Page 7 of Ruthless Game

When I reached her, I paused. What did I do? Shake her hand? Hug her? Kiss her? Get down on one knee and ask her to marry me? I just stood there, rocking on my feet, completely unsure what to do. I was usually a “cocky bastard” according to my dick of a father, and had fooled around with my fair share of girls, even if we hadn’t gone very far. I’d never struggled around them before and had no idea how to approach this situation.

Apparently she did.

“Do I have something on my face?” she asked, looking up at me. There was a small bowl of yellow Starbursts next to her.

Usually that would’ve prompted, a “my lips, if I get my way,” but not only was her family surrounding us—a family that could kick me out before I’d even gone inside, ruining my hockey chances for good—she seemed too sweet, too innocent for that kind of line. For any line.

“No,” I cleared my throat. “You don’t.”

“So um, is there another reason you’re staring?”

Because you’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I never want to look away.

“I’m Lawson,” I settled for, shoving my hand out to shake hers like a complete loser.

She looked confused. “I thought your name was David.”

I jerked. “Never David.”

“What about Dave?”

I shook my head.

“Davey?”

Oh. She was messing with me.

I grinned. “Not that either.”

“Well, I can’t call you Lawson. That’s your last name. What’s your middle name?”

No one had ever asked me that. No one had ever seemed this interested in me. It warmed something in my chest that had been cold for a long, long time.

“Max.”

“Then—” she smiled, and it was like the sun breaking through clouds. “—I’ll call you Max.”

Max. I’d never been Max, had always been Lawson. Even my teachers called me Lawson. But for her, I’d be a Max. Hell, for her, for my Starburst, I’d be anyone.

She reached out to shake my hand. Her hand was so small, so soft. Everything about her was delicate; everything about her screamed for me to be a man and protect her. Then and there, I decided that’s what I would do. Be a buffer between this magical girl and the world, feed her yellow Starbursts every day if that’s what she wanted. Make her happy.

No matter what.

3

Emma

“… A

nd the Countess of Moreland said to me, ‘You’re the handsomest man here, James.’ And then I said …”

“Uh huh,” I said, scratching the star-shaped birthmark on the back of my neck, barely paying attention to my date, James something or other, who was three hundredth in line for the throne … or something. Or other.

My friends had set me up with him. He was maybe the twentieth guy at Oxford I’d been set up with over the past two years. None of them interested me. Unfortunately, no one interested me more than the tall boy with the blue eyes and crooked smile who had broken my heart three years ago.

Still, I kept trying. The way to get over someone was to get under someone else, right? Something I’d never done, despite what Max thought of me.

Not Max, I reminded myself. Lawson. I couldn’t think of him by that name anymore. He wasn’t my Max, hadn’t been since that awful night when he’d said terrible things and done worse. A night I refused to think about anymore.