“…trashy…”
“…in her blood…their mother ran…another man…”
“…Olivia…honor society…same way…born that way.”
Olivia blinked hard to stem the tears stinging her eyelids, her flesh crawling with humiliation. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to fill in the blanks between the snatches of conversation.
Driven to escape, Olivia surged to her feet.
“Bitches,” Beth muttered, eyeing her cup of steaming cocoa and their well-groomed tittering backs with intent. “Meet me in the bathroom. I’ve got business to take care of.”
Olivia stumbled off the bleachers and dashed behind them, desperate to find a dark place to hide. She forced air into her lungs in great shuddering breaths. The words chased around in her head, searing her with their poison. …born that way…Olivia…same way. She huddled in the dark, against the cold concrete.
Olivia looked up at a movement. Luke Rutledge stepped into the shadows with her. Olivia’s heart hammered. She dashed at the trickle of tears behind her glasses with her gloved fingers.
“Olivia? Are you okay?” His big hands cupped her shoulders. A tremor of recognition rippled through her. She hadn’t imagined the look they’d shared earlier.
“I’m fine.” Her voice squeaked out. She ought to feel threatened. Luke stood six feet tall with broad shoulders and it was dark beneath the bleachers. Instead, he seemed genuinely concerned, almost comforting—totally at odds with his bad boy image.
“You’re sure?” He rubbed small circles against her shoulders with his gloved hands. Even through the layers of gloves, coats and sweaters, his touch left her tingling in a way she’d never felt before.
She shoved her glasses more firmly onto her nose. “Really. I’m okay.” Her breath lodged in her throat. She’d never realized how a boy smelled up close. Different than girls. Interesting. Exciting.
“Good.” Other girls might’ve seen it coming, but surprise rooted her to the spot when he pulled her closer and kissed her. She’d dreamed about kisses. She’d read about kisses.
None of it had prepared her for the real thing. His mouth pressed against hers, hot and hard. She leaned into him and kissed him back, giving in to the spontaneous need flashing through her.
…born that way…Olivia…same way. They couldn’t be right, could they? But this was exactly how girls from the wrong side of the tracks behaved. Was that why he’d followed her? Kissed her? She was easy? Trashy?
Horrified, she wrenched away from Luke. She ran out of the shadows as fast as her trembling legs carried her.
She was not that way. She wasn’t and she’d prove it. To them. To him. And to herself.
1
Thirteen years later…
“YOU’LL BE THE BELLE of the ball tonight,” Beth cajoled as she brandished the package of hair color at Olivia.
Olivia paused in the middle of pressing her dress for the costume ball and sprayed extra starch on a pleat that refused to cooperate.
“I’m not concerned with being the belle of the ball,” she argued. “I’m quite fond of my mousy brown hair, thank you. Why would I want to trade it in for late-blooming, tramp-in-training red?”
Beth stretched out on Olivia’s four-poster Rice-carved bed. “You couldn’t look like a tramp-in-training if you tried. Trust me. But you could try shucking the prude disguise. You’d be a knockout. A little hair color, some contact lenses and dressing as if you really are twenty-nine instead of sixty-five.”
Flamboyant, outgoing Beth just didn’t get it. Olivia wasn’t interested in being a knockout—not that she even considered herself KO material. Beth was a force of nature. Olivia was a rock. Olivia liked her quartz status.
She rolled her eyes at Beth and picked up the long-standing argument. “My eyes are allergic to contacts, as you very well know.” She mentally reviewed her wardrobe of conservative skirts and blouses. “And I dress like a twenty-nine-year-old librarian with good taste—”
“Maybe you should borrow something from Tammy.”
“Maybe when pigs fly.” Her older sister maintained an inverse fashion philosophy—the least amount of clothes showing the most amount of flesh. And Tammy had a bountiful amount of flesh up top. Olivia shook her head as she peered down at her relatively flat chest. “Can you imagine these in one of Tammy’s halter tops? Even if I dared to bare, there’s nothing there. I’d have enough extra material to make a skirt.” Not to mention she’d set every tongue in town wagging.
Beth snickered. “Okay. You’ve got a point. But at least you’ll skip the sag factor. You’ll still be Ms. Perky Boobs at sixty when Tammy’s playing soccer with hers. Now about this color…”
Olivia pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose and peered across the ironing board at the hair-color model. She’d invested a lot of thought and care into cultivating a conservative, tasteful “look.” Olivia always carried with her the sense that everyone in town was watching—waiting for her to slip up, to do or say something inappropriate.
For the span of a heartbeat, a shadow of restless longing tempted her. And then it passed. She shook her head. “Forget it. I’m not going to look tacky or cheap. Adam wants to discuss something important tonight.”
The thought brought an involuntary smile to her face. Adam had begun to affect her that way.
“What?” Beth scowled in suspicion.
Beth’s scowl dampened her good mood. “I don’t know, but it sounded important.”
“You’ve been dating a month, maybe he’s gonna put the move on you. Sex is always important to men. Right up there with breathing, eating and television.” Beth sighed and placed the hair color box on the nightstand.
“Beth, you’ve got the gutter mind.”
“What’s gutter about that? You’ve been out half a dozen times. He’s kissed you, hasn’t he?”
“You know he has.” Twice to be precise—both times their kiss had proved a pleasant, perfunctory end to their evening. At first, she’d merely considered Adam a friend—a very attractive, very influential friend. Lately, their relationship had taken a more intimate turn. However, it wasn’t that intimate, yet. “He’s mentioned his grandmother’s birthday several times. I think he’s going to invite me to the party. It seems more likely than sex.” Olivia examined the pressed dress. Each pleat lined up in perfect, starched order. “That looks good.”
She turned off the iron and hung up her dress. The dark purple complemented her pale skin and dark hair. At least that was the salesclerk’s opinion.
“Hmm.” Beth cast a considering eye over the floor-length, lady-in-waiting gown. “Almost as stiff and upstanding as Adam. I’m sure he’ll approve.”
Olivia moved the dress to the back of the door and sat on the opposite end of the bed, crossing her legs at the ankles. Hortense jumped up and settled her immense kitty weight across Olivia’s lap. Olivia administered the obligatory scratch behind the ears and turned her attention back to Beth. Usually, Beth was brutally frank—it was one of the things she admired about her long-standing friend—but, for weeks now she’d been beating around the bush, dropping snide comments. “If you don’t like him, why don’t you just say so?”
“I don’t like him.”
Hortense seconded the opinion with a short meow.
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