I’d been so caught up in the moment I hadn’t noticed Emma’s reaction, and now that I was thinking about it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to look because I knew if she was grimacing or shuddering or anything that indicated she was dreading what I was dying for, I would have melted where I stood. The bad kind of melting, the water doused Wicked Witch of the West kind of melting.

I sat down first, giving myself a few more moments to let it all simmer in. Chancing the shortest of glances her way, I didn’t see any lines of dismay or eyes narrowed in aggravation, so I mustered up some courage and did a full-on body turn so I could look at her straight on.

She kept her face forward, not allowing me to read anything in her eyes. Her face was expressionless, as unreadable as an empty book. Her shoulders were relaxed, as was the rest of her. No more hands wringing the hell out of her skirt, no more looking so uncomfortable she could have been seated on a hot burner.

She could have been elated, she could have been devastated. I didn’t know.

I didn’t think there could have been anything worse than finding her cringing at the thought of spending the quarter together, but I’d been wrong. This was worse.

She was so still and flat faced she could have been a mannequin.

“Emma?” I whispered, contemplating reaching over and shaking her a little.

When she didn’t respond with even a blink, I did just that. “Emma?” I repeated, wrapping my fingers around her arm. “Partner? What’s going on up there?” I tapped her temple, eliciting a reaction from her this time. Her eyes blinked a few times, followed by a few shakes of the head, like she’d been caught in a dream and had just woken up.

I only hoped she didn’t leap to the conclusion she’d woken up to a nightmare.

“Are you all right? I think you blanked out on us for a few minutes.” I was genuinely concerned. I didn’t need to have the framed certificate on my wall like my M.D. brothers did to know this wasn’t normal, or healthy, behavior.

Clearing her throat, she ran her hands through her hair in quick fits. “I’m fine. Sorry. I was just getting caught up on my meditation. It’s been awhile and since I just found out I’d be spending the semester with you,”—the corner of her mouth fought the upward movement—“I figured I’d need as many moments of calm as I could get.” She tore her fingers through her hair a few more times before twisting it into a fat bun and stabbing it through with the pencil held between her teeth.

The woman was a pencil welding, bun stabbing samurai.

“Why, Miss Scarlett,” I said, flicking my ear at her, “was that an attempt at humor I just detected coming from you?”

“No,” she said. “That was my attempt at honesty.”

I put on my most injured face. “That was an attempt at humor.”

“Yes, it was,” she said, grinning. “Thank you, thank you very much. I’ll be here all week,” she said, bowing her head.

“From what I hear,” I said, leaning in again. Pressing my luck, but that’s what I did. “You’ll be here”—even closer. She didn’t back away—“all quarter.”

Her cheeks colored. Not instantly, but a beautiful, smoldering journey to muted crimson. She was blushing. She was blushing at something I’d said. Something I’d done. I didn’t need to be the ladies man I was to know this was a very good sign. Girls didn’t blush at boys that didn’t make them go, somewhere inside, pitter-patter.

I very nearly leapt from my desk again shouting praise to the skies.

“All right, everyone,” Professor Camp called out. “Now that you know who your partner is, the first matter of business is to assign your first project. Other than spending copious amounts of time together, this weekend’s date will be—because I like to think of myself as a traditionalist on the dating front—the man’s choice.” The girls all groaned, Emma loudest of all as she threw me a look and an elbow, like boys were positively hopeless when it came to the date planning department.

They were right. Boys were. Good thing I happened to be a man.

“Word of advice, boys,” he said, pointing around the room, “leave the condoms in your nightstand.”

“Damn,” I said under my breath, which was promptly followed by a sharp elbow to the side, compliments of Miss Scarlett.

“This is a project, The Luh-ove Project, not a one night stand,” he said, letting that hang in the air. “Try to go against your hormones hitting hyperdrive at this time in your lives and act accordingly. I don’t need the blame for being the catalyst for bringing an illegitimate child into the world.” Stepping around the lectern, he tapped his head. “Fight nature and think with this, not with this,” he finished, tipping his hips.

There were a few nervous laughs, but mainly just a lot of faces frozen in varying shades of red.

“Friday or Saturday night?” I asked her, wasting no time. The professor had just given me carte blanche for dating Emma Scarlett, and I wasn’t going to waste a second of it.

She looked over at me with an expression that said, eager, much? I shrugged, not denying her silent accusation. I was nothing if not eager. “Friday night I’ve got an away game, and Saturday night I’m supposed to be going out with Ty to some Monster Truck rally,” she said, like she was reading from a calendar. “How about Sunday afternoon?”

I didn’t need to fake a look of insult. “Sunday afternoons are for family dinners, last-minute studying, or catching up on cartoons. They are not for dates. No can do, Em,” I said, liking the way the nickname came out of nowhere and seemed just right. “In case you missed it, Professor Bitter ordered we break up with our significant bothers”—that earned me a glare—“if we wanted to get a good grade. I don’t know about you, but I won’t accept anything less than an A+.”

She laughed a few notes. “I’m sure someone with your attendance record has been blessed with report cards punctuated with nothing but A+s,” she said, her sarcasm the blatant, not even an attempt at subtle, type. “And I think it was more of a suggestion than an order that we break up with boyfriends we’ve been together with for six years,” she enunciated, giving me a knowing look. I already knew where she was going with this. “Or deleting the phone numbers, addresses, and bra sizes of every sorority sister on the west coast from our phones.”

Specific, no hint of remorse in her delivery, scarily accurate in her conclusion. All in all, I’d have to give her an A+. That’s just the kind of girl she was. I knew she’d settle for no less in this class.

“Saturday night,” I said, no room for negotiating in my voice and expression.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she relented. “But Ty is going to be really, really . . .”

She fumbled for whatever the right word would be to describe him, so I saved her, guessing there weren’t enough descriptors for a butt-wipe of that level.

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” I said, not bothering to hide my elation. I’d fought a lot of battles, won a lot of wars, but I’d never felt the victory in my veins, or tasted it on my tongue, like I was this one. “I can’t wait.”

When she smiled back at me, its tip echoing my sentiments, I almost wished Ty had gotten his hung-over butt to class to witness the first wall of their relationship fall.

CHAPTER SIX

I hadn’t talked to Emma since Monday when we made our original plans to confirm we were still on for tonight, but I wasn’t going to let a two hundred pound amoeba get in the way of a first date with Emma Scarlett. He might have been under the impression that his macho man crap would be enough of a deterrent to keep me away from Emma, and maybe it would have for some guys. But I’d never fallen into the category of some guys.

I rolled up to the curb outside her dorm ten minutes early, having no problem with parking in the fire lane. If a man trying to convince the woman he was falling for to join the free fall wasn’t considered an emergency, I didn’t know what was.

I grabbed the bouquet and the shiny silver box and walked-slash-jogged up the walkway to her dorm. My stomach felt like a family of angry chimpanzees were tearing it apart from the inside out. My palms were wet, long surpassing the clammy stage. I was jittery, anxious, expectant, and about ready to burst from the cacophony of emotions eating me from the inside out. Basically, I felt like a virgin on prom night. Walking down the hotel hall.

This was crazy. This girl, in barely one week’s time, had managed to take the smooth out of my game, the gusto out of my sail, the confidence out of my stride. She’d rendered my bravado useless at exactly the time I needed it. The one time for decades past that I’d needed to show up with every last soldier in my firing squad, I’d shown up to the front lines with a pubescent drummer boy.

Attempting to put a lid on the negative self talk, I reached for the door handle, ready to launch myself inside with all the smooth, suffocating swagger of which I knew I was capable. My fingers hadn’t even wrapped around the handle when the door thrust open, slowing only after it collided with my face. I was pretty sure the sound I emitted sounded anything but smooth. Or manly.

“Patrick?” a familiar, sweetest sound I’d ever heard after being slammed in the face, voice shrieked. “Oh my goodness gracious. Are you all right?” She squeezed up against me, running her hands over my face, knowing something should be broken or gushing. Other than my ego, everything was just as intact as it had been two seconds ago.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I reassured her, taking a step back and smiling with exaggeration so she could see we didn’t need to spend our first date in the waiting room of minor emergency. “However, if you promise to run your hands all over me like a nun who’s fallen off the wagon every time I get hurt, I’ll be faceplanting into every door I pass.”

Her lines of concern drew tighter into an expression of amused accusation. A girl had never looked so beautiful while giving me a pointed look. And pointed, next to swooning, was the majority of looks the female masses sent my way.

“You’re early,” she said at last.

I could have lied as to why, but I didn’t. “I couldn’t wait,” I answered, shrugging.

“And unless you were running away from Ty, you’re early too.”

Shrugging, she mimicked my expression. “I couldn’t wait.”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that bang I just heard was my heart hitting the floor. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to show. Especially since the warmest interaction I had with you this week was the cold shoulder,” I said in a teasing tone, although I wasn’t really.

Ty made it to class Wednesday and Friday and, with his presence, caused Emma’s absence. She was there physically, but not in spirit, I guess you could say. She hadn’t said a word to me, nor replied to any of my best attempts at making conversation. In fact, she hadn’t even acknowledged me. It was a dark form of torture.

I wanted to ask her if this shell of Emma had been created because of something I’d done or because of something Ty had done, but since she wouldn’t even spare a sideways glance my way, I lulled myself to sleep analyzing the hell out of that puzzle.