Rush Me (New York Leopards 1)

“Okay, Kate.” We parked in Madison’s driveway and climbed out of the car. I took the plate of cookies she’d baked and she took the wine and we headed across the lawn. Madison lived in her parents’ guesthouse, which allowed us to feel a little more like we were twenty-three, and not thirteen. “I bet that’s it, except I’m the one who should want revenge for how she tortured me. No, I think it has to be David’s money.”

“Which, let’s be honest, is a pretty hefty incentive. I mean, I like getting summers off, but I’m probably going to have to spend them waiting tables.”

“Or maybe they really like each other.” My nose crinkled in confusion. “They coo constantly. But I just don’t understand how that could happen. Why couldn’t he date, like, you?”

“Because that would be like dating my own brother.” Kate pushed the door open. “Ew. Why would you even suggest that?”

Inside, Madison and Carly, the other half of our quartet, jumped up and enveloped us in hugs. To give credit where credit was due, Sophie had done her part in bringing the four of us together. She’d always picked on me, and Kate by association. Carlotta Ruiz, new our freshman year, had been an easy target. Sophie and her cohort had broken into giggles each time Carly spoke in faintly accented English, and cried out, “No habla español!” Madison, on the other hand, should have been safe, but Sophie despised anyone wealthier and prettier than she, especially when they refused to join her gaggle.

By the end of that awful year, we’d been forged into an indestructible circle, and by sophomore year we’d found our own group of friends in the artsy-honors circuit. Now, I couldn’t imagine life without these three. Their rooms felt as familiar as my own, and their woes and dreams tugged at my heart. I knew them as well as I knew my own brother.

Which made it no surprise that they sometimes drove me insane, as only family could. Madison fretted like the world was ending on a daily basis. Nothing could be right. She would never find a job, never afford her own apartment, and her boyfriend—she always had a boyfriend—was always acting strange. Life was very hard for Madison.

Life seemed easier for Carly, who had a full ride to grad school, a shiny apartment in New Haven, and a live-in, long-term boyfriend. So we probably drove her crazier than she drove us. I’d seen her ready to breathe fire when the rest of moaned about real life and wished we were still in school.

Then there was Kate—loyal, funny Kate—with her very peculiar fatal flaw.

We all curled up on Madison’s queen-size bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets. Kate let her upper body flop straight down, her head landing in a poof! of down comforter. “I did it again.”

I grinned, tucking into the plate of cookies.

“How?” Madison asked. “Not at your parents’?”

Kate made a horrified face. “God, no.” She’d drawn her stick straight light brown hair into a ponytail, and now she chewed on it. “Remember how I went up to Boston for the teachers’ conference last weekend? The school put me up in a hotel.”

“So, tell.” Carly stretched an arm across the bed and grabbed the hair from Kate’s mouth. Carly always said that she had to live vicariously through our romantic escapades, since she and Andy had settled into a domestic pattern. “How’d you meet? Was it another teacher?”

Kate shook her head, and adopted her story-telling voice. “I have a lot of college friends in Boston, so I met up with them in the evening. They took me to this club in the Back Bay.”

The three of us groaned. Kate did notoriously badly at clubs.

“And my friend Jo thought it would be a good idea to get those ten-shot things.”

Carly laughed. “You can’t do shots.”

Kate grinned, slightly embarrassed. “And it’s possible we’d already pregamed a little.”

“Bad teacher.” I shook my head. “Bad, bad teacher.”

“Anyway.” Kate shrugged it off. “You know me. When I drink, I like to dance.”

Madison raised her brows. “Yes. We know.”

Most people liked to dance when intoxicated. Kate really, really liked to dance.

“I ended up dancing with this guy,” she continued, toying with her napkin. “And then...you know...”

“You made out in the middle of the dance floor?” I guessed.

“And then he suggested you get some air?” Madison added.

“And then you canoodled all the way home,” Carly finished, with the cadence of “this little piggy went to market.”

I grinned at her. “Please tell me you got his name.”

“Michael Wright. And I already found his profile.”

Carly snagged Madison’s laptop, and pulled up her app page. Three years ago, she’d invented a family tree app that took off exponentially. It wasn’t Farmville, by any means, but most people had heard of it,