By Referral Only Page 7

  “Yes, what girl doesn’t need three older brothers inserting themselves in her dating life,” I commented with a smile. That poor girl. No one would be inserting anything if the twins were half as intimidating as Cole.

  “Hey, we’re nice, friendly blokes. Or, we can be.” Cole’s green eyes darkened again as they slid down my neck and over the towel still clutched against my chest. The thought of what my hair and face must look like after a night rolling around in bed, followed by a morning getting drenched in the rain, made me want to dig a hole and crawl into it.

  He raised his gaze back to my face. “I can tell you, if Liam had left my baby sister in the rain, he and I would be having some serious words.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not your sister then.” My voice sounded far away and a little breathless for some reason.

  Cole shifted toward me and my body overpowered my brain, leaning in an attempt to get closer. His eyes never left mine, cool irritation turning to hot desire in the space of a breath. He lifted a hand and settled it on the side of my neck, thumb swiping lazily back and forth over my pulse, which thudded so hard my ears ached.

  “It is a very good thing you’re not my sister,” he said, his voice low and husky.

  I didn’t realize I was staring at his mouth until his tongue flicked out to wet his lips. A lightning bolt of desire shot straight through me, ending between my thighs, and I jerked away as though it had struck my brain.

  “I, um. Thanks again for the ride.” My face heated and I scrambled for the door handle. “I mean, thanks for the—”

  Cole had somehow gotten out of the car and around to my door while I floundered, and he held it open and helped me to my feet. I tugged my hand out of his before I completely drowned in the smell and feel of this guy who slipped through my smokescreen with far too much ease.

  “You’re quite welcome. Here.” He handed over my keys, then took a folder his driver had brought around while we’d been bumbling, and passed it to me, too. “Venue contracts. I’ll let the committee know about the Homecoming theme.”

  “Okay. Bye.” I ran up the concrete steps and let myself inside, not caring that my shoes were squishing on the polished wood of the foyer. It had never occurred to me to run away from a guy my entire life, but Cole Stuart…there was something about him that scared the shit out of me.

  I shook my head, shivering again from the air conditioning, and headed upstairs. There was something about him, all right. He was everything Whitman University had to offer, and that meant he was totally wrong for me. The Stuarts not only had money, they were fucking royalty. The way he talked about his brothers and sister, they were obviously a close family. I could only imagine his parents’ reaction to their youngest son bringing home a bayou rat.

  My phone turned back on five minutes later and I had a text from Liam.

  Had fun last night. Do it again after Wednesday rehearsal?

  Yes. The text proved that Liam wanted to keep hanging out. We could work on things in bed, and in the meantime, I had a guy who didn’t make me feel naked when I wasn’t.

  Chapter 8

  It was my last week with the kids at the Coterie, and I had to admit I would miss them. The four hours a week I spent in their enthusiastic presence were my only respite from maintaining my campus image, an act that had never seemed exhausting until I didn’t have to keep it up.

  Kids told the truth without thinking, even when they probably shouldn’t, and the relief from having to constantly be on a stage relaxed every muscle every time I stepped through the door.

  Cole hadn’t been back. The disappointment coursing underneath my relief proved I’d been right to stay away from him. We’d talked several times about Homecoming, but always a perfunctory conversation after speech or a couple of minutes on the phone. He acted hurt when I escaped, but I didn’t have time to worry about his feelings and protect my own.

  The kids were putting on a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which they’d voted on—they preferred the comedies, even though they usually didn’t get the reason it was supposed to be funny. Caroline and a boy named Randall took the lead, and they all looked adorable in their stitched-together wardrobe. They had worked hard to memorize the short, five-minute performance, and the theatre’s board joined the parents as an audience.

  Caro messed up a line or two, her eyes cutting to me each time, but I gave her big, reassuring smiles. She was a good little actress, actually, and covered the mistakes so that no one but she and I would have noticed. She ran up to me afterward, even before she went to find her parents, and flung her spindly arms around my waist.

  My chest flooded with the kind of warmth that I’d found at DE and I picked her up into a big hug. “You were fantastic, Caro! Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  She grinned. “Mom said I can come see you in West Side Story next week.”

  “Excellent.” I spotted her mom and gave her a smile. “You have more fans waiting. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Caroline spun around and greeted her mother, who still looked like the most exhausted person in the world. Doctor Paladino had let me know that Caroline’s father had died in Iraq, and that she and her mother were pretty much on their own. Most of their family lived in California.

  Someone touched my elbow and I turned to find Geoff. “Amy said you’ve done an excellent job.”

  I shrugged, pride tugging my mouth into a smile. “I had fun.”

  It was honest, not bullshit. I wanted to keep helping.

  “Well, some of the board members would like to meet the girl who made a bunch of kids take so eagerly to Shakespeare.”

  Geoff led me back inside the now mostly empty auditorium. My eyes immediately found Cole’s. He winked and bowed his head in a silent gesture of commendation.

  “Ruby Cotton, this is Brad Daniels, Diana Jacobs, Wren Masters, and Bobby Flipkins.” He glanced at Cole, whose hungry eyes hadn’t left my face. “It looks like you know Cole Stuart.”

  I shook everyone’s hands, putting faces with names, flushed from the weight of Cole’s gaze. Brad and Bobby were both prominent New York directors who had debuted Tony-nominated shows the last couple of years. I recognized Wren’s name from local theatre, but Diana was new to me. “It’s nice to meet you all.”

  “You’re doing a great job with the kids,” Diana said.

  “Thank you. I enjoyed it far more than I expected to. It’s kind of a reminder that enthusiasm can’t be faked.”

  They all chuckled, then Bobby Flipkins spoke up. “Well, Geoff here says you’ve got plenty of that. I know Brad and I are both looking forward to your own opening next week.”

  Excitement and nerves tightened my stomach. They were coming to my show. Forget Liam and his stupid Bruckheimer movie, and the way Cole did crazy things to my body from across the room. Screw every guy at St. Jude’s and Whitman who thought money mattered more than anything.

  I was going to fucking own New York, and it was going to be because I deserved it.

  ***

  “I don’t understand why we can’t just act like we’re together at the theatre,” I grumbled, rubbing my palm across Liam’s almost smooth chest.

  “The show opens in a few days, Ruby. I just don’t think we should upset the status quo right now.” He sat up and pulled on a pair of shorts, then walked into the bathroom.

  He’d been saying that for the past three weeks, and Liam, like most actors, harbored superstitions about changes to routine. The show still needed some work, and the last thing I wanted was to distract everyone’s focus.

  Keeping quiet for the time being was probably for the best.

  “Want some dinner? I have leftover Chinese.” He stood in the doorway, stretching his arms and displaying his tanned stomach.

  Not that I hadn’t seen it. I wrinkled my nose, my growing irritation with him and this relationship making me a little nauseous. “Let’s go out.”

  “I don’t have the cash, ba—er, Ruby. Plus, I’m
kinda tired.”

  I pulled on a T-shirt, then rummaged around for my shorts. It wouldn’t do any good to offer to buy; Liam had made it clear that the financial imbalance in our relationship irked him. He might not care where my parents’ cash came from, but it occasionally rubbed him the wrong way that I came from money. He insulted Whitman too often for my taste, apparently forgetting that I went there, and my knee-jerk reaction to defend the university still surprised me.

  Go Owls.

  In reality, I had started thinking about moving on. Liam’s constant preening and not-too-subtle reminders that his acting career was taking off bored me, but I’d stick it out through West Side Story’s run. No reason to make one of my favorite parts of life awkward.

  We went into the kitchen and dragged leftover paper containers of chicken, rice, and vegetables from the fridge, heating them up and chatting about the play and whether or not the rest of the borderline incompetent Shark Girls would be ready.

  Liam and I sat at the kitchen table, pinching food with clean pairs of chopsticks, when he decided it was time to actually talk about something other than sex or theatre. “Even though we’re not public, we’re okay, right? Everything’s good?”

  Dread dropped into my stomach and the pea pods in my mouth turned sour. The dreaded relationship status discussion. The sound of the television droned from the other room, filling the house with white noise, and making me almost wish that girl from The Ring would make an appearance, drag Liam away, and save me from the awkward.

  “Are you asking if I’m your girlfriend?” Maybe that word would scare him. It worked occasionally.

  “I mean, I don’t dig labels, but I like hanging out with you. We’re having fun, right?” His brown eyes watched me, as though he sensed the wall in between us for the first time.

  I might have been close to dropping him, but I wasn’t ready right this moment. I needed time to prepare, and groped for more neutral ground. “You’re not seeing anyone else?”

  “Not at the moment, but I’m going to be gone a few months shooting the film, and you know how things go on set. I don’t think we can really…define anything, or talk about much beyond that.” His dark eyes found mine, pleading. “I thought we were on the same page with the whole casual thing, but just thought…you’ve been off lately and I wanted to make sure.”

  “We are definitely on the same casual page.”

  I forced a smile and slid into his lap, tugging his handsome face to mine. The kissing still exceeded my expectations; Liam had great instincts. His tongue tasted spicy from the food, lit sparks on my tongue, and when his hands slid up my shirt and cupped my breasts, the hope that this would be the time for the great and elusive orgasm returned. His fingers had gentled in the past weeks and his touch knocked a shudder through me the same moment the front door banged open.

  “Liam, you home, dude?” One of his roommates called out.

  Liam sighed into my mouth and tweaked my nipples in a way that left me wanting to murder his roommate, then sat back in his chair. I shifted to straddle him, intent on both getting up and to the bedroom to find a bra and dishing out a little something for him to think about while I did. I took my time, dragging the heel of my hand, then the back of my thigh, across the tent in his shorts as I squirmed very deliberately loose.

  “So, I guess I’ll be going.” I turned to wink at him, pleased at the rakish, borderline desperate lust smoldering in his dark eyes.

  “I don’t think so,” he growled playfully, his handsome face twisting into a grin.

  I squealed and escaped down the hallway as Liam gave chase, tackling me onto his bed. We laughed and wrestled for a while and then he kissed me for several minutes. The anxiety from our conversation eased, slinking back to wherever shit like that came from.

  Probably back into my ovaries.

  Things were winding down, but it was still nice to touch another person and feel wanted for a few hours a week. Relief that nothing had to be decided today relaxed us both, and I left him feeling better about the whole thing.

  ***

  The website boomed; new girls signed up for accounts every day, and by late September it had passed two thousand ratings, with about fifteen hundred guys listed. Most of them had a good balance of ratings, which was nice—it made it clear that at least some of the lows were probably jilted exes. The stars-only decision held as a good one, since it didn’t seem right to splash problems like Noodle Dick’s all over the internet.

  The referrals were the most clicked links, anyway.

  I filtered three more of Quinn’s ratings—annoyingly all five stars, even though the referrals were still no’s—and the second of Noah’s, like I promised. Like he’d promised, they were both five-star referrals. It seemed my resident sexy computer nerd hadn’t been falsely confident about his skills with the ladies. Toby Wright’s were all high, which didn’t surprise me—before he’d played a role in screwing Em over, I’d entertained the idea of spending a few weeks in his bed.

  Without analyzing why, I checked Cole’s current stats. Ten ratings—one of the most on the site, but he was a senior—and they were all one or two stars, with not a single yes to the question of referral. The memory of his attentive green eyes, the way my body heated under a simple gaze, and the electrical charge his presence inspired all argued with the bare numbers on the screen.

  The mystery of Cole Stuart still vexed me, despite all of my mental urgings to ignore it.

  Emilie breezed in the door a minute later and flopped on her old bed. “Hey!”

  I whirled in the chair, happy to see her, and waved a hand in front of my face. “Dude, did you just see all of that dust fly out of your mattress? How long has it been?”

  “Har har, very funny. It’s not like you’ve been here every night either, you little minx.” Emilie turned her messenger bag upside down, dumping a snarl of textbooks, sketchpads, pens, charcoals, and a bunch of trash onto her purple comforter.

  “Time to clean house?”

  “Yeah. Plus I need some fresh wardrobe.”

  I glanced at the door. “Where’s Quinn?”

  “Investor conference call. What are you doing?”

  “Administrating my website.” I grinned. “It doesn’t take much work, honestly.”

  “Then turn it off and talk to me. How are things with Liam?”

  With anyone else, it would have been easy to say fine, smile, and move on, but Emilie was my best friend. If I couldn’t tell her everything, then it would stay bottled up. She watched me without comment while I outlined the good and the bad pieces of Liam Greene.

  I held back my instinct that the relationship would soon outlive its intrigue, wanting her honest opinion before I clouded it with my own.

  She didn’t give one right away, and her lack of reaction bothered me. After she stayed silent for a full minute after I shut up, my irritation spiked. “Well? Advice from the girl who has it all?”

  Emilie sighed, picking up a chunk of silky black hair and studying nonexistent split ends. “You want my opinion?”

  “Now I’m not sure,” I answered, my natural defenses rising into place. It was one thing for me to decide Liam wasn’t worth the effort, but another for her to make a snap judgment.

  “You’re my best friend, so I’m going to give it to you anyway. You’re settling, and I don’t understand why.”

  “Settling?” The word sounded dirty. I wanted to brush my teeth.

  “You set up this website for Whitman girls to find awesome boyfriends, but you’re putting up with mediocre sex and a guy who says dumb shit like I don’t really dig labels, and who’s pretty much planning on boning whoever on the movie set will let him stick it in.”

  Irritation slipped toward anger. Emilie thought what she had was so easily found—it wasn’t. I loved her and she had never made me feel less than her, but there were times she didn’t understand, and this was one of them.

  She’d never grasped my reasoning for giving up on Whitman guys after
Michael—partially because any guy at Whitman would take her home without a second thought, and partly because she had the kind of effortless courage that eluded me.

  “I like him.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you spent months pining after him and fantasizing about knocking him into bed, so you want to like him. But even if you did…he’s not good enough for you. You’re booty-calling, hooking up, whatever you want to call it, but you’re not dating.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “Really?” She crossed her arms and gave me a look. “That’s all you want out of a guy?”

  Her questions and accusations pushed buttons I’d tried hard to pretend didn’t exist. Watching her and Quinn together made it impossible to pretend I wasn’t missing out.

  “That’s all I want out of a guy at the moment,” I clarified, a little too loudly.

  “Ruby. Come on. Are you listening to yourself? I know you convinced yourself after Michael that you want to spend college in a string of flings with no feelings beyond attraction, but Liam isn’t even good enough for that shit and you know it.” She nodded at my laptop. “At least go after someone with the good sense to satisfy you.”

  “So, now you think finding an amazing lay is easy? It’s like you’ve forgotten all of this shit Quinn put you through before it finally worked out—how stupid you looked to other people, including yourself—but you stuck it out anyway. Now you can judge Liam?”

  Hurt twisted her lips and stabbed my heart, but I lifted my chin, daring her to deny any of it. Plenty of people had thought Emilie had lost every last shred of dignity running after Quinn when he’d very clearly and publicly shunned her more than once.

  In truth, Emilie was the strongest girl I knew. She hadn’t done any of it out of desperation, only out of a strange surety that Quinn was the one. I wished I could be more like her.

  If I were, I would have found a way to believe that every rich boy and his family weren’t like the Lawrences, picked myself up, and taken a chance on a guy like Cole Stuart, if his ratings were better. Or even if they weren’t.