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
