LITMIR.BIZ

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but it’s tougher for me since I get splashed around the tabloids more. Before too many people connect us, let’s make sure there isn’t any initial recognition that might blow it for you.”

      “I haven’t even had a single you-know-who-you-look-like here.”

      “Which is great. That’s just what we want. Hopefully I’ll get by the same way and maybe we’ll be home free.”

      “I hate for you to have to go alone tonight, though,” Alyssa said.

      “I won’t be alone. I’ll be with your adviser. She’s been assigned to me by the powers that be who want donations. You know how that goes—I’m sure she has orders not to leave my side.”

      The idea of Cassie Walker’s company pleased him more than he wanted it to. More than it should have, given the fact that it would be against her will. Which, admittedly, was a downer. And yet he was still happy to be going into the evening knowing he would get to see her again.

      Then, because he couldn’t stop himself and this seemed like a way of doing it without raising undue suspicion, he said, “So, tell me about her.”

      “Her? Cassie?”

      “Yeah.”

      Alyssa frowned slightly at him. “I can’t tell you anything about her because I don’t know anything about her. She’s been nice. Like I said before, she got me out of that chemistry class I hated when the instructor wouldn’t sign my drop form. She talked to him for me and persuaded him to do it after all. But beyond that—”

      “Do you at least know if she’s married? Or single? Or engaged? Or involved with someone?”

      Alyssa reared back slightly and took a closer look at him.

      Joshua knew he was no good at fooling her, but he had his fingers crossed that she might not see through him this time.

      No such luck.

      His sister grinned ear to ear suddenly, made fists of her hands, raised them and did a little upper body dance, making circles with her fists as she sang, “You like her! You like her! You like her!”

      Still hoping to put one over on her, he rolled his eyes. “Jeez, you can be obnoxious.”

      Alyssa’s answer was more of the same torso dance to accompany the second chorus of “You like her! You like her! You like her!”

      “I just want to know if I’m stepping on anyone’s toes by keeping her away from them. Husbands, boyfriends, fiancés tend to get bent out of shape if their women are having to hang out with me for the sake of work. And if that happens, significant others could take a closer look, realize who I am—and who you are—and wreck this whole thing.”

      His sister didn’t buy it for a minute. Instead, she did the dance and the song for the third time.

      “Okay, that’s getting really annoying,” Joshua informed her when she was finished.

      “It’s true, though.”

      Younger sisters could be such pains in the neck.

      “I don’t even know her,” he insisted.

      “You know she’s cute.”

      “She’s just okay,” Joshua understated, playing it cool when that one word—cute—was enough to bring Cassie Walker’s image vividly to mind again. And that vivid image made a ripple of something that almost seemed like delight run through him.

      “She’s nice, too,” Alyssa pointed out.

      “I’ll take your word for it.”

      Suddenly Alyssa’s expression sobered considerably. “But Cassie’s kinda like Jennie. Only worse. At least Jennie was…I don’t know, not from Northbridge. But Northbridge is like really, really removed from the kind of stuff that happens around you.”

      “Which is why we chose the school here.”

      “And the people are all so…you know, regular. Normal—”

      “I do know,” Joshua said, feeling a twinge of regret that he and his sister even had to have this conversation, that normal and regular had become novelties to them.

      “You wouldn’t risk another Jennie mess, would you?” Alyssa asked as if it worried her that he might be considering it.

      But he wasn’t. He wasn’t considering it at all. Which was why he absolutely would not act on this interest or attraction or whatever it was that Cassie Walker had set off in him.

      “No. Of course I wouldn’t risk another Jennie mess.” Especially not when just the mention of that name was enough to make him feel guilty and angry and hurt and just plain rotten. “I told you when it happened that that was it for me. That I’d never do that to anyone else ever again.”

      “You swore,” Alyssa reminded him, letting him know she was holding him to it.

      Joshua understood. The entire ordeal had scarred Alyssa.

      “Because I liked Jennie,” his sister added. “And I like Cassie even if I don’t really know her. I wouldn’t want—”

      “Relax. It’s not going to happen. I just wondered what you knew about her so I could go in armed. Like if there’s someone special in her life, I’d encourage her to bring him along, make friends with him.”

      That was a lie. Well, the excuse he was giving for wanting to know if there was someone special in Cassie Walker’s life was a lie. The rest—the determination not to let anything happen with Cassie Walker—was the truth. Joshua was nothing if not determined to make sure of that.

      “It’ll be okay,” he assured his sister.

      But Alyssa didn’t look convinced.

      “It will,” he said more forcefully. “Believe me, after Jennie, I know better. I don’t want to go through that again and I sure as hell wouldn’t let you go through something like that again, either.”

      Alyssa nodded, but she no longer looked as carefree and confident as she had earlier. Now she looked very, very young to him again.

      “Hey,” he cajoled. “Have I ever let you down?”

      That made her smile, if only slightly. “No,” she answered as if the question were ridiculous.

      “And I’m not here to start now. So relax.”

      She seemed to. Although not completely.

      “I want you to be happy,” she said then. “It isn’t that I don’t. I want you to be with someone nice—like Cassie. Someone who would like you for you and be good to you. I just don’t—”

      “I know,” Joshua cut her off once more. “And I’ll find someone nice and things will work out. But that isn’t what this trip or Northbridge are about. They’re about you and your going to college without any hassles. That’s all I’m paying attention to right now.”

      Another lie since the image of Cassie Walker popped into his head yet again.

      But still, he meant what he said. This trip and Northbridge were about his sister, about his sister’s finishing out her education like any other person her age. It wasn’t about his hooking up with anyone. Let alone with someone who had too many similarities to the second-to-the-biggest catastrophe that had hit his and Alyssa’s lives.

      So pretty or not, spunky or not, even dimples or no dimples, Cassie Walker was—and would remain—nothing but the woman Northbridge College had appointed as his guide through Parents’ Week.

      But if things were different, he thought as he and his sister finally decided to return to the small town, if things were different, things might be a whole lot different…

      Chapter Four

      “On behalf of myself as

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