“Hey, pretty lady.”

The voice was smooth and warm. I was all of seventeen years old and still didn’t know the pleasure of kissing a boy, let alone of responding to feelings that his voice conjured in parts of my body I didn’t know could feel things. Because I was the quiet one. The wallflower. Slower than most of my friends when it came to discovering all the joys of liking boys.

But that voice…wow.

I all but crashed into the tall, lean yet well-built form that just rounded the corner at my high school. My nose came within an inch of smashing into his chest, and if it weren’t for his hands coming up to grip my arms, I would’ve done it.

But I still got an up-close inhale of his alluring smell.

I sucked in a breath, embarrassment heating my face as I tried to process the different aromas that filled my nose with the scent of him. He was like sweet soap, a bit of masculine sweat, and the sun, if I could put a scent to it. Not at all a bad mix, if you asked me.

“You’re Thea, right?”

Jerking my head up, I met a pair of eyes that were golden—sort of. They were gold, but they had these long flecks of darker brown, almost like tiger stripes. Those eyes would be captivating on anyone, but set in a face that looked like something out of a magazine with skin the color of a good cup of café au lait, they were staggering.

Jaw-dropping.

Mesmerizing.

And altogether?

His entire form was familiar.

Shit.

It was LeVan Vanderbilt.

He was the most unattainable boy in school. Probably in our town. LeVan was a legend. Boy genius, track and field star…and rumor had it that he was into magic, too. Not like the woo-woo, hoodoo, voodoo stuff that went on in some parts of our great state of Louisiana. And nothing like the fake stuff I used to see on TV shows. Okay, so the illusions and card tricks he did weren’t real, per se, but he made them seem real. He made you believe they were real.

He was by far the coolest guy in the whole damn town.

And he knew my name?

“Um, yeah. Yes, it is,” I said, easing away from him just enough to look up into his captivating pair of eyes without craning my neck, but not far enough away for him to let me go. LeVan Vanderbilt was touching me and I needed that to last a little longer, if possible. I just wished there was a way for me to subtly check the sides of my lips to make sure I wasn’t drooling.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I am. Yes.” And bingo. I had the pause I needed. Reaching up, I touched my nose and managed to somewhat casually, I hoped, check my mouth. Nope. No drool. “I almost smashed my face right into you. It’s a wonder you don’t have a faceprint of me on your shirt…you know, from the makeup and all? Not that I’m wearing much…makeup, I mean, not clothes…of course, I’m wearing enough clothes…uh…but that’s what I get for not paying attention to where I’m going as I bolt across these halls!”

What the hell did I just say to LeVan frigging Vanderbilt? I pressed my mouth shut to force myself not to ramble, not even to utter another word. Like sorry, which was on the tip of my tongue before I started all that nonsensical babbling.

“It’s just as much my fault.” He gave me a slow, warm smile that sent a sliver of heat racing through me to parts unknown. “My mind was off somewhere else.”

He glanced down and that was when I noticed the cards all around us. Cards. His deck of cards. I must’ve bumped them out of his hand.

“Oh my gosh, I did this… I’m so sorry!”

“I was just practicing.” He stopped, then shrugged.

“You were doing one of your card tricks, weren’t you?” I asked when he didn’t continue speaking.

“Yes.” He grinned, eyes crinkling a little around the corners. “Seems like an awful lot of people know about my little hobby.”

“An awful lot of people know you want to be a magician,” I said as he knelt to gather up the cards. I joined him on the ground, scooping up the ones closest to my feet and passing them over. “You’re getting pretty famous around here.”

“Mentalist,” he said and accepted the cards.

As we stood up again. “What?”

Those eyes were so beautiful. He was so beautiful. He had the kind of perfectly perfect good looks that made you want to just sit and stare. And if he weren’t so close to me, I’d do it, too, but with him right there, I was sure that gazing at him ad infinitum would make the moment sort of awkward. But I couldn’t stop.

Like a bee drawn to pollen.

A deer caught off guard by the beams of a car’s headlight at night.

A moth to a flame.

None of them could ignore the object of their most hardwired desires by averting their eyes. So how could I possibly pull it off? Even so, he was sure to think I was a total freak, a stalker chick of the worst kind, if I stood there and sighed, and just kind of gazed at him.

“A mentalist,” he said again. “I’m a mentalist, not a magician.” He tilted his head to one side. “I guess one could argue that mentalists are a kind of magician.”

Intrigued enough now to forget my embarrassment—and the fact that I was late for class—I asked, “What’s the difference?”

He gave me a wicked grin and held out a hand. “Give me the rest of the cards and I’ll show you.”

“Miss Kent!”

The sound of this period’s hall monitor, Mrs. Lewis, was enough to cause me to jolt and jerk upright so fast that the cards I’d gathered in my hands went flying all around us.

“Shit. I’m so sorry,” I whispered to the boy still on his knees, now picking up the cards I’d dropped twice.

“It’s okay,” he said, and with the last card back in his hand, he straightened and stood next to me.

“Don’t you have class?” Mrs. Lewis asked from behind her horn-rimmed glasses.

I hitched up the backpack on my back and nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Lewis. I was on my way there when I sort of bumped into…” I looked over at him. “Um, LeVan.”

“Did you bump into him, or did he have his head in the clouds as usual?” She gave the tall, fit, dreamy boy a narrow look, her brows arched.

“Now that ain’t fair, Aunt Tish—”

“It’s Mrs. Lewis in school, LeVan,” she corrected him without letting him finish uttering her first name.

He gave her a mild expression of annoyance like she’d just affronted him. “You know I graduated last year, right? I’m just here because Mom asked me to drop off something for Harry.”

Right. I’d forgotten that LeVan’s mother was the vice-principal’s sister. In a town as small as St. Gabriel, everyone seemed to be connected to everyone else. Everyone knew something about everyone else too, including little details like that. But all those little details had a way of slipping my mind when it mattered. Like now, as I stood here being incredibly unrealistic about the fact that this boy was way out of my league, and probably would never give someone like me the time of day if he knew a thing about my family.

“You are still in my school, and right now, you’re keeping one of my students from getting to class.” Her dark eyes cut to me and she cocked her brow at me again, waiting.

“I’m sorry,” I said, face flushing hot and red. “I…well, Nicky had a rough morning, that’s all.”

Her face softened and the pity I knew she felt—that everyone felt—made me want to take back the words or at least back away and leave these halls. I didn’t. Deeply ingrained pride refused to let me. Stubbornly, I squared my shoulders. As the vice principal looked on, I crouched down and gathered up the last of the cards I’d dropped for a second time, not acknowledging LeVan as he joined me. When I had all the ones I could reach, I stood up and passed them over.

“I’m very sorry I crashed into you,” I said, no longer delighted or dismayed that he recognized who I was. Of course, he did.

We lived in St. Gabriel.

Everyone knew everyone here.

He had to know I was a Kent.

Which meant he was better off far away from my fucked-up family.

Without saying anything else, I stepped around him and walked off at a near run as I rounded the corner, disappearing down the hall as though he’d worked one of his magic acts—no, one of his mentalist acts—and made me disappear.