“I’m not talking about Alex,” I groaned.
Andie held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, we won’t talk about Alex. But I will say that I think you are crazy if you spend time with Jake. It would be crazy anyway, but even crazier because he’s there with his girlfriend.”
I nodded glumly. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. I’m a psychiatrist.”
“You’re not a psychiatrist yet.”
“I know. Only two more years.” She grimaced. “God … I don’t think I’m going to make it.”
I thought of the next nine months and spending it avoiding Jake and the knifelike feeling in my chest every time I saw him. “I know what you mean.”
It was almost the end of week one of classes and I was already feeling the weight. Papers were due, tutorial materials were needed. I would actually have to do school work while I was here. The induction week in a foreign city had kind of lulled me into a false sense that I was on vacation.
With classes up and running, Claudia and I had agreed to put our heads down and get organized. We could go back to having fun once we were settled into our academics.
Settling in for me would usually mean my brain was too cluttered with thoughts on classes to be able to concentrate on anything else, but not this time. I hated to admit it, but Jake Caplin was taking up way more of my thoughts than I’d like.
While running my finger along the books in the reserve section of the university library in search of material I needed for an upcoming tutorial, I heard his voice right beside my ear. I jumped, thinking I’d actually conjured him.
“Jesus,” Jake cried out softly, dodging my flailing arm.
I glared up at him, my hand now pressed to my chest as I tried to get my heart rate to normalize. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know the words ‘Hey, Charley’ were considered lethal.”
“They are if you sneak up behind me and practically whisper them in my ear. It’s creepy. Creepiness often precedes death.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied in a strangled voice.
“You do that.” I turned back to the bookshelf so I didn’t have to look at his gorgeous face, which happened to need a shave. When Jake needed a shave, he looked beyond hot. It was so unfair.
I felt his head dip close to mine. “Whatcha looking for?”
“The equation for time travel. Some guy just gave me permanent heart failure and I’d like to go back in time and change today so that I’m lying on a beach in Guam being waited on by a hottie named Han with heavy footsteps and an aversion to whispering.”
Jake chuckled and I felt the deep sound in every one of my erogenous zones. “Still a smart-ass, I see,” he said.
I looked up at him and ignored the fact that he was wearing another tight-fitting, long-sleeved shirt and that he obviously worked out. His shoulders and biceps were broader than they used to be and I realized belatedly that even his face was a little different. It was sharper, harder, the softness of youth having melted away.
He was quite possibly more beautiful than he used to be. Wonderful.
My gaze shifted past him and I shrugged casually. “Some things change. Some things don’t.”
“You have and you haven’t.”
His comment brought my eyes back to his. I frowned. “What do you mean?”
It was now Jake’s turn to shrug. “You’re still a smart-ass, still cocky, but you’re quieter about it, more reserved. You’re not … you don’t seem as open to people as you used to be.”
Finding myself in dangerous territory, I deflected his observation with sarcasm. “I was never open to people, but I live in a small town and was given little choice in the matter.”
Jake ignored the sarcasm. “Come grab a coffee with me.”
I felt an uncomfortable flip in my chest. “Now?”
“Yeah. There’s a café across the main forum of the library. It’s two seconds away. We’re here. It’s there. We could be drinking coffee or juice or soda, milk even, or tea, or you know they have food there too …”