Victoria Pade - Celebrity Bachelor

“Oh, it’s okay,” Cassie rushed to say. “I didn’t mind. I just didn’t have any idea I was coming to meet someone like you….” She was making it worse. “To meet anyone,” she amended as damage control. “Or to do anything in any kind of school capacity. If I’d known I was going to be coming into contact with a parent—or a guardian—I would have changed.”

“You look fine,” Alyssa chimed in. “Like one of us.”

There was some truth in that, Cassie realized just then. Alyssa was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her brother had on a heather-green Henley T beneath his leather jacket.

“You really do look just fine,” Cantrell confirmed, glancing at her again and giving a smile that Cassie had no doubt could wilt any woman’s will from a hundred paces.

“Well, anyway,” she said, wanting to get beyond all of her opening faux pas as quickly as she could, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Cantrell.”

“Pleased to meet you, too. But call me Joshua.”

“And I’m Cassie,” she said, thinking only after the fact—once again—that that probably had been unnecessary and possibly presumptuous.

“Cassie is the freshman adviser,” Alyssa supplied then. “She helped get me out of that awful chem class and into biology.”

The dean took over from there. “Cassie has also agreed to be your private guide through Parents’ Week. She’s good at not attracting attention.”

“Kind of like your average, run-of-the-mill, ordinary fence post,” Cassie said somewhat under her breath, not appreciating that particular accolade on top of unobtrusive, folksy, homegrown daisy, with no flash or flutter.

Cantrell had heard the fence post remark in spite of her soft utterance, but she was grateful that he didn’t comment on it. At least not verbally. The drawing together of his dark eyebrows seemed to refute it, but only in a way that somehow made her feel better.

“Keeping a low profile is the name of the game this week,” he said then. “If you can pull that off, Alyssa and I will both be eternally grateful.”

“Given the fact that your name and picture are splashed all over almost everything I pick up, I can’t promise anything except that I’ll give it a try,” she said.

“Good enough.”

“Now, if you’re ready, I’ll have Cassie show you to the house we thought was the best place for you to stay this week,” the dean said.

“All right,” Cantrell agreed.

The dean returned to the door with everyone else following behind, holding it open for them all. Then he joined Cantrell to descend the stairs, telling him how glad he and everyone else at the college and in town were to have a man of his stature there. Alyssa and Cassie walked slightly behind them.

When they were outside the administration building, the dean thanked Cantrell for coming, assured him Cassie would take good care of him, and then said good-night.

“I should go back to the dorm now, too,” Alyssa said when the dean had left. “I have a quiz in my literature class tomorrow morning and I still haven’t finished reading the book it’s on. Do you mind?” she asked her brother.

“Nah, go ahead,” Cantrell encouraged. “I’ve been on the road all day. I’m looking forward to a hot shower before I crash.”

Alyssa stood up on tiptoe and pressed a quick kiss to her brother’s cheek. “Thanks. Thanks for coming this week, too. And for everything else you did to pull it off.”

“Sure,” Cantrell said as if whatever he’d done had been no big deal, even though Cassie had the impression that wasn’t how Alyssa saw it.

Still, it was obvious that his sister’s kiss and gratitude touched him, and it was nice to see that the ultra-cool titan had a soft spot.

Then Alyssa said good-night to Cassie, too, and trailed off in the same direction the dean had gone.

And just like that, Cassie was alone with Joshua Cantrell in the early autumn evening air, beneath the huge, ancient elm trees that stood watch over the campus.

“Dimples. You have dimples.”

“What?” Cassie said after the moment it took her to realize Cantrell’s attention had shifted from his sister to her.

“You’re actually cracking a smile for some reason and you have dimples,” he explained.

She hadn’t been aware that his reaction to his sister’s gratitude had made her smile.

But rather than showing any more of her self-consciousness, this time she pretended the existence of her dimples was news to her. “No kidding? Dimples? Huh. I wonder where they came from?”

Without missing a beat, Cantrell played along, bending over to take a closer look. “Yep, one in each cheek. Not like any fence post I’ve ever seen.”

Cassie grimaced at that and tried not to notice the magnetic energy the man exuded when he came close. Or the fact that she was not immune to it. She decided against responding to the fence post reference. Instead she nodded in the direction they needed to go—opposite from where both the dean and Alyssa had just headed.

“The dean has you in the old chancellor’s cottage. It’s this way.”

She had another surprise in store for her when Cantrell inclined his chiseled chin toward the school’s parking lot. “Will my bike be all right there overnight or is there a place for it at this cottage?”

“Bike?” she repeated, wondering why he’d brought a bicycle with him.

“I came by motorcycle. It’s there. In the lot.”

Oh.

Cassie focused on the parking lot and there it was. A big, black Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Despite his jeans, T-shirt and leather jacket, Cassie had still assumed he’d come by car. Limousine or town car, maybe, but by car. Not by motorcycle.

And once more she repeated what he’d said out of shock. “Motorcycle? You came all the way here on a motorcycle? Alone?”

“I was going to come by presidential motorcade but it didn’t fit with the low-profile thing,” he joked.

“It’s just that it’s a long way from Billings to here on a motorcycle.”

“Yes, it is. Which is why I’m looking forward to that shower.”

Cassie didn’t know what was wrong with her tonight. She was being so dense. And she told herself to stop it. Immediately.

In an attempt to do that, she searched her memory banks for why they’d started talking about his mode of transportation in the first place.

Parking. And the safety of his motorcycle…

“The chancellor’s cottage is at the other end of the campus, so you could park it on the street back there if you wanted, but no matter where it is, it won’t be bothered. The most recent car theft in Northbridge was ten years ago and that was more a mistake than an actual theft. Ephram McCain was seventy-nine at the time and got confused because his truck was powder blue and so was Skipper Thompson’s. Ephram got into Skipper’s and drove off in it—”

“Without keys?”

“Most everyone kept their keys in the ignition until this happened. Anyway, Ephram drove home in Skipper’s truck and Skipper reported it stolen. But, like I said, it was really just a mistake and there were never any charges pressed or anything. But if you want to move your motorcycle—”

“No, that’s okay,” Cantrell said with a slight chuckle. “I don’t suppose seventy-nine-year-old Ephram is still on the prowl fifteen years later.”

“Actually, he’s still going pretty strong at ninety-four, but he did give up driving.”

Cantrell laughed more openly at that, shook his head and said, “Just lead me to the chancellor’s cottage.”

Cassie did that, taking a brick-paved path through the still lush, green lawns of the campus.

At a loss for anything else to talk about, she launched into a campus tour.

“That building behind the administration building—the same flat front, redbrick, only bigger? That’s where most of the classrooms are,” she began without inquiring if this was information he already had or even wanted. “This whole property was owned by the Nicholas family originally. By the time the parents died, the kids had all moved out of Northbridge and were established in other places, so the Nicholases left the property and all the structures on it to the town to build a college that could mainly serve kids out here in the sticks. The Nicholases’ main house is what we use as the dormitory—”