Can't Stop the Feeling (Whispering Bay Romance 6)

“With that red hair and those blue eyes, I would have pegged you for Irish.”

She sniffed. “That’s a stereotype. There are plenty of redheaded, blue-eyed Italians out in the world.” Wait. He’d noticed the color of her eyes?

“Stereotype, huh?” he said mildly.

She flushed. “Point taken. I didn’t think you’d be any good at calculus because in my experience good-looking guys usually aren’t.”

He blinked. “Are you always this direct?”

She blew out a breath. “Unfortunately. Yes.”

“Then you and I are going to get along just fine, Red.” Then he grinned, as if his smile was the answer to world peace.

She should have been annoyed by all that confidence. But there was something in the way he looked at her that made her think… No, that was crazy. He’d hardly paid any attention to Melissa, and by college guy standards, the brunette had been a slam dunk ten. He was probably just being friendly.

After that, whenever he wanted to tease her he called her Red. And the way he said it. Well, she didn’t hate it. Nope. Not one bit.

They began meeting every Sunday afternoon, first in the library, but by the third week, they changed it up to meeting at The Bean, a local coffee house next to campus where the atmosphere was more relaxed and they could eat while studying. Sunday afternoons quickly turned into Monday nights as well.

It was the fifth week of class and they’d both ordered coffee and sandwiches when he was looking over her solution to a problem. “You have your decimal in the wrong place.”

“Crap.” She frowned and erased the equation.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Red. You’re actually pretty smart for a girl, you know.”

In the beginning, she’d cringed whenever she thought back to that first day of class, but over the past month, they’d developed an easy camaraderie that lent itself to this kind of fun banter. “You’re never going to let me live it down, are you?”

Ben laughed. “Maybe. In a couple of years.”

Ben, she’d quickly discovered, was as serious a student as she was. In high school, she’d always been attracted to the smart boys. But smart seemed too tame an adjective to describe him. He was brilliant and focused, never missing a class or a study session.

After they both scored a ninety-nine on the first test of the semester, (the highest scores in the class), everything became a friendly competition between them. Ben was funny and kind. And completely respectful. To the point that she might as well have been his little sister.

It was a depressing thought.

He was only four years older, but at eighteen and twenty-two, the gap seemed wider than it would be in the future. For one thing, he could legally get into bars. Plus, he’d spent the past four years serving in the army and had done two tours in Afghanistan. Something he’d let slip out in casual conversation a couple of weeks ago.

“What was it like being in the Middle East?”

“It was great. We got milk and cookies every night before they tucked us in bed.”

She stared at him.

Ben sighed. “The weather was miserable and most of the time I was bored out of my head.”

Most of the time.

“Were you scared?”

“Yes,” he said right away. Then he paused, as if to reflect more on his answer. “But it wasn’t all bad. I learned a lot about myself over there.”

“Like what?”

“Like… You really want to know this stuff?”

“Sure.” I want to know everything about you.

“I learned that as hard as I thought my life had been to up then, a lot of people are worse off than me.”