Heat Up the Fall: New Adult Boxed Set (6 Book Bundle)

by Gennifer Albin

  “Let me take you home,” Liam suggested in a soft voice.

  I shook my head and pulled out of his arms. “I’m okay. It’s not that far. Go back to your friends. I was just upset.”

  “I won’t call you hen anymore,” he promised.

  It was such a little thing, but it made me want to cry more. It felt like forever since someone had listened to one simple request of mine. Jess, my mom—they were all too busy telling me what to do or treating me like I was still a little kid.

  “Do they really call girls hens in Scotland?” I asked him.

  His mouth crept into a grin. “Only the cute ones.”

  “So I’m cute then?” I bet I looked hot right now with my blotchy eyes and red nose.

  Liam laughed and turned back toward the bar, but before I could start heading home, he called out to me. “No, Jillian. You’re beautiful.”

  Chapter Five

  The following Thursday found me perched nervously in Professor Markson’s class. Somehow I had been so freaked out that I’d wound up getting there five minutes early. I hadn’t been early to a single moment in my life so far. I checked my notebook. Opened it. Closed it. Clicked my pen. My iPhone vibrated, and I pulled it out of my bag.

  JESS: GOOD LUCK ;)

  I wasn’t sure how she had convinced me to come back, and I wasn’t about to admit to her that Liam’s concern the other night at Garrett’s did more to make the decision for me than her lecture. Letting Jess know that would have been akin to showing her my entire hand at poker. She would know she won. It was safer to keep bluffing.

  "Hey, Ch-Jillian," Liam corrected himself as he dropped his messenger bag on the floor between us. He looked tired, like he had been out all night.

  That wouldn’t be a surprise. Yesterday was the first Wednesday night out that I had skipped in two years at Olympic State, except for when I had the flu or my period. If I had to get serious about my grades to keep my parents footing my tuition bill, I was going to have to slow down.

  "Out late?" I asked him.

  "We went to Garrett’s. I thought I might see you there."

  I almost asked him who "we" was. It was probably the guys I’d seen him with on Tuesday night. "I’m trying to party less."

  "I didn’t get the impression that you were the party less type." Liam pulled out his MacBook, flipping it open.

  "I am not giving it up," I told him. There was no chance of that, but I figured if I went out every other week, my grades were sure to improve. It was simple math. Fifty percent less partying, fifty percent improvement in my GPA. Of course, I hated math, so it might be a flawed equation.

  Markson strode into the room and grabbed a piece of chalk. I winced as it squeaked across the chalkboard. He stepped back and revealed today’s topic: Getting to Know You. Markson tugged on his vest and cleared his throat over the buzz of a dozen conversations.

  "I’m glad to see we haven’t lost anyone yet," he said, and his gaze landed on me.

  I kept my face impassive. He better watch it. It was still early enough to pull out of this class.

  "Today you’ll be doing one of your most important interpersonal activities with your partner. You’re going to get to know them. I want each of you to find out ten things about your partner," he instructed.

  That sounded easy enough. I was certain I already knew ten things about Liam. He makes waffles. He could be totally obnoxious. I doubted Markson wanted a length estimate. Though, I could provide that too.

  "But there are rules!" Markson called out. Several partners had already started chatting quietly. "Listen up. You may not tell me anything about clothes. I don’t care how phat their pants are."

  There was a collective groan at his use of "phat."

  "Do you guys say wicked?" he asked.

  "Sick!" someone yelled from the back of the room.

  "Okay, I don’t care how sick their pants are. You may also not give me a rundown of their class schedule. I want you to get to know them. By the end of this class, you should feel like you’ve been on a really great first date."

  I frowned. The last thing I wanted was to feel like I had been on a date with Liam.

  "Write it down on a sheet of paper. I can’t wait to learn all sorts of interesting and terrifying things about each of you."

  Liam scooted his desk so that he faced me as I tore out a sheet from my notebook. He was humming something under his breath. The melody sounded vaguely familiar.

  "What is that?" I asked him.

  "It’s ‘Getting to Know You’ from The King and I—the musical." He said it without a hint of embarrassment. Further proof that he wasn’t your typical American male.

  "Okay, Liam likes musicals," I said as I scrawled it on the paper. One down, nine to go.

  “You sounded a little judgmental, Jillian.”

  A cough interrupted us. Markson was watching us and he mouthed, “I statements.”

  “Sorry,” Liam said. “I feel like you’re judging me.”

  “I’m just getting to know you,” I reminded him. “Do you like musicals?”

  “I do,” he admitted, folding his hands behind his head, revealing his rather impressive biceps and triceps and several smaller, but well-defined “ceps” of some sort. “I have five sisters.”

  “You have five sisters?” I repeated in disbelief.

  “And I’m not gay.”

  I rolled my eyes. I knew that much about him. I jotted down the bit about five sisters.

  “What about you? Brothers? Sisters?” Liam had his own pen poised to take notes.

  I shook my head. “Just me. My parents decided it was better to break the mold, which was a benefit to all humanity.”

  “Well, now I know you’re self-deprecating.” Thankfully, he didn’t write that down.

  “I don’t really get along with my mom,” I said. “You heard us on the phone the other day.”

  “I can’t imagine not having my sisters,” Liam said in a thoughtful voice. His words were sad and distant, as though he was stuck halfway between here and Scotland.

  “You miss them,” I said.

  “I do. They taught me everything I know about women and waffles.”

  “I suppose I owe them a note or something.” I wrote Liam makes good waffles on my paper alongside five sisters.

  “A thank-you note?” Liam wiggled his eyebrows.

  Or a reprimand. “Something like that.”

  “It feels like cheating to put down that you’re from Scotland, because I already knew that,” I said, reading over my notes. So far I had discovered two new things about Liam.

  “I only have one thing about you,” he pointed out. “What’s your major?”

  I supposed that didn’t fall into the no-course-schedule rule, but I dreaded answering the question. It was one thing to admit to being undeclared when I was a freshman, but the weird, pitying looks had started last year.

  “I don’t have one yet. I’m still deciding.”

  Liam didn’t even blink as he wrote it on his sheet. “Okay, so you’re undeclared.”

  “I have one,” I said, thinking of the guys he was with the other night. “Where do you live? I mean, do you go home to Scotland for breaks?”

  “Can’t afford it. I saved up for two years so that I could study over here. One of the biology professors is sponsoring me. He has a son in the Alpha Lambda fraternity,” he told me as I scribbled several things on my paper.

  That explained the guys he was with. “So you came here specifically to study?”

  “I’m going into oceanography,” he said. “I volunteer at the aquarium, so I can get acquainted with the local aquatic life.”

  “The one on Pine Street?” It was only a few blocks down from Garrett’s, which explained why I kept running into him there.

  “That’s the one,” he said. Liam leaned forward in his chair and turned the full force of his blue eyes on me. “Are you going to visit me?”

  My breath hitched in my throat, but I shook my head. �
��Not really my thing.”

  “But you’re undeclared, maybe it would inspire you.”

  “I love the ocean,” I admitted, “but swimming in it terrifies me.”

  “Yeah, you can’t be scared of the ocean as an oceanographer.”

  “Do you dive?” I asked him. I had seen guys in wet suits at the local beach. I thought they looked crazy, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Liam in a wet suit.

  “Yeah, you want to come with me?”

  “Not a swimmer, remember?”

  “I won’t let you drown.” His words were thick. Possibly because of his accent, but maybe because he was staring at me so intensely.

  “Okay.” I focused on my paper. “So you’re a budding oceanographer with five sisters who makes waffles and lives with a professor.” I wasn’t too bad at this assignment, and I’d managed to mostly avoid flirting with him so far.

  “And you’re an undeclared major with no siblings. That’s not enough. I need to know more about you,” he said as he tapped his pen on his paper.

  I don’t think I was imagining how he emphasized the word need.

  “I live with my best friend, Jess. You met her,” I said.

  “When did you meet her?” he asked.

  “We were assigned as roommates freshman year when I lived in the dorms.”

  “Good. That’s three things. Who was the other girl you were with at Garrett’s?” he asked.

  “Cassie. She lived across the hall. She’s actually still in the dorms. Her scholarship covers her living expenses.” Cassie was ridiculously smart, which most people didn’t realize given her sailor-in-training vocabulary. But I wouldn’t trade places with her if it meant I had to keep living in the dorms.

  “Favorite food?” He was reaching for things now.

  “Tacos,” I said. “Although it’s impossible to get good Mexican food here. It’s easier in California.”

  Liam looked fascinated by this information. Almost as if he was hanging off my every word. Maybe this assignment was more dangerous than I thought. Now he could build up an image of me to go with the night we spent together. I needed a way to remind him that I was only interested in being friends or class partners. But his next question surprised me.

  “Have you been to Disneyland?”

  I blinked and laughed a little by his boyish interest. “Of course. It was my parents go-to vacation idea.”

  “I’m so jealous.” Liam smacked the table with his hand. “I’ve always wanted to go to Disneyland.”

  I grinned and wrote this down. “It’s not that great. Bad animatronics and old rides. Disneyworld is much cooler.”

  “Stop,” he said, holding a hand up. “We don’t have anything like that in Scotland. I keep hoping I’ll get a chance to go while I’m here.”

  “Maybe you can come home with me for a break.” The suggestion was out of my mouth before I could swallow it back. Had I just invited him to my house? Was I trying to encourage him?

  Liam gave me a wicked smile. “Maybe I will.”

  The memory of our bodies pressed together, sweaty and naked, flashed through my mind, and I tried to shake it out. I wasn’t about to wind up back in bed with him. The suggestion was a polite invitation. I didn’t have to follow through on it.

  In the front of the room, Markson called the class to attention, asking us to leave our papers for his perusal over the weekend. I looked over to see if Liam had been able to get all ten things about me. To my surprise, the sheet was full. I didn’t feel like I had told him that much. My own paper was missing one thing, so I scrawled one final thing I knew about him on the bottom of the page.

  Markson stood by the door, collecting our papers, but he paused when I handed him mine.

  “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you the other day. I’m glad you came back.” Up close he was younger than I thought. His closely cropped hair and preppy clothes hid his real age. He probably wasn’t even a real professor, but one of the grad students who taught the more generalized courses for the department. I even thought I spotted a tattoo creeping out of his button-down shirt.

  “No big deal,” I said with a shrug. Even though it was a really big deal to me. But if he had the balls to apologize, then he probably would back off for the rest of the course. If not, I could always get my revenge when we filled out feedback forms during finals.

  Liam followed me out the door, walking closely by my side as we excited Taylor Hall. I tried to shake him, but he seemed content to tail me.

  “Listen, Jillian, do you want to grab coffee?” he asked me in a hopeful voice, adding, “As friends?”

  I wanted to tell him no, but instead a “maybe” slipped out.

  “Maybe next week?” he suggested. “I wouldn’t mind knowing more than ten things about you.”

  Before I could react, he grabbed my iPhone from me and tapped in a number.

  “Sure,” I said, adding another “maybe” to the end of it.

  “I hope I see you out this weekend.” Liam slung his bag over his shoulder as his lips curved into a pleased grin.

  Thanks to this class, he officially knew more about me than any guy I’d known since high school. I slid the lock on my phone and went to delete his number, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it when I saw it listed under Waffle-maker.

  Chapter Six

  It only took one more well-meaning phone call from Tara to send me spiraling into despair. She must have known that calling on Friday would effectively ruin my weekend, but I was determined not to let her get me down. It took a considerable amount of coaxing, but I managed to convince Cassie and Jess to go out. As I sat across from them and their boyfriends, I wondered if it was really worth it.

  Trevor, who had an obsessive need for our approval, was buying all our drinks, so it wasn’t all that bad. At least he actually tried to talk to us, unlike Brett who sat like a sad statue next to Jess.

  Garrett’s had decided to make the bar into a more club-like atmosphere on the weekends, so the place was packed. They’d also introduced two burly bouncers, which were totally unnecessary in Olympic Falls, population 9,200.

  A waitress popped by our table. “Can I get you another round?”

  “Yes, you can.” Trevor flashed her a Cheshire cat smile, and Cassie snuggled into him, giving him a peck on the cheek. Trevor liked to show off his money as much as possible, and Cassie didn’t seem to mind. Of course, I couldn’t help but notice how his gaze followed the waitress’s ass as she headed toward the bar.

  The music pulsed into something electronic, which was very un-Garrett’s, but the crowd didn’t seem to mind. Jess leaned over to Brett, but he shook his head, so she grabbed my hand. We pushed our way onto the dance floor and started shaking with the beat. Dancing with Jess was always a laugh, because she totally let loose. For a minute, as I watched her fling her blonde hair wildly, I remembered the carefree girl I’d been assigned to live with my first year at Olympic State. Now that she was serious about her MCATs and getting into the right med school, she’d chilled considerably. It was nice to see her having some fun.

  Cassie joined us, and we all pressed close together, waving our hands over our heads. It didn’t take long for Trevor to sneak in, which attracted a few more guys to our party. Apparently Trevor’s presence was like a homing beacon for horny dudes. One of them grinded against me as I scanned the crowd, but I didn’t recognize anyone. I barely noticed how the guy’s hands were creeping up my stomach until Jess pulled me closer to her and out of his grasp. I mouthed a thank you. The danger of the new Garrett’s was that I was too comfortable here, which meant I wound up not realizing that I was falling victim to loose change. We’d coined the term our freshman year for the sleazy types who acted like they were in the opening scenes of some bad porno flick.

  Jess put her arms around my waist and danced close to me, preventing any guys from getting too close to us, although more than a few stopped to admire the spectacle. They all looked like jerks, and I couldn’t help but think that it was sad th
at two girls dancing together was such an asshole magnet.

  The music changed to something slower and we turned into one another and pretended to waltz. This was what I missed, being silly with my best friends. Cassie was tangled up with Trevor, her eyes glued to his as his hands groped down her back. Jess made a gagging face, but then her eyes swept over to Brett. I pushed her toward him.

  “No,” she called over the loud music.

  “It’s cool. I need to go to the bathroom.”

  Jess looked torn, but she headed back to Brett. I watched as she looped her arms around his neck, and a wave of jealousy rolled through me. I couldn’t help but feel like the fifth wheel with the guys around.

  In the bathroom, a freshman was puking in the toilet, and I stopped to pull her hair back.

  “Thanks,” she moaned before she retched again.

  It was the unwritten rule of Garrett’s that you held hair for girls in the bathroom. Cassie, Jess and I had all done our time over the toilet here, and there was nothing worse than being sick alone on the dirty bar floor.

  But suddenly the whole atmosphere felt less than glamourous. Once I was sure she was okay, if a bit gutted, I headed back to our table. A mess of blonde hair caught my attention, and I slowed down, but when the guy turned around, I didn’t recognize him and my heart sank. Was I actually looking for Liam? Had I gotten that pathetic? I wiggled through the crowd. Brett and Jess had progressed to a full-blown make-out session, and Cassie was nowhere to be seen. Jess broke away as soon as I plopped down on the stool.

  “Cass headed home with Trevor,” she told me.

  I spotted Brett’s hand rubbing her thigh.

  “I think I’m going to head home too," I said, giving her the out to go home with Brett and have boring, quiet sex. At least, someone would get laid tonight.

  “It’s early though.” There was hesitation in her voice, and I knew she was only sticking around for me.

  “I’m tired,” I lied. I was wide awake, but a night watching Netflix was sounding better and better. It was that or staying here to watch Jess and Brett’s foreplay. I grabbed my wallet and pecked Jess on the cheek.