The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (177 page)

“Well . . .” Ariana stalled, working to retain her composure and calm her racing heart. It was hard, though, with Thomas’s eyes probing every inch of her body, as if uncovering every last one of her many secrets. She felt exposed. Naked. Exhilarated.

What would he do if she reached up and touched his cheek?

For a moment she felt dizzy, heady with the possibility that she could actually do it. He was right there. They were alone, relatively. He wouldn’t be able to tease her anymore if she did something that risky. Yeah, that would wipe that knowing smirk right off his incredibly handsome face.

Ariana felt her hands twitch with anticipation and shoved them under her thighs.

What was wrong with her? This was
Thomas Pearson
. Everyone knew he was a player. The kind of guy who hooked up with girls as long
as they amused him, then moved on once he decided he was bored. The kind of guy who hadn’t batted an eye when his best friend, Eli Tate, had gotten expelled last year after the dean found him high in his room next to a half-empty bottle of Xanax—a bottle that everyone knew Thomas had sold him. More than that, she was supposed to be in love with
Daniel.

But for some inexplicable reason, she couldn’t turn away from Thomas. Couldn’t break eye contact. Couldn’t help but want to do something wrong for once. Couldn’t help but want
him
.

“Someone’s thinking naughty thoughts,” Thomas sang in a whisper, gazing at Ariana’s lips.

Ariana’s entire body tingled. She opened her mouth to speak, not knowing what she was going to say.

“Ariana!” Daniel’s bark obliterated the moment. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Ariana instantly slid all the way to the other end of the bench, as if Thomas had just burned her with a hot iron. Had Daniel seen anything? Not that there was anything to see, but—

“Wow. When he says ‘jump,’ do you say ‘how high?’” Thomas teased.

Ariana narrowed her eyes at him, even as her heart pounded a painfully fast beat.

“Be there in a second,” she called to Daniel. But he had already disappeared back into the hallway.

Suddenly all Ariana could feel was the sting of Daniel’s disinterest. Wouldn’t most guys be a little bit concerned if they spotted their
girlfriend alone on a bench with a guy like Thomas? It was embarrassing. And Thomas had noticed it too. There was nothing Thomas Pearson didn’t notice.

Suddenly, Ariana knew what she had to do. She turned to Thomas, a smile tugging at her lips.

“Sorry to disappoint, but I guess I
am
a good girl. Always have been, always will be.” And with that, she placed her hand on his leg, letting her fingertips graze the length of his thigh as she slowly stood up. She couldn’t believe she was doing this—especially with Daniel right outside.

Apparently, neither could Thomas, whose eyes were wide with shock. The air felt thick with electricity, and Ariana could feel her pulse in her fingers. Her throat. Her heart. Everywhere. Touching him, even if just for a second, felt inevitable. Like there was nothing else she could do
but
touch him. Breathing heavily, Thomas reached out, as if to take her hand, but Ariana stepped away. She turned her back on him and walked to meet Daniel in the hallway, heady with triumph. She had shocked Thomas Pearson. Mr. Aloof himself.

Apparently she was capable of such things.

“Sorry to make you wait. You okay, babe?” Daniel asked, putting his hand on the small on her back and steering her toward the hotel’s exit.

“Fine,” she lied. She actually felt faint and vaguely ill from the gravity of what she had just done—the line she had just crossed. She had done something unpredictable. Something off-script and unplanned.

And she had enjoyed it.

But now, as they entered the empty lobby and Daniel took her hand in his, the spell was broken and guilt crashed over her in waves. Only a horrible person could think about a guy other than her boyfriend, even for a second—and at a Christmas dance, no less.

“Have I mentioned tonight that I love you?” Daniel asked, holding the front door open for her. A sleek black car sat in circular drive, the driver waiting patiently at the curb.

Ariana looked up at Daniel, searching his angular features and Brooks Brothers tux, looking for a stain, a scar, a flaw. There was none. Even post-booting he was perfect.

“I love you too,” she murmured, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. In that moment, she decided that whatever had happened with Thomas was nothing. Stupid. Meaningless. The result of too much champagne. Daniel was her boyfriend. Her life. The right guy.

She repeated the words over and over in her head, believing them each time. But when she stepped out into the freezing December night air, she realized that her leg still burned where Thomas had touched her.

“She needs something more,” Ariana murmured aloud on Sunday afternoon. “Something he can’t give her.”

She swiveled in her desk chair, turning away from her laptop and the unfinished Word document that was taunting her. She snapped on the Christmas lights she and Noelle had strung around their dormered windows and watched as dusk began to settle over the campus. It was getting dark earlier and earlier each day. “So is it really wrong for her to look for romance somewhere else, if she knows she’ll never truly be happy with him?”

“Depends.” Noelle emerged from the walk-in closet they shared, peeking over the tower of designer threads she was carrying in her arms. “Maybe she isn’t trying hard enough. Have they tried doing it in public?” She expertly navigated the mess of clothes that littered her half of the room, dumping the stash from the closet into an open Louis Vuitton suitcase on her unmade bed. “Because whenever I start
to get a little bored with Dash, we go someplace where we know we might get caught. Ups the naughty factor. Or if she has a camcorder, she could—”

“Not
that
kind of romance,” Ariana groaned, spinning back toward her desk. She tossed an old issue of
Quill
, the Easton literary magazine she contributed to, on the floor and typed one sentence into her computer. “And remind me never to borrow a movie from you without making sure it’s not homemade.”

“Noted.” Noelle opened her top dresser drawer and pulled out several tubes of M.A.C. lip gloss.

Ariana picked up the pomegranate-cassis pillar candle Daniel had given her that morning as an early-Christmas-slash-sorry-I-got-drunk-last-night present and inhaled its waxy scent. “Anyhow, I’m talking about real romance. The kind of romance where you feel a burning desire to be with the person all the time.”

“Who are we talking about, anyway?” Noelle asked, zipping up her red Vera Bradley makeup bag before grabbing a pair of caramel brown leather boots near the doorway.

“Emma Bovary,” Ariana said. “And don’t even think about taking my Michael Kors boots home with you. I need them for Vermont.” She put the candle back down on her desk next to the three silver-framed photographs. They were her favorite pictures. One was a photo Paige had taken of her and Daniel last summer at the Ryans’ Martha’s Vineyard estate. The second was a black-and-white photo of Ariana by herself, taken by Daniel at Noelle’s house in the Hamptons last summer, as Ariana blew a kiss at the camera. The other was an old candid
of Ariana and her mother on the back porch of the family’s sprawling home in Atlanta. They were both smiling, happy. It had been taken years ago, before her father had essentially checked out of their marriage. Before all the hospitalizations. Before Easton. Before Billings. It felt like another time, another life. The girl in the photo might as well have been another person. But Ariana loved the image just the same.

“Emma Bovary?” Noelle held a shimmering bronze minidress in front of her and pursed her lips at the full-length mirror on the closet door. “You mean that sophomore slut who slept with Gage after finals last year? Because he felt a burning sensation after he was with her, but I can guarantee you it wasn’t desire.”

“That was Emma Benning,” Ariana corrected, forcing herself to look away from the photograph. “I’m talking about Emma Bovary as in
Madame
Bovary.
” She waved her worn copy of the novel in the air. “As in, the tragic heroine of one of the most celebrated and controversial French novels of all time. We’re reading it in Mr. Holmes’s lit class, and we have a paper due before break.”

Noelle yawned and glanced at the glowing alarm clock next to her silk-covered bed. “You just spent two minutes telling me a story about a depressed Frenchwoman who can’t even get her husband to screw her?” She crossed her arms over her cream cashmere V-neck. “That’s one hundred and twenty seconds of my life I’ll never get back,” she chided, throwing the dress into her suitcase. “So I’ll be taking those Michael Kors boots with me as reimbursement.”

Ariana didn’t even bother to argue as Noelle shoved the boots into
her bag. If she decided she really cared that much, she would simply sneak in there later tonight when Noelle was in deep-sleep mode and take them back. It was their way.

“It’s actually an incredible book,” Ariana sighed, lowering the book to her lap. “But this paper is incredibly bad.” She drummed her fingers on the desk and deleted the last sentence she’d written. “It’s only supposed to be a few pages, but I can’t concentrate long enough to write a coherent sentence.”

“Please. You know that Holmes will give you an A anyway. All you need to pass his class is a decent ass,” Noelle said. She tilted her head, checking out Ariana’s butt. “That’s at least a B-plus.”

“Thanks a lot.” Ariana rolled her eyes.

“What’s wrong? Worrying about the trip?” Noelle sat on her suitcase and tugged at the zipper. It didn’t move.

“A little,” Ariana admitted. Of course Noelle knew. Noelle
always
knew. It was almost like she had a sixth sense for gossip and other peoples’ insecurities.

“Nervous about meeting the parents? I hear they’re a little stuffy, but fine.” She leaned over and brushed a piece of lint from her black patent leather Louboutins, her dark hair falling like a curtain over her face. “At least Daniel invited you. Dash’s parents would never let me horn in on their holiday plans. God forbid a McCafferty holiday photograph ever differed one iota from the year before. I shudder to think what’ll happen when grandkids come along. They’ll probably have a kids’ photo and an adults’ photo. I mean, really. Would it be that big a deal to have
one
extra person hanging around?”

“Noelle Lange.” Ariana twisted her hair into a bun and stuck a pencil through it. “Are you jealous?”

Noelle hesitated for a split second and Ariana knew that no matter what Noelle said next, she had hit the nail directly on the head. It was rare that Noelle showed a chink in the armor, and Ariana savored the moment.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Noelle said. “I don’t get jealous.” She gave up on the zipper and sat down on the floor to sort through another pile of clothes. “And besides, we weren’t talking about me. We were talking about you. And how you’re so nervous to meet Daniel’s parents that you can’t even pull together a few pages of decent bullshit.”

“It’s not that,” Ariana said slowly, using her mouse to highlight everything she’d written about Madame Bovary’s more-than-questionable ethics. Her finger hovered uncertainly over the delete key. “I’m sure his parents are fine.” She lowered her finger and pressed the button. Her failed efforts of the past few days disappeared, leaving a clean, blank screen. Ariana instantly felt better. It was nice when mistakes were so easily wiped away.

“So what is it, then?” Noelle asked impatiently. “You’re acting like you don’t even want to go. The place sounds amazing. It’s supposed to be extremely—”

“Exclusive,” Ariana finished for her, slamming her laptop screen closed in exasperation. “Believe me, I’ve heard. And it’s not that I don’t want to go. It’s just that I’m a little nervous about . . .” She paused and glanced down at her lap. “About Daniel.”

“Nervous about Daniel?” Noelle echoed. “Why? You’re going to
be with your hot boyfriend at an exquisite resort doing nothing but skiing, sitting around the lodge, and . . .” She paused, a devilish grin spreading across her face. “Having sex. And now I get it.”

Ariana buried her face in her hands. “Ugh. What’s wrong with me?”

“Just pre-virginity-loss jitters.” Noelle shrugged and threw a Hermès scarf at Ariana. “Stop thinking about it and just
do
it already.”

Ariana picked up the scarf and wrapped it around her neck. “But I just want to make sure it feels right.”

“It’s definitely not going to feel right,” Noelle offered matter-of-factly. “It’s going to feel like hell. So you have a few glasses of wine first, and it’s over before you know it.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Ariana flopped down on her bed and wrapped her arms around her squishiest pillow. “I just don’t want to regret anything about my first time.”

“You really have to deal with this obsessive need of yours to control every aspect of every situation,” Noelle said, amused. “And besides, what’s to regret? Daniel Ryan is the
perfect
guy. And he loves you. Everybody knows it.”

“I know,” Ariana sighed. She wound a lock of her wavy hair around her index finger and pulled it tight. She wanted to tell Noelle that she wasn’t certain she loved Daniel back, but she kept her gaze fixed on the ceiling. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. She knew how Noelle would look back at her. Like Ariana had lost her mind. Like she was crazy.

“Ariana,” Noelle said quietly, sitting down at the foot of Ariana’s bed. “Almost every girl at this school would kill to be you.”

Implication: every girl at this school with the exception of Noelle, who was perfectly happy being herself.

“Daniel is totally and completely right for you,” Noelle continued. “So stop freaking out.”

“You’re right,” Ariana sighed.

“Aren’t I always?” Noelle held out her hand, and Ariana gave her back the Hermès scarf. “I’m meeting Dash. When I get back, you’d better have your head on straight.” She crossed to her side of the room and pulled a small camcorder out from under her bed.