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One
Lane
Okay, I’ll admit it: I came into this tutoring session with a bad attitude. Because after days, weeks, no—monthsof telling my parents that everything is fine, that my grades really are good, they went ahead and hired me a Physics tutor anyway.
A tutor! Like I must be lying. Like there’s no possible way I could keep up with these college classes, and surely, given how blonde I am, I must need all the help I can get.
Jerks.
In reality I’m near the top of my class, but do they believe that? No, because girls who wear pink and style their hair can’tpossiblyrub two brain cells together. Even though I lived in their house for the first eighteen years of my life, it’s not credible.
Bah.
“Latte for Kennedy!”
Scowling at the coffee shop door, I slump down in my chair. All around me, spoons clink against china and conversation hums.
The Brainy Bean is always busy, but it’s lunchtime on a Thursday and the place is rammed wall-to-wall with Kephart College students. Steam fogs the big glass windows. Flustered professors check their watches in line by the counter, while student athletes sprawl around tables together, talking loudly about their last game, last carb, last kegger.
Other tables are quieter with students hunched over laptops, buried in their noise-canceling headphones as they tap-tap-tap away at their essays. Plates hold nothing but muffin cases and crumbs.
And me? I’m cupping my own hot mug, glowering at the Brainy Bean doorway like a sulky teenager. I picked the table over in the far corner, tucked against the wall by the noticeboards.
Whoosh. Thwick.
Every time the automatic doors open and close, a breeze drifts across the busy coffee shop and ruffles the fliers pinned on the boards above my head. And every time, I grind my teeth a little harder, waiting for whichever killjoy tutor my parents have hired to tell me that I’m dumb.
Where did they even find this guy?Ambrose Brent.With a name like that, they must have dug him up from the nearest graveyard. Bet he lives above a funeral parlor. Bet he hates sugar and fun. Bet he—
“Lane Rhodes?”
A deep voice sounds by my shoulder, making me jump and slosh coffee over the rim of my mug. When I spin around, a tall, lean man stands beside me, frowning slightly at the mess I’ve made.
His dark hair is rumpled, and tortoiseshell glasses perch on his hawkish nose. He’s wearing a dove gray button-down shirt tucked into dark pants, and the open collar shows the hollow of his throat.
“Yes?” I squeak, my bad attitude evaporating like the morning dew.
Because… oh my god. My tutor ishot.My parents hired me a hottie.
This is hilarious.
Ambrose Brent meets my eyes for a split second, thick eyebrows spearing down in disapproval. Then he’s off, striding across the cluttered coffee shop to gather a stack of napkins. A leather satchel bumps against his hip as he goes.
Biting my lip against a grin, I watch him return. It’s like watching a gorgeous, oblivious nerd on a catwalk.
“Here.” Ambrose Brent, tutor hottie extraordinaire, flings the napkins onto our table. They stain with coffee as soon as they make contact, wrinkling and soaking up fluid, and if I press my lips any harder together, my whole mouth will disappear. “You should be more careful next time.”
“Andyoushouldn’t sneak up behind people.” My knee jiggles under the table, and oh wow, I can’t tear my eyes away from this guy. Everything about him is a work of art. His cranky scowl; the carved lump of his Adam’s apple; the pale, corded forearms revealed by his rolled sleeves. The sparkling lenses of his glasses and the small mole on his left wrist.
And the deep, resonant voice that scolds me: “There is a door right behind you.”
Don’t smile. Don’t smile.
“But the main entrance is over there.”
“You do understand that two doors can work at once? It doesn’t break any rules of nature.”
Losing my battle at last, I beam at my new tutor. “Don’t you want coffee?”
