CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sean didn’t believe in picking a girl up late for a date, but he’d never been fifteen minutes early, either. Still, something told him Serena probably wouldn’t mind if he came up to her spot on the third floor of the library a little ahead of schedule. At least, he hoped she wouldn’t, and that she’d lost at least some of her well-honed concentration to thinking about him. Because Lord knew he’d lost plenty this week thinking about her.
“Hi, Janice. How’s your week been?”
The woman behind the information desk smiled. “Good. Are you here to book more time in the archives?”
He started to shake his head, when he realized it was one hurdle he didn’t have to worry about jumping again. All because of Serena. And though he probably wouldn’t be picking up a camera any time soon, that didn’t mean he couldn’t at least enjoy looking at some of the best photographs in the world.
“I came to pick up Serena, but booking more time is a great idea.”
After they’d arranged for an hour midweek when she would be personally available to bring out some of the hidden gems people rarely got a chance to see, he jogged up the stairs. The second he saw the top of Serena’s baseball cap, he smiled.
The library was the last place in the world that should have been romantic, or felt special. But when he looked at her, he realized it was both. Even better, late on a Friday afternoon, no one else was around and it felt like it was all theirs.
“Hey, beautiful.”
She jumped slightly in her seat, the way she had before when he’d surprised her reading with her headphones on. Next time he’d have to figure out a better way to get her attention.
“Hi. I set my alarm to go wait for you downstairs, but I guess I didn’t hear it go off.”
“I’m early.” If he’d been smart, he would have taken the extra fifteen minutes and just stared at her from a distance to try to get his fill of her beauty. “Do you need to finish up?”
“No.” She closed her book. “I’ve kind of had a hard time concentrating this afternoon.” Her cheeks flushed at the admission. “I couldn’t stop wondering what you had planned for us.”
He reached out to tilt up the brim of her baseball cap so that he could better see her face. “You’ll never guess, so you shouldn’t even bother trying.” When she looked a little worried, he added, “But I’m pretty sure you’re going to have fun.”
Her face was such an open book—happy to see him one minute, a little worried the next, and then trying to trust him when he asked her to. How the hell he was going to keep from kissing her today, he didn’t have a freaking clue.
All he knew was that the next time they kissed had to be because she wanted it, not because he couldn’t keep from reaching for her again and crashing his lips against hers.
When he picked up her bag, he was surprised by how light it was. “Finally given up carrying around bricks all day?”
She laughed. “I might have bought a couple of ebooks this week. Just to try them out, mind you.”
As they headed downstairs, it would have been perfectly natural to take her hand. But at the last second, he stopped himself. They hadn’t talked boundaries, hadn’t discussed public perception, hadn’t yet worked their way around to whether this was really a date or just two friends hanging out. For the first time, he understood what it must have been like for the girls he’d been with over the years, not knowing where they stood with him. No doubt they’d all love to see the tables turned on him now.
But since he’d been worrying all week about the way her professor had been looking at her before her meeting with him, first he had to ask, “How’d the rest of your week go? I kind of got a weird vibe from that English professor.”
She shot him a slightly surprised look before saying, “I felt the same way at first, but, actually, this week has been totally fine. And I guess he already got what he wanted out of our meeting on Monday, because he hasn’t set up another one since then.”
Serena didn’t say that she was relieved, but he could hear it in her voice. And she wasn’t the only one. All week, he’d had ugly visions of what that professor probably dreamed of doing to his supermodel student. Now, thankfully, it looked like Sean didn’t have to worry about it anymore, since the guy had decided to back off. Had him showing up with Serena at his office and her kissing him on the cheek played a part in the professor’s sudden about-face?
“And has anyone on campus given you grief over the story about us?”
“Well, since no one knew it was all made up, I’m pretty sure all the other girls on campus aren’t too happy about me stealing the most wanted guy at Stanford.” She wasn’t saying it to flirt with him, he realized, she was simply telling him how the week had gone for her. “But apart from that, I’m already such a freak that, honestly, I don’t think anyone really blinked an eye over it.”
“You’re not a freak.”
“When I was five years old and in kindergarten, I was already taller than the third-grade boys.”
“Okay,” he said in a teasing voice, “maybe that is a little freaky.”
He was glad when a surprised laugh bubbled out from her lips. “How tall are you?”
“Six-four.”
“I actually have to tilt my head to look up at you. That hardly ever happens.”
They were, he already knew, a perfect fit...and again, that urge to thread his fingers through her silky hair and drag her into him for a kiss almost overpowered his better sense.
“What about you? I know it must have been weird for you to find pictures of yourself online like that. I was so shell-shocked by it on Monday that I didn’t think to check in about how you were doing until you were already gone, and I didn’t want to bug you with texts.”
He could feel an apology coming on, but since none of it was her fault, he cut her off at the pass. “First, you should text me whenever you feel like it. And, honestly, it wasn’t that big a deal. Except for having to tell people that we weren’t actually dating. That sucked.”
“It did?”
Seriously, did she not have any sense at all of just how amazing she was? Not just beautiful, but easy to be with, and so warm, that she’d actually managed to melt some of the ice that had frozen his heart this year.
“Big time. But if you’ll agree that tonight is a date and not just two buddies hanging out, that might help me get over it.”
When she didn’t say anything back, or give even the slightest hint of a smile, he knew he was moving too fast again. Hell, hadn’t she already told him a half-dozen times that she wasn’t here to date? Why didn’t he actually listen for once?
On a low curse, he said, “I know I’ve got to stop trying to push you like that.”
“No,” she said softly, “it’s actually really nice, the way you keep asking me out. It’s just...” She flushed. “I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this, because then you’ll know exactly how much of a freak I really am, but I haven’t exactly been out on a lot of dates.”
“First of all, stop calling yourself a freak. It’s really starting to piss me off. And second, guys must have been falling all over you for years, so I don’t get how you not dating is even possible.”
“I’ve always worked a lot,” she explained. “And I haven’t been to a normal school since I was a really little kid. This is the first time in my life that my mother hasn’t been with me pretty much all the time.”
He frowned. “She couldn’t have been with you every second of every day.”
“She was extremely protective. And—” She scrunched up her face as if she was embarrassed. “—I never really tried that hard to push the boundaries with her. Not until I decided to give up my career to go to school.” She took a deep breath and turned to face him, brave and beautiful. “Ask me again, Sean.”
The late afternoon sun was at her back and she was so radiant that for a few seconds, he almost couldn’t remember how to form words. He didn’t have his camera with him, but that didn’t stop him from taking a picture in his head.
“Will you go on a date with me tonight?”
“I’d love to.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Sean led them into the middle of a field. “We’re here. Welcome to your first official normal college student experience.”
The green sign in front of them was faded enough that Serena had to step close to it and squint to make out the words. “Stanford University Frisbee Golf Course.” She looked from the sign to Sean. “This is what normal college students do on a Friday night?”
“According to my parents—” When he paused, she watched him fight back the wave of grief that tried to get in as he pasted a grin on his lips. “Frisbee Golf used to be really cool back in the day.”
“Which day was that, exactly?”
They both laughed, and she was glad to note that it sounded less and less rusty every time he did. Sean Morrison had been born to smile and laugh. But he clearly hadn’t done it nearly enough lately, and it broke her heart. Especially when he’d obviously worked so hard to think of something “normal” that they could do in a totally off-the-grid setting where they wouldn’t have to deal with people looking at them or taking more pictures.
Because she was pretty darn sure that they were going to be the only two people out on this Frisbee Golf course tonight...
He walked toward an oak tree and pulled out two Frisbees from behind it, one red, one blue. He presented the red one to her as if it were a rose. “The rules are the same as regular or miniature golf. A stroke is counted every time the Frisbee is thrown and we stop counting once we make it in. We don’t have to keep score if you don’t want to.”
“You’re not the only competitive one,” she told him, even though she’d never thrown a Frisbee in her life. How hard could it be? “Why don’t you show me how it’s done?”
His stance was at once precise and effortless, and when he let the Frisbee go, it sailed through the air with a little whistle then landed smack dab in the middle of the faded blue metal basket around the silver pole.
She couldn’t stop smiling as she looked at him, and it wasn’t just because he was breathtakingly handsome in his jeans and T-shirt. Seeing how pleased he was at getting a hole in one was super cute, too, and she could easily see him as a little boy with his parents as they showed him how to play this strange game.
A little cocky now—with a blush, she imagined several other things he probably had to feel cocky about, all of which she was suddenly longing to experience—he grinned at her and said, “Your turn.”
She stepped up to the marker he’d dropped on the grass, turned slightly to the left, put her weight on her right leg, pulled the Frisbee back toward her chest, and let it rip.
Straight into the tree a good ten feet to the right of the basket.
She could hear him trying to muffle his laughter as she headed over to the tree to pick it up.
“Did it slip at the last second?”
She could barely keep her own laughter at bay as she said, “What do you think?”
But they were both laughing by the time he said, “Why don’t you try again? Hold up a sec, though, so I can get out of your way first.” He moved halfway behind another tree. “Go for it.”
Again, she tried to copy what she’d watched him do. This time, it went better, landing on the grass only five feet away from the basket without hitting any trees or bushes.
“I have an idea,” he said as she picked it up a second time. “Since you’ve obviously never thrown a Frisbee before—” He ignored her faux scowl even as a grin continued to play around the edges of his mouth. “—maybe it will be easier if I help you get a sense of what it should feel like.”
Stepping behind her, he put his arms around her and reached for her hands. “Is this okay?”
Instantly consumed with the delicious heat of his body against hers, and how good he smelled, all she could manage was a quick nod.
He had her shift her hips slightly to the left, then used his right foot to scoot hers up on the grass. “It should be an effortless glide of your arm from here—” He brought their right hands back toward her chest, careful not to touch her inappropriately in any way. “—to here.”
She felt the muscles of his forearm and bicep ripple against hers as he moved their arms back out, both of them still holding on to the Frisbee.
“And don’t forget,” he said, his breath dancing across her earlobe so that she had to work really hard to fight back a shiver of need, “this is supposed to be fun. Keep breathing and relax your muscles.”
She had learned at a young age how to make her too-long arms and legs move in a seemingly effortlessly coordinated manner as she walked down a runway. But it was one thing to do that around a bunch of other women and gay men with cameras. It was another entirely to do it around a ridiculously hot guy who sent her system into such disarray that she could hardly remember her name.
“Ready to give it another try?”
Actually, she was mostly fighting the urge to spin around in his arms, drop the Frisbee, and lace her fingers through his hair so that she could drag his mouth down to hers for another one of the kisses she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about. But she forced herself to follow his lead, instead, and together they threw the Frisbee.
It landed right in the middle of the basket.
“Good job.”
His arms were still around her as she laughed, and this time she couldn’t stop herself from turning to face him, her hands pressed flat to his chest between them, his heart beating steady and strong against her palms. “You did all the work, you know.”
“It was both of us.”
She was tall enough that his mouth was right in front of hers when she tilted up her face to look at him. She could feel her breath coming faster and his heartbeat picking up against her hands. “Maybe I should try one by myself this time.”
“Maybe.” His gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth. “Or maybe you should kiss me.”