Chapter 73

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