Notorious (8 page)

Thursday morning, Tinsley took her time walking to Stansfield Hall for her first meeting with her new adviser, the infamous Mr. Dalton. She hadn’t taken any special care getting dressed this morning—it was easy to appear effortless when half your clothes are made specifically for you—and had unconsciously chosen a fairly chaste outfit. Her forties-style flutter-sleeved, white georgette blouse and chocolate Tocca pencil skirt with embroidered daisies seemed, at first glance, quite proper. Until you noticed the slit that showed off most of her perfectly slender thigh and the distracting way the lines of her red Blumarine bra could be seen through the delicate chiffon whenever she shifted a certain way, which she could be counted on to do. Even her purple suede peep-toe Miu Miu wedges implied repressed sexiness, which Tinsley knew was far more seductive than blatant sexiness.

Her father was a globe-trotting businessman, always involved in dozens of multinational ventures and investing in companies that drew him to places like Cape Town and Beijing and Oslo. Tinsley’s mother was a photojournalist and former model, half Portuguese, half Danish, an ethnic combination that happened to be one of the world’s most aesthetically pleasing and to which Tinsley’s owed her unbelievable violet eyes. Her parents had treated her like an adult since she began to speak, so she’d always felt comfortable with an older crowd—they talked fast and moved faster, and that’s how she liked to feel like she was living, at the fastest speed possible. Chiedo, their translator and guide over the summer, must have been twenty-five, though it never occurred to her to ask him. Eric Dalton, if he had just graduated from Brown, couldn’t be much older than twenty-two. That was nothing.

After all, when she met him at Chapel, he had practically been drooling. Tinsley might have felt guilty if Brett had actually told her what was going on between them, but if Brett
thought
she didn’t know and had no plans to tell her, Tinsley had every right to flirt with Mr. Dalton as much as she wanted to. So there.

She heard a Billie Holiday song playing from behind his closed office door.
The very thought of you and I forget to do … those ordinary things
. ... She pictured him flipping through his CDs, trying to decide what would make the best sound track for their first official meeting. Billie Holiday was a bold choice—because she was such a jazz classic, it couldn’t be construed as inappropriate in any way, yet her throaty, dramatic voice was so blatantly sexy, it had to reveal something about the inner workings of Mr. Dalton’s brain. She hadn’t even met him yet and she’d already read his mind.

Mr. Dalton opened the door and Tinsley was startled again by how beautiful he was. His hair was damp, which instantly conjured up images of him stepping out of the shower and reaching for a very small towel. He smelled like Polo aftershave, and Tinsley found herself longing to touch his smooth, freshly shaven cheek.

“Tinsley Carmichael. Very nice to see you again.” His voice was deep and very professional, but this was quite clearly the highlight of his day. Where did he go from here? Trying to teach bored freshmen to care about Thucydides and Herodotus and all those other impossibly ancient historians? An intimate meeting with his gorgeous advisee was clearly the perfect way to start off his day.

“Hey, Mr. Dalton.” She stepped inside his cluttered office, loving everything about it and him.

He groaned in mock anguish. “Eric, please.” He indicated the leather chair in front of his desk, and Tinsley took a seat, smoothing her skirt and crossing her legs in one unified, elegant gesture. Eric pretended not to notice the slit in her skirt and sat down behind his desk. He shuffled through a stack of folders before pulling one out and opening it. “I’ve always felt like students should be able to call teachers by their first names. It makes them seem more human. And it makes me feel less ancient.”

Tinsley had no trouble thinking of Eric as anything but human—a very healthy, red-blooded man human. Maybe she would have taken a greater interest in ancient history if Eric had been her teacher.

He smiled across the desk at her. “So, how have things been going for you since your return to Waverly?”

Vague question, she thought. What
things
? Classes? Boys? Annoying roommates? “Fine. It’s nice to be back.” As exciting as it was to travel the world with her parents, there was something reassuring about being back on Waverly turf, back where she knew how to spin teachers and toss off A papers on Nathaniel Hawthorne in under an hour and where the food wasn’t so exotic it bordered on inedible.

He leaned toward her. “You know, as your adviser, I’m supposed to keep an eye on you, make sure things like the Ecstasy incident don’t happen again.” Eric looked stern for a moment, and Tinsley could tell he was getting a kick out of pretending to intimidate her.

She nodded humbly, trying to look repentant. “It won’t.”

“Good,” Eric said, looking satisfied. “It’s part of my job to make sure you stay on the right track.”

“
The
right track?” Tinsley asked. “It seems like there should be more than one.”

“For you, I’m sure there are,” Eric said with a smile, revealing a toothpaste-white grin that reminded Tinsley of when she was eleven and used to practice kissing on an eight-by-ten photo of Ashton Kutcher. “What about colleges? Any thoughts?”

“Well, I’m looking into Columbia right now,” Tinsley lied, hating to even think about college. When pressed, she said Columbia, but really, Columbia and Princeton and Amherst and Williams all seemed like bigger versions of Waverly—filled with jaded spoiled kids exactly like her.

“Columbia’s a good school. And what about after college?” Eric smoothed his tie against his chest and glanced down at the open folder on his desk. “I see your grades are solid in all subjects—A-minuses or B-pluses. But … I guess I don’t really get a good sense of where your interests lie.” He looked up from his folder and met Tinsley’s gaze for a little longer than appropriate. A chill ran down her spine—it felt like he was trying to peer inside her. “Besides varsity tennis since you were a freshman …” Eric raised his eyes from her folder to give Tinsley an appreciative eyebrow raise, as if to say he’d love to see her on the court sometime. “Your only extracurricular is Cinephiles, the film society.”

“I actually
founded
the Cinephiles,” Tinsley replied, a bit defensively.

“Well,
that’s
impressive.”

“It’s not a big deal.” Tinsley was modest now. “But there’s this state-of-the-art screening room in the basement of Hopkins Hall that only gets used when a teacher decides to show her class a film.” Tinsley shook her head. “Have you been down there yet?” The film room was one of the sexiest places on campus, with expensive leather reclining theater chairs, a fourteen-foot-wide screen, high-tech lighting, and surround sound. There were only about twenty seats, so it was intimate, like the kind of private screening room a Hollywood director might have in his Beverly Hills mansion.

“No, I haven’t.” Eric looked intrigued. “I didn’t even know Waverly had something like that—they certainly didn’t in my day.”

“You should definitely check it out.” She thought of how exciting it would be to sit in the dark with Eric, watching something sexy and dramatic like
Body Heat
on the big screen. Or not watching it. Out in the hall, some band geeks were discussing which songs they needed to perfect for homecoming. Losers.

“You know what I think?” Eric asked, planting his elbows on the desk. She could imagine a few things he must be thinking. She shifted gracefully in her seat and refrained from playing with her hair, a gesture she thought girls overused when trying to get guys’ attention, and instead concentrated on holding his gaze, which was more difficult than she expected. His eyes seemed to bore into her. “I think you are one of those very rare people who have so many talents, they have a hard time deciding on the right ones to use.”

That was cryptic. What did that mean, the
right ones?
“I’m not sure I know what that means,” she said coolly, tugging her skirt down over her knees.

“Nothing bad,” he quickly assured her, flashing her an intimate smile. “Just that you’re smart and good at everything you do. I’m just trying to find out what turns you on.”

Tinsley was suddenly encouraged. Without any prompting, she spent the next ten minutes elaborating on her experience in Cape Town and Johannesburg and the thrill of making a documentary in a country with such a shocking contrast of opulent wealth and desperate poverty living right on top of each other while it was still in the process of defining its post-apartheid identity. The excitement of watching an entire nation try to figure itself out inspired her and made her wish she could make more documentaries, maybe even one about this messed-up country of her own. It had been a high-intensity summer. She could feel her cheeks glow as she spoke, and she felt comfortable and excited. The words just tumbled out of her.

Eric nodded and jotted a few notes down on his pad. She noticed he had a few very faint freckles on the planes of his cheekbones.

Tinsley stopped talking abruptly. “Am I boring you?”

“Not a bit.” Tinsley could imagine the two of them in a café in France, sipping their third espressos and unable to end their conversation. “Have you read the Fitzgerald story ‘The Offshore Pirate’?”

Tinsley shook her head, her black hair gently swishing back and forth against her blouse.

“You remind me of the main character.” His deep gray eyes glimmered, as if there was something else he wanted to say. Tinsley waited, but he didn’t say it.

“Well, I hope that’s a compliment.” She laughed, already planning to head to the library between classes to check out the story. Being compared to a Fitzgerald heroine could be an insult, but she had a pretty good feeling that it wasn’t. “Listen, I hate to leave, but I think I should be getting to class.” She stood reluctantly.

“Anytime you need anything.” Eric looked like he was trying hard to keep his face neutral. “You know where I am.” He stood and moved toward the door, glancing at his Cartier tank watch on his right wrist. Next to it was a platinum-engraved gate-link bracelet. Without thinking, Tinsley reached out to touch it. Dalton seemed a little surprised by her sudden movement, but he didn’t pull away.

“This is gorgeous,” she said breathlessly, her fingertips tracing the delicate link design. “My father had one exactly like this that was stolen. Is it Victorian?” She looked up at him and realized his face was only about six inches from hers. She quickly turned back to the bracelet, fingering the latch and enjoying the closeness of his skin on her fingers. If she moved them a centimeter to the right, she’d be touching his arm. Her heart raced.

“I guess you know your antiques too.” Eric gave her a quick smile and made no effort to step away. “Yes, um, it’s Victorian. It was my great-grandfather’s, actually, my great-great-grandfather’s. It was a gift from the royal family for … I’m not sure what, actually.” His chest rose and fell beneath his perfectly pressed shirt and tie. It was clear he was in agony, but Tinsley wasn’t ready to let him get away yet. She looked up to find his cheeks flushed. She opened her violet eyes wider, knowing that from his angle, looking down at them through her thick black lashes, they were irresistible.

“Do you think I could borrow it?” This, she thought, was the ultimate test. If he gave it to her, it meant he was ready to forget all about Brett and take his chances with her. “I’d love to know what it feels like to wear it, just for a while.”

Eric blinked his gray eyes. Without speaking or moving them from Tinsley’s face, he unlatched the bracelet with his left hand and held it out to her. Instead of taking it, she thrust her right arm out, palm up, so that Eric could put it on himself.

“Be very, very careful with this,” he told her solemnly as he fumbled with the latch, his fingers grazing her arm. “Your wrist is much smaller than mine, so keep your eye on it.” Tinsley watched as his gaze progressed up her slender arm to her body.

“I will guard it with my life,” she vowed, her lips unable to suppress a flirtatious victory smile. “And I’ll give it back the next time I see you. I promise.” Impulsively, she stood up on tiptoe, planning to kiss him on the cheek. He smelled like Ivory soap and Crest toothpaste. But just as her lips were about to touch his cheek, Eric turned his head, and her mouth landed halfway on his lips.

Oops,
Tinsley thought happily. She kept her mouth where it was for a moment before finally pulling away. They stared at each other.

Eric spoke first, quietly, as if his voice were trying to hide some emotion. “Then I hope I’ll see you again soon.” He opened the door for her, keeping his eyes on her face the entire time. There were other students in the hall, hurrying off to class. Tinsley lingered outside his office as she fingered the bracelet.

“Don’t worry, you will.”

Instant Message Inbox

EasyWalsh:
Hey, how r u?

JennyHumphrey:
Booooored. In a research seminar at the library. I already know how to use the dewey decimal system!

EasyWalsh:
Bummer … Did you hear that it’s, uh, official with Callie now?

JennyHumphrey:
Yeah, I did … You okay?

EasyWalsh:
Yup.

JennyHumphrey:
That’s good.

EasyWalsh:
I really hope this doesn’t sound sleazy, but do you want to meet up in the woods today for the art project we were talking about yesterday?

JennyHumphrey:
OK.

EasyWalsh:
I’ll give you directions at lunch.