▪️ Emily ▪️ "Of course I am.” Ace's cocky grin reappeared at last, and Emily knew she was lost. Or perhaps she’d found herself by falling in love with this wild, impetuous man. She never wanted to be the cause of Ace's unhappiness again. “I didn’t believe I was the type of man who’d find love. I’m too serious, too set in my ways…” “You got in my way, and I never want you to get out of it.” Ace's brows drew together. “It’s time we both stopped thinking about who we were, and concentrate on who we are. If a few years ago you’d asked me where I’d be today and what I’d be doing, I wouldn’t have been able to answer you. I didn’t know. I didn’t think about the future. But now, if it’s one year…or five or ten, no matter where I am, I know where my heart will be.” He took Emily's hand in his and laced their fingers together. “With you.” “You’re a romantic.” Ace had shattered all her preconceived expectations and beliefs about so many things. Most of all, who Emily was when they were togeth
"Hello, I'm Cole from Spring Well college....." "Hello, I'm Cole from Spring Well college and I'm calling..." Another hung up phone! Oh dear. It was going to be a really, really long night. She was supposed to be doing this college fund-raiser where undergraduates called up wealthy alumnshe and connected deeply with them in a way that got them all nostalgic and wallet-opening or bank transfer. To be honest, she wasn’t exactly an ideal candidate for the role. Given that she got all squirmy borrowing 60 pence for a can of Coke Zero from the vending machine, she had no fucking clue how she was going to work “and how would you feel about endowing into an English essay ” into a casual conversation with a complete stranger. Her best friend Harper was actually the one who’d signed up, but she’d come down with laryngitis. Which meant the telethon team ended up having to use her instead. She knew as soon as they gave her what was supposed to be two days of training in ten minutes that i
“And apparently you’re the CEO of a multinational banking and financial services holding company. I don’t know what much of that means.” “You can look it up on the Internet. Anything more?” She stared at the next line. “It says you’re a lovely person, and very kind to animals.” “Cole.” It showed how screwed up her priorities were right then that, for a moment, all she could think was, He remembered her name. she imagined his lips shaping it: Cole, Cole, Cole. “Uh, what?” “What does it really say?” Her name, and the touch of sternness, raised all the hairs on her arms. “It says you’re the third richest man in the UK with a net worth in the region of twelve billion quid.” She waited. No idea what for. She'd done as he’d commanded, but he wasn’t exactly going to shower her in praise and cookies for it. she expected he would hang up but he didn’t and so they were stuck there, fresh silence deepenin
Cole's shift ended at nine, the next group of eager volunteers filing in to reach out to alumnshe in different time zones. While she hadn’t spoken to any more billionaires, she'd actually done okay. Somehow, her conversation with Aiden Crux had given her more confidence in what she was doing and herability to do it. He’d said she was doing a good job, after all. And, coming from him, that had to mean something. Unless he was being sarcastic. Oh shit. What if he was? In any case, she'd even started to enjoy herself once she got into the swing of things. Nearly everyone had memories to share or stories to tell, and as she made herway back to herroom across the moonlit quad, she found myself wondering what herstory was. She'd done so well at school that she'd come to university expecting a cross between Brideshead Revisited and an English version of The Secret History, and fully prepared to be a genius. Except Oxford wasn’t like that
He wasn’t actually being mean. Her course had a reputation for being easy—probably deservedly, since the earliest lectures started at eleven and, while they weren’t presented as optional, hardly anyone went to them anyway. “Yes, but how am I supposed to revise every book written in English from 650 to the present day. That’s”—hervoice went a bit shrill—“not reasonable.” “Can’t you prioritize the important ones or something?” “Do I look like Harold Bloom?”“I’d be able to tell you if I knew who that was.” Cole could have explained The Western Canon, but nobody deserved that. They'd been on the same staircase in her first year and stuck together ever since, despite having nothing in common. She was reading Materials, whatever that meant, and constantly getting internships at MIT. She was also captain of the first girls , played basketball, and had recently returned from Uganda, where she’d been part of a team that was
"Okay, how do I look?” Cole turned away from the mirror over the sink and struck a pose. Harper's expression was carefully neutral. “Honestly? Like a kid in her mom's dress.” The post-telethon dinner was black tie for men and blue dress for women and she didn’t have the right kit, so she'd borrowed Harper's. Not completely grasping the impact of Harper being six foot four and an athlete. When she was pretty much the opposite of that. “What if I rolled the sleeves up?” “Don’t you fucking dare. That’s my best dress.” As Cole walked across the room, the dress felt baggy. Harper winced. “Do you really want to meet important alumni looking like that?” “It’s not that bad.” Her hair was having a small rebellion of its own. She'd quiffed six ways to Sunday but the whole thing had fallen sideways like a drunk on Saturday night. But fuck it. Aiden Crux wasn’t coming anyway. Not because of a single conv
It was a typical late spring evening, powder-puff pink and gold, and Cole sprinted over the flagstones, heading toward the front quad and the Lodge and, ohgodohgodohgod, Aiden Crux. Her mouth was tangy with copper, as though she could taste her own too-fast beating heart. The lawns of Spring Well, like pretty much everywhere else in Oxford, were sacrosanct, but she cut across the corner of one anyway because it was a legit emergency. And that was when she saw him. Initially with a faint sense of outrage because, instead of black tie, he was dressed in a midnight blue three-piece suit. And also because her immersion therapy hadn’t prepared her properly. Fairly good-looking her arse. Those Google images had lied. They had actively lied. The man was beautiful. So ridiculously fucking beautiful it was hard to get your head round it somehow. He looked like a film star. Not the modern sort—not one of your am
Especially if it was slutty or degrading. Cole turned around, trying to shut down the porno in her brain. They were in a public place, and she was fully dressed (in several layers of formal wear as it happened), but it felt vulnerable. Giving this man, this stranger, her back. Her trust. His arm came around her from behind. And the heat of it, the pressure. The tightening muscles of his forearm made her a bit delirious. She leaned back and his body was right there, all hard planes and angular curves for her to nestle into. She tilted her hips, wriggling her arse until she was tucked in against him, pinned and protected at the same time, at once safe and overwhelmed. She tried to breathe and an excited little moan happened instead. Aiden tugged her in tighter still. No humiliatingly inappropriate noises from him. But his heart was thudding hard and fast against her spine. A finger touched her lightly under the chin and she tipped her head back