There were about sixty-four million jokes I could have made. Instead I closed my eyes. Tilted my chin to make it easier for him. “I trust you.”
He fiddled, the touch almost aggressively impersonal. “Left end lower than right, bring it over, make a loop, up and through…fuck.” A knock on the door and Nik jerked away from me, the ungainly knot he had created unraveling instantly. “Um, yeah?” he called out.
Weird Owen stuck his head in, gingerish curls flopping haphazardly. “Message from the Lodge. You’ve got a visitor.”
Nik looked startled. “Me?”
“Nuh-uh”—he pointed at me—“that one.”
It couldn’t be…could it? “Who?” I asked, like a disingenuous fuckwit.
“Hard somebody? No. Hart. He’s waiting for you.”
“Oh my God.”
Reality hit me. A cartoon anvil dropped from a balcony. Dong. Little tweety birds flying round my head. Caspian Hart. Not just a name on a list, a picture on a screen, a voice on the phone. He was here. He had come. To see me. And he was waiting.
Oh fuck.
Oh shit.
Oh fuck shit fuck.
I’d thought “suddenly nerveless fingers” was something that only happened to people in novels but one minute I was holding a fallen-apart bow tie and the next it was on the floor. As I bent to pick it up, I realized my hands were sweating. What a totally fabulous impression I was going to make.
“I…uh…I guess I’d better be going.”
“Yeah, man.” The way Nik matched my casual tone ruthlessly revealed it as the lie it was. “Might be a good idea.”
Deep breath. “Right. Well. I’m going.”
I had to squoodge past Weird Owen, who had no sense of personal space and was right in the doorway.
“Hey, Arden?” Nik’s voice followed me into the corridor. I turned and he gave me a two-fingered salute. “Be careful.”
It was our cheesy…joke, routine, whatever. I couldn’t remember when we’d started but it was a thing. The more banal the activity (“I need to go to the loo”), the funnier it got. Right now, even though I wasn’t exactly going off to fight aliens or sacrifice my life in service to my country, it was hard not to take it a bit seriously.
Which made no sense because…I was going to meet a guy, we were going to have a polite conversation, he was maybe going to donate some money to St. Sebastian’s, and then I was never going to see or think of him again.
That should not have been a big deal.
Although if I kept him waiting much longer, I probably wouldn’t meet him at anyway. The man who didn’t have time to read letters was unlikely to have time t for disorganized undergraduates. He’d cast an irritated glance at the empty quad and then get back in his chauffeur-driven who-knew-what or his private jet (okay, there probably wasn’t room for a private jet in the middle of Oxford) and that would be that. St. Sebastian’s would probably slip right to the bottom of the Norrington Table, fall into financial ruin, and eventually be overrun by zombies. All because I couldn’t get my act together.
I whooshed to the staircase, holding up my trousers as best I could and still clinging to that damn bow tie, telling myself there’d be time to fix it later.
Down to the first floor, ground floor, out.
It was a typical late spring evening, powder-puff pink and gold, and I sprinted over the flagstones, heading toward the front quad and the Lodge (and, ohgodohgodohgod, Caspian Hart).
My mouth was tangy with copper, as though I could taste my own too-fast beating heart.
The lawns of St. Sebastian’s, like pretty much everywhere else in Oxford, were sacrosanct, but I cut across the corner of one anyway because it was a legit emergency.
And that was when I saw him.
Initially with a faint sense of outrage because, instead of black tie, he was dressed in a midnight blue three-piece suit. And also because my immersion therapy hadn’t prepared me properly.
Fairly good-looking my arse.
Those Google images had lied. They had actively lied.
The man was beautiful.
So ridiculously fucking beautiful it was hard to get your head round it somehow. He looked like a film star. Not the modern sort—not one of your amiably shaggable Chris Pines or Charlie Hunnams—but a screen idol from a lost age, all perfect symmetry and effortless poise, the remote and overwhelming splendor of a temple to cold and ancient gods.
I hadn’t let myself waste a single thought on what would happen if he actually came to the dinner. Of how I might greet him or what I might say. But I was starting to wish I’d planned and practiced. I could have stepped up to him, just as self-assured, holding out my hand for him to shake like that was totally the sort of thing I did. Mr. Hart, I would have purred, a pleasure to meet you.
Unfortunately, I caught my shin on the KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign and fell over instead. Face-planting—after a few comedic but ultimately useless arm flails—right in front of his polished shoes. Oxfords, of course, not brogues.
Not the worst place I could ever have imagined being. But not just then.
He made a startled noise and then eased himself to his haunches, giving me an up-close-and-personal view of just how top class his tailoring was. It was all I could do not to follow those crisp creases all the way up his thighs to his—
“Are you all right?” he asked.
What I wanted to say was no. I was seriously abso-fucking-lutely not all right. I’d fallen over like the Andrex puppy. In front of a man I desperately, desperately wanted to…not fall over in front of. I lifted my head a little bit.
God, he was so elegant. This vision of exquisite masculinity carved by a bent Pygmalion. Everything about him flawless, from his graceful, long-fingered hands to that stern mouth, its unyielding curve touched by the faintest hint of sensuality. And those gray-blue wolf’s eyes, all ice and savagery, watching me.
“Arden?” His voice sounded different in person, somehow more. “Arden St. Ives?”
“Nope,” I mumbled. “Definitely not. He’s someone else. Someone really attractive and totally vertical.”
“Come on.”
Oh God. He was touching me. Helping me up. And, thankfully, while it wasn’t my most agile ascent, Nik’s trousers stayed in place. If they hadn’t, it would have been the clincher on whether I had to commit suicide pretty much immediately.
But now I didn’t know what to do. It had been easier on the phone when his beauty wasn’t burning my eyes like magnesium and my capacity to make a fool of myself was somewhat lessened by distance.
He held out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Arden.”
We shook and I was sure I was limp and sweaty and slightly grassy. “That’s not fair. I was planning to say that.”
“Likewise.”
“You what?”
“Likewise. I find it a useful word in such circumstances.”
“Oh right.” I smiled at him. I couldn’t help it. He was just so…so…He looked like he needed to be smiled at. “Likewise, Mr. Hart.”
I thought he might smile back but instead his eyes darkened, and then his attention flicked away from me. “Caspian is fine.”
“Okay.” I followed his gaze, but he didn’t seem to be looking anywhere in particular. Just away from me, which wasn’t exactly a good sign. “Um, thank you for coming. I didn’t think you would.”