Celebrity Bachelor. Victoria Pade
to welcome students, family and friends.”
It was the opening line of the chancellor’s speech to kick off Parents’ Week at the meet-and-greet Monday evening. But as Cassie sat on the auditorium stage with the rest of the advisers and administrative personnel, she wasn’t paying too much attention. She’d heard the chancellor make the same speech several times, and she had other things on her mind. Like taking a mental inventory to make sure that tonight—unlike the previous night—when she connected with Joshua Cantrell, she looked her best.
She had on her favorite navy blue pantsuit with the asymmetrical front-button closure on the short, round-necked, collarless jacket, and the matching slacks that she’d been told more than once made her rear end look fabulous. Three-inch heels with peekaboo toes completed the outfit that always made her feel confident. Which was exactly what she wanted.
She’d had her hair trimmed this morning—not too much, just enough to shape it so it fell to an inch below her chin and swept under at the ends in a way that was neat and professional but had a bit of bounce, too. Plus the style was softened by the bangs that swept over her left eyebrow to add some intrigue.
She’d also been careful to apply a neutral-toned eye-shadow to highlight but not overwhelm her eyes, and two layers of mascara that promised to lengthen and curl her lashes.
The blush she’d brushed across her cheekbones made her look as if she’d spent a day at the beach, and a sort of pink, sort of tawny lipstick had finished her up a mere fifteen minutes before the beginning of the meet-and-greet when she’d left home and come across to the campus.
Maybe not model material, Cassie decided, but she knew she looked better than she had Sunday evening. And that made her feel better about herself—which was her goal tonight, even though she was sure it was obvious that she was dressed to impress. To impress Joshua Cantrell.
Not for any personal reason, of course, she insisted to herself. She simply wanted to put her best foot forward for the sake of the school and the town.
Because if she was going to be forced to represent them both with Mr. Megabucks—whether she liked it or not—she was going to do it at the top of her game. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’d gone home last night and dug through her boxes until she’d found a magazine she’d recalled packing, searching for pictures of him. When she’d discovered one—of him pre-woolly-mammoth stage at some benefit with a drop-dead gorgeous underwear model on his arm—she’d torn out his half of the photograph and spent much too much time looking at it.
Paying special attention to her hair, makeup and clothes tonight didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’d gone to bed thinking about him being right here in town. A block and a half away in the chancellor’s cottage.
It didn’t have anything to do with imagining how she was going to spend the coming week squiring him around. Getting to know him. Getting to see if he was everything he was touted to be when it came to charm and charisma and intelligence and sexiness. Getting to be the woman on his arm, so to speak…
No, none of that was the cause for making sure she felt good and comfortable and confident about her appearance today.
Where was he, anyway?
She scanned the auditorium, locating Alyssa Cantrell sitting about six rows back. But Alyssa wasn’t with her brother. She had a girlfriend and the girlfriend’s parents to one side of her, and a male friend and his father to the other.
Had Joshua Cantrell left Northbridge before the week had even begun? Cassie wondered.
He could have. He could have been called away on business. Or someone could have recognized him and he might have decided to leave before the media got wind of his being here. Or he—or someone he knew or was related to—could have become ill.
Or he could have hated Cassie on the spot and fled before he had to spend another minute with her.
Cassie shied from that notion because it was too demoralizing to consider. Besides, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few words last night, and the time they had spent together hadn’t seemed to go that badly.
But even if she didn’t allow herself to take any kind of blame, the idea that Joshua Cantrell might have left Northbridge made her feel as if she’d been let down.
Had he left town? she kept wondering as she continued to search for a sign of him in the audience while the chancellor gave the school’s mission statement and outlined its goals. Had Joshua Cantrell found a mere matter of hours in Northbridge and minutes with her to be too tedious, too pedestrian, too provincial to tolerate?
He wouldn’t be the first man….
But just when that letdown feeling was really taking over, Cassie spotted him.
He was sitting in the very last row, in the very last seat to the left of the stage. Alone.
And that one sight of him lifted her dejection and replaced it with relief and something Cassie didn’t want to believe was excitement.
He was sitting off, away from everyone, so she had an unobstructed view of him. For the most part, at any rate—because he was seated, his lower half was hidden. But he had one foot on the armrest of the seat in front of him, causing an upraised knee to be within view where it braced his arm propped on top of it. She could also see that, unlike her, he hadn’t gone to any lengths to dress up for this evening. The leg that poked into the air was encased in denim and it occurred to her that it was possible he was wearing the same butt-hugging pair of jeans that he’d had on when he’d arrived in town yesterday.
He had changed what he was wearing on top, though. He had on a tan sport coat over a rust-colored shirt with the top collar button casually unfastened.
Cassie also noted that he was still clean shaven and that his black-as-night hair, while in slight disarray on top, was in an artful disarray that she thought he might have put some small effort into.
Basically, he just looked good. Relaxed. Rested. Sure of himself. And the very essence of cool.
Everything she felt less of now that she’d laid eyes on him again.
But she wasn’t going to let him do this to her, she lectured herself with what she’d decided through an entire night and day of thinking about him. She wasn’t going to be a basket case around him just because he was some kind of great-looking, sexy celebrity. She was going to remember that she was a well-educated, respected person in her own right, and that he was nothing more than a tennis shoe manufacturer, regardless of how successful a tennis shoe manufacturer he might be.
Still, the reminder didn’t keep her heart from beating faster when he seemed to meet her eyes from the distance. It didn’t keep her from looking away in a hurry. And it didn’t keep her from thinking that this was going to be one very difficult week to get through…
The chancellor wrapped up his speech then. The dean took the podium to read from the handout that everyone had been given as they’d entered the auditorium, outlining the week’s events. Once he’d finished that, he invited the audience to have cookies and coffee or tea in the auditorium’s lobby.
If Cassie had had any thoughts whatsoever about delaying her second encounter with Joshua Cantrell, it was nixed when the dean’s return from the podium brought him directly to her.
“Do you see him?” the dean asked in a confidential voice.
Cassie knew exactly who him was, and didn’t bother playing dumb. “Yes, I see him.”
“Don’t leave him cooling his heels. He’s important to us,” the dean told her needlessly.
“I know, I know,” Cassie said, standing with everyone else and following her coworkers off the auditorium stage.
A few people were waiting to talk to someone on the stage as they descended, but most of the parents, friends and family were filing out to the lobby. Joshua Cantrell, on the other hand, had left his seat to stand behind it, but didn’t seem intent on going anywhere else,