Out of Her League (4 page)

She strongly suspected the manners thing
was true, and felt triumphant that she’d figured something out about Lachlan. Too
bad it didn’t explain why he couldn’t speak the rest of the time.

When they drew up in front of Michaela’s building,
Mike appeared at the door. He immediately made eye contact with Michaela,
eyebrows raised. She smiled, both to reassure him she was fine, but also
because she really, really appreciated how protective he was of her. He’d
become something of a pit bull since a photographer had been caught trying to
“deliver flowers” to her neighbors.

“Thank you for the walk,” she said to
Lachlan.

As always, he appeared a little alarmed
when she looked directly at him, but he nodded.

Michaela decided to push her luck. “I hope
we can do it again.”

His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“We don’t have to talk,” she added quickly.
“Just—it’s nice to have company, you know? I don’t…”
What? Get out much?
Have any friends? Trust that I can hang out with people I don’t know because
I’ll constantly be wondering if they’ve been watching me have sex?

Crap. What if Lachlan had seen it? Maybe
that’s why he couldn’t speak to her, because he—

Frowned down at her. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Two o’clock tomorrow?”

“Sure,” she said, her head spinning.

*****

The next day, Mike greeted Michaela the
moment she stepped out of the elevator. “You’ve got a visitor.”

She looked around the lobby. “Where is he?”

“He wouldn’t come in. I thought you’d be
okay if he did, since you were with him yesterday, but he said he’d wait on the
street.”

Michaela smiled. “He’s shy.”

“Really? Didn’t seem like it to me,” Mike
commented, then held the door open for her, his smile falling away to give
Lachlan a stern look.

Michaela wanted to roll her eyes and hug
Mike at the same time. Instead, she introduced the men to each other, amused to
see how they sized each other up. Both were in their uniforms—Mike’s a dark suit
with a subtle nametag, Lachlan’s an Oxford cloth shirt, khakis, and a pair of worn
Oxfords on his feet.

She considered cracking a joke about
Lachlan’s academic taste in clothing, but decided she’d rather stay silent now and
hold out some hope that he would be able to speak to her this afternoon.

They started out towards the Square, a
healthy gap between them, and were soon stepping into Starbucks again. Michaela
wondered if coffee was to become part of their walking ritual. That is, if she
could convince Lachlan to do this again. Given his absolute silence and how he
looked everywhere but at her most of the time, she wasn’t going to hold her
breath.

Once they had their coffees, they turned as
if to follow their path from the day before, but then Michaela saw the bright
yellow shop on the corner.

“Can we duck in here?” she asked.

Lachlan frowned, but only shrugged and
followed her into the Curious George store.

He looked hilariously out of place in his
spot in the corner, stoically watching while Michaela looked around. The
manager of the store did a terrible job of surreptitiously taking her picture,
and the sales clerk practically fell over herself to greet Michaela. Then she
kept reaching out to touch Michaela’s arm and elbow, under the guise of helping
her with her selection.

It was nothing new, so Michaela put up with
it all, more interested in how Lachlan’s expression got increasingly puzzled
with each glancing touch or photograph. He clearly had no idea what to make of
it.

Finally, Michaela decided on a few things
for Callum and Rupert’s son, Oliver, and went to the register. Lachlan came to
stand at her side, silently glaring at the manager and her phone until she
dropped her hand and turned back to her work.

 Michaela hid her smile, politely keeping
her attention on the clerk in front of her. As soon as they left the shop,
though, she grinned, pleased with her purchases and tickled by Lachlan’s protective
behavior. She should probably warn him that it was the equivalent of peeing on
a forest fire, but it had given her another glimpse into who he really was, beneath
his stony exterior, and she found she was hungry for more hints.

They walked slowly through the Square, then
farther onto the quieter streets.

“How do you stand it?” Lachlan asked, out
of the clear blue nowhere.

Michaela almost tripped, she was so
surprised to hear his voice. “Stand what?”

“All those people looking at you. Taking
pictures.”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m just used to
it.”

He looked over at her, and, for the first
time ever, caught her gaze directly and held it. “No, you’re not.”

Michaela arched one eyebrow. “What makes
you say that?”

“I can tell you see them—you look around a
lot more than most people do. Especially New Englanders. But like a New
Englander, you don’t make eye contact with anyone.”

She sighed. “I hope it’s not obvious. I’m
not trying to be rude.”

“Oh, no, you’re not.” Lachlan’s cheeks
turned a dull red. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay. I didn’t think that’s what you
meant. And you’re right.” She frowned down at her coffee cup. “I
should
be used to it, but I don’t think I ever will be. It’s not as bad as it used to
be, right after—well, there was a time I couldn’t go out without worrying
someone would feel the need to condemn me to hell, loudly, in front of a large audience.
I guess it’s made me a little wary.”

Lachlan actually
laughed
. Which
seemed kind of rude, and would have pissed her off, except the sound was so
new, so
rich
, it actually made her shiver. She’d never tell Callum, but
Lachlan was the
way
better looking brother when he was like this.

“
A little wary
?” Lachlan repeated
incredulously. “I’d have become a shut-in.”

She didn’t think before she said, “I
thought you
were
a shut-in.”

For the space of a second, Lachlan stared
at her and Michaela cursed her big mouth. Then he grinned, his expression pleased
and exasperated all at once. “Callum is an idiot. He’s always on my ass about
getting out more, like I’m locked in my house all day, reading philosophical
treatises and yelling at kids to get off my lawn.”

Michaela was almost delirious with the
sound of his voice. Whole sentences, strung together in a row without a
stutter, even. “That’s pretty much what he had me expecting,” she admitted.

“Idiot,” he muttered, but it sounded
affectionate, and was said with a warm smile still hovering on his face as he
turned to look ahead of them.

“I considered it, you know,” she said,
apparently having adopted Lachlan’s talent for non-sequiturs.

“What’s that?”

“Being a shut-in. Not going out ever.”

“Really? You don’t seem like you’d enjoy that,”
he said, his deep voice serious again.

“Yeah, but…” She tried to figure out a good
way to explain the enormity of it. There was no graceful way, so she just went
with the bald truth. “Every time someone looks at me, recognizes me—whether
it’s one of my professors, my neighbors, strangers, a priest, a shop clerk—I
wonder if they’ve watched me having sex.”

Lachlan came to an abrupt halt. “Jesus
fucking Christ.”

“Yeah, him too.”

The walks became a thing. They weren’t
every day, some were longer than others, and the routes shifted with each
outing, but they were consistent in one significant way: Lachlan made less and
less of an ass of himself. Sometimes, he even spoke in complete sentences.

He was quite proud of this accomplishment.

This morning they’d already spent almost
two hours together, mostly silent, but comfortable now with his awkwardness. They’d
started to gravitate closer to each other, too, often brushing arms or bumping
hips. It still made him nervous, but not like before. And under that
nervousness was something else. Something he wasn’t ready to think about.

Today Lachlan had suggested they visit the
Harvard Museum of Natural History, in light of the rain outside, and because it
was a strange and wonderful place filled with taxidermy and dinosaur bones and intricately
crafted glass flowers.

He didn’t really think about it before
going into tour guide mode, blathering on about the anecdotes and unusual
history he’d learned over the years, even going so far as to confess he’d spent
many hours wandering the halls of the museum when he needed to think.

Michaela didn’t laugh at him. Mostly she even
seemed interested. And very kindly did not ask a lot of questions, allowing Lachlan
to get through the entire time without stuttering or clamming up once.

Maybe that was why, as they perused the
geological samples, he decided now was the perfect time to stick his foot in
his mouth.

“Why are you hanging out with me?”

Michaela blinked up at him. “Pardon?”

Lachlan grimaced. “I mean, you must have a
lot of friends. People to spend time with. Why are you here with me?”

Rather than answer, Michaela started wandering
through the display cases again, her lips pursed. Lachlan couldn’t tell if she
was thinking, or annoyed, or what.

Social cues: Not his thing.

“I don’t have any friends here.” She spoke
quietly, for his ears only, but still he wasn’t certain he’d heard her
correctly.

“You don’t have friends?”

“Not here,” she agreed with nod. “Back in
New York I have some. My cousins. Brothers. But not up here.”

“Why not?” he asked, knowing full well he
was skirting the line between interested and fucking rude.

She shrugged. “Remember that problem I had
about wondering what people are picturing when they look at me?”

Lachlan nodded—he’d thought about that a
lot, actually. He couldn’t fathom bearing up under that kind of scrutiny. Let
alone with the constant, unfailing grace she wore like a cloak.

“I haven’t made a lot of new friends since
it happened,” she said. “Only two, in fact, who I trust completely.”

“Callum?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes. He was the one exception,
until recently.”

“Until recently?”

“Well, I thought I had another exception,”
she said, smiling up at him.

“Oh. Oh, well, that. I—you mean—” Lachlan
closed his mouth and took a deep breath through his nose. After several
attempts, he managed a slightly strangled, “Yes.”

Her smile could light up the entire damn
city.

Lachlan promptly lost the ability to speak
coherently, probably for the next hour. At least. Michaela seemed to understand
and left him to gaze blankly into a glass case of not-at-all-interesting rocks for
a few minutes.

After a while, Michaela drifted closer to
him again. He caught her studying his profile, like she was checking for
something there. Whatever it was, she must not have found it, since she ambled
back down the aisle, apparently content to continue examining the massive
collection without his tour guide assistance.

Then she came back again, this time
catching his eye deliberately. “You done or do you need more time?”

He stared at her stupidly.

“Okay, more time it is,” she said easily, smiling
as she wandered over to a massive amethyst geode.

Did she just bust my chops?
The laughter dancing in her eyes said yes. Lachlan couldn’t
understand why this, of all things, made something loosen inside of him. Maybe
it was because in all the years he’d been humiliating himself in public, she
was the first person to ever call him on it like this. Tease him about it,
even. And somehow manage to do it kindly.

She caught his gaze and arched one eyebrow,
daring him to say anything. And really, what was his defense going to be here?

His own lips twitched and her smile turned
into a full-on toothy grin, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. His
heart did something funny in his chest, but somehow he managed to retain
control.

“You’re something else,” he said with a hoarse
chuckle.

She snorted. “Then I guess we make a pair.”

Michaela slid into her seat at the back of
her Business Law class, nodding and smiling faintly at the people around her,
most of whom had settled regularly into these same seats over the course of
their first two weeks.

Three of her classmates had their heads
together and kept casting her looks. She recognized them from several of her
classes, but she’d never introduced herself to them. Or to anyone, for that
matter.

They glanced over at her again. Michaela sat
a little straighter, her shoulders tight.

Please please please don’t let this be
weird.

The professor called the class to order and
everyone faced front. If anyone sent any more looks her way, she was stoutly
unaware of them, her focus absolute on the lecture. Or, at least, she was doing
her damndest to give that appearance. These were probably some of the worst
notes she’d ever taken, which sucked since she’d come to class desperate to
hear what the sadistic bastard was going to say to help her make sense of the
reams and reams of reading he’d assigned.

She was distracted enough that the end of
the lecture snuck up on her. She quickly shoved her things back into her bag, keeping
her head down, but saw the moment her three classmates stopped in front of her
desk.

She looked up reluctantly.

“Hi,” said the woman. She had short, dark
hair in a pixie cut that suited her face and features really well. Her smile
was wide and earnest, her gaze direct as she stood flanked by the two men. “I’m
Sadie.”

“Hi, Sadie,” Michaela said automatically,
“I’m Michaela.”

One of the guys—who looked like he shopped
exclusively at his country club, a type Michaela knew too well—snorted, but
Sadie’s elbow in his ribs cut him short.

“
What?
” he asked, rubbing his seafoam
green polo over the spot Sadie had nailed.

Sadie rolled her eyes. “This is Tanner.
He’s an asshole, but we forgive him because he takes exceptional class notes.”

“Gee, thanks,” Tanner said dryly, then
offered Michaela a polite smile and nod. “Nice to meet you.”

“And this is Eric,” Sadie continued,
pointing to her other side.

Eric nodded and smiled weakly, making eye
contact for a second before looking back down at Michaela’s desk. Unlike
Lachlan, Eric was the kind of shy Michaela had seen countless times before and
understood. He was wearing beat-up jeans and a black t-shirt, his backpack over
one shoulder proudly bedecked with a rainbow flag and a NoH8 button.

“Nice to meet you, Eric,” Michaela said
with a smile.

Eric nodded again, faster, flashing her
another quick smile, his cheeks turning pink. He was kind of adorable.

She looked at Sadie. “What can I help you
with?” she asked, hoping her lingering dread wasn’t apparent.

“Are you doing the Business Law program?”

“Uh, yes?” Michaela answered, not sure if
being honest was wise. Then again, given the number of classes they all shared,
it wasn’t like they couldn’t figure it out. Still, her stomach tightened, her
nerves climbing. She didn’t like the way Tanner was watching her through
narrowed eyes, as if expecting her to do or say something wrong.

Sadie, though, smiled even more widely. “Great.
Then we were wondering if you have a study group.”

Michaela blinked. Because—
what
? “What?”

“A study group.” Sadie gestured at the last
of their departing classmates. “Most of the rest of the class has split up into
groups, and the three of us were talking about doing the same, but we could
really use a fourth. We didn’t see you talking to anyone else in class, so we
thought we’d ask.”

“Oh, I—I don’t know. I hadn’t really
thought about it. I didn’t realize…” Michaela trailed off, having run out of
things to say. She’d never once considered anyone
might
ask.

Sadie’s gaze stayed direct, waiting. Eric
continued to study the desk. But Tanner’s mouth twisted into an ugly, knowing
smirk.

“Don’t worry about it. We can find someone
else.”

“
Tanner
,” Sadie said sternly. “Cut
it out.” She turned back to Michaela. “Just think about it, okay? I mean, we
should get started soon if we’re going to do this, but if you want to get back
to us, that’s cool.”

“Uh…okay, thanks.”

Tanner rolled his eyes, then pushed his
friends along the aisle. Eric sent her a tentative goodbye wave as he was shepherded
out the door.

Michaela heard Tanner’s not entirely subtle,
“I told you that was a dumb idea,” clearly from the hallway.

And Sadie’s biting, “Shut up. She’s just
another student like us.”

Michaela couldn’t hear what Tanner said in
response, but she could certainly guess.

Lachlan was sitting in his office, thumbing
through this month’s issue of
Philosophy Now
, when his door burst open.
He dropped his magazine, stunned, as Anna dove into the room and shut the door
behind her.

She’d never once entered his office without
knocking first. No one did. And as if that weren’t strange enough, she appeared
even more nonplussed by her own behavior than Lachlan.

He carefully placed the magazine back onto
the stack waiting to be read, giving them both a moment to recuperate.

Finally, when the silence had stretched on
too long, he asked, “You all right there, Anna?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she said quickly.
“Shit, I can’t believe I just did that.”

“What exactly did you do?”

Lachlan was somewhat alarmed to see the
usually very professional and cool-headed Anna blush.

“I told Dean Chomelsky that I didn’t think
you were in your office, when I knew perfectly well that you were, then I ran
up here to warn you before he could come check.”

“Warn me of what? You know I like Dick.”

Anna clapped a hand over her mouth and
giggled helplessly.

Lachlan mouth dropped open in shock, even
if on the inside he was cringing at the unfortunate phrasing. “Anna, what is
the matter with you?”

“Oh god, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m
doing. I think it’s adrenaline. I’m never this sneaky.”

“Do you want to tell me why you’re being
sneaky now?” Lachlan asked again, his patience fraying.

“I just, I really like being your TA and
think of you as a friend, sort of, and I had to come see you before
he
got here.”

Lachlan didn’t know what he was supposed to
say to that. He liked that Anna was his TA, too. She was the best student in
the program, and she didn’t get nervous around him. At least, until now.

“Why do you think I wouldn’t want to speak
with Dr. Chomelsky?” he asked, avoiding using his boss’ first name in an
attempt to keep the conversation moving forward without more hysterical giggles.

Anna looked at what she held in her hands
and frowned. “Have you read the
Crimson Gossip
this week?”

“Uh, no? That’s not really my thing,”
Lachlan said, wondering why on earth Anna would ask if he’d been keeping up on
a blog that was universally reviled by the university’s administration. The
anonymous students who ran that website were very good at creating a fervor,
and terrible about confirming anything was actually true before they posted it.

No doubt they all had promising careers in
mainstream journalism ahead of them.

Anna held out the print-outs in her hand.
“You should see this. I’m pretty sure Dr. Chomelsky already has.”

Lachlan’s heart sank, and not just because
his dean was apparently reading shitty blogs. He took the pages and stared in bewilderment
at the half-dozen pictures of him and Michaela together, including one of them
grinning at each other in the museum the other day. All this was under the
headline:
A New Beau for Michaela Price? Go Dr. Snorrison!

Lachlan winced.
Dr. Snorrison?
Ugh. He’d
never heard that unfortunate play on his name before.

The article was what one would expect, if
one ever expected to be the subject of tabloid fodder—which Lachlan most
decidedly did not. He did, though, have a sudden and startling insight into why
Michaela had fake-dated his brother for so long.

Anna stood in front of his desk, wringing
her hands.

He smiled at her reassuringly. “Thank you
for bringing this to me. I had no idea we’d generated a stir.”

“You didn’t. Those idiots did,” she said,
gesturing at the papers with a frown. “I wish I knew who wrote that crap so I
could tell them to mind their own business.”

“Not to mention check their facts,” Lachlan
muttered.

Anna’s eyes widened. “It’s not true?”

If it was, or wasn’t, didn’t seem like
anyone’s business, but Anna had done him a favor by dashing up here, and it was
nice that she thought of him as a friend. She was still his TA, and he still
advised her on her graduate work, but he supposed they could be friends.

Friendship was a subject he’d given a great
deal of thought, recently. Michaela hadn’t made more than a few friends in
years, and with very good reason.