“I DEFINITELY MISSED THIS.”
Jasper cupped my face with both hands, walking me backward toward my bed. The sun was just starting to set on what had to be one of the most bizarro days of my life, but none of that mattered. Not here. Not now. Not when I was alone with Jasper. My butt hit the side of the mattress and I fell back, Jasper toppling over me with a laugh. I scooted over so we both had room, but it wasn’t like we needed it. He pulled me against him so tightly, we took up the space of one person.
“Missed me, or missed the kissing?” I joked, coming up for a breath.
“Missed it all,” Jasper replied, and touched his lips to my earlobe. “Every. Last. Bit.” He punctuated his words by kissing my cheek and then my neck and then my collarbone. He was just inching my tank top strap off my shoulder when the downstairs buzzer buzzed. We both froze.
“Don’t move,” I whispered. “Maybe they’ll go away.”
I didn’t know why I was whispering. If someone was in the alley downstairs, they definitely couldn’t hear us. We both held our breath. After a minute or so, Jasper leaned in to kiss me again—and the buzzer went off. This time, whoever it was just laid on the thing and didn’t let up. The noise was seriously grating.
“Dang it!” I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
“Did you just say ‘dang it,’ Red Sox?” Jasper joked, pushing himself up in the bed and settling back against the pillows, comfy as can be.
I grinned. “I think I did.”
I ran to the door and pressed the talk button on our old-school intercom.
“Hello! Please stop buzzing! I’m here!”
“Cecilia, it’s Tash.”
I groaned inwardly. “Tash, I’m really busy right now. Can you come back tomorrow?”
“No. I can’t. I’m here with the movers and we have all your stuff. Just let me up!” she barked.
This time I groaned audibly, then pressed the unlock button. I wasn’t sure what she meant by “all your stuff,” but I knew she wasn’t going to go away until she did what my mother had sent her here to do. Tash was reliable that way. I heard footsteps stomping up the stairs and opened the door. Tash swept into my apartment, carrying a white box with my new laptop, and she was followed by five men with armloads of cardboard crates.
“Where’s your room?” Tash asked.
I pointed, and she led the charge.
“Whoa! Hey!” Jasper bleated as his cozy time was interrupted. I was about to explain when Max and Matilda brought up the rear.
“What are you two doing here?” I asked.
“Pleasure to see you too!” Max air-kissed me as he breezed by.
“Hi, Cecilia!” Matilda greeted me. “Oooh, great dress. Vintage?”
“Um, yeah.”
She had a few outfits on hangers slung over her shoulder. “Your mother asked me to come over and organize your closet—you know, color-code by seasons and make notes of what you might need.”
She followed Max into my room. When I got there I saw that the five men were unpacking my boxes onto the bed, the dresser, and any other available surface. Tash was booting up my new computer at the desk, and Jasper had been backed into a corner, where he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible.
“Ooh, Tennessee School of Design?” Matilda said, noticing the catalog—which I’d retrieved on my way out of the diner—at the foot of my bed. “Great program. You going there?”
“Um . . . I’m not sure yet.”
“But she’s definitely applying, right, Red Sox?” Jasper said hopefully. We’d leafed through the application materials when we’d first gotten back and he was 100 percent psyched about the idea of me sticking around.
“We’ll see,” I said with a laugh.
“Where’s the closet?” Matilda asked.
“Right there.”
I pointed at the Johnny Cash shower curtain that served as a closet door. To her credit, Matilda didn’t even hesitate. She just shoved the curtain aside and yanked down on the string that turned on the one hanging light bulb.
“Where’re all your clothes!?” she gasped.
“I was . . . on a budget when I moved here,” I replied. “Most of my stuff from school is out here being unpacked.”
I launched myself at a large, neckless man who was currently manhandling my underwear, and grabbed them to my chest. Jasper stifled a laugh.
“Max, get your cute butt in here, and bring your iPad!” Matilda shouted.
“Gladly,” Max replied, sliding sideways to get past me and out of the mayhem.
“Okay, I connected you to the wifi. Your mom’s having the whole building upgraded to the highest speed connection they get in this backward town,” Tash said, turning to look at me.
“Hey!” Jasper protested.
She shot him a silencing look.
“If I were you, I’d check my e-mail. I’ve already sent you lists of items we’ll need to address at Wednesday’s budgetary meeting for the gala, and I’ve started to compile the catalogs and menus of local vendors, such as they are,” she added with a sneer.
“I reiterate my ‘hey,’ ” Jasper said more firmly, stepping away from the wall.
“Wait. Wednesday’s budgetary meeting?” I asked.
Tash poked at her iPad. “At HQ, ten a.m. I’ve uploaded the meeting schedule and all your deadlines onto your iCal. You’re welcome.”
“I have to work from nine to two on Wednesday,” I told her.
Tash rolled her eyes. “Fine then, I’ll reschedule for . . . three p.m. Will that suit you?”
Her tone was so condescending, it made me want to dropkick her out the window. I could tell Jasper wanted me to say “no,” just to put her in her place, but the gala was less than three weeks away and there was no way I was squirming my way out of this. My responsible, deadline-hitting, straight-A side kicked in.
“Fine. Three o’clock.”
“Good. I’ll just have everyone else rearrange their schedules around yours.”
Tash hit the screen a few more times for emphasis.
“You do realize you have only five T-shirts and two pairs of shoes?” Matilda said, emerging from the closet. “Two pairs. Two pairs of shoes.”
“Breathe, Matty. Breathe,” Max said, kneading her shoulders from behind.
Matilda saw the piles of sweaters and dresses and sensible corduroys that had been unpacked on my bed and deflated in relief. “Oh, thank God!”
She and Max started to sort through everything and new piles quickly emerged.
“Well, we’re done here. I’ll leave Matilda and Max to do their job.” Tash snapped her fingers at the movers and they all filed out. “See you Wednesday at three, Cecilia,” she said. “In the meantime, if I were you, I’d start reading the information I sent you.”
And then she was, mercifully, gone.
“Um . . . Jasper, this is Matilda and Max,” I said, gesturing weakly at the pair. “They’re my stylist and . . . what was your preferred job title again, Max?”
“Transformation specialist. Pleasure to meet you,” Max said, leaning across the bed to shake Jasper’s hand.
Matilda barely looked up from the dress she was inspecting. “Hi.”
“Nice to meet y’all too,” Jasper said. He turned to check out the new computer and the piles of papers and notebooks stacked next to it. “Wow. Your mother really wants you to go to Harvard.”
“What? Why?”
I joined him and saw that atop a bunch of my high school notebooks was the Harvard course catalog, my acceptance letter, and the instructions for choosing dorm preferences and meal plans online. Then there was another stack of clean Harvard notebooks, a Harvard iPad cover, and a bag full of Harvard clothing.
“Yeah, she really does,” I said with a sigh.
“But you’re not going to, are you?” Jasper asked. “Not now that you have other options. I mean, Boston’s pretty far away.”
“No,” I answered automatically. “I mean . . . I don’t really know.”
“Oh.”
My heart squeezed. “I just haven’t had time to think about it. There’s a lot going on and it’s a little overwhelming,” I told him. “I need some time to figure it all out.”
What I didn’t tell him was that when we’d looked over the application for the Tennessee School of Design earlier, my heart had been steadily sinking. Not because it didn’t sound great. It sounded, in fact, amazing. Students were allowed to create their own major, choosing which courses were related to their personal creative vision for their career. And the courses were incredible. Everything from basic clothing construction to interior design to merchandising for children. The heart-sinking part came from the requirements for admission. On top of the general application, interview, and personal essay, I’d need to provide two letters of recommendation from teachers or other authority figures who could attest to my unique creative style and I’d have to submit a portfolio of my work in a tactile creative medium.
What was I supposed to hand in? Photos of the window at Second Chances?
Harvard was looking more and more like the only viable option.
My new computer dinged loudly. Another e-mail arriving from Tash. Was she writing them on her way down the stairs?
“Doesn’t look like your mom’s gonna be giving you that time,” Jasper said wryly.
The back of my neck prickled. It was bad enough that I had to deal with all this stuff, but him rubbing it in didn’t help. In fact, it made me feel even worse. At that moment, Jasper’s phone let out a little trumpet blare and he yanked it from his jeans pocket.
“Do you want to help me go through these e-mails?” I asked, as Matilda and Max began hanging up my clothes. “We could take it in the living room?”
It wasn’t exactly the night I had planned, but maybe after Max and Matilda left we could get back to the smooching.
“Holy buckets, Lia! I just got invited to Blue Peak’s twenty-fifth anniversary party tomorrow night,” Jasper announced, scrolling through the e-mail. “And they want me to perform!”
“Jasper! That’s amazing!”
“Evan says I have a plus one.” He looked up at me, his eyes bright with excitement. “You have to come! You’ll come, right?”
“Of course! Are you kidding?” I threw my arms around him. “I’m totally in!”
“Aw!” Max and Matilda trilled in unison.
Embarrassed, I went to pull away, but Jasper gave me a long, closed-mouthed kiss, then released me and headed for the door.
“Wait. Where’re you going?”
“I have to go figure out what I’m gonna sing!” he said excitedly. “And my stylist is sending over some outfits to choose from.” He laughed and shoved the phone away. “Who woulda thought we’d both have stylists. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Sure. Love you!” I called out as he opened the door.
“Love you too!”
And then the door slammed behind him.
“Cecilia, my friend, your man is fine,” Max said.
“Yeah,” I said dreamily. “He kind of is.”
Then my computer dinged again and I sighed. Jasper may have been dreamy, but he’d also just left me to deal with Tash’s e-mail deluge on my own.
* * *
“Oh come on, Lia, you have to apply to this school.” Fiona plopped down atop a stack of unpacked boxes of books in the Book Nook’s back room as she flipped through the TSoD catalog. “They have a minor in silk screening!”
“Do you have some secret passion for silk screening that I don’t know about?” Britta asked, leveling a stare over her eyeglass frames as she hauled a few books out of a box and shelved them.
“No, but maybe Cecilia does. Maybe she does and she doesn’t even know it and if she went to this school she’d find out she did!”
“Wow. Someone’s had too much coffee this morning,” I said, leaning back against the brick wall.
It was Tuesday morning, and Britta was helping out her boss, Maisy Freiss, with inventory. Fiona and I had come along to hang, because stockrooms and bathrooms and broom closets were some of the few places we could go anymore without being bothered by the press.
“I don’t know, guys. It’s just a lot,” I said as the grain of the brick tugged at my curls. “My mom wants me to work on this gala, I have my job at Second Chances. And honestly, I don’t even know what I would submit for the creative portion. Maybe I should just go to Harvard.”
“No. You can’t go to Harvard,” Fiona said.
“Why not? You guys are both going away to school in the fall. It’s not like you’ll miss me.”
“We will miss you no matter where we all go, but that’s not the point,” Fiona said. “The point is, I don’t think you want to go to Harvard.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Because most people would kill to get into Harvard and be chewing their own arms off in anticipation of going,” Britta said in her bland tone. “You? Not so much.”
“Ugh! But my mother will murder me if I don’t go.” I groaned and bent forward at the waist. “You guys, what am I gonna do?”
Fiona slid off her pile of boxes and her feet smacked the floor. “I’ve got it!”
“What?” Britta and I said in unison.
Fiona turned the catalog around to face me, bending it back so that only one page was visible—the list of acceptable media for the application’s creative portion. “Event design!”
“Wait . . . what?” I said, pushing myself forward.
“It says it right here. Event design is on the list.” I snatched the catalog from Fiona and stared at the words, my skin prickling. “You design your mom’s gala with local flair or whatever and then send all the amazing pictures in as your portfolio!”
“That might actually work,” Britta said, dusting her hands off on her jeans shorts.
“I don’t know, you guys. I have almost no time to pull this off.”
“So we’ll help!” Fiona offered. “Won’t we, Britta?”
“Sure. I’m in.” Britta shrugged.
“Come on, Lia! What do you have to lose?” Fiona asked. “One brave thing, right?”
I chewed my bottom lip. Could I really do this? Could I pull off a portfolio-worthy event with basically zero experience? I supposed it was possible, if my friends were here to help and I had my mom’s staff on my side. How great would that be? Using the event my mother was forcing me to work on to get out of going to Harvard? Her brain would explode.
“If you do this, I’ll run for Sweetbriar Princess,” Fiona offered, mistaking my silence for hesitation.
“What? You hate this town,” Britta stated. “You can’t be princess of a town you hate.”
Fiona lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. I think it could maybe be fun. And unexpected. And brave, right?” She looked at us hopefully. “Also, it would probably look good on my resume, doing something outside the box.”
“Totally!” I said. “And you’d be an amazing princess.”
Though I still had no idea exactly what the requirements were for the position, or what the responsibilities were once it was won. At that moment, I felt like I could do anything. And if I could, so could Fiona.
“So we have a deal?” Fiona asked.
“We have a deal.”
And suddenly, I had a ton of work to do.
* * *
“So I spent the entire afternoon in the library looking through all these gorgeous books about Southern style and Tennessee architecture through the ages, and I think I’ve come up with some really cool ideas.”
“That’s great,” Jasper said, his warm hand cupping mine on the seat between us as our limousine turned onto a wide boulevard in downtown Nashville. “I’m so psyched you decided to apply. It’s just too bad part of the process involves helping out a person that you hate.”
“It’s not that I hate her,” I said. “We just never really had a relationship.”
I took a breath as I scrolled through another twenty-four e-mails from Tash, setting up meetings and tastings and phone calls for later in the week. Now that I’d decided to focus on the design of the event, it all seemed pretty superfluous. Did I really have to be in on cake tastings?
“I just wish I had more time. Party planning is way more complicated than you’d think.”
“I’m sure you’re gonna do great.” Jasper leaned over to kiss my nose.
“Thank you,” I said with a smile.
But the back of my neck was beginning to prickle with sweat. And not just because my brain was running a mile a minute in ten different directions. The straps on the white eyelet lace dress I’d chosen from the stockroom at Second Chances were itching my shoulders something awful, and I’d allowed Britta to do my makeup, which meant false eyelashes that kept sticking together. Matilda and Max had wanted to help, but this was Jasper’s night, and they were being paid by my mom to make me presentable for her events. Besides, it wasn’t like I can’t dress myself.
Or can I? I thought, reaching up to scratch my shoulder.
“Do you think you’ll be all right, though? Working with your mom every day?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“So then uncomplicate it.” Jasper shrugged. He looked so adorable in his black cowboy hat and a light blue plaid shirt with a dark gray jacket over it. And when he said things like that, with that level of assuredness and just a twist of naiveté, I could so easily remember what he’d looked like when we’d first met as little kids. It made me feel closer to him, because I could say I knew him even back then. When the biggest challenge between us was who could clamber to the top of the monkey bars faster.
“And how do I do that, exactly?”
“Don’t let her push you around. Just keep reminding yourself you’re an adult now. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
I attempted a smile, but only one corner of my mouth twitched. It was so easy for Jasper to say something like that. He’d never had parental expectations. Jasper had been raised by his grandmother, Daria Case—Gigi’s best friend—and even though she was pretty strict, she’d made it clear that all she ever expected from him was to find something he loved to do and do it. I would have sold my left foot for someone to say that to me.
“I don’t know. The gala’s only three weeks away. I feel like it’s easier to just do what she wants, get it over with, and move on.”
“If you say so,” Jasper said under his breath.
His tone bothered me. It was dismissive. Almost condescending. Did he think I was being naive?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Nothing! I just . . . Are you sure you can’t find something else to do for the application? Something with Tammy? Or maybe your stylist! She seemed pretty gung ho about the whole thing.” He looked me in the eye. “I don’t want your mom taking advantage of you, that’s all.”
I squirmed a bit in my seat, and the straps cut into my skin. “That’s not what this is,” I told him. “This is just me killing two birds with one stone. Make my mother happy and get into college. It’s a win-win.”
“If you say so.”
Okay, I was going to have to put an end to this conversational thread before I screamed.
“Have you thought of anyone we could ask to play at the gala?” I ventured. “Maybe Blake Ralston? You’re playing a lot of dates with him.”
Jasper laughed. “I can barely get up the guts to talk to that man, let alone ask him for a favor.”
“It’s not necessarily a favor,” I ventured. “It could be good PR for him too.”
“True, I guess,” Jasper said, and took a sip from a bottle of water. “But I don’t know, Lia. Your mom said someone up-and-coming. Blake Ralston’s a superstar.”
“But I—”
“We’re pulling up to the venue now, Mr. Case,” the driver interjected, glancing in the rearview mirror.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” Jasper replied. He smiled, buttoned his jacket, and looked at me. “We’ll figure it out. I promise. You good to go, beautiful?”
“Fine,” I said, forcing a smile. “We can talk about it later.”
Outside the windows, a smattering of people quickly turned into a crowd as the car paused outside the Vanderbilt Hotel. I gazed down the red carpet, which was surrounded by paparazzi and reporters and fans, twenty people deep. My vision swam. All those faces. All those bodies. All those hands.
The door opened.
“Let’s do this!”
Jasper got out of the car and the already-shouting crowd grew louder. I slid to the edge of the seat and peered out. Too many people. Way too many people. And flash pops. And microphones. And screaming—oh, the screaming. My heart felt like a moth caught inside an outdoor lamp, trying to bust its way out in every direction.
“You coming?”
Jasper smiled his wide, comforting, beautiful smile and offered his hand. I put my fingers into his and he tugged me out of the car, then slipped his arm around my waist. I felt marginally better with my side pressed against his solid body.
“All right, you two!” Evan Meyer was there in his signature scarf and T-shirt ensemble. He had to bellow to be heard. “The first twenty feet or so you just stop to pose for pictures. Answer questions if you like, but make it quick. We’ve given priorities to TNN, E!, and Today. They’re near the entrance and will each get two minutes.”
“Cecilia! Cecilia! Over here!”
“Jasper! Can we get a smile! One smile? Come on?”
“Or a kiss maybe? Show us a kiss!”
“Now remember, key number one to ridding the public’s memory of the sight of Jasper in handcuffs is replacing it with images of the hot new couple on the scene!” Evan shouted.
Key number one? That was key number one? Nobody had told me that. My pulse vibrated inside my veins and my mouth had gone gummy. I couldn’t do this. All those cameras. All those lenses.
“All right!” Evan rubbed his hands together. “Let’s premiere Jasilia!”
Ja-what-now?
Jasper started to follow Evan, his foot landing on the red carpet, but I froze. He moved until our arms were stretched out between us, then looked behind him with concern. He was back at my side in half a second.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered in my ear.
“All those people,” I said. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Do you want to go home? We can go home right now,” Jasper said.
Evan bit his lip. “Um . . . actually . . .”
I looked up into Jasper’s blue eyes. He had no idea. He couldn’t just go home. He had responsibilities now. And one of those responsibilities was feeding the fame machine. If there had been a Montgomery Family Handbook, that would have been on page one. I might not have been allowed to live it, but I had certainly witnessed it. There was no way I was going to ruin this for him. Not after the damage my mother and the FBI had already done. I’d promised to do whatever I could to help.
“You are the greatest boyfriend in the history of the world for offering that,” I said. Then I slid my hand into his and smiled. “Come on. Your public awaits.”
“You sure?” he asked, touching my face with his fingers. My skin tingled.
I so wasn’t. “I’m sure,” I said.
I just really hoped I didn’t throw up on some poor reporter’s shoes.