Kitabı oku: «Celebrity Bachelor»

Time to go.

So why wasn’t Cassie moving? Why was she standing there, in front of Joshua, still looking up at that face that was striking even in the dimness of the night?

And why was he still standing there, too? Looking down at her with eyes that seemed to be memorizing her every feature?

It occurred to Cassie that even though they might not have made it to her doorstep, this was exactly what she’d pictured happening if they had. A good-night kiss felt like the next step. But that couldn’t happen. She was doing her job. And he wasn’t interested in her as anything more than a tour guide and to help maintain the role he was playing.

Yet there they were, still standing there, eyes on each other, and if he leaned only a tiny bit closer….

Celebrity Bachelor
Victoria Pade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VICTORIA PADE

is a native of Colorado, where she continues to live and work. Her passion—besides writing—is chocolate, which she indulges in frequently and in every form. She loves romance novels and romantic movies—the more lighthearted, the better—but she likes a good, juicy mystery now and then, too.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

“Cassie, I need to enlist you for special services.”

Cassie Walker had been called at home and asked to come immediately into the office of the dean of Northbridge College. It was eight o’clock on a Sunday evening and there had been urgency in the summons, two things that had aroused her curiosity.

“Okay,” she said tentatively, sitting somewhat stiffly in one of the two visitors’ chairs in front of the dean’s desk.

“I want you to know that I’m speaking on behalf of myself and Mayor McCullum, because this is a matter of interest to him and all of Northbridge.”

“Ah,” Cassie said, wondering what the dean could be possibly getting at.

“Are you familiar with Alyssa Johansen?” he asked then.

Northbridge College was a private school in the small Montana town of the same name. The total enrollment was a mere 237 students. Cassie had been an academic adviser and the coordinator of residential advisers for the dormitories since her graduation from the college with a master’s degree four years earlier. She wasn’t friendly with each and every student, but small colleges were like small towns—she was familiar with most of the names and faces.

“Alyssa Johansen,” she repeated. “She’s a freshman. Not from Northbridge.” Which was why the eighteen-year-old stuck out in Cassie’s mind. The school didn’t get many out-of-state students. “I’ve spoken to her a couple of times since the semester started. But I wouldn’t say I actually know her yet. It’s only been three weeks, though I know she hasn’t been in any trouble at her dorm.”

Cassie couldn’t imagine what about the pretty, vivacious, black-haired girl required the dean—on his own behalf and that of the mayor—to call her in on a Sunday evening.

“Alyssa Johansen isn’t really Alyssa Johansen,” Dean Reynolds revealed as if it were a state secret.

“Who is she?” Cassie asked.

“She’s Alyssa Cantrell.”

“Alyssa Cantrell,” Cassie parroted. “As in Joshua Cantrell?”

That wouldn’t have been her first guess had it not been for the dean’s emphasis on the name.

“Yes,” the dean confirmed.

No one who picked up a magazine or a newspaper or stood at a grocery store checkout where tabloids regularly splashed pictures and headlines could have avoided knowing who Joshua Cantrell was. He was the Donald Trump of tennis shoes: the Tennis Shoe Tycoon, as he was referred to.

“Alyssa is here as Alyssa Johansen to keep her identity secret so she can have some privacy and a normal college experience,” the dean explained. “There are only a handful of us who know who she really is. She’s Joshua Cantrell’s younger sister. His much younger sister. He raised her. And the press hound them mercilessly.”

The dean paused a moment for effect, then said, “There have been distractions arranged to keep reporters and photographers from realizing where Alyssa actually is—it’s very important to her and to her brother that her real identity and her presence here be kept strictly confidential. But, as you know, Parents’ Week begins tomorrow. Many out-of-town family members are actually arriving today or tonight.”

“Right,” Cassie said, fully aware of that fact.

“We had planned for Kirk Samson to do what I’m about to ask of you. After all, he’s head of fund-raising. But Kirk was cutting a branch off a tree in his yard late this afternoon when the ladder he was on tipped over. He fell to the ground and hurt his back. He had to be taken to the emergency room and be X-rayed, and his wife called us only an hour ago to say that he’s on pain medication and muscle relaxants and will be laid up at least the whole week.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cassie said.

“So we need you to fill in in a hurry,” the dean announced.

“To fill in on what? I don’t know anything about fund-raising,” she pointed out.

“As I said, it’s important for Alyssa to have as normal a college experience as possible,” Dean Reynolds said without addressing Cassie’s question or comment. “Having her guardian—in lieu of her parents—attend Parents’ Week is part of that. Plus, her brother plays an active role in her life and wants to be here with her and for her. He’s taken steps to keep the press from following him for the time being, but I need you to show him around. To be his private escort.”

The request sounded slightly seedy to Cassie and the dean must have realized it after the fact because he amended it. “What we need is for you to be the school’s delegate. We can’t have anyone high-profile do it—like the chair of the board of regents or the president or the chancellor or even me. It might cast Cantrell into the spotlight and negate whatever it is he’s doing to throw people off his trail. But we want someone with him as much as possible to be his private guide to the school and the town. To make him feel welcome. At home. Comfortable. To make him feel like one of the Northbridge family.”

“You know I just closed on my house,” Cassie reminded. “My things are all in boxes. I need to buy furniture. To get settled in. I was planning on using every minute I could spare to do that.”

“I know you’re busy,” Dean Reynolds allowed. “But whether your boxes get unpacked this week or next won’t really make much difference, will it? It’s important that Cantrell get the personal touch so he feels favorably toward the school and the town.”

“I don’t know,” Cassie hedged, not thrilled at all with what was being asked of her. For more reasons than simply because she had boxes to unpack.

“We need you,” the Dean insisted. “You’re folksy. A homegrown daisy. No flash. No flutter. One of us, through and through—exactly who should represent us.”

Cassie didn’t know what flutter was, but when it came to flash, she knew she didn’t have any of that. Oh boy, did she know it! Not having any of it had cost her a lot.

But that plain, folksy, lack of flash that she personified made her feel all the more unqualified to contend with someone like Joshua Cantrell, let alone impress him the way she was afraid the dean was hoping she would.

“I think you should ask someone else,” she said then. “I’m reasonably sure I’d disappoint…well, everyone.” Just the way she’d disappointed another important person in her life. “I think you need someone flashier than I am.”

But the dean wasn’t budging. “We just want someone nice and knowledgeable. A welcoming type of person.”

But it would still mean being in the company of a man who was a celebrity of sorts. A very attractive, wealthy, well-traveled man. Someone Cassie knew she would be uncomfortable and extremely self-conscious around. Someone who would only serve to remind her just how flashless, flutterless and folksy she was…

The dean must have realized that she was leaning toward standing her ground and refusing because before she could, he said, “Seriously, Cassie, we’re in a bind. I’m confident you’re the right person for the job. You’re the freshman adviser to Joshua Cantrell’s sister, so it won’t seem odd that you’re who we’ve assigned to him. You’re unobtrusive—”

Ah, another quality to add to the list—flashless, flutterless, folksy and unobtrusive. Quite a claim to fame she had going for her…

“—and I’m asking you as a favor to me, please do this,” the dean concluded.

The dean had moved heaven and earth to get her grants and scholarships to pay her way through her bachelor’s and her master’s degrees because he’d known her family’s financial position didn’t allow for advanced education. So when Dean Reynolds presented what he was asking as a favor to him, she had to grant it. Which he probably knew and had been saving for a last resort.

“I suppose I can show him around,” Cassie conceded reluctantly.

“Good enough,” the dean said victoriously. “Now, could you get right to it? Joshua Cantrell is with his sister in the faculty lounge and I want to introduce you. I also need you to show him to the old chancellor’s cottage. We’ve had it cleaned and repaired and updated so he can stay there.”

“You want me to meet him this minute?” Cassie said, the alarm she felt echoing in her voice.

As a rule, she would not have gone out looking the way she did. But she’d only closed on her house on Thursday and she and her family had spent this weekend moving her in. When the dean had called and asked that she come to his office right away, she’d tried to explain that she was hardly presentable. But the dean had said he understood that she’d been moving and that it didn’t matter how she looked. So she’d taken him at his word and had come just the way she was. But now she took stock.

Jeans with a rip in the knee. Yellow crew-necked T-shirt tucked into them. Tennis shoes that were not Joshua Cantrell’s brand. Her thick, chin-length brown hair pulled straight back into a ponytail. No makeup.

She was definitely not dressed to meet anyone for the first time, let alone a hotshot like Joshua Cantrell.

But it seemed as if she had no choice. Especially when the dean said, “I don’t just want you to meet him this minute, I need you to. Cantrell and his sister are alone in the faculty lounge and I’ve left them waiting too long already. I have to get to the mayor’s house for a dinner he’s having with some mucky-muck from Billings.”

“Oh…”

As if that barely uttered word were enough, the dean came around the desk and urged Cassie to her feet, sweeping her out of the office. The next thing she knew, she and the dean were headed up the stairs to the second floor where the other administration offices were.

“We just want Cantrell to like it here. To like the college. To like all of us in Northbridge,” the dean was saying on the way. “Let the town’s charm infect him. That’s all the mayor and I are asking.”

Cassie managed only a nervous nod as they arrived at the door to the faculty lounge.

She caught sight of herself in the glass upper half of the door and flinched a little.

She’d been hoping Joshua Cantrell might take one look at her and think country girl, but now she was convinced he would think country bumpkin instead. And it didn’t help boost her confidence any.

Maybe Dean Reynolds sensed her dismay because with one hand on the doorknob he whispered, “Don’t worry, you’ll be great.”

Cassie couldn’t even muster a smile at that. She had experience to tell her that she wouldn’t be great at all.

But it didn’t matter.

Because just then, the dean knocked once and opened the door.

And there was no turning back.

Chapter Two

The first look Cassie got of Joshua Cantrell was from the rear. He and his sister were standing at the window across from the entrance to the faculty lounge when the dean opened the door and ushered Cassie in.

The girl Cassie had known as Alyssa Johansen—and now knew to be Alyssa Cantrell—was pointing something out to her brother. Apparently they hadn’t heard the dean’s knock or the door opening because they didn’t turn around.

But no matter what the view from the window, it couldn’t surpass the one Cassie had of Joshua Cantrell’s broad shoulders and expansive back encased in a leather jacket, narrowing to jean-clad hips, an admirably taut derriere and long legs.

“Uh, hmm…”

The dean cleared his throat to gain their attention and this time they heard him. Both Alyssa and her brother turned from the window.

It wasn’t Alyssa who nabbed Cassie’s attention like a train wreck, though.

Not that that initial vision of Joshua Cantrell’s front half was anything like a train wreck. Oh, no, there was nothing ugly about it. In fact, it surprised Cassie considerably. In all the photographs she’d seen of the man in the past several months, he’d looked more like a woodsman than a jet-setter—long, shaggy hair, full beard and mustache. So on the walk up the stairs she’d come to think she was about to encounter a woolly mammoth. A woolly mammoth with an entourage, more than likely—that’s what she’d thought.

But not only was Joshua Cantrell alone in the faculty lounge with his sister, he was also clean shaven and his black hair was cut close to his head all over, with only the top a fraction of an inch longer to leave some sexy disarray.

“Sorry to interrupt,” the dean apologized. “But Joshua Cantrell, I’d like you to meet Cassie Walker.”

“I apologize for my appearance,” Cassie said at the conclusion of the dean’s introduction. “This is certainly not how I’m usually dressed when I’m doing anything in conjunction with the college, but I’ve just spent this weekend moving into a new house and I was in the middle of emptying boxes when I got the dean’s call, and he didn’t really let me know what was going on and—”

That’s not the first thing to say when you meet someone! Cassie silently shrieked at herself when the words slipped out. She cut herself off before it got any worse.

There she was, face-to-face with one of the most awesomely attractive men she’d ever seen in her life and to say she felt even more self-conscious about her hair and the way she was dressed was an understatement. Adonis, meet Dishrag….

And Joshua Cantrell was an Adonis.

If there was a flaw in his face, Cassie couldn’t find it. He had a square jaw and a chin that seemed sculpted to match; his cheekbones were just pronounced enough to give him a rugged edge; he had a full lower lip beneath a thinner upper that curved at the edges as if he couldn’t be easily challenged; a nose that was just straight enough to be masculine and perfect at once; and glorious, crystalline silver-gray eyes that actually seemed to gleam like the reflection of winter snow in steel.

Eyes he cast at the dean in response to Cassie’s regretful greeting. “You made her leave in the middle of everything to come here on a Sunday night just to meet me?”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Cassie rushed to say. “I didn’t mind. I just didn’t have any idea I was coming to meet someone like you….” She was making it worse. “To meet anyone,” she amended as damage control. “Or to do anything in any kind of school capacity. If I’d known I was going to be coming into contact with a parent—or a guardian—I would have changed.”

“You look fine,” Alyssa chimed in. “Like one of us.”

There was some truth in that, Cassie realized just then. Alyssa was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her brother had on a heather-green Henley T beneath his leather jacket.

“You really do look just fine,” Cantrell confirmed, glancing at her again and giving a smile that Cassie had no doubt could wilt any woman’s will from a hundred paces.

“Well, anyway,” she said, wanting to get beyond all of her opening faux pas as quickly as she could, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Cantrell.”

“Pleased to meet you, too. But call me Joshua.”

“And I’m Cassie,” she said, thinking only after the fact—once again—that that probably had been unnecessary and possibly presumptuous.

“Cassie is the freshman adviser,” Alyssa supplied then. “She helped get me out of that awful chem class and into biology.”

The dean took over from there. “Cassie has also agreed to be your private guide through Parents’ Week. She’s good at not attracting attention.”

“Kind of like your average, run-of-the-mill, ordinary fence post,” Cassie said somewhat under her breath, not appreciating that particular accolade on top of unobtrusive, folksy, homegrown daisy, with no flash or flutter.

Cantrell had heard the fence post remark in spite of her soft utterance, but she was grateful that he didn’t comment on it. At least not verbally. The drawing together of his dark eyebrows seemed to refute it, but only in a way that somehow made her feel better.

“Keeping a low profile is the name of the game this week,” he said then. “If you can pull that off, Alyssa and I will both be eternally grateful.”

“Given the fact that your name and picture are splashed all over almost everything I pick up, I can’t promise anything except that I’ll give it a try,” she said.

“Good enough.”

“Now, if you’re ready, I’ll have Cassie show you to the house we thought was the best place for you to stay this week,” the dean said.

“All right,” Cantrell agreed.

The dean returned to the door with everyone else following behind, holding it open for them all. Then he joined Cantrell to descend the stairs, telling him how glad he and everyone else at the college and in town were to have a man of his stature there. Alyssa and Cassie walked slightly behind them.

When they were outside the administration building, the dean thanked Cantrell for coming, assured him Cassie would take good care of him, and then said good-night.

“I should go back to the dorm now, too,” Alyssa said when the dean had left. “I have a quiz in my literature class tomorrow morning and I still haven’t finished reading the book it’s on. Do you mind?” she asked her brother.

“Nah, go ahead,” Cantrell encouraged. “I’ve been on the road all day. I’m looking forward to a hot shower before I crash.”

Alyssa stood up on tiptoe and pressed a quick kiss to her brother’s cheek. “Thanks. Thanks for coming this week, too. And for everything else you did to pull it off.”

“Sure,” Cantrell said as if whatever he’d done had been no big deal, even though Cassie had the impression that wasn’t how Alyssa saw it.

Still, it was obvious that his sister’s kiss and gratitude touched him, and it was nice to see that the ultra-cool titan had a soft spot.

Then Alyssa said good-night to Cassie, too, and trailed off in the same direction the dean had gone.

And just like that, Cassie was alone with Joshua Cantrell in the early autumn evening air, beneath the huge, ancient elm trees that stood watch over the campus.

“Dimples. You have dimples.”

“What?” Cassie said after the moment it took her to realize Cantrell’s attention had shifted from his sister to her.

“You’re actually cracking a smile for some reason and you have dimples,” he explained.

She hadn’t been aware that his reaction to his sister’s gratitude had made her smile.

But rather than showing any more of her self-consciousness, this time she pretended the existence of her dimples was news to her. “No kidding? Dimples? Huh. I wonder where they came from?”

Without missing a beat, Cantrell played along, bending over to take a closer look. “Yep, one in each cheek. Not like any fence post I’ve ever seen.”

Cassie grimaced at that and tried not to notice the magnetic energy the man exuded when he came close. Or the fact that she was not immune to it. She decided against responding to the fence post reference. Instead she nodded in the direction they needed to go—opposite from where both the dean and Alyssa had just headed.

“The dean has you in the old chancellor’s cottage. It’s this way.”

She had another surprise in store for her when Cantrell inclined his chiseled chin toward the school’s parking lot. “Will my bike be all right there overnight or is there a place for it at this cottage?”

“Bike?” she repeated, wondering why he’d brought a bicycle with him.

“I came by motorcycle. It’s there. In the lot.”

Oh.

Cassie focused on the parking lot and there it was. A big, black Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Despite his jeans, T-shirt and leather jacket, Cassie had still assumed he’d come by car. Limousine or town car, maybe, but by car. Not by motorcycle.

And once more she repeated what he’d said out of shock. “Motorcycle? You came all the way here on a motorcycle? Alone?”

“I was going to come by presidential motorcade but it didn’t fit with the low-profile thing,” he joked.

“It’s just that it’s a long way from Billings to here on a motorcycle.”

“Yes, it is. Which is why I’m looking forward to that shower.”

Cassie didn’t know what was wrong with her tonight. She was being so dense. And she told herself to stop it. Immediately.

In an attempt to do that, she searched her memory banks for why they’d started talking about his mode of transportation in the first place.

Parking. And the safety of his motorcycle…

“The chancellor’s cottage is at the other end of the campus, so you could park it on the street back there if you wanted, but no matter where it is, it won’t be bothered. The most recent car theft in Northbridge was ten years ago and that was more a mistake than an actual theft. Ephram McCain was seventy-nine at the time and got confused because his truck was powder blue and so was Skipper Thompson’s. Ephram got into Skipper’s and drove off in it—”

“Without keys?”

“Most everyone kept their keys in the ignition until this happened. Anyway, Ephram drove home in Skipper’s truck and Skipper reported it stolen. But, like I said, it was really just a mistake and there were never any charges pressed or anything. But if you want to move your motorcycle—”

“No, that’s okay,” Cantrell said with a slight chuckle. “I don’t suppose seventy-nine-year-old Ephram is still on the prowl fifteen years later.”

“Actually, he’s still going pretty strong at ninety-four, but he did give up driving.”

Cantrell laughed more openly at that, shook his head and said, “Just lead me to the chancellor’s cottage.”

Cassie did that, taking a brick-paved path through the still lush, green lawns of the campus.

At a loss for anything else to talk about, she launched into a campus tour.

“That building behind the administration building—the same flat front, redbrick, only bigger? That’s where most of the classrooms are,” she began without inquiring if this was information he already had or even wanted. “This whole property was owned by the Nicholas family originally. By the time the parents died, the kids had all moved out of Northbridge and were established in other places, so the Nicholases left the property and all the structures on it to the town to build a college that could mainly serve kids out here in the sticks. The Nicholases’ main house is what we use as the dormitory—”

“That old stone mansion,” Cantrell interjected to let her know he was familiar with that. “Boys in the east wing, girls in the west, with the cafeteria, living and recreation rooms common to them both but keeping the sleeping quarters separated.”

“I see you read the brochure,” Cassie confirmed. Next, she pointed to the burnished brick building they were nearing. “One of the Nicholas daughters was widowed when she was young and left with three small kids. The parents had that built for her and the kids so they could live nearby. Which they did until the daughter remarried and moved away. It’s now our library. The Chancellor’s cottage was actually a house for the man and wife who were the Nicholases’ domestic staff. It was turned into the chancellor’s cottage when this became a college. But only one chancellor has ever lived in it. The first one. He was devoted to the school and never married, so even after he retired the college allowed him to stay in the cottage until his death.”

“Did he die in the cottage?” Cantrell asked, for some reason sounding as if he were smiling again, although Cassie couldn’t bring herself to glance over at him walking beside her.

“No. He actually died sitting on a brick garden wall in front of one of the older homes around here. Apparently he’d gone for a walk the way he did every day, had gotten tired and stopped to take a rest—”

“And that was all she wrote for him?”

“He had a heart attack sitting there. No one realized it for a couple of hours. Everybody who saw him thought he was snoozing. He sometimes did that, he’d walk, find somewhere to sit and nap in the sunshine for a while, then get up and finish his walk—”

“How old was this one?”

“Ninety-seven.”

“People live forever here.”

“Not forever, but we do have some who get up in years. Anyway,” Cassie concluded as they rounded the section of the grounds where students often sat on the benches to read or talk, “by the time the chancellor died, the cottage was too small for the current chancellor and his family, plus they were already living in their own home, so the cottage was just left vacant. But the dean says it’s been fixed up for your visit.”

“You’re just full of stories, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I know, they’re dull,” she responded out of reflex because it was what Brandon had always said….

“I didn’t say dull,” Cantrell corrected.

But he also didn’t say she wasn’t boring him, Cassie noted, still convinced that she was.

The chancellor’s cottage came into view then, behind more trees and a lavish hedge that was trimmed to just below the paned and shuttered windows.

“It really is a cottage,” Cantrell marveled as if that hadn’t been what he’d expected in spite of the title. “It looks like something out of Grimms’ fairy tales. Not that it looks grim…”

She knew what he meant. The cottage was a small Tudor-style house, with a sharply pointed roof over gables and a front door that was arched on top rather than squared off. The door was also larger than it should have been, dwarfing the house to some degree.

“Are cookie-baking elves going to rush out?” Cantrell asked as Cassie took the key from under the welcome mat and used it to open the oversized door.

Of course it would seem comically quaint to someone like him, she thought as she did. He might be the epitome of the all-American success story but he definitely seemed more like James Dean than Jimmy Stewart.

But she only said, “I don’t think cookie-baking elves were part of the spruce-up, no.”

She stepped aside so he could go in, but he motioned for her to enter first, earning points for manners even if he had just put down her town. Or at least, that was how Cassie viewed it.

She did go in ahead of him, though, wanting nothing so much as to have this over with so she could get home and not see this guy again until she was more presentable.

He followed behind her as she set the key on the small table just inside the door.

“It’s all pretty much here, where you can see it,” she said then. “One room. Kitchen, bedroom, living room—”

She did a display-model sort of wave to present it to him and gave him a moment to glance around at the few cupboards, sink, miniature refrigerator and two-burner stove that lined the wall to the left of the door; the sofa, armchair, coffee table, single reading lamp and television beyond that and the double bed, nightstand and chest of drawers that made up the bedroom in an alcove toward the rear of the space.

It had all been cleaned and painted, Cassie noted. Plus there were new slipcovers on the furniture and a fresh quilt over the bed she was betting had just-bought linens on it.

“The bathroom is through that door,” Cassie added after a moment, aiming an index finger at the walnut panel facing into the bedroom alcove. “There’s a claw-footed tub with a shower over the center of it, along with the rest of the requisite accommodations—nothing luxurious but it’s all in working order.”

She was just about to ask if he had luggage somewhere when she saw two leather suitcases on the bench at the foot of the bed.

“I guess someone already brought your bags,” she said unnecessarily.

“I had them sent ahead. Glad to see they got here.”

Cassie ventured to the refrigerator then and opened that door to peer inside, discovering what she’d suspected even though no one had filled her in beforehand.

“The fridge is stocked,” she informed him, moving to look in the cupboard above the brand-spanking-new coffeemaker. “There’s coffee and filters. And breakfast cereal. Fruit in that bowl on the counter. But I don’t see any cookies, baked by elves or not.”

He chuckled despite the fact that there had been an edge of sarcasm to her voice.

“Too bad. I like cookies.”

Cassie glanced at him then, discovering him smiling amiably enough, clearly unaware that he’d ticked her off. Which probably meant she was being overly sensitive when it came to her hometown—another throwback to other days. To a different man. So she consciously discarded her own minor pique and amended her tone.

“Is there anything you need that isn’t here?”

He shook his head. “Seems comfortable enough. I have my cell so it doesn’t matter that there isn’t a telephone. And I can probably get cookies somewhere else.”