Celebrity Bachelor

After about an hour and a half people began to drift out, ending the opening of Parents’ Week. Alyssa announced that she needed to read three chapters of biology for her next day’s class and when Joshua encouraged her to go back to the dorm to do that, she bid her brother good-night.

Which once more left Cassie alone with Joshua Cantrell.

It wasn’t quite nine o’clock by then—not late by big city standards but not early by Northbridge standards, either, so Cassie debated whether to simply usher Joshua to the chancellor’s cottage or offer to extend the evening.

In the end, she decided to leave it to him.

“Would you like to get back to the cottage or—”

“Or,” he said, jumping at the option before she’d actually given him one.

“Okay. Northbridge doesn’t have a bustling nightlife but we could take a walking tour of the town.” Which was the only thing she could come up with on the spur of the moment. It might also appease the mayor if he accused her of not doing the promotions he wanted. “How would that be?”

“I’d like it,” he said. “It seems like a small-town thing to do. Unless I’d be keeping you from someone— I asked Alyssa if she knew if playing diplomatic envoy with me was driving a wedge between you and a husband or a fiancé or a boyfriend, but she didn’t know.”

He’d asked his sister about her? Cassie thought, mentally stalling on that tidbit. Had he asked only to make sure he wasn’t interfering or because he wanted to know if there was a man in her life?

Not that it mattered, Cassie told herself.

And yet it did matter to her a little. Deep down. She couldn’t deny it.

Was it really possible that he had tried to find out if she was single? That the illustrious Joshua Cantrell, man of the world, escort of ladies extraordinaire, was even curious about whether or not the playing field was open with Cassie?

Even the possibility—slight though she was sure it was—boosted her ego.

Still, she tried not to pay too much attention to it and said simply, “You’re not keeping me from anyone, no.”

“I already know I’m keeping you from something—unpacking—but if I’m not going to have an angry man tracking me down to do me bodily harm, I’ll take you up on that walk.”

“No, no one will track you down to do bodily harm,” she assured. “There’s no husband, fiancé or boyfriend.”

Joshua Cantrell’s handsome face erupted into a wide grin that gave a second boost to her ego, because it looked nothing but pleased to hear that. “Then by all means, give me the grand tour.”

“Tour maybe, I don’t know how grand it will be,” Cassie said, working as they left the building to contain what almost felt like a hint of glee at the lingering notion that this man—of all men—had wondered if she were free.

And had been happy to learn that she was…

Chapter Five

When Cassie and Joshua left the campus, Cassie led them toward the town square that stood between the college to the west and, to the east, the school compound that educated Northbridge’s kindergartners to twelfth graders and offered the town’s only sports field.

“Wrought-iron pole lamps that look like they came from Victorian England, and a gazebo. Huh,” Joshua mused as he glanced around at the town square’s lighting and the gazebo at its heart. “Do you have band concerts here in the summertime?”

Was he making fun? She couldn’t be sure. She also couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of her voice when she answered.

“As a matter of fact, we do. Along with a lot of other activities year-round. The square is one of my favorite parts of Northbridge. I love the big trees and the gazebo— I think it’s beautiful with its redbrick base and the railing and pillars painted white, and that pointy red roof with the cupola. It’s all part of what says home to me.”

“I wasn’t criticizing,” he told her, apparently having picked up on her defensiveness. “I think your town square is great. I like it, too. It’s quaint.”

Cassie wasn’t sure if quaint really was a good thing to someone like Joshua Cantrell, but she wasn’t going to take issue with him.

Instead, as they crossed South Street to the east side of Main, she said, “Quaint. Well, that will describe most of what you’re about to see.”

Not all of it, however. Part of that first block nearest to the square had a few more boxy, contemporary-looking buildings and storefronts housing the ice cream parlor and Ling’s Chinese Palace—the new restaurant. Plus the government building/police station had a more modern feel to it.

But from the northwest corner of that block, where the old four-story, redbrick former mercantile had been turned into the medical facility, all the rest of the way up Main, the buildings were pretty quaint, Cassie had to admit.

Quaint in the best sense of the word, though, she thought as she pointed out businesses, shops and stores that occupied the two-and three-storied, primarily brick structures that gave Northbridge an old-fashioned, country-town feel. Quaint in the best sense of the word when it came to the awnings and overhangs and farreaching eaves that provided shade and character to most of the edifices. Quaint in the best sense when it came to more of those same town square pole lights lining the sidewalks on both sides of the street, each of them circled with flower boxes that were decorated for the season—planted with white and yellow mums now for autumn—lending that homey, small-town feeling.

Cassie and Joshua weren’t the only post-meet-and-greet attendees to graduate to the stroll along Main Street. Several other faces from the college’s Parents’ Week orientation were out and about, too, to mingle with a few Northbridgers.

Smiles and greetings were exchanged along the way but no one seemed to think any more about Joshua’s real identity now than they had earlier, and so Cassie and Joshua were able to take their walk without incident.

They did, however, encounter Roy Webber, the local Mr. Fix-it, and one of the town’s biggest busybodies, and in introducing Joshua to him, Cassie included the cover story she’d agreed to.

It clearly pleased Joshua, who nudged her with his shoulder once Roy Webber had moved on and said, “Thanks for getting that out there.”

“By tomorrow noon, the whole town will have heard it,” she informed Joshua. “Roy Webber is a bigger gossip than any woman I’ve ever met.”

“Perfect,” Joshua said with satisfaction. “I owe you.”

“Yes, you do,” Cassie said from atop her high horse as they made a U-turn at the northernmost end of Main.

They’d gone up an incline to reach what was the formal entrance to Northbridge and as they crossed from the gas station to the bus station, Joshua paused halfway between the two to peer down at the view of nearly the entire town from that vantage point.

“This is nice,” he mused.

“Quaint,” she repeated a bit facetiously.

“I like quaint. I don’t know what made you think that was an insult,” he insisted.

Cassie knew she could be overly sensitive when it came to things like that. She admitted to herself that she was probably being harder on Joshua than he deserved for something that was a part of her own baggage. So she tried to get out of the course she’d set with some semblance of aplomb.

“Okay, I’m sorry if I misunderstood.”

“Apology accepted,” he decreed as if something about her amused him.

They finished to cross the street but Joshua continued to look out at the town, this time focusing on Adz, which stood in the center of the block at the base of the hill.

“Did you say that that Adz place belongs to your brother?”

“I did,” Cassie confirmed as they went on at a leisurely pace.

“And it’s a pub and restaurant?”

“Right.” Cassie briefly considered asking Joshua if he wanted to cross back again and go in for a drink, but the idea of introducing him to Ad and having to explain why she was with Joshua in a social situation wasn’t something she was eager to do. So she didn’t make the suggestion.