’d spend time with real
businesses, tackling real issues, and gaining insight into how to
make our fledgling little ventures better. Ever since a boutique
owner in my hometown had stopped me at age nineteen and asked where
I’d gotten my unusual and eye-catching charm necklace — I’d made it
myself, I proudly told her — I had wanted to learn the ins and outs
of building a bigger business. I never told her the genesis of my
jewelry line. I never revealed to anyone but my best friend Jill
that I’d started it out of rejection. That it was fueled by hurt.
The charms were my way of taking something back, taking me back
after Bryan’s callous brush-off. If I were a rock star, I’d have
Taylor Swifted him and written one of those anthemic I
don’t love you anymore
songs. Instead, I did the only thing I could do. I turned to
my one talent and uttered a quiet
screw
you, Bryan Leighton
with my
jewelry.
The boutique owner had started
carrying my necklaces and the My Favorite Mistakes style had become
a — well — a favorite in her store, and soon at my parent’s shop
too, then at others in Manhattan. The trouble was my charms were
all handmade. By me. And the grassroots nature was getting a little
challenging. I needed practical skills and knowledge to grow, and I
was more than ready to get them through this mentorship.
But that wasn’t the only reason I
needed this class. My parents had stumbled into hard times when the
tough economy hit the tourist town of Mystic, Connecticut where
they ran a little gift shop and had for years. They took out a loan
to keep inventory stocked, and I hated to see them struggling
especially since the store was their nest egg, their third kid,
their key to an eventual retirement. They’d worked so hard my whole
life, putting my brother and me through college, weathering many
storms of the financial and the health variety for years. Now they
were within spitting distance of retirement, and I wanted to do all
I could to make sure they could enjoy some well-deserved time off.
I’d taken out loans to pay for business school, but they weren’t
due for several years, so my plan was to ramp up my own business
quickly to help pay off theirs.