Page 48 of One Bet

The room was huge with raised seating and long curved tables broken into three sections and divided by steps leading to each tier. In front, there was a single desk and a whiteboard that ran the length of the wall. Nothing about this room was extraordinary. Nothing memorable. It was a classroom like a hundred others on campus. But it was magical. And it started with…

“Hey.” The voice. Then the smile. Then the eyes. She didn’t appeal to me all at once, but in waves. And it started with her voice.

“Hi,” I answered while I studied her.

She wrangled her bag over my head, well, almost over except the corner that caught me in the temple.

“Sorry.” She slid into the seat next to me. From the thousand pound bag that whacked me in the head, she pulled a legal pad, three pens, two high lighters, an anatomy book that accounted for the girth and weight of her bag, a twin to the one I’d left at home, and a tape recorder she set on the corner of her desk.

When she turned and flashed me another smile, I almost fell out of the chair. It was a holy shit moment, the kind a guy like me would never be lucky enough to have twice. The kind that imprinted on my guts. God, she was extraordinary in ways I didn’t usually find women to be.

“No problem.” And I sounded like I’d just rounded the corner from junior high to puberty. A crack that made prob and lem sound as if two different people, one an adult male and the other much younger, on the cusp of chest hair and pubes, said it.

She stared at me for a second, and my fool heart fell for her, right then. For her eyes. Blue like a summer sky. Big enough I could see, if not forever, a very long time. I fell hard enough I wasn’t even bothered by the floweriness of my thoughts.

“If you hear me actually burst into tears during class, don’t worry. I suck at science.” She said, and her voice was music to ears that finally knew what real music was.

One more smile out of her and I was probably going to end up making a fool of myself. She was that kind of dangerous to my well-being and my cool-guy reputation. The long dark hair that curtained her face as she settled in drew my gaze and I wondered if the dark brown strands were as silky as they looked.

Before I could answer, Dr. Klein walked in, white lab coat, ruler-straight spine, wiry gray hair that sprouted from her head in about seventy directions. If she wasn’t Albert Einstein’s time-traveling twin, she was definitely his modern-day doppelganger. She even had the mustache.

The wonder girl next to me leaned over.

“I’m Felicity, by the way.” She held out her hand. “Felicity Fields.”

“Chancellor Fields’ daughter?” I asked, my voice a croak again.

She nodded. And if her smile was potent, her skin was silk. Satin. Perfect. Extraordinary. “I’m…um, I’m Finn.”

She chuckled. “I know who you are. We all know who you are.”

Between the fact that the melody of her laugh had me mesmerized and that she hadn’t let go of my hand yet, I could barely draw in a useful breath. And she knew who I was. That made her even hotter. Not that I would’ve believed it possible until I saw it with my own eyes.

Suddenly, I didn’t care one damned bit about the anatomy of the musculoskeletal system. I cared about getting to know Felicity. I wanted to know what music she liked, her favorite books and classes and TV shows. I wanted to know about her family and friends. Her…everything. And it couldn’t happen fast enough.

I leaned closer and caught a whiff of her. Jasmine. Lavender. And I stuttered because every word I’d ever heard or learned to say disappeared from my mind. I didn’t have a single thought left. Nothing. And now I was the creepy guy in class who was sniffing the girl sitting next to him. I jerked straight and cleared my throat. Loudly. It was more a growl than a simple clear.

Dr. Klein looked at me. Of the 50 or so students in the class, she stared at me. Long. Hard. A glare, really. That glare would have shrunk a lesser man. But I was in my own world, ego charged because the pretty girl next to me knew who I was.

“All right, people. Everybody needs a partner because things are about to get very interesting.”

“It’s not Bio or Chem, and we aren’t doing labs in this class, so what the hell do we need a partner for?” I said softly.

Yeah. It could have easily been called grumbling maybe even whining, but only because if I chose a partner, that meant I would have to come to class every Tuesday and Thursday or it wouldn’t be fair to said partner. And no way in hell did I plan to come to class every Tuesday and Thursday.

But when I looked over at Felicity, she had the most adorable, pleading, wide-eyed puppy dog look on her face. And if those batting eyelashes weren’t meant for me, the rest of my life was meaningless.

As soon as I had the thought, I wanted to kick my own ass. I wasn’t some drama queen who needed the meaning of life. But I wanted this girl. Maybe for more than just the usual wham, bam, thank you, Finn.

I felt connected to her. Or maybe I kept my mouth shut because I was depressed and tired and horny. Plus, still hungover from the drugs. Either way, I nodded instead of explaining that the chances of me ever coming back to the live version of this class were slim.

And if my head hadn’t betrayed me, my mouth was all set to give up. “Okay.”

An answer I could only chalk up to letting my dick be in charge of my response.

“All right.” And it took a whole minute for a grin to spread across her face and for her to lean in and whisper, “I can’t wait to tell all my friends that Finn Makenzie and I are learning anatomy together.”

I chuckled at the slight high school cheerleader shoulder shrug and the wiggle to her eyebrows. There was something so adorable about her.