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The path to my future was etched in stone from the moment I was born. Nobody in my family ever asked me what I wanted because there was only ever one acceptable response. I could be clever or dull, cruel or kind, just as long as I was smart. My mom was permitted to be the wallflower artist, but the Kelley children were expected to follow in their father’s footsteps.
Undergrad at Brookstone University, then graduate school, leading into a teaching or research position.
That was the script, and with the exception of majoring in English instead of history, I’ve stuck to the path. But the time to apply to grad schools for next fall is fast approaching, and I haven’t filled out a single application.
My drink isn’t very strong, but it serves its purpose, smoothing my jagged edges. I take another sip, vaguely aware of a man leaning against the railing to my right.
I should go back inside before they serve dessert; I wouldn’t want to miss Professor Richardson’s big thank-you speech.
“I thought that was you,” says the man beside me. His baritone voice ripples throughout my body like a coin tossed into a fountain.
My throat tightens. I feel the floor shift beneath me as I turn to meet the crystal-blue gaze belonging to a man I haven’t seen in years.
“You...” I breathe the word like a wish. “What areyoudoing here?”
And what right does Gavin Dunn have to strut into this party like sex on legs, looking so damn delicious?
Chapter Two
Alexis
“I’m here to celebrate the man of the hour,” Gavin says.
“Right, of course,” I say. That’s why we’re all here, though Gavin’s excuse is probably better than most. He was once a PhD student in the American History program at Brookstone. I’m sure he took plenty of seminars with Professor Richardson.
The smile that once consumed Gavin’s face so readily seems to take effort to spread. “You look great, Alexis.”
My pulse trips over itself. Five years ago, I would’ve given anything for him to look at me the way he’s looking at me now, his blue eyes blazing with desire.
“So do you,” I tell him.
Maybe it’s the suit, or the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that weren’t there before, but he looks more refined than he did back when I knew him. Bigger, too, like he’s added weightlifting to his old cardio regime, not that he ever had trouble filling out his jeans and tee shirts before.
Gone are the sun-kissed locks that used to skim the corners of his smooth jaw. Now he wears his dirty-blond hair short, the lower half of his face coated with a uniform layer of scruff the same color.
“I take it you’re here with your family,” he says. “I saw Frank and Erica inside.”
My grip tightens around the plastic cup in my hand. “Did my dad say anything to you?”
“I don’t think he saw me. Probably for the best, considering...”
“Yeah, probably.” I offer up a sad smile, grateful to be on the same page where my dad is concerned. Once upon a time, Gavin was my father's advisee and research assistant. Now none of us can so much as say his name without my dad seething.
“I heard Frank retired last year,” Gavin says. “Hard to believe he’d willingly step away from all this.” He gestures to the old fashioned in my hand. “Don’t tell me you bought that yourself. It’ll make me feel old.”
I chortle. Gavin’s a lot older than me, but I’d hardly consider him old. He was twenty-nine the summer I turned sixteen. If I'm twenty-one now, that puts him at thirty-four.
A criminally gorgeous thirty-four.
“I’ll have you know, I’ve been buying my own drinks since August—”
“Eleventh,” he says. “I remember.”
My mouth goes dry. The only reason he remembers my birthday is because I made a gigantic fool of myself with him on that date five years ago.
I’d gone down with my parents to stay at our family's Charlestown beach house that summer. I loved that house. It was only twenty-seven steps from the sand, and yes, I counted. Never one to grasp the concept behind the termvacation, my dad invited his research assistant to stay with us so he wouldn’t have to interrupt his very important work.
From the moment Gavin arrived at the house, I was obsessed with him. It didn’t matter that he only saw me as a kid. To me, he was the most interesting, funny, dedicated person I’d ever met. I wanted to be around him all the time.
