Trials and Tiaras (Untouchable #7) - Heather Long Page 0,85

the question, the trees parted to reveal an old gothic style structure of a building. It was huge and imposing. There was a circular drive leading up to the front and huge wings jutting off to the sides. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be impressed or terrified. It was both fascinating and cold all at once.

Archie followed the circular drive around, then backed into a parking slip I hadn’t even noticed so that we could face the building. After he put the car into park, he said, “Welcome to Blue Ivy Prep, my home away from home for a few years.”

Surprise speared through me, and I glanced over at him. “I thought you went to a boarding school.”

“This is it,” he said. “Generations of Standishes and Graysons have gone here. If Maddy hadn’t left and broken off with her family, we might have met here instead of in Texas.”

I stared at the building. It was…cold. Unfeeling. I mean, it was just a building, but it seemed…isolated and alone.

“I know it looks bad, but that’s just the outside. C’mon,” he slid out of the car and walked around to get me. “Kids are probably away on their spring break, which is why it’s so quiet. But it’s perfect for an impromptu tour.”

“Aren’t we going to get into trouble?” I stared at him.

Archie laughed. “Babe, this is one of those times where our last names open doors, and here, our money built at least a third of this place.”

Our money.

We made it three steps as I lagged, and he glanced at me with a question in his eyes.

“It’s not my money,” I reminded him. “I’m not even sure they’re my family.”

“No,” he murmured softly and cupped my cheek. “But I am. What’s mine is yours.”

Some of my reservations melted away. “I love you.”

He grinned slowly and with more than a little smugness. “Luckiest bastard in the world right here.”

I snorted. “I’m the bastard in this relationship, remember?”

A snort followed by a groan met my declaration, but we set off again. The big doors looked like they’d been created out of hammered iron, but they were just heavy and wooden, yet Archie pulled the door open easily. The interior was all dark cherry wood and elegant looking. If the outside was cold and forbidding, the interior was warm and inviting.

Portraits lined the walls of stuffy looking individuals, yet they all seemed extremely expensive oil paintings. “School founders,” Archie murmured against my ear. “This is the main hall. Food court is down there.” He pointed toward one of the myriad of halls jutting away from this building. “Upstairs are administration offices and counselors. This way…” He grinned at me as he tugged me along. “This is the way to the boys’ quarters. Girls are quartered on the other side, though there is a courtyard between them.”

It was a whirlwind tour that included seeing a communal shower, bathroom, and a library that I wanted to stay in until Archie told me there were two of them—this one and then an identical one in the girls’ wing. Why two? He shrugged. Probably sex in the stacks in the sixties and seventies. Free love had changed how Blue Ivy did business.

When he eyed one of the shadowy areas in the shelves then me, he winked. “Next time. When you’re not so sore.”

They were all intimately aware of my current status, and my blush was not for that, so much as for the promise of next time.

Next, we plunged deeper into the boys’ side, and he took me to a room at the far end. Only then did he let go of my hand to work something against the lock.

“Archie, what are you doing?” I hissed. So far, we hadn’t seen anyone, but that didn’t mean we were alone. There were cameras in some of the halls. None up here, though.

At all.

“It’s fine,” he said as the lock gave. “This thing is so stupid easy to open if you know what you’re doing.” Inside, we found a tidy room with a private bathroom. It was a single, apparently, about as big as my bedroom, maybe a little bigger. There was a bed tucked in the corner under the window with a desk next to it and a big fat arm chair in the opposite corner.

It definitely smelled like teenage boy in here.

“This,” Archie said. “This was my home away from home for four years. Started at Prep in fifth grade. Left after eighth. This hall