Jane Austen Girl (21 page)

He cranked the truck, put it in gear, and eased back out onto Main Street, headed for school under the dead heavy certainty that any chance he’d ever had with Andy, he could now call gone.

“I’ll always pick you first.”

Kyle to Andy

Recess - Second Grade Red Rover

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Andy felt like she’d been holding her breath since seven-thirty that morning when she’d come downstairs to find her breakfast waiting and a note from her dad that said he had to meet the county building inspector on a site at seven.

She made some coffee, forced herself to drink it black instead of with the cream and sugar she liked, and dumped the breakfast in the trashcan. Eating seemed like way too much effort when all she could think about was the morning ahead and how much she wanted to make a good impression on George.

She changed outfits three times before finally settling on a fitted sleeveless, pink dress that hit just above the knee, hoping it said appealing and not cheap.

She arrived at the Inn way too early, and then not wanting to look like she was overly anxious hid out in one of the side sitting rooms until she heard other girls coming in. Now that they were all sitting in their chairs, looking sick with nerves, Andy knew she was no exception.

It was eleven on the nose when the door at the back of the room opened, and Grier stepped inside. Another woman dressed in an expensive-looking business suit and the guy who could only be George was walking beside her.

Andy felt the air leave her chest, even as she couldn’t tear her eyes off his face, which was actually really beautiful. He had high, well-defined cheekbones, and blue eyes framed in thick, dark lashes. He looked like an athlete, muscles clearly defined beneath the light blue polo shirt. The only scratch on the entire record was the fact that they would be nearly the same height. Andy was five ten, and she guessed him a dead ringer for that.

But then, if he had been taller than she was, he’d have to fall under the category of perfection, and she was almost relieved to see that he didn’t have quite everything. She had a better shot with less than perfect.

Grier walked to the front of the room. The other woman and the duke stood at her side as she said, “Good morning, everyone. As you can see, George Fitzgerald, Duke of Iberlorn has joined us this morning.”

A nervous upsurge of laughter followed Grier’s words. When it settled back, she said, “So, please, let me introduce the executive producer for the
Dream Date
show at the KT Network, Elizabeth Arbon.” The girls all clapped politely, and then Grier said, “And with her today is the Duke of Iberlorn.”

The applause rose high and loud, and the duke smiled a very engaging smile that somehow showed both confidence and a hint of shyness. The combination surprised Andy, and she glanced around to see its effect on every other girl in the room. They were all but swooning.

Andy forced herself into polite composure, determined to appear a little less impressed.

Grier explained that they would be having a very informal chat session over the next hour, during which George would tell them a little bit about his life and take any questions they might have. After lunch, he would meet with each of them for a one-on-one session.

This brought forth nervous giggles of anticipation.

And again, Andy refused to join the fray. She sat straight in the chair with a composed smile on her face.

George took the podium. Grier and the producer walked over to sit in the front row.

“Good morning, everyone.” Andy didn’t have to look around to know that the greeting alone with its Irish inflection would win every girl in the room, including herself.

“Good morning,” they all said back in unison like a dozen pretty robots.

“I love those southern accents,” he said, and there was nothing condescending in the assertion. That seemed to lower a sense of ease into the tense atmosphere, and Andy found herself leaning forward a little in her chair.

“Well,” he said, glancing at the producer. “I don’t suppose I could have twelve dates for the ball, could I?”

The producer laughed, and so did all the girls, Andy included. George certainly hadn’t been shorted on charm.

“I’m afraid not,” the producer said, smiling.

“Ahh, well, can’t blame a guy for trying.”

He went on then to talk about his life in Ireland and the small town where he had grown up, similar, he said, in many ways to this one. Andy found it hard to believe, but the way he described it, she could almost imagine that it was. He’d gone to a private school that was even more out in the country than his own home. They had not been allowed to have computers, telephones or TVs in their room, and so he had spent his time playing rugby and tennis. “Not,” he said, “that I had any special gift for either one. I just didn’t have much else to do, and if you do something for enough hours, you’re likely to get good at it.”

The modesty that threaded his words together surprised Andy. She kept expecting something more in line with what she would have imagined in a guy who had clearly known a life of privilege. But during his twenty-minute talk and his answers to the questions that followed, she never saw it.

By the time the last question had been answered, and everyone had asked him something except for Andy, the hour was nearly up.

“Is there anyone else?” George asked.

When no one spoke, he looked directly at Andy and said, “Is there something you would like to ask about me?”

Anything resembling a reply seemed to be stuck in her throat, and she could feel the eyes of the other girls resting on her, assessing, questioning why he had singled her out.

“I. . .uhh. . .well, what’s your favorite song of all time?”

The other girls laughed, echoing Andy’s own realization of how completely lame the question was.

“Ahh,” George said. “I think a person’s taste in music says a lot about them. All-time favorite.
Can’t Always Get What You Want
.”

Forgetting her discomfort, Andy smiled at the answer and said, “Stones. Good one.”

“And yours?” he said, smiling that full, charm-infused smile directly at her.

“
Go Your Own Way
.”

“Fleetwood Mac,” he said.

Andy smiled and felt a blush creep into her cheeks.

“Did somebody tell you he liked old rock or something, Andy?” one of the girls piped up from the audience. “That’s hardly fair.”

Grier stood then without acknowledging the question, and walked back to the podium. “All right, why don’t we head in to the other room for lunch, and, afterwards, we’ll start the individual sessions. I have each of your names in a basket, and the duke will draw one at a time. That will be the order you go in.”

The girls stood then and, to Andy’s surprise, George, Duke of Iberlorn, looked at her and smiled again.

THE HOUR-LONG LUNCH
turned out to be an exercise in misery for Andy. The duke sat in the middle of one side of the rectangular table, every girl there vying for his individual attention. Every girl, that is, except for Andy.

Andy sat at the far end of the table on the opposite side. And even Casey, the usually shy girl sitting next to her, managed to lob a couple of conversational points at the duke, to which he responded with what seemed like genuine smiles and interest. Andy wasn’t normally one to give up so easily, or to knock herself out of the running without a good effort. But there was something about his actually being here that made the whole thing seem even more far-fetched than it had when he was really nothing more than a mental image.

He was real, all right, and while it would’ve been a little easier to write him off had he been a jerk, he seemed anything but. His interest in Timbell Creek sounded entirely genuine. He wanted to know about their high school, how many kids went there, what they did for fun on the weekends, who their favorite bands were, what movies they liked, and whether any of them still preferred hardbacks to digital books. It was on this question that he looked straight at Andy and actually said her name.

“What’s your take on that, Andy?” She jumped in her seat at the sound of his voice on her name. “Do you like to read?” he added.

“Uhh, yes,” she said. “I do, actually, a lot.”

“I would have guessed that,” he said. She wondered then if she should regret that statement, whether it made her sound boring. But then he said, “Me, too. So which is it? Hardcover? Paperback? Digital?”

“It depends on the situation,” she said. “If I’m trying out a new author, I like digital. One, they cost less. And two, if I love their book, I can immediately download the rest of what they’ve written. But if I’m on a vacation or something, I like sitting on the beach with a hardcover.”

“Exactly,” he said.

All the other girls looked at Andy, and not one of them was smiling. It was like Wimbledon or something, where she hadn’t been the designated favorite, but had somehow managed to slam home a winning shot.

He held her gaze for a moment or two longer than she would’ve expected, and when he smiled, it was like the ceiling above them opened up and in shot a big beam of sunlight.

Andy felt beads of sweat pop out on her upper lip, and she forced herself not to reach up and wipe them away.

Charlene Myers took the reins of the conversation then, and Andy found herself only too willing to let her, half listening as Charlene babbled on about some show she was watching on MTV, and how she couldn’t stand waiting a whole week for the next episode because it was just so good.

For the remainder of the lunch, George did not look at Andy again.

Dessert was vanilla ice cream with fudge sauce. Andy ate every drop of hers. She barely put down her spoon before regret swooped in. All that work her mama had done to make her beautiful, and she couldn’t turn down the ice cream.

Sliding her chair back, Andy excused herself and walked quickly to the restroom.

She latched the stall door, knelt in front of the toilet and stuck her finger down her throat. She gagged hard, but nothing came up.

“Andy?”

Recognizing Grier’s voice, she bolted off the floor, standing and flushing the toilet.

“Are you okay, Andy?”

“Yes,” she said, hearing the tremor in her own voice.

A stretch of silence followed during which Andy prayed that Grier would leave before she had to come out.

“Andy? Can you open the door, please?”

Short of outright defying her, Andy had little choice but to come out. She walked to the sink without meeting eyes with Grier.

“Andy, what’s going on?” The question held concern and kindness.

Andy bit her lip to keep from crying.

“I can’t keep this to myself,” Grier said softly. “What you’re doing is dangerous, Andy. Surely, you know that.”

“It’s not forever,” she said quickly, meeting Grier’s eyes in the mirror. But she heard the flimsiness of her own excuse and looked away.

“But how do you know that?” Grier asked and Andy didn’t have an answer.

A HALF HOUR LATER
all the girls filed back into the room where they would wait to be called in for their individual interviews. Andy hadn’t bothered to try and talk Grier out of going to her dad. She knew there wasn’t any use. Could she actually blame her?

She took her seat in a middle row and pulled her Kindle from her backpack, anxious for some means of escape other than the most obvious one of leaving the competition all together.

As it turned out, she had plenty of time to read because she was the last girl to be called. And while that might have bothered her on some level, she was so engrossed in her book that at the sound of her name, she looked up with a start.

“You mind if we just talk in here?” George asked.

Andy glanced around to see there was no one else in the room. She started to stand and dropped her Kindle. When she reached for it, she all but stumbled on her backpack.

He walked over, clearly trying not to smile.

“Uhh, sure,” she said.

“Can I help you with that?”

“I’m good,” she said, her cheeks blazing hot.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” he suggested.

“A walk?”

“Maybe just down the street or something?”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Do you want to leave your stuff here?”

“Sure,” she said. The interviews were supposed to be no more than fifteen minutes, so she didn’t think it would be at risk that long.

She led the way out of the room, too aware of how close he was behind her. They walked through the lobby and out the main door. Andy spotted Grier near the reception desk and raised her hand in a little wave when Grier gave her a questioning smile. Andy had no idea what Grier was thinking, but since she didn’t know what to think herself, she forced her attention back to putting one foot in front of the other. That seemed like something she could actually manage at the moment.

“Where would you like to go?” she asked when they’d reached the sidewalk outside the Inn.

“Wherever you’d like to take me. What’s interesting?”

Andy couldn’t imagine what he would find interesting in Timbell Creek, but they did have that cute coffee shop three or four blocks away, so she set off in that direction, and he followed. Only now he walked beside her, and the mere inches separating their shoulders felt like it contained electricity instead of air space.

“I’m sorry you had to wait so long,” he said.

“That’s all right, I was reading.”

“What was it?” he asked.

“A mystery,” she said. “I like trying to figure out who did it before I get to the end of the book.”

“Me, too,” he said. “Who’s your favorite writer?”

She started to say the Nancy Drew Files were her all-time favorite, but it sounded like something that would make him laugh. So she said, “Harlan Coben is good.”

“I like his books.”

They had walked at least half a block before either of them spoke again.

“So what made you enter this contest?” he asked.

The question was so unexpected that Andy’s mind went completely blank, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Finally, she shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Just to do something different, I guess. Why did you decide to do this contest?”