The Husband Game

The guy behind me is tall and lanky, with stringy dark hair and a broad smirk. “You really have an eye for nature. Or natural beauty, at any rate.” He bends closer. Too close. And he is not looking at the painting at all.

I shrink back on instinct, feeling like he’s invading my space, and swallow around a warning lump in my throat. “Um. Thanks.”

“Makes sense, given how gorgeous you are.” His eyes sweep from mine over my body, and I can’t help but notice the way he lingers on my hips, even though he can’t be able to see much. I’m wearing a peacoat, for Christ’s sake.

I wonder what the 1950s husband-searching advice is for creepers. I also wonder if there’s any way I can salvage this for the article somehow. 1950s advice leads to stalkers? I clear my throat, trying to rack my brain for some polite way to scare him off. “Listen, it’s been great chatting, but—”

“Why don’t you come grab a drink with me?” he interrupts, bringing his hand to rest on my shoulder.

I flinch, and brush it off, before I can stop myself. Whether I’m impersonating an old-fashioned girl or not, there are some instincts I cannot—and will not—ignore. “No thank you,” I say.

“You aren’t very friendly, you know.” He plants himself next to me, in the universal Guy Who Cannot Take a Hint stance.

One I’m all too familiar with. See? I mentally scream at Fiona—well, at her editors who wanted this story, anyway. This is why we shouldn’t take advice from decades ago.

This is why we shouldn’t bother with dating at all. I snap my watercolor case closed and shove it into my bag, getting ready to flee. “My mother told me I shouldn’t talk to strangers,” I reply, a cold note of disdain in my voice.

That was probably a mistake. He laughs and reaches out to snatch my painting from the easel. My heart sinks. I can, and will, leave without it if need be. But I’d started to get attached to that painting, performance piece or not. “Do you always do what your mother tells you?” he asks, smirking. “Or do you ever branch out and try to be naughty once in a while?”

I narrow my eyes and shove to my feet, drawing myself up to my full, completely not intimidating height. “Give that back,” I demand. I’m proud that my voice doesn’t shake.

All around us, clusters of other students hurry past, boys and girls. None of them so much as cast a glance in our direction. If I scream, would they help? Probably. But I don’t want to cause a total scene. Especially when I’m not a student, and I came onto campus posing as one of them in order to flirt undercover.

Could I get into trouble for this? I wonder belatedly. I mean, everyone here is at least 18—and everyone in the engineering wing is older, because I’m pretty sure most are in the grad school. So like, early 20s. But still, I do feel strange being here, doing what I’m doing.

Especially now.

“I’ll give it back,” the much younger than me, and yet still twice my size guy taunts. “If you come over here and give me something in exchange.”

“Fat fucking chance,” I snarl, any of my housewife manners long since abandoned. I dig in my pocket for my keys. I’ve taken enough self-defense classes to know where I need to stick these. How to throw a punch, too, in a way that will do more damage than this guy will be expecting me to throw.

Luckily I don’t have to find out whether I can get arrested for attacking a creep of a student, because a second later, another voice rings across the green.

“Everything okay here?” A man in an honest-to-goodness suit strides toward us. I figure he must be one of the professors at the school. He’s all Midwestern crew-cut handsomeness—a strong jawline, blond crew cut, and the kind of gray-blue eyes that could pierce your soul.

Right now, those eyes have fixated on my would-be assailant, narrowed to a dangerous point.

“Actually, no,” I say, before the other guy can make up some bullshit about our interaction being just fine. “I was working on an art piece, when this boy stole my painting and insinuated I’d have to do something untoward to get it back.”

Untoward? Who am I? Now I really do sound like I’ve been reading too many issues of Today’s Woman.

But if my handsome rescuer notices the weird speech, he doesn’t comment. He just turns on the creepy guy, grimace intensifying. “Give it back to her. Now.”

Creep scowls, but does as he’s told, thrusting the canvas in my direction, so I can move forward and snatch it from his grip. “I was lying about it being beautiful,” he tells me. “A third grader could have painted something nicer.”