Celebrity Bachelor

“So we need you to fill in in a hurry,” the dean announced.

“To fill in on what? I don’t know anything about fund-raising,” she pointed out.

“As I said, it’s important for Alyssa to have as normal a college experience as possible,” Dean Reynolds said without addressing Cassie’s question or comment. “Having her guardian—in lieu of her parents—attend Parents’ Week is part of that. Plus, her brother plays an active role in her life and wants to be here with her and for her. He’s taken steps to keep the press from following him for the time being, but I need you to show him around. To be his private escort.”

The request sounded slightly seedy to Cassie and the dean must have realized it after the fact because he amended it. “What we need is for you to be the school’s delegate. We can’t have anyone high-profile do it—like the chair of the board of regents or the president or the chancellor or even me. It might cast Cantrell into the spotlight and negate whatever it is he’s doing to throw people off his trail. But we want someone with him as much as possible to be his private guide to the school and the town. To make him feel welcome. At home. Comfortable. To make him feel like one of the Northbridge family.”

“You know I just closed on my house,” Cassie reminded. “My things are all in boxes. I need to buy furniture. To get settled in. I was planning on using every minute I could spare to do that.”

“I know you’re busy,” Dean Reynolds allowed. “But whether your boxes get unpacked this week or next won’t really make much difference, will it? It’s important that Cantrell get the personal touch so he feels favorably toward the school and the town.”

“I don’t know,” Cassie hedged, not thrilled at all with what was being asked of her. For more reasons than simply because she had boxes to unpack.

“We need you,” the Dean insisted. “You’re folksy. A homegrown daisy. No flash. No flutter. One of us, through and through—exactly who should represent us.”

Cassie didn’t know what flutter was, but when it came to flash, she knew she didn’t have any of that. Oh boy, did she know it! Not having any of it had cost her a lot.

But that plain, folksy, lack of flash that she personified made her feel all the more unqualified to contend with someone like Joshua Cantrell, let alone impress him the way she was afraid the dean was hoping she would.

“I think you should ask someone else,” she said then. “I’m reasonably sure I’d disappoint…well, everyone.” Just the way she’d disappointed another important person in her life. “I think you need someone flashier than I am.”

But the dean wasn’t budging. “We just want someone nice and knowledgeable. A welcoming type of person.”

But it would still mean being in the company of a man who was a celebrity of sorts. A very attractive, wealthy, well-traveled man. Someone Cassie knew she would be uncomfortable and extremely self-conscious around. Someone who would only serve to remind her just how flashless, flutterless and folksy she was…

The dean must have realized that she was leaning toward standing her ground and refusing because before she could, he said, “Seriously, Cassie, we’re in a bind. I’m confident you’re the right person for the job. You’re the freshman adviser to Joshua Cantrell’s sister, so it won’t seem odd that you’re who we’ve assigned to him. You’re unobtrusive—”

Ah, another quality to add to the list—flashless, flutterless, folksy and unobtrusive. Quite a claim to fame she had going for her…

“—and I’m asking you as a favor to me, please do this,” the dean concluded.

The dean had moved heaven and earth to get her grants and scholarships to pay her way through her bachelor’s and her master’s degrees because he’d known her family’s financial position didn’t allow for advanced education. So when Dean Reynolds presented what he was asking as a favor to him, she had to grant it. Which he probably knew and had been saving for a last resort.

“I suppose I can show him around,” Cassie conceded reluctantly.

“Good enough,” the dean said victoriously. “Now, could you get right to it? Joshua Cantrell is with his sister in the faculty lounge and I want to introduce you. I also need you to show him to the old chancellor’s cottage. We’ve had it cleaned and repaired and updated so he can stay there.”

“You want me to meet him this minute?” Cassie said, the alarm she felt echoing in her voice.

As a rule, she would not have gone out looking the way she did. But she’d only closed on her house on Thursday and she and her family had spent this weekend moving her in. When the dean had called and asked that she come to his office right away, she’d tried to explain that she was hardly presentable. But the dean had said he understood that she’d been moving and that it didn’t matter how she looked. So she’d taken him at his word and had come just the way she was. But now she took stock.

Jeans with a rip in the knee. Yellow crew-necked T-shirt tucked into them. Tennis shoes that were not Joshua Cantrell’s brand. Her thick, chin-length brown hair pulled straight back into a ponytail. No makeup.

She was definitely not dressed to meet anyone for the first time, let alone a hotshot like Joshua Cantrell.

But it seemed as if she had no choice. Especially when the dean said, “I don’t just want you to meet him this minute, I need you to. Cantrell and his sister are alone in the faculty lounge and I’ve left them waiting too long already. I have to get to the mayor’s house for a dinner he’s having with some mucky-muck from Billings.”

“Oh…”

As if that barely uttered word were enough, the dean came around the desk and urged Cassie to her feet, sweeping her out of the office. The next thing she knew, she and the dean were headed up the stairs to the second floor where the other administration offices were.

“We just want Cantrell to like it here. To like the college. To like all of us in Northbridge,” the dean was saying on the way. “Let the town’s charm infect him. That’s all the mayor and I are asking.”

Cassie managed only a nervous nod as they arrived at the door to the faculty lounge.

She caught sight of herself in the glass upper half of the door and flinched a little.

She’d been hoping Joshua Cantrell might take one look at her and think country girl, but now she was convinced he would think country bumpkin instead. And it didn’t help boost her confidence any.

Maybe Dean Reynolds sensed her dismay because with one hand on the doorknob he whispered, “Don’t worry, you’ll be great.”

Cassie couldn’t even muster a smile at that. She had experience to tell her that she wouldn’t be great at all.

But it didn’t matter.

Because just then, the dean knocked once and opened the door.

And there was no turning back.

Chapter Two

The first look Cassie got of Joshua Cantrell was from the rear. He and his sister were standing at the window across from the entrance to the faculty lounge when the dean opened the door and ushered Cassie in.

The girl Cassie had known as Alyssa Johansen—and now knew to be Alyssa Cantrell—was pointing something out to her brother. Apparently they hadn’t heard the dean’s knock or the door opening because they didn’t turn around.

But no matter what the view from the window, it couldn’t surpass the one Cassie had of Joshua Cantrell’s broad shoulders and expansive back encased in a leather jacket, narrowing to jean-clad hips, an admirably taut derriere and long legs.

“Uh, hmm…”

The dean cleared his throat to gain their attention and this time they heard him. Both Alyssa and her brother turned from the window.

It wasn’t Alyssa who nabbed Cassie’s attention like a train wreck, though.

Not that that initial vision of Joshua Cantrell’s front half was anything like a train wreck. Oh, no, there was nothing ugly about it. In fact, it surprised Cassie considerably. In all the photographs she’d seen of the man in the past several months, he’d looked more like a woodsman than a jet-setter—long, shaggy hair, full beard and mustache. So on the walk up the stairs she’d come to think she was about to encounter a woolly mammoth. A woolly mammoth with an entourage, more than likely—that’s what she’d thought.

But not only was Joshua Cantrell alone in the faculty lounge with his sister, he was also clean shaven and his black hair was cut close to his head all over, with only the top a fraction of an inch longer to leave some sexy disarray.

“Sorry to interrupt,” the dean apologized. “But Joshua Cantrell, I’d like you to meet Cassie Walker.”

“I apologize for my appearance,” Cassie said at the conclusion of the dean’s introduction. “This is certainly not how I’m usually dressed when I’m doing anything in conjunction with the college, but I’ve just spent this weekend moving into a new house and I was in the middle of emptying boxes when I got the dean’s call, and he didn’t really let me know what was going on and—”

That’s not the first thing to say when you meet someone! Cassie silently shrieked at herself when the words slipped out. She cut herself off before it got any worse.

There she was, face-to-face with one of the most awesomely attractive men she’d ever seen in her life and to say she felt even more self-conscious about her hair and the way she was dressed was an understatement. Adonis, meet Dishrag….

And Joshua Cantrell was an Adonis.

If there was a flaw in his face, Cassie couldn’t find it. He had a square jaw and a chin that seemed sculpted to match; his cheekbones were just pronounced enough to give him a rugged edge; he had a full lower lip beneath a thinner upper that curved at the edges as if he couldn’t be easily challenged; a nose that was just straight enough to be masculine and perfect at once; and glorious, crystalline silver-gray eyes that actually seemed to gleam like the reflection of winter snow in steel.