Melinda Lorenzo - Bad Reputation

“Excuse me,” I choked out, and exited the room, knowing they were all staring after me, and not really caring.

* * *

I caught up to her in the stairwell.

“Hey!”

She spun my way and stopped, like she was startled to see another human being, then looked guiltily at her hands, which clasped her shoes tightly. I suppressed a grin. Her gaze came up again, and for a breathless moment, they held me fixed to the spot.

Then her eyes narrowed in recognition.

“Are you going to trip me again?” she asked.

“I didn’t trip you. You came running at me.”

“You were sleeping in the hallway. At my house .”

She started to turn on her bare heel.

“Wait!”

“Dammit,” she muttered. “What?”

“I’m with the school paper,” I lied.

She stared at me blankly, and I shoved down irritation that she hadn’t noticed me in the meeting.

“I sat in on your meeting with the city just now,” I clarified. “I was hoping we could do an interview? An exclusive, maybe?”

Her pretty mouth tightened up. “Press inquiries go through my lawyer.”

“I’m not real press.”

“Please?” I turned on my sexiest grin. “It’s mean a lot to me, Miss—”

Crap. What was her name?

She rolled her eyes. “You’re kidding, right? You work for the paper and you sat in on the meeting and you didn’t even catch my name? That doesn’t bode well for your career in journalism.”

“I just started. And it’s more of a hobby than a career.”

“Find a new hobby,” she suggested.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, and in the brief second I glanced down, the redhead disappeared down the stairs.

Dammit .

My phone buzzed again, and I fought an urge to toss it out the window. Instead, I answered it without bothering to check the display.

“What?” I growled.

“Is that any way to greet a nice girl like me?” asked a teasing voice.

My heart did the weird twist and release thing it did every time Amber called. I knew what I owed her, but she was still a constant reminder of my past.

I took a breath and put a smile into my reply. “Hey, sweetheart. Bad timing on my part. I thought you were my dad.”

She laughed. “You’ve got to start remembering who I am.”

“How could I forget?” I joked.

I meant it in a light-hearted way, but the second I said it, my mind went to Beth, and I wished I hadn’t spoken. They were cousins. I’d known Amber first, in fact. She was the daughter of one of my dad’s golfing buddies. Our mothers attended the same social functions. At a party one night, Amber had introduced Beth and me, all those years ago.

“Too late,” I murmured out loud.

“Pardon?” Amber said.

“Nothing. It’s just always a relief to hear your voice.”

She snorted, but I knew she liked the flattery. “You promised me you’d show up tomorrow.”

“I promise a lot of girls a lot of things,” I teased.

“I’m sure that’s truer than I want to think about,” Amber said. “But you made this one to me .”

“Babe…” I searched for the kind of excuse that usually came so easily, and failed. “I’m not going to be great company tomorrow.”

My honesty was a testament to how on edge I was feeling.

“I know. You really aren’t all that much fun in general. But you did promise,” she told me in a sweet voice.

I wanted to laugh at her obvious manipulation. I’m generally impervious to any and all attempts to reel me in, and I was sure Amber knew it. Maybe my emotions were just raw enough, or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for letting anyone down. Whatever the reason, I found myself agreeing.

“A promise is a promise,” I said.

“Yes it is.”

For one second, I thought I heard a hint of smugness in her voice, and I was immediately regretful of agreeing to meet her. I held my temper in check and refused to back down. I clenched my teeth together and made myself bury the irritation under a chuckle.

“You’ll have to remind me where I said I’d be,” I told her cockily. “Lots of promises mean lots of forgetfulness.”

She drew in an irritated breath, and this time I chuckled for real.

“It’s the market in the commons,” she reminded me, just shy of completely impatient.

I should apologize .

I couldn’t make myself do it.

“All right, sweetheart,” I said. “I’ll be there. I’ll even dress nicely so you don’t regret inviting me along.”

“Oh, I won’t,” she assured me, and hung up.

Saturday

When my alarm had gone off on Saturday morning, I’d groaned and dragged myself out of bed.

I slept poorly, plagued by a recurring dream. In it, the too-good-looking-for-his-own-good stranger from the school paper tapped me on the shoulder, only every time I turned around, I found Mark standing there instead.

“Not a dream,” I muttered as I made my way through the already busy student market. “A nightmare.”

The most coveted spots were the ones on the outside because they were the biggest and got the most traffic. The ones in the middle of the market were practically stacked on top of each other, and only the customers who wanted to make an actual effort would reach the area. As I shouldered my way through the other vendors, I knew that’s where I would be stuck.

I finally reached an empty table, plunked down my supplies, and stifled a cringe when I immediately recognized the girl setting up at the table beside me.

I plastered a smile on my face.

“Oh my God! Chipper!” squealed Amber. “How long has it been?”

Not long enough, if you’re still calling me by that god-awful nickname , I thought immediately, but kept my smile in place.

“Since high school,” I answered.

I automatically inventoried my former classmate’s appearance.

She hadn’t changed much. Her brown hair now boasted a few blonde highlights, and her makeup was a little more sophisticated, but aside from that, she looked like the same right-side-of-town snob.

It took serious effort to keep from curling my lips in disgust.

In the back of my mind, I knew I should’ve left all of those feelings behind the second I crossed the stage for graduation. But looking at her perky face brought back a lot of bad memories. She was one of a big group of kids who refused to accept me because of where I came from, who were never able to see past my postal code and accept that I had the brains to attend the upper class high school.

“Chipper?”

And of course, the nickname topped my list of reasons to never forgive or forget.

“Yes?”

“I never understood where that came from,” she replied. “No offence, but you never seemed all that chipper to me.”

I assessed her expression carefully. Had she really forgotten the clothes that never measured up? The years of torment? I couldn’t easily dismiss my own feelings about it, but I had been on the receiving end. Maybe it never really mattered to Amber at all. Maybe it didn’t occur to her the experience had been traumatizing for me, or she didn’t have a clue that even years later, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t that awkward girl with the dangerous father.

Just something else to occupy her time .

Her eyes were wide, and she was smiling innocently at me.

“Buck teeth,” I muttered.

“Pardon me?”

I opened my mouth to repeat myself, then closed it again when a thick arm snaked around her waist.

“Joey!” she complained, but didn’t pull away.

Feeling awkward, I drew my gaze away from the sight of the manly fingers splayed possessively across Amber’s stomach. My eyes went to her boyfriend’s face. He was grinning at me, and he looked awfully familiar.