Wyatt lay on a blanket in the Memorial Union Quad, Annie curled at his side, her head resting on her backpack. She was close enough to set him on fire with desire, but not close enough to kiss. Oh, yeah. Wyatt released his frustration in a long, slow breath directed at the high clouds that scudded by.
That was Annie for you.
It was a beautiful spring day. Here in Prosperino, the college campus by the sea was a riot of color and the fragrant aroma of a landscape in bloom. A perfect day for lovers. For kissing. For ducking off into the bushes for a little “hot and bothered.”
Wyatt stripped off his T-shirt to better work on his tan. He glanced at Annie. She was studying her biology.
For crying out loud, didn’t she ever give it a rest? He had some biology he’d like to show her. He flexed a biceps and watched her from his peripheral vision to see if she noticed. She didn’t. He flopped over onto his back.
Annie was a nice girl. The type of girl a guy brought home to mother. Even the kind of kooky, hormone-ravaged woman his foster mother, Meredith, had been lately.
Yep. Annie Summers was the kind of girl a guy married.
The renegade thought shocked him and he nearly choked on his gum. Married? Where had that come from?
The pink tip of her tongue protruded from her mouth as she scrunched her brow and highlighted endless paragraphs of proton/neutron-type information. He groaned, low in his throat. She was driving him batty.
Overhead, seagulls wheeled and cried, begging the students for leftover crumbs from lunch. Annie was such a sucker for the noisy critters. She called them “baby” and “honey” and enticed them with bits of her sandwich. She didn’t even do that for him, he thought grumpily.
He called the stupid, noisy birds “air-rats” and shooed them off. They reminded them too much of himself as a boy he guessed. Always begging for food.
He fired a pebble at one now, and without looking, Annie reached up and smacked his hand. He chuckled. She was so cool.
They’d been dating for nearly a month now, and it had been the slowest, most torturous month of his life. Courting this woman took finesse. Savoir-faire. A patience born of wisdom and maturity.
A veritable sainthood.
Hell, he’d be a monk by the time she got done with him. So far, she’d given up three dinky little good-night kisses and some hand-holding at the midnight movie. He’d relived every moment of these whisper kisses a million times after each successful union of their lips. But always, she’d push him away, shyly claiming that she needed time.
Time? Time for what? he wanted to know.
Normally, he’d have moved on to greener pastures by now, but this was Annie.
Annie was different.
Annie was his soulmate. He’d known that from the moment his lips had touched hers back there on Valentine’s Day and a clap of thunder had gone off in his head that left him deaf to any kind of rhyme or reason when it came to one flame-haired, fiery-tempered, good-humored, overly studious Annie Summers.
“Hey.” He reached over and tugged a strand of her wild red mop away from her cheek.
“Mmm?” Her highlighter squeaked as she found a particularly interesting section in her text.
“Want to go to a party on my dorm floor tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Really?” Annie wanted to party tonight? During dead week? Had a Frosty Freeze opened in hell?
“Yeah. I could use a study break.”
Wisely, Wyatt bit back the sound of impatience he’d been on the verge of snorting.
Study break?
This would be no milk and cookies study break. This was to be a kegger of mass proportion. An out-and-out rock-n-roll, get-down-and-funky brawl. He couldn’t wait. Right now his roommate and a couple other guys who were freshly twenty-one were out scoring the beer and other accoutrements. He could fairly hear the electric guitars tuning up from here. By ten o’clock that night, people would be swinging from the chandeliers. He just hoped Annie would loosen up for once and enjoy herself.
No such luck.
By ten that night, Annie was angrily shrugging into her slightly beer-stained jacket and marching out the door and back to her room. Wyatt, whipped puppy that he envisioned himself to be these days, followed, bellowing her name like a lovesick bull.
“Annie!”
“Shut up,” she barked.
She jerked her arm out of his grasp when he finally did catch her out on the sidewalk. The moon was full—which no doubt accounted for at least some of the insanity up on his dorm floor—and he could clearly see the disgust etched into her flawless brow.
“But wait. I can explain. I had no idea, really, that it was going to be such a big, well, riot, actually—”
“Bull.”
“No, really, I’m not lying. I knew it’d be wild, but not that bad. Especially that guy with the can of Crisco. He was kidding, I think. Anyway, I’m sorry. Forgive me?”
She slowed slightly. He was breathless. Man. When the woman was mad, she could move. They reached the end of the street that fronted his dorm and Annie turned down a main drag that led to the library.
No doubt she had some studying to do, he thought sourly. The street lamps shone through the trees and cast eerie patterns on the pavement. Now and then a Thursday night reveler or two would pass. Staggering, slurring, singing and generally firing Annie up even more. He grinned, imagining that her face was nearly as hot as her hair.
As her body.
Oh, man, she had to forgive him.
Out of energy reserves, he grabbed her arm, and when she tried to jerk away, he didn’t let go.
“Annie.” He was breathing heavy now, from the exertion or from the effect her anger had on his libido, he couldn’t tell. “Annie, please, honey, I’m sorry.”
Annie sighed. “I can’t believe you like hanging out with those…those…” She groped for the perfect word, meant to scathe. To blister. To singe.
“Animals?” he supplied helpfully.
“Yes!” she exploded, sending the word into the next zip code. “They were horrible!” She gave her arms a frenetic waving. “All gropy and dopey and—”
“Freaky and geeky?” He pulled her off the beaten trail and into a small grove of trees at the side of the library. “Goofy and doofy?” Steering her against a tree, he leaned across her body, balancing against a smooth trunk with his palm. Looking into her eyes, he arched a brow and grinned. “Dancy and fancy?”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“Why not?”
“I’m mad and I want to stay that way.”
“What if I don’t want you to?”
“Tough noogies,” she said petulantly.
He brought his lips to hers and rubbed them lightly across. “Don’t be mad,” he whispered into her mouth. Her breath was sweet. Minty and warm and fresh and…Annie.
“I can’t help it. I want you to respect me. Not treat me like some kind of brain-dead, sex-crazed party animal.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, raining kisses in a line along her jaw until he reached that little place behind her ear where she’d dabbed something musky. “I’ll never treat you like a sex-crazed animal again,” he murmured, reclaiming her mouth and speaking against her lips, her nose, her chin.
“Promise?” she breathed.
He noted that her