Untangling The Stars

by Alyse Miller

  Maybe that was part of Silas Dove’s dangerous allure, Andie mused. It was easier to look at Guy Wilder without her head spinning if it was under the microscope of her academic opinion. Her thoughts wandered back to the course she’d be teaching in all of five minutes. This was definitely a train of thought worth bringing up in the morning’s lecture. After all, for as sinister and compulsively dark as he was condemned to be by force of his monstrous nature, there were hints of a heart of gold buried deep in Silas’s undead shell. In many ways, he was the classic anti-hero. Was there a heart equally as pure hidden inside his infamously “bad boy” human doppelganger Guy Wilder? So much for academic opinion. Whether there was any truth to either—the cheekbone thing or Guy’s inner sweetie pie—Andie couldn’t say. But, in any case, she was a sucker for a challenge…and admittedly all too eager to find out. Curiosity wasn’t just for cats, apparently.

  “So, is it any good?”

  Andie had to blink herself back to the present. Oh, he was talking about the class. Not waiting for an answer, Guy had already started to make his way to the farthest corner of the lecture hall, giving Andie that blissful backside view again before she could recover her thoughts. She was more than a little embarrassed when she realized her jaw has dislodged and left her mouth hanging open. Thank goodness he didn’t have another set of those piercing blue eyes in the back of his head to see her acting a fool and staring at his butt like a famished woman eyeing a plump, juicy pot roast.

  “I, uh…” For the love of Pete, get it together, Foxglove. Andie sucked in her breath and, tearing her eyes off of Guy—who had folded every inch of his leather and denim manliness into the farthest chair in the farthest corner of the hall—turned to her empty seat to gather up her materials. “I like to get a front row seat, yeah.”

  There, that had been a reasonably articulate response, even if it was more than a little delayed. The bell would be ringing any minute and her students would flood through the door and expect her to be on point, and Andie didn’t have the foggiest idea what she’d been thinking about two seconds before Mr. Hot Mess came stumbling into her classroom. Something about the evolution of gothic literature to today’s current mainstream horror fascination and its impact on the desensitizing of today’s youth? Yeah, that sounded about right, more or less. Oh—Andie rolled her eyes—wasn’t that lovely. That theme sure wasn’t going to seem like it had a bull’s-eye painted all over the real-life vampire (Andie grunted at the oxymoron) sitting in the back of her classroom or anything. Now that she thought about it, maybe inviting Guy to “lay low” in her class wasn’t such a great idea after all. If she was so affected, who knew what his presence would do to a room full of hormone-riddled students, most of whom could probably recite every episode of his hit show, My Bleeding Heart, from memory. Ever self-indulgent, Andie allowed herself to pretend she could easily ignore Guy and started shoving globs of highlighters back inside her book bag. Sure, she could ignore him. Guy who?

  “I’m more of a back row seat kind of guy myself,” Guy called down to her, sounding lighter and suddenly playful. His voice thumped against that knot in her underbelly like the twang of a rumbling steel guitar. “Although I have to admit the view is pretty decent from here, too. Maybe the best in the house, actually.”

  As if on cue, Andie dropped the bunch of pens in her hands, sending them rolling across the floor at her feet. Oh great, she thought, hey I have an idea. You play the popular hot guy and I’ll be the nervous bookworm. Self-indulgence was over. Ignoring his presence was going to be out of the question. And, wait—what? There was no way Guy Wilder—that fidgety, brooding, deliciously dark man who’d slinked into her classroom with his tail between his legs three minutes ago—was calling her the best view in the house…right? Either she had heard him wrong or ascending the few risers up had given Silas Dove his groove back. Anyway, whatever clever response she should have had—and she was usually reliably witty in awkward situations—completely failed her.

  The best she could manage was a nervous sounding chuckle. She evaded the need to say anything at all by bending down to pick up her pens. She refused to let herself even think she was hiding. She was absolutely not hiding.

  All right, Foxglove, Andie scolded herself as she crouched beside the desk. Get it together, girl. Four pens, four sane thoughts to get your head back straight: go. She grabbed the pink highlighter at her feet. He’s trying to be nice, forget it. That was probably true. He had a fan base to keep happy and wanting after all, and he probably thought she was one of them. He obviously thought she was an average college girl. She tossed the highlighter to her free hand and snatched up two dry erase markers half-wedged under her bag. Class starts in, like, two seconds, and you’re teaching a class on not being disillusioned by entertainment, remember? He’s just a normal guy—acting is just a job. Besides, he’s not that handsome. Great, she had almost talked herself back to normal. Now, where was that last pen? She surveyed the floor in front of her, under the chair, beside her bag. There had been a fourth, damn it—

  “Oh!” Without warning Andie found herself staring level into the matching nebulas that were Guy’s achingly blue eyes. He’d finally pushed away the dark sunglasses—using them now as an arm to hold back falling locks of tangled coffee-colored hair—and their brightness was in full effect. She had been so lost in her inner pep talk that she hadn’t heard him step lightly back down the risers and sneak up beside her—much less heard him squat down barely two feet in front of her. It was a miracle she didn’t fall right backward onto her graceless ass.

  His face, striking and chiseled from a distance, up close was like some beautiful piece of art carved from polished stone. This close, Andie could see that his eyes weren’t merely blue, but that there was a thin, barely noticeable ring of contrasting color flaring out around his pupil. It was a color halfway between yellow and green. Chartreuse, she thought it was called, named from some old French liqueur that was itself named after a monastery in some mountains somewhere. Why she was thinking of secret recipe French wine while staring into this man’s eyes she had no idea, but if it were possible to get tipsy just thinking about it, she was about halfway to drunk. And it was nowhere near five o’clock.

  When she remembered to open her mouth and say whatever came next, she saw that Guy’s expression was a mirror of what hers almost certainly looked like—stunned. Andie felt her cheeks pink in little warm blooms. She was blushing. Fan-freaking-tastic. Guy’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips—a little flash of red triangle through unshaven bristles on the edge of Andie’s vision. The sudden movement quickened her back to reality, and Andie was surprised to notice that Guy’s breathing was a bit uneven, too. He was gazing at her from a mere few inches away with the intensity of a…well, of a starving vampire. She felt her face switch from surprise to swoon to something that bordered on shock. Why was he looking at her like that? That couldn’t be a good thing. Please don’t let there be anything gross on my face, Andie prayed silently. Did I fall asleep grading papers?

  “I’m…sorry,” he stammered, handing her the fourth—oh yeah, she was looking for that—pen. “I didn’t mean to, um, startle you.” He rocked back onto his heels and stood up quickly. She followed him up, keenly aware that the top of her head only came up to the middle of his chest. He was a lot taller than he looked on TV, but then again, he was only about eight inches tall on TV.

  She used the pen to wave away his apology. “My fault.” She managed a small, halfway confident smile, although her voice sounded thick and raspy, like it had been years since she’d spoken. “I didn’t hear you come down the steps.”

  His fingers plucked the sunglasses from the top of his head. Absently, he bent their arms opened and closed in his hands. Another blink and the self-assured man dissolved back to the nervous ball of energy he’d been when he first walked through the door. Andie could almost swear she saw his metaphorical shields go up. This guy had a pretty thin veneer. “Yeah, I’m good at that.” It sounded s
heepish.

  “As vampires are want to do, I’d imagine.” Shit. She meant it as a joke but hoped it didn’t offend him. Things were getting a bit heavy with all the stargazing and lip licking and all. Maybe the quip would play to her favor and a little levity would lighten things up. A girl could dream.

  Mercifully, a smile broke across Guy’s face and transformed it into something more…alive. He really did have a strange, vampire-like stillness about him. He laughed, and Andie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Yeah, I guess that’s right.” Guy laughed again and then touched the tip of his finger to his mouth, a gesture that seemed a mixture of deep thought and amusement. “Actually”—he touched his finger to Andie’s shoulder in a familiar, though totally absentminded kind of way that made her jump slightly, which he didn’t seem to notice—“you said something. Chartreuse, I think. What did you mean?”

  Holy crap, she’d had no idea she said that out loud. It made her wonder just how many idiot thoughts came parading out of her mouth without her hearing them. “Oh, gosh.” She hid her face behind the palm of her hand. Maybe she could cover up her blushing with a few fingers and some skin. “Chartreuse, yeah. Your eyes…” She swallowed, trying to ignore the phantom weight of his fingertip still on her shoulder that seemed to radiate heat. This had to be easily be the most embarrassing thing she’d ever uttered. “They have a ring of chartreuse green around them, right against your pupil. It’s…lovely.” God—lovely, that was the best you could come up with?

  Guy shook his head, smiling at some secret joke that Andie wasn’t sure whether was about her or at her. “You know, that’s what I thought. And, this is silly—I hope you’ll forgive me—but they used to say that the monks who made chartreuse liqueur got the recipe from witches in Italy, and that’s why they guarded the recipe so closely.”

  Now Andie was the one caught off guard by a non sequitur. She blinked up at him with big, dumb cow eyes. He crossed his arms over his chest in a movement that made the leather of his jacket squeak, and fixed her with a beaming blue stare. “Supposedly chartreuse liqueur is a key ingredient in love potions, and if two people sit under a walnut tree and drink a glass together, they’ll be matched forever.”

  Okay, yeah. She’d heard the story before, but Andie had no idea where he was going with this—though she had to admit she was pleasantly surprised that Guy knew the tale, too. Maybe her runaway train of thought wasn’t so bizarre, and it was perfectly normal to think of wine and monks and love potions for no reason at all. Much to her relief, her curiosity won out over those mesmerizing eyes and she was able to match his gaze with a lifted eyebrow and a few less butterflies fluttering around in her belly.

  Guy bowed in—or rather, he stepped in and tilted his head down toward her—closing the gap between them. Whether he did it for effect, or to bring that thin ring of green back into her vision, she wasn’t sure. But he was close, so close. His voice was the tiniest step above a whisper, his mouth a breath away from hers. “You’re not trying to put a spell on me, are you, Andie Foxglove?”

  Her insides turned to pudding. Every fiber of her being went limp and wanted to swoon at that comment and those eyes. Worse, something extremely naughty inside her gave a second’s thought to falling into what seemed like a taunting, waiting kiss on the edge of Guy’s still very-close lips. But somehow—miraculously—Andie stood her ground, even with a fever crawling up her skin and making her eyes burn. She wasn’t sure if he was flirting with her, or challenging her, or both, but she liked it—really liked it. The Guy Wilder who had slid in her classroom door had gone from nervous to flippant to downright coy, and nothing could whet Andie’s appetite like a good challenge. A good challenge wrapped inside the beautiful mess that was Guy Wilder wasn’t so bad either.

  “Not today, Mr. Wilder,” she whispered in the space between them as the bell rang overhead.

  Not today, Andie reflected as the door swung open and she turned to greet the students pushing their way into her classroom. But she never said never.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The lecture hall had enough seats to accommodate nearly one hundred students, but it wasn’t long before every spot in the empty room was brimming with the idle chatter that radiated from a chorus of several dozen voices. Andie smiled as she watched her students fill the rows past her chair, handing out hellos and high-fives here and there as they flocked past. A full classroom was a good classroom, and the recent term break seemed to have done everyone some good. Cody Matthews looked especially tan in the fluorescent lights, his sun-kissed bronze skin an interesting contrast to the shiny violet streaks in Fiona Reagan’s otherwise jet-black hair. Morgan Ryder’s softball injury looked like it was healing nicely, judging by the way she was pelting the back of Nick Murphy’s head with paperclips as he tried—unsuccessfully—to woo her sorority sister, the shy yet resourceful Hilary Nguyen. Nick might have better luck if he stopped wearing an endless parade of chauvinistic t-shirts. Today’s selection proclaimed that he was a proud member of the Female Body Inspection club. Cute. Apparently, that joke never got old and the boys of Phi Kappa Whatever were bent on keeping the tradition of groan-worthy t-shirts alive.

  It made Andie’s heart happy to see their faces; besides she had a debt to repay them—and she’d been looking forward to it all break.

  Andie did a quick scan over the classroom. No absences. She let her eyes move through the crowd of students and up to the dark corner of the risers. Luckily, no one had noticed Guy, who had slipped back to his spot in the far corner and lowered his sunglasses firmly back into place. The rich, expressive face that had just lingered millimeters before hers only seconds before was now a canvas wiped entirely blank of emotion. But when he caught her looking up at him, he changed—came back to life, it seemed. One corner of his mouth twitched just as a little in the tiniest smile Andie had ever seen. She tore her eyes away from him, lest she get flustered again and accidentally give away his secret. If the kids bouncing around getting settled in saw him, it would be pure and absolute chaos. She’d been to a comic convention once. It was mayhem.

  From vampires to fairy tales, if the past few minutes were any indicator, Guy Wilder was going to give Andie a run for her money. For a woman who had spent her life planning her every move like a carefully executed game of Battleship, this morning’s events had been a plot twist Andie never would have seen coming. Of course, he could tip his head at her when class was over and walk straight out of her classroom just as easily as he had walked in and she’d never see him again, save for television and the covers of glossy magazines. That was the most likely—the most realistic—outcome. There was no sense in getting all caught up in daydreams.

  The reality of it all struck a note of instant regret in Andie. It seemed suddenly like it would be a terrible thing never to have Guy Wilder’s chiseled face and heart-stopping blue eyes looking directly at her again. It would be an even more tragic loss to think she could have gone for broke and kissed that handsome mouth—even if it were a tease that might have ended in a case of sexual assault. It wasn’t like she had leaned in to him, babbling about French wine and love spells. Besides, who would blame her for planting one on Silas Dove when she’d basically been handed the chance? Two could play at that game, and Andie was a go-for-broke kind of girl.

  The second bell sounded, abruptly announcing that class was now in session. All chatter came to a sudden halt as the attention turned to her. All right, Foxglove, Andie muttered under her breath as she clipped her microphone to her blazer and walked onto the lecturer’s platform and into the proverbial spotlight. It’s show time.

  ***

  Andie’s eyes didn’t return to the man in the corner as she addressed the crowd of anxious students facing her. Her thoughts centered on one thing and one thing only: getting them back for a delightful birthday prank they’d sprung on her right before the break. From the apprehensive looks on their faces, it seemed they were waiting for her to say something about it, too
. Somehow, the lot of them had managed to sneak into her room after hours, and those devious little devils had transformed the boring classroom into a birthday surprise fit for a grade schooler, replete with Mylar balloons and crepe paper. Andie was grateful she had a lecture hall to herself. Most of the lecture halls were divvied up and shared by a group of professors, but Andie had wanted her classroom to feel like home—both for herself and for her students. She had made it her mission, once she’d arrived at the university, to commandeer her own room from the abandoned bank of rooms in the outdated English wing that had been more or less forgotten in the wake of its shiny new replacement. Out with the old, in with the new. The campus had been so busy building new wings, that these forgotten halls had gone largely unused in all the rearranging. No one seemed to want them, so Andie had won out and managed to secure her own. It didn’t have all the latest and greatest of gadgetry in the campus, but it had chairs and a whiteboard and it was enough. And, her efforts had paid off. Sometimes these four walls felt more like home than her loft apartment off campus. She certainly seemed to spend more time here these days.

  Stepping onto the platform, Andie let the quiet in her classroom hang in the air as she walked to her desk in the center of the stage. She’d pulled down the projector screen, creating the perfect set up with which to give her performance. Earlier in the day, she had rehearsed it half a dozen times, making sure to get every detail down perfectly. It was super important to Andie that her delivery went off without a hitch—not only because it was important (which it was), but because she knew the effort the kids had gone through for her birthday surprise and she wanted to repay them properly. Tit for tat, or something like that.