I tried not to panic, but it wasn’t easy. Being called down to the dean’s office in the middle of the school day could only mean one thing: something horrible had happened to my brother and they were bringing me to the office to tell me.
Although, I thought as I made my way down the empty hallway, if the worst had happened (I couldn’t even bring myself to consider precisely what that might mean) my parents would have contacted me. I was sure of it, actually. But other than a couple more sweet texts from Jared this morning, my phone had been eerily silent. No news—at least in this case—was good news.
So it had to be about something else. But what? My grades were fine and I hadn’t missed any classes. And when I’d had her drive me back to Rosewood the night before, I’d given the dean a lame excuse about how I’d forgotten my mom’s birthday and needed to Skype her right away, which she seemed to believe.
So what could it be?
It suddenly occurred to me that maybe the dean knew about what had happened with Brady in that supply closet at the dance. Maybe I was being pulled into her office so she could throw me off the equestrian team and freak out about me distracting her son from not only his duty as the Rosewood equestrian coach but also his own Olympic training.
Maybe she’d even try to blame me for that bone-melting kiss when it had absolutely been initiated by Brady.
I mean, I hadn’t exactly pushed him away. But he’d totally started it and I would have stopped it eventually if we hadn’t been interrupted.
Probably.
My face flushed as I thought about having to endure her reprimand over a steamy kiss from her son. Worse would be the issue of being kicked off of the Rosewood equestrian team because despite my being the worst on the team, I was getting better under Brady...er...Coach Fleming’s guidance. I really did like being on the team, and not just because of him, either. In fact, my life would be significantly less complicated if I wasn’t on the team, so it was a testament to how much I enjoyed it that I kept subjecting myself to the almost daily torture of being near Brady.
Taking a deep breath and trying to calm my nerves, I paused outside the main office doors, smoothing my skirt along my thighs with my palms, wiping some of the sweat off my hands at the same time.
“She’s not so bad,” I told myself, “She’s not the dragon everyone says she is.” But now that I knew the dean’s relationship to Brady, she was even more scary in an awkward sort of way.
I took another big breath and grabbed the handle to pull the door open.
Mrs. Andrews, the school secretary, looked up from her computer screen.
“Just knock and then go right in,” she said with a nod of her head toward the Dean’s closed door. “She’s expecting you.”
I muttered a thank you and stepped toward the door, stopping in my tracks when I heard muffled voices. The dean’s and then a man’s. It couldn’t be my parents, could it? I listened, but couldn’t identify the man by his voice, only made out a casual tone, which meant it wasn’t my parents; if they’d flown halfway around the world overnight there would be nothing casual about them being here, because it would mean the worst possible scenario had become a reality.
So no, it couldn’t be my parents. Which meant...Oh no. The dean must have pulled Brady in so she could reprimand us together. Because I needed to be even more humiliated.
“Go on,” Mrs. Andrew said from behind me, startling me out of my thoughts. “You don’t want to keep her waiting.”
At that reminder, I grabbed the door handle and turned it, the action causing the conversation in the room to cease, making me even more nervous.
I pushed open the door and hesitated in the doorway, sensing a body in the chair on the left. I kept my eyes on the dean, worried that if I even glanced at Brady, I’d somehow make it worse.
“Ah, Ms. Prescott. Come in,” the dean said, her face unreadable, but she didn’t look exactly angry.
I stepped forward and closed the door. “Ma’am,” I said.
She nodded toward the body in the chair. “I am to believe you know this young man?”
Huh? Cautiously I turned my head and gasped. “Robert?”
My brother grinned and stood up. We’d never been the kind of siblings who hug, but I couldn’t help but throw myself into his arms for so many reasons in that moment, most of them having to do with relief. “Oh my God, Robert,” I said, my face mashed into the fabric of his rugby shirt. He smelled good and clean and not at all like he’d been in a torture chamber at the hands of terrorists.
“Hey B,” he said, squeezing me tightly before grabbing my arms and pushing me away so he could look at my face. “You look great; I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve seen you. You’re all grown up.”
I rolled my eyes at his fair impression of our father, but otherwise let it slide. “Where have you been?” I asked, wondering if Mom knew he was here now. Probably not, which meant he needed to contact her ASAP before she gave herself a stroke from worry.
He glanced at the dean and then back to me. “It’s a long story.”
Dean Haywood got up and came around her desk. I looked at her and held my breath, not sure what she was about to do, but she merely squeezed my shoulder lightly and continued on to the door. “You two catch up. I’m off to the dining room for a coffee.” And with that, she left Robert and me in her office, closing the door behind her.
~ ♥ ~
“Where have you been?” I asked again, as soon as the dean was gone.
Robert didn’t answer, but swept his eyes around the room in a move I knew all too well: he was worried about being overheard or videotaped. He looked back at me and raised his eyebrows. I shrugged, having no idea if the dean’s office was secure. Normal girls probably would have been nervous at his paranoia, but for us, it was standard operating procedure when we talked about family to make sure we wouldn’t be overheard, just in case.
“A couple friends and I went to New York City. They had family they wanted to go visit and that made me think of you, so here I am. Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“Of course,” I said, not buying even the tiniest bit of his story. “You’re my big brother. Of course I’m happy to see you. In the middle of the school day. Unannounced.”
He gave me a look that said, “I will explain, let’s get out of this room so we can talk.”
“I probably shouldn’t be out of class for too long, but want a quick campus tour?”
He nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
Without another word between us, we left the dean’s office and I told Mrs. Andrews that I was taking my brother for the ten cent tour of Rosewood, but not to mark me absent; I’d be back for afternoon classes. There were only fifteen or so minutes until lunchtime, so I didn’t think that would be an issue. She nodded and scribbled something on a piece of paper on her desk.
I led my brother down the hall and out the side doors into the brisk autumn sunshine toward the stables. Once we were about ten feet from the doors, he spoke before I got the chance.
“I have stuff to tell you,” he said.
Obviously. “Before you do, does Mom know you’re okay? She called me last night, freaking out about you going missing.”
He cursed and dragged a hand through his short brown hair, making it stand up on end. “I’ll call her. Soon.”
“Robert!”
He shook his head. “It’s complicated.”
I stopped walking and crossed my arms. “What is it? You’re clearly here for a reason, so tell me what’s going on.” He obviously wasn’t in any danger, but he was making me nervous.
He seemed to chew on his words before he practically spat out, “I’m flunking out of school.”
“What? How is that even possible?” My brother is pretty much the smartest guy I know, like Sheldon Cooper smart, (but with social skills and looks that made him really popular with girls) so it was hard to believe he was flunking out. There had to be something more going on.
“The workload in the accelerated program I’m in is killer. Right out of the gate I got behind and then it snowballed and I can’t catch up. I’m taking the rest of the year off.” He shrugged like he’d just announced he was skipping a day of classes to go to Six Flags. Not the same thing. At all.
“You can’t quit, Robert.”
His face told me he already had. “I’ll go back next year. I just need to regroup and get my head in the game”
“What are you going to do?”
He nodded toward the school. “The dean said I could work here for the rest of the school year.”
Whoa. What? “How did that happen? Are you serious? Doing what?”
“I told her I wanted to be near you and would be looking for a job. She offered me one in maintenance. I’m good with my hands and like tinkering with stuff, so I’ll work wherever I’m needed.”
I stood there blinking at my brother, not really grasping the how or why of what was going on. I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if he had told me he’d transferred to clown school so he could run away and join the circus. “You’re telling me that you’re flunking out of Yale, where you were accepted on a full scholarship into an accelerated MBA program, so you came here to visit me at my all-girls school and somehow just talked the dean into giving you a job in maintenance?”
He grinned, making me think he was losing his marbles. “Actually, it’s an internship; I won’t be getting paid. But the rest is about right.”
“Oh, yes, that makes even more sense, Robert.”
He slid his arm across my shoulder. “Come on B, cut me some slack. Most guys my age aren’t on the career fast track like I was. I just need some time to figure things out. It was getting pretty intense at Yale and I figured if I didn’t give myself a break now, I was going to end up in some Wall Street job I hated.”
“So being a janitor is the answer?”
“I didn’t say that. The answer is figuring out what I want before I make any permanent decisions.”
“So why were you off the grid?”
He cringed. “I haven't figured out how to tell Mom and Dad yet.”
“Sure,” I said giving him a look. “That makes total sense because when you call and they hear you’re not dead or kidnapped or something, they won’t care about the Yale thing and how you’ve taken an unpaid job here so you can find yourself.”
He gave me a look back.
“Come on, Robert. They’re going to be pissed no matter what. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh, nodding. “I guess that’s unavoidable.”
I shook my head. “You know, for being almost three years older, you’re no wiser. Call them,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket and holding it out toward him.
He waved it off. “Soon. First give me that tour—if I’m going to be working here, I’ll need to know where everything is.”
~ ♥ ~
I was pretty sure if Robert was going to be working at Rosewood (and I still wasn’t entirely convinced that he was serious) he would get the tour from whoever his boss was going to be. So, since it was my favorite place on campus, I led him over to the stables.
“You ride here?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m on the equestrian team,” I said, adding, “I suck, though.”
He laughed. “Probably not as much as you think. Didn’t you get a bunch of awards when you used to ride before?”
I thought back to the ribbons I’d won, the ones I’d bragged about to Brady before I’d known he was a real equestrian. “Yeah, well, those were small scale. Like, microscopic. The coach here is an Olympian.”
“Wow, they take it seriously here.”
“Fairly seriously, but he goes to the boys’ school down the road, so he works here for extra money. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to Charlie.”
“I’m sure I’ll meet your coach soon enough,” he said, screwing up his face.
I laughed. “Charlie’s my horse. Brady’s the coach.” As I mentioned him, my eyes flicked to the parking lot beside the stables and sure enough, Brady’s truck was there.
Just that morning, I’d walked past him in the barn and his eyes on me had been almost feral. I’d had to turn away from him before one of the other girls noticed the inevitable flush on my face. I certainly didn’t need Robert seeing that, especially if he was going to be working on campus. We got along great now that we were older, but I had a feeling much of that had to do with us living in separate towns. Having my brother teasing me about my very obvious and inappropriate crush on my equestrian coach (who was also the dean’s son) was just the kind of thing that had us at each others' throats when we lived under the same roof. Not that exact scenario, but he would use anything even remotely embarrassing to make me suffer.
“You know what?” I said, stopping short of the stables door. “I need to use the bathroom. Why don’t we go back to the main building and I can do that and we can grab a coffee.”
“What about Charlie?”
I shrugged. “I’ll show him to you later. I had a huge cappuccino this morning and need to make a pit stop.”
Never the huge fan of horses I was, Robert shrugged and turned around with me.
“So where are you going to live?” I asked.
“She said I can either get an apartment in town or there’s a staff dorm room here.”
Yeah, it was selfish, and I love my brother but... “You don’t want to be stuck here on campus.” I said, scrunching up my face as much as I could, like being on campus was horrible.
He bumped into me with his shoulder as we approached the door that would take us back into the Rosewood building. “Are you kidding? I don’t want to be stuck on a campus full of girls? Nice try, little sister.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be disgusting. You can’t think like that if you’re going to work here. You can’t be a creeper, Robert.”
My brother put his arm across my shoulders and squeezed me to him. “It’s so good to see you, B. I missed you.” Sometimes, when he wasn’t trying to torture me, my brother could be really sweet and very charming. I could only imagine the kind of play he got at Yale. Maybe that was why he was flunking out, though as the thought occurred to me, I quickly pushed it out of my head, not really wanting to think about my brother’s love life.
A kachunk brought my attention to the door as it opened. And because that’s how the universe rolls for me, it was Brady striding out holding a large coffee and wearing his riding clothes. Including the super-tight riding pants that practically made me need to wipe my chin. I tried not to notice the lines of his muscular thighs, but it was too late.
He froze in his tracks, his entire body stiffening as we faced each other.
“Oh hey,” I said as casually as I could manage.
Brady wasn’t looking at me, though. He was looking at Robert. And not in a good way, making me realize Robert still had his arm around me.
I swallowed and cleared my throat. “Brady, this is...”
“Rob Prescott,” my brother interrupted, taking his arm from around me and sticking his hand out. “Brooklyn’s brother.”
Brady’s shoulders relaxed as he glanced at me for the briefest of moments before taking Robert’s hand in his own. “Hey,” he said with a rare smile. “Brady Fleming—Brooklyn’s equestrian coach.”
“You’re the Olympian?” Robert asked, giving Brady a once-over. Maybe he hadn’t expected him to be so young. Although Brady didn’t look all that boyish with the couple days’ worth of stubble on his jaw.
“Not yet, technically,” Brady said, looking slightly embarrassed, which just about killed me.
“Good to meet you,” Robert said, recovering and giving Brady a friendly grin. “Brooklyn says you’re a great coach.”
When did I say that?
Brady’s polite smile got infinitesimally wider as he turned to me, his amber eyes intent on mine. “Oh. Well, thank you for that, Ms. Prescott.”
I wondered if Robert had caught Brady’s initial reaction and abrupt change in demeanor after learning we were siblings. But I only had a second to think about it, because then he said, “So. This is interesting.”
I almost choked on my own saliva. “What?”
He looked from me to Brady and then back, shaking his head. “Whatever. I guess I’d better get back to the dean so we can iron out the details of my employment here.” Then he turned to me, smirking. “I’ll see you later, B.”
Great. So much for keeping him in the dark about Brady. That lasted all of what, like point five seconds?
“Make sure you call Mom,” I said, trying to think of something to say to embarrass him.
“I will,” he said over his shoulder as he grabbed the door and pulled it open for himself, disappearing before I came up with a good insult.
“What’s that about?” Brady asked as I was still staring at the door, not quite ready to be alone with this boy in front of me. It was easier in the practices with the horses, even the ones where it was just the two of us. Maybe easier isn’t the right word, because it wasn’t easy. More tolerable, maybe. At least then we had a task to do and the horses between us. Here on the path, it was like there was a spotlight on the fact that it was just us.
Taking a deep breath, I looked at him. “He’s flunking out of school and did a disappearing act, not telling anyone, including my parents, who are freaking out. Then he decided he’d come visit and while he was at it, he somehow convinced the dean to give him a job.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Wow. She’s not easily convinced of anything, especially something like that while the school year is underway.”
I shrugged. “My brother can be very charming.”
That’s when we seemed to run out of things to say.
And it got weird(er).
“So I better go back in,” I said suddenly, turning away from his gaze.
“See you tonight,” he said.
I looked at him blankly.
He nodded his head back over his shoulder toward the stables, not taking his eyes off mine. “Practice. We’re still on, right? Unless you need to be with your brother?”
Yeah, my life would be so much less complicated if I wasn’t on the equestrian team. Or wasn’t into torturing myself.
“No, I’ll be there tonight,” I said. “See you then.”
He gave me one more lingering look before, without another word, he nodded, turned and walked away.
I couldn’t help but watch him go. Stupid skin-tight pants.