Reckless Hearts: A Billionaire Romance (22 page)

"Those will be the first words out of my mouth, I'm sure," I said.

Peabody turned away, pulling open a drawer and pretending to examine the contents. A dismissal. I had nothing useful for him, so the conversation was over.

At least I don't seem to be in any trouble
, I thought.

***

T
hree weeks passed from when he'd dropped me off behind the admin building. Then a month. Gradually, he slipped deeper into the recesses of my mind. Still there, to be sure, but no longer truly present.

Another week slid by in a blur of studying for my upcoming finals. Snow three feet deep lay on the ground courtesy of a polar vortex, so bright in the daytime if the sun was out that you had to wear sunglasses to avoid squinting.

Despite the weather, everything was going well. Better than well. Amazing. Even better than before I'd met Owen, somehow.

Even Justin Rothsman and Ted Dressner left me alone. My infamy had worn off at last, it seemed. And now I was just the poor smart girl not worth their attention anymore.

Then I got the letter, which I grabbed from my mailbox on the ground floor even while I tried to kick the snow off my boots and onto the mat. It was marked from the Kingdom Animal Hospital.

My breath caught. I remembered a pair of soft brown eyes in pain. A tail thumping weakly. A vet saying how he thought the dog could be saved, but it was going to be expensive...

I tore the letter open right there in the mailroom, bringing it over to the window to let the daylight spill across the words.

I read it all without blinking. Then I read it again.

It said Georgie was doing well. His casts were due off in two weeks. The antibiotics were working. All good news that left me with a case of the warm fuzzies.

There was another note inside of the envelope. I figured he'd asked them to include it.

It was one line, two sentences handwritten and unsigned. It didn't need a signature, though.

Georgie will have a good home. He was worth saving.

I hid both the letter and the note in my jacket on the way up to my dorm apartment, as though someone might wander down the hall, see them, and know exactly what they were.

All at once Owen occupied the forefront of my thoughts.

Has it really been a month?
I thought. Our time apart now exceeded our time together. That shocked me, cutting far deeper than I thought it could.

I guess you could say I had a relapse. Crazier still, I could remember his number. I looked at my phone and wondered if I should call him.

Then I thought of the note and realized that I shouldn't. There was nothing about it that invited more contact. He'd left out his signature or anything like it on purpose. It had been polite.

Didn't he say that he'd let me know how Georgie was?
This was all that was. A courtesy.

But still, a month? I could hardly believe it.

And I missed him.

Then another dangerous thought:
maybe this is his way of showing that he misses me, too.

I touched his note against my upper lip. I knew it had to be in my head, but I thought I caught the faintest hint of his coconut-infused aftershave.

And then I really missed him.

So, scraping up what vestiges of willpower remained, I crinkled his note into a ball and threw it into the wastebasket.

But that was too tempting. So I fished it out and shredded it into the toilet, watching the strips of paper swirl around and then disappear.

It wasn't as liberating as I hoped.

"D
id you hear?" Jennifer asked.

"I hear all the time, actually. I hear you right now," I said.

She gave me a playful kick beneath the cafeteria table, putting one hand over her mouth so as to not be rude and show me the piece of roasted red pepper sandwich she'd bitten off.

"You walked right into that one. I had to," I said.

"I know, and I'll get you back," she replied, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

"So what should I have heard about but didn't?"

"It's about Mr. X, actually. Remember him? You guys had something of an argument when he was here near the beginning of the semester."

My appetite and my good humor vanished. I put my hands on my thighs to keep them from balling up into fists and getting all sweaty. "I remember. What about him?" And then, because I couldn't help it, "Is he okay?"

"He's fine. But he's finally dropped that whole Mr. X thing. Apparently the press has had all his information from the start of it, he just had them keep quiet about it."

It's all available. It's right in front of their noses if they want to know, but they don't. They like the mystery
, I remembered Owen saying. I nodded and smiled, though, pretending I didn't really care.

Even though my initial reaction, to sum up in a single word, was,
"finally!"

"I thought of you right away, right when I read about it," she said.

"Why?" I clenched up, wary.

"Because his name is Owen. And you said the guy who had you all twisted up a month or so ago was also named Owen. Funny, isn't it?"

"Hilarious."

"Of course, I doubt they have the same last name, too. His is Ashton, by the way. Owen Ashton. Not a bad name, right? Though a little more pedestrian than I would have imagined." She picked up her sandwich and took another bite.

"I wonder why?" I said.
What was she expecting? Horatio Hornblower?
Though I reminded myself that I had a similar reaction.

I had tomato soup. Although now all the saltines I'd ground up into it had softened to mush. I pushed my tray away, my appetite not wanting to appear for an encore performance.

"Hmm?" Jennifer managed around her mouthful.

"I wonder what made him decide to end the charade? To make him give up his mystery. I mean, isn't that what everyone was so fascinated about in the first place?"

Again she swallowed and dabbed at her mouth with the napkin. "I guess. But people are never as mysterious as they think they are. I'll bet he just got tired of it. Or something's made him think differently about the whole thing. Hey, maybe he's met someone, do you think? He is super hot. I'd kind of started thinking he might be gay, seeing as the tabloids never have him with a girl."

He definitely wasn't, I could have assured her but didn't. That would give away the secret. And I couldn't bring myself to do that. Even if it meant fame in the rags they sold at the grocery store checkout.

My reaction was a knee jerk, though.
He can't have met someone! Because if he did that means he's forgotten about me and now there's no chance at all that he'll come back.

I thought of the letter about Georgie and the note that came with it.

Then I put it all out of my mind as best I could. Finals were coming, and I really was back in my groove.

And then, the next day, he showed up at my door.

***

N
ot exactly at my door. For one, I don't think he knew which unit I lived in. For two, you couldn't get inside the building unless you had a key or someone let you.

The night before had sent New York one of the worst blizzards I'd ever seen. The wind howled between the buildings, the snow (more shards than flakes) fell in on the horizontal instead of the more traditional vertical.

It buried the place in so much snow that I thought for sure class would be canceled. But when you had the big bucks like SNYUC, you could afford to hire an army of plows, blowers, salt dispensers, and the people to man them.

Not that I minded. I was back to enjoying school. Still, getting to sleep with all that racket hadn't been easy. And it left a big drift out on the ledge of my window, too, obscuring the quad so that I could only see the tops of the campus buildings in the distance.

And besides, the storm had blown itself out in its fury and the sun peered down from a crystal clear blue sky. I did always like how clear the air looked when it was ice cold out. Not so much the cold part, though.

I left my dorm ready to face the day, the padding of my thick parka keeping the strap of my messenger bag from biting into my shoulder.

I pushed through the door, the pebbles of salt scattered about in front of it crunching beneath my boots. It was a couple minutes of walking outside to the get to the lecture hall I needed, and I wanted to see if I couldn't shorten that by 30 seconds or so.

"Allison." It wasn't a question. And I knew that voice.

I almost kept walking. Almost. I turned and there he stood. Well, rather, he leaned against my building beside the doors. He wore a black overcoat with the collar turned up to protect his neck.

"What are you doing here?" I said. Despite the cold, everything in me went hot.

"We have to talk." He pulled his hands out of his pockets. Black leather gloves of course, glossy in the fresh daylight.

My reaction switched from shock to:
No. He can't be here. Not now.
Not when I'd just gotten back on track. How dare he do that?

"I'm pretty sure we're through with talking. Your secretary made that pretty clear."

Then I turned and started walking, the salt still crunching beneath my boots. It took much more effort than I thought it would, walking away.

Then his hand landed on my shoulder and he spun me around. "Please don't do that. Don't run away from me."

"You know, I think that's the only time I've heard you say 'Please.'"

His jaw worked. "Let me take you inside. Somewhere warm, where we can talk. Just don't run away."

I shoved his hand off me, nearly dropping my messenger bag as I did. "Why not? That's what you did. Although I guess you didn't run; you drove. And then probably flew. I don't know and I don't care. Not anymore."

"I'm going to make this right, Allison. I want to make this right."

By now more people had come out from the various buildings on their way back to class or to their dorms. A few of them did double takes when they moved past us, recognizing the former Mr. X, Owen, who had been enjoying more time in the limelight after his big reveal.

I had to end this now, before people could start asking questions.

"You set it right already when you dropped me off that night, can't you see that? We're both back where we belong. I'm finally back to where I used to be before this whole thing started. And I hear stock in Utopia has never been higher. So good job, I guess."

He frowned. It was adorable and I hated it. See? This is me, hating it.

"No, that's not making it right and you know exactly what I mean. We reverted, that's all. We had something good. I know it. I know you know it. And I also know we can get it back if we try."

"Well, it's not happening!" I said, my voice bouncing back to me off the walls of my dorm building. Everyone around us stopped for a moment in surprise, then started moving more slowly than before. To eavesdrop better.

Great, just what I wanted to avoid.

"I don't believe that," he said.

"Believe what you want. Believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy and that trickle-down economics works. Your belief isn't going to stop them from not being real or true."

I stabbed a gloved finger at his chest, the action washing me in a wave of déjà vu. Except this time it wouldn't end in a kiss.

"Did you ever seriously think this would work out?" I said.

He nodded, though not in answer to me. "Still with the questions. Always the questions. Why don't you answer one yourself for once?"

"Sure, if it will make you get out of my life once and for all." That gave me a pang in my stomach. But it was the right thing. I knew it was.

"Will you come away with me? Right now. I needed some time to sort through my feelings, but now I have them in the right order. I know what I want. I know who."

I shook my head. "No. You're too late, Owen, don't you get it? I think we were both too late before it even really started. The sooner you see that, like I did, the sooner it will be better for you. Like it was for me."

We stood there another few moments, the breaths misting in front of our faces and the sharp cold in the air bringing spots of color to our cheeks.

"What? Not the answer you were looking for?" I said.

He ignored that question. "Is that really the way you feel? Is it really better for you now?"

Of course it was, I knew. My grades were great. I was no longer in danger of academic probation and losing my funding. I was back on track.

Why, then, did a stone weigh heavy on my stomach when I said, "Yes. Now, I have a class to get to. Go back to Manhattan or Indonesia or your lake house. I don't care, just anywhere but where I am."

Again, I turned around and started walking. The back of my throat burned with the heat of my voice, the confrontation still echoing in my thoughts.

Don't turn around. Don't turn around. I can't turn around,
I kept thinking.

I waited for his hand to land on my shoulder again, or for him to call to me. He didn't. I didn't turn around either.

Even though I wanted to.

I
t was like all the progress I'd made had been erased, that line of my life wiped from the dry erase board of existence. I hated him for it.

I couldn't concentrate in that lecture, or the one after it. That conversation kept playing over and over in my head, the way I shouted at him and how it echoed back at me, the shock on his face when I refused him.

He came back, though. He came back, can't you see?

Too little, too late
, I shot back. It was like I said to him; it never should have started in the first place.

And since it had been so public, I expected a call from the Peabody's office at any time requesting I come in for a chastisement.

Wouldn't that be delicious irony? If telling him to stay out of my life so publicly like that resulted in Peabody pulling some obscure law from the school's charter to get me expelled?

That made me snort in the middle of my Third World Economies class. The people around me turned and looked, but didn't say anything.