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I reached Hollis Hall, the building that housed the lecture halls where my classes would take place this semester. Hollis Hall stood four stories tall and was totally made of brick covered with crawling ivy. Stained glass windows cast long, multicolored shadows over the sidewalk as I walked up the steps and entered the building I’d been drooling over since my first day on campus.
The whole building smelled like ink and parchment. I walked over the same stones generations of scholars and historians had tread upon.
I smiled despite myself. This was my dream come true. Me, a graduate student. Me, one day closer to eventually having a doctorate degree. I turned a sharp corner and started down a narrow hallway lined with offices belonging to the graduate staff.
Thrumming with nervous excitement, I didn’t notice the sudden flash of movement and lifted voices as I wove through the crowded hallway. I didn’t notice the students in front of me who suddenly skipped out of the way as a door opened right in front of us and a man backed out of the threshold and into the hallway, his voice lifted in a deep, rasping laugh. A British accent filled the air in front of me, and time stood still, my world effectively tilting on its axis.
Or, maybe it was just me tilting, because I ran right into him and fell backward, my books sliding from my arms and thudding to the floor. I yelped in surprise, and a warm, large hand clasped my arm and stopped me from landing on my ass.
Chapter 2
Rhys
I LIFTED THE SMALL, dark-haired woman upright by the arm. She glared up at me, her angular face twisted in a scowl and dark green eyes blazing with righteous fury.
She was, hands down, one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen in my life.
“Watch where you’re going!” she snapped, yanking her arm out of my grasp. “You can’t just back out of doorways like that.”
“I—”
“What are you doing here, anyway? This building is for graduate classes only.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, her books still scattered at her feet.
I bent to pick up her books, ignoring her scoff and protests as I stacked the heavy textbooks in her arms. I held on to one, turning it to look at the spine, and handed it back to her with a smirk. “A fan of sociology?” I asked.
She screwed up her face in a scowl and whirled back around, stomping off down the hall.
A chuckle in the doorway I’d just come out of caught my attention. I turned to Dr. Dan Montague, a man of roughly forty, as he motioned me back inside his snug office.
“I should have warned you about the morning rush,” he laughed, sitting back down behind his desk. “Maybe you should wait a while.”
“Might as well.” I shrugged, sitting down at the chair in front of his desk. His office was small and cozy, all stone and dark wood like every other room on campus.
I’d been here for a few weeks but still felt like a fish out of water. While I’d been to the United States on a few different occasions for conferences and the like, I hadn’t ever spent this much time in the States, nor had I spent time on an American college campus for very long.
My friends and colleagues back in England had warned me about the raucous parties, secret societies, and wild students. But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had to accept Gatlington University’s offer for a year-long tenure. For the next year, I’d be free from the restraints of travel and the extensive and sometimes tedious nature of my research.
“Well, you met Whitney Dahl.” Dan smirked. He poured coffee from his dark Greek thermos. He never went anywhere without it.
“Who?”
“The girl you just mowed down in the hallway.” He laughed, bringing his coffee mug to his lips. “Whitney Dahl, the daughter of aerospace tycoon Albert Dahl and his wealthy, old-money wife, Rachel Dahl, nee Rothschild.” He lifted his brows as if I understood a damn thing he said. “She’s the queen here, just so you know.”
“What do you mean?” I couldn’t help but laugh as I thought about the woman in the hallway.
“She’s been running this entire campus since her freshmen year,” he began, swiveling back and forth in his chair. “Let’s see. She was captain of the track team, sat on her sorority house’s board and was president of Theta Nu Delta last year. She occasionally works for the chancellor, planning charity parties and such. Basically, she knows everyone and everything. She’s a bright student, on top of it. Graduated at the very top of her class last year.”
“So she’s a graduate student?”
“Oh, yes. I anticipate she’ll move on to a doctorate after this year.” He exhaled deeply. “I had her in a few of my classes during her undergrad. Again, she’s bright. A top-notch student. The kind you want in your classrooms as long as you don’t let her take over. I’ve been trying to secure her as a TA for a while now, but she’s into sociology, anthropology, history... what else did she study during her undergrad? Art history, I believe, is her favorite.”
“How did she even have time for class?” I asked, beyond curious. Dan seemed pleased enough to continue the conversation.
“Beats me.” He leaned forward, pressing his fingertips to the desk. “Remember how I said Gatlington’s student body was unique in that most of these students are here because their parents, or grandparents, were once students here?”
I nodded. How could I forget? I’d spent the morning in his office allowing him to help me prepare for what he said would be the ultimate culture shock. Gatlington University should have been an Ivy League school. It was terribly hard to get into and was renowned for its degree programs, especially in business, law, and the social sciences.
The admissions process was unique in that only a select few outliers—those who didn’t have family donating massive amounts of money to the school—made it in every year. Highly competitive and established before the American Revolution, Gatlington was a historic campus located in a historic college town by the same name in Upstate New York.
