1
I’d never spent much time thinking about men’s backs. Clothes, watches, cars? Sure. Backs? Not so much. But then again, to be fair, no one’s back looked like his.
I shifted in my seat, hoping the movement would keep me awake. Bad enough it was 9 a.m. but it was also my Project Finance class, which was a giant pain. So really, my back-ogling kept me alert. At least that was what I told myself as he stretched again, and I felt things. Lots of things.
Max Tucker sat in front of me, wearing a light gray T-shirt that vaguely translated to, I don’t care what I look like. Your clothes could say things like that when your body screamed warrior sex god. Not that I was listening or anything.
He moved forward an inch, and I sucked in a deep breath, watching, fascinated by the muscles rippling under the soft fabric.
Compared to the rest of the guys here at the International School in London, there was something about him...something that didn’t fit here.
It wasn’t just that he was American or that he didn’t have money, although that was a big part of it. We went to a school where labels, wealth and appearances mattered, but more than anything, what counted most was swagger. You had to walk around like you owned the place, and at a school filled with the sons and daughters of world leaders and moguls, that was no easy feat. But even without the swagger, you noticed Max. He might have been more peasant than king, but his body was all god.
He was tall. The kind of tall that made me feel small, which at five-eleven was a challenge. His shoulders were so broad, he nearly blocked out the class. Reason number one why I sat behind him. If they couldn’t see you, they couldn’t call on you. And fuck if I knew anything about project finance. I was here because it was required for my fashion marketing major, and even though it was only the first week of classes, I was already over it.
The other reason, the one that had me squirming in my seat as I drank in Max’s body, was that I liked looking at him. He was beautiful in a rugged way that really shouldn’t have been beautiful at all. Costa had been elegance and sophistication, with eyes that hinted at wicked pleasures and dark sex.
Max didn’t look like that at all. He was too open, his eyes too expressive, his face too easy to read. He didn’t look like he had secrets, like he’d ever had secrets. He looked solid. And while I’d once thought solid was the most boring thing in the world, it now taunted me, sitting inches away. It said, Taste, touch, see. It wanted me to reach out and curl my fingers around his gray T-shirt, slip my hand under the fabric and stroke the golden skin and hard abs his shirt hinted at.
Merde.
It hit me again, like a punch to the head. I wanted—no, after over a year of celibacy, needed was a better word—to get laid. I knew I was hard up when I was lusting after someone like Max. Someone I hated. Someone who hated me.
Max
Fleur Marceaux’s eyes bored into me like two lasers shooting at my back. Half the time I expected that when I turned around, I’d find a dagger there. The other half I thought of long, straight, light brown hair and deep brown eyes, ballerina-like legs, tanned skin and more attitude than one man could ever handle...or want.
I wasn’t sure if it was a French thing or a Fleur thing, but either way, she took high-maintenance to new levels.
I turned in my seat
slightly, just able to make out the curve of her jaw and her soft pink lips. Because I was weak, I allowed my gaze to dip down to take in the rest of perfection.
Even at a school like the International School, where most of the student body bathed themselves in designer labels and over-the-top outfits, Fleur took the cake.
I’d been around her enough last year when she’d dated my best friend, George—before she put his heart in a blender and hit “Liquefy”—to know that the only way to manage Fleur was to not let her mind-fuck you into submission. She always had the upper hand, so I made a point of taking it from her—because I liked it, and even more, because I liked the way it teased out a little line between her brows. The girl who glided through life looked annoyed now, and as much as I shouldn’t have cared, her reaction did things to me. So I looked. A lot.
She was wearing a dress today. I had no idea what the color was—something between red and orange that clung to every inch of her body. The neckline dipped low framing mouthwatering cleavage. She wasn’t curvy, and her breasts were smaller than average, her ass the same, but when her hips moved as she strutted down the halls, I’d always found myself unable to tear my gaze away.
I’d hated her for three years; been in lust with her since the first day I bumped into her in the hall freshman year. Total mind-fuck.
She glared back at me, her lips slanting into a hard line, and I met her gaze with a smug satisfaction I didn’t completely feel. I never felt satisfied around Fleur—just needy, and edgy and wanting more. It made the game of chicken we constantly played with each other that much more difficult to win. Impossible, really.
I turned in my seat, adjusting my jeans, struggling to concentrate on the professor at the front of the room and not the girl behind me.
It was my senior year of college, just weeks before I started the long process of going through rounds of interviews for my dream job. Some companies began hiring in the fall of your senior year. I’d been waiting for this moment forever, and now it was here, and it was terrifying.
I heard my father’s voice in my head:
What do you need with that fancy education? You think you’re too good for home now? You just wait. You’ll come home and end up working with your brothers at the bar.
I tried to block it out. Block out the doubt and the fear that he was right, that I couldn’t do this. I was applying to some of the best investment banks in London, one of the most competitive cities in the world. My academic record had to be perfect.
“Eighty percent of your grade in this class will be a team project you’ll work on for the entire semester,” our professor announced from the front of the room. “The project will involve you financing a business venture. I’ll give you the parameters, and you’ll have to work within those guidelines to create a successful business. You’ll be graded on a variety of factors, including how well you work together, the overall quality of your project, a written paper and a presentation before the International Business faculty at the end of the semester. You can see how the individual components will be weighed on page four of the syllabus.”
I thumbed through the pages, unable to ignore the feeling that Fleur was watching me again. Didn’t she care about her grades at all? Rumor had it that her father was filthy rich, but what the hell was she going to do after graduation? Live off Daddy? Did she even care about her education, or was college just a series of parties for her?
The International School was a good school, but it also attracted a certain type of student. Some like me were on scholarship and had
taken out student loans. Taking your education seriously had an entirely different meaning when you knew you’d be spending the next ten years of your life paying it back. If I got lucky, got the kind of job I’d been working for all along, I could turn ten years into two.
“Part of being successful is meeting the challenges thrown your way,” the professor continued. “You may not always like your coworkers, and there’s no ‘fair’ in business. You may be paired with a weaker group, and you can only work harder to overcome your shortfalls. So in the spirit of creating an authentic business environment, you won’t be allowed to choose your partners as was done in previous years.”
Groans erupted throughout the classroom. I understood his point, but the odds of me getting a good partner were just drastically reduced. Maybe a quarter of the class took their major seriously and cared about learning. The rest of the class was like Fleur; their degrees were pieces of paper to hang on walls at family companies where they had secure positions waiting for them after graduation, and an impressive title like “vice president” they would add after their name before they turned twenty-five.
I had over one hundred thousand dollars in student loans, and the offer that I could sleep on the saggy couch in my parents’ living room for a couple weeks after graduation—if I paid rent.
“If you’re sitting in an odd-numbered row, turn behind you. Congratulations, you’ve just met your new business partner.”
Wait, what?
I counted the rows, dread filling me when I came to mine. Fuck.
There was a moment when I thought about saying something to the professor, a stupid wistful moment that vanished as soon as it came. I turned slowly, as if my body could prolong the inevitable. But it couldn’t, and it didn’t, and the next thing I knew, I was face-to-face with my nemesis-slash-crush.
Fleur’s lips curved, and her eyes filled with a knowing glint as if she recognized my discomfort and loved it. Her voice came next, that hint of a French accent some masochistic part of me gravitated toward like a sailor caught by a siren’s song.
“Hi, partner.”
Fleur
We faced off at a little French café around the corner from school. Professor Schrader had released us early so we could go over the project with our partners. Normally, I would’ve been thrilled—thirty minutes less of class was always a win—but at the same time it meant thirty minutes of my life spent with Max.
He scowled at me across the table, and I got a little preview of what the next three months would hold. Fabulous.
I plastered on a saccharine smile completely at odds with my tone. “Are you always like this, or is it just me?”
Max jerked his head
up from the notebook he’d been scribbling in—he had freakishly small handwriting—and stared at me blankly as if he’d almost forgotten I was there.
My eyes narrowed. “Believe me, I’m no happier about us working together than you are.”
Okay, that was an outrageous lie. My GPA hovered dangerously around a 2.0, and I needed to pass this class to graduate. Max was allegedly a genius. I had the better end of the deal here. Unfortunately, he was just so Max.
I leaned in closer, trying to sneak a peek at the notebook in front of him. “What are you doing?”
He looked back down at the page, his face hidden, his voice barely over a mumble. “Coming up with a plan for the project.”
“Aren’t we supposed to talk about it?” I asked, torn between annoyed and hurt that he didn’t even ask what I wanted. He probably figured I wasn’t smart enough to contribute. “Shouldn’t we come up with a project together?”
No way was I going to end up with something boring. If I was going to have to stare at numbers all day, then at least give me something pretty to look at—besides Max. A fashion label, something I could handle.
“Hello?” I waved my hand in his face and was met with silence. He wasn’t particularly talkative on an average day, but this was ridiculous.
Max let out a little huff of air as he leaned back in his chair, his palms behind his head. I was treated to the view of big, tanned biceps, and long, corded arms. His shirt rose with the motion, displaying an inch of his abs before it snapped back into place as he slouched forward in his seat.
“Fine. What kind of project do you want to choose?” He stared at me expectantly as I struggled to transition from that hint of ab to finance. “Well?” There was a challenge in his voice we both knew I couldn’t rise to, and a gleam in his eyes that said what I already knew. He’d written me off as an airhead a long time ago.
This was what I hated most about Max. He always made me feel like I was an idiot. To be fair, compared to him, I probably was. I didn’t like school, found most of it to be a giant waste of time. And I didn’t love my major. The fashion part was great, but the rest of it? Business was my father’s thing, not mine.
It would have been easy to blame the language barrier—English, after all, was my second language—but it wasn’t that. Boarding school in Switzerland had been in English and French, and my grades had still been dismal. I’d spent more time hooking up with Costa than studying.
And now, at twenty-two, with less than a year between me and graduation, I regretted it. Regretted all the times I’d blown off studying to go clubbing; all the time I’d wasted on things that didn’t really matter, and on the one person who didn’t.
I didn’t like the way people like Max looked down on me, but it was all so far beyond me. It felt like I was constantly playing catch-up, starting a story in the middle when everyone else had begun at the beginning. I got Cs and Ds occasionally and skipped class when I could get away with it, because sitting in classrooms listening to subjects everyone else so easily understood was sheer torture.
I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. No clue who I was supposed to be.
It hadn’t really bothered me until now.
I blamed Samir. Half-French, half-Lebanese, he was my best friend, and thanks to our French mothers who were sisters, my cousin. But most of all, he was my partner in crime. When I’d been slinging back Cristal at clubs, he’d been right there next to me. It was what everyone around us did. It was normal. And there was safety in numbers; it was how you knew you were doing what you were supposed to, that your life was going according to plan. Eventually, we had to grow up, but I’d always thought I’d have more time. But then Samir had graduated and enrolled to get his master’s, and he’d given everything up for his girlfriend, my other best friend, Maggie.
He was more serious, more driven, just more. So was Maggie. They were talking about getting a flat together next semester and making all these plans, and I was happy for them, really I was. I just wasn’t sure where that left me.
I didn’t have a future to get excited about. Didn’t have someone to make plans with. I had a past I wished I could forget and a blackmailer obsessed with making me remember.
2
I took my frustration out at the gym, hitting the weight machines until my muscles were screaming. It didn’t help.
Today’s meeting with Fleur had been a disaster. We’d spent thirty minutes alternating between arguing and ignoring each other. I’d kept my head buried in my notebook while she froze me out. At this rate it was going to take us three years to do the project, and I’d be paying off my student loans working at my father’s run-down bar.
I had to get it together. I had seventy thousand reasons I needed to play nice with Fleur...somehow.
I keyed in the code to our room, greeted by the sight of my roommate George playing Xbox.
He was one of the few British students at the International School, and I always wondered if that sense of being different was what had made us such fast friends. He wasn’t a scholarship kid like me. In a country where university education was a hell of a lot cheaper than it was in the United States, it was a little unusual that he attended an international university and paid the school’s high tuition fees. But his dad was on the board of trustees so I figured that played a role.
Despite his family’s money, George didn’t have the same easy confidence and attitude that flowed here. He was a little nerdy like me, more comfortable staying in on weekends and playing video games than dropping thousands of pounds at a nightclub.
For a school that boasted one of the most culturally diverse student bodies you could imagine, it was ironic how many common threads you found. And money was the ultimate unifying factor.
“How was class?” he asked, not taking his gaze off the game.
I dropped into the seat next to him, grabbing the spare controller while he finished up his space exploration mission and switched over to multiplayer.
“Horrible.”
“Project Finance, right? I thought you were excited for that one.”
“Yeah, I was. He assigned us partners for our group project.”
I took the remainder of my pent-up frustration out on the tiny avatar on screen.
“By the way you just killed that robot on our team, I’m assuming you aren’t pleased with your assignment?” George asked, his tone dry.
I hesitated for a beat. We’d never had a big discussion about his breakup with Fleur. I knew he’d been really into her—although in all fairness, what guy wasn’t?—and she’d broken things off after five months of dating. It had been almost six months since they’d broken up, but what if I was poking at something by mentioning her name?
“Who is it?” he asked.
I sighed. The school was too small for him to not find out anyway. “Fleur.”
I expected tense silence and got laughter instead.
“You and Fleur are going to work together?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Apparently.”
George snorted. “Dude, she’s going to eat you alive. She hates you.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, I figured that out.”
“No, I don’t think you get it. I mean, she really hates you.”
I glared at him. “Got it, thanks.” Fleur could be difficult most days, but she did seem to have a special crevice of loathing in her heart with my name on it. “I don’t get why,” I complained.
George gaped at me, setting his controller down for a minute. “Seriously? You don’t remember?”
I was fairly certain I
remembered every single one of my interactions with Fleur in vivid detail, and still, nothing came to mind.
“No, I don’t.” I gestured for him to keep playing, needing the distraction.
“How do you know why she hates me?”
“She told me when we were dating. I asked her why she had such a problem with you. I don’t think it’s a big secret or anything; she was up-front about it. You haven’t ever asked her?”
Impatience filled me, and for the millionth time, I tried to pretend I didn’t care that she looked at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe. “Yes, because we spend so much time talking about our feelings.”
I watched in annoyance as my avatar got taken out. Not my day.
“You walked into that one,” George commented.
I grunted in response, waiting to respawn.
Finally, he put me out of my misery. “She’s pissed about the nickname.”
“What nickname?” I asked.
“You seriously don’t remember?”
“I seriously have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“She’s angry because you gave her the Ice Queen nickname. Hates-you-with-the-fire-of-a-thousand-suns angry.”
He had to be joking. “Everyone calls her the Ice Queen.”
“According to her, everyone started calling her that after you did.”
I struggled to remember, tried to think of anyone who would have heard me use it. I was pretty much at the bottom rung of the International School social world, a complete and total nonentity. I’d never considered that anyone knew, or cared, what I thought. Least of all someone in Fleur’s circle.
Fuck.
“Who the hell does she think I shared it with? I can count the number of friends I have at this school on one hand, and you’re among them. Did you spread the nickname?”
“Like I had a death wish.”
“Besides, what was that, freshman year?” It had to have been. I’d spent sophomore year doing a study abroad in China, and Fleur already hated me last year when she started dating George. This was unreal. Only at a school as small and cliquey as the International School would something like that stick. I’d say it was high school all over again, but my high school hadn’t been this bad.
“Who carries a grudge like that for three years? And over a nickname? Besides, why the hell does she care what I think anyway?”
George shrugged. “Beats me. We didn’t exactly have an in-depth conversation on the topic. I asked her, and she told me and that was pretty much it. But if you’re going to have to work with her, you’re probably going to want to apologize or something. I don’t know. She’s big on grand gestures. Maybe lie down in traffic for her,” he joked.
I winced. This was going nowhere good. Knowing Fleur, she’d probably let me get run
over a few times.
Fleur
My next meeting with Max didn’t go much better.
“You’re late,” he grunted, not bothering to look up from his desk in the library.
Rude.
I’d meant to be on time, I really had. But then I’d taken a nap after class and had forgotten to set an alarm. I didn’t wear a watch—it took up unnecessary accessory space—but at most, I was a few minutes late.
I sank down into the seat across from Max, waiting for him to look up and acknowledge me. If we couldn’t get through a thirty-minute meeting without biting each other’s head off, then I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to do this for a full semester.
I struggled with my temper, trying not to let him get under my skin. I wasn’t sure what I was more annoyed about: ...
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