Chapter Two
The Who’s Who of D.C. society will be at the Reynolds estate tonight for one of Mrs. Reynolds’s fundraisers. We’ll be on hand to collect the best gossip and to answer the question on everybody’s mind: What will happen when Blair Reynolds and Thom Wyatt see each other for the first time since their engagement ended at the altar?
—Capital Confessions blog
Blair
I wanted to scream. I wanted to drive a stake through Professor Canter’s heart.
Assuming he had one.
“What was up with that? He’s never made anyone stand for so long,” Adam commented as we walked down the steps to the law school lobby, pushing our way through the crowded stairwell.
I forced a smile. “Maybe he hadn’t eaten his weekly quota of souls.”
Maybe he’s a dick.
“I’m sorry I talked to you. I didn’t think he’d freak out like that.”
I shrugged. “I shouldn’t have answered.”
He shouldn’t be such an asshole.
“He calls on you a lot, right? Like every week?”
Every fucking week. Only me.
“Yep.”
Adam grimaced. “It’s weird. He doesn’t seem to call on anyone else as often.”
No shit.
“Maybe he doesn’t like my father or something. Or maybe he just gets off on making 1Ls squirm.”
I didn’t say the truth—I suspected he liked making me squirm.
“You did well¸ though. You might not always have the answers, but you never seem like you’re going to lose it like the rest of us.”
Adam was being kind. I wasn’t great at law school. My LSAT scores hadn’t been anything impressive and I’d been lucky to even be admitted to Hannover. It wasn’t a stellar law school—not the kind of place a Reynolds attended as my father so often liked to remind me—but it was the best I could do. My father had wanted to pull strings to get me in somewhere more prestigious, but I’d needed the chance to do this on my own, and as much as I’d wanted to get away from D.C. and the scandals that plagued me, it gave me the opportunity to be near the people I cared about—especially when I was still getting to know my half sister, Jackie.
I sank down onto one of the big leather couches in the lobby while Adam took the seat opposite mine.
At twenty-four, Adam was a year older than me. He was from Virginia as well, and we’d grown up around some of the same people, although our paths had never crossed until law school orientation. He exuded the whole boy-next-door vibe and he was pretty easygoing. In an environment where everyone seemed poised to take each other down, it was a welcome quality.
“Do you want to grab lunch after con law?” he asked.
1Ls at Hannover were typically divided into three sections and we all took the same required classes together. This semester I had torts, con law, property, contracts, and legal research and writing. Adam and I were in the same section.
“Sounds good to me.”
“Can we talk about how hot Professor Canter was today?” our friend Caitlin asked, interrupting us as she sat down next to me on the sofa.
Originally from California, she had a laid-back personality that fit in well with Adam and me. We’d formed a study group of sorts at the beginning of the semester and shared notes and case briefs. It helped to divide up the ridiculous workload.
“That suit?” Her eyes widened. “Holy Christ, I wanted to strip it off of him. I’m almost jealous of how much he calls on you. At least he knows who you are, Ms. Reynolds.” She did a fairly good imitation of Professor Canter’s voice that was accurate enough to be unsettling. “I’d give my right arm for him to say my name in that voice of his. I could perv on him all day long.”
I laughed, even though her words struck close to home. I hadn’t told anyone about my attraction to Professor Canter, but despite his horrible personality, most of the female student population seemed to share Caitlin’s opinion.
He was an asshole, but he was definitely a hot asshole.
“I promise you, you wouldn’t feel that way if you were in my shoes. I have nightmares where I wake up to the sound of him calling on me.”
“So you’re dreaming about him?” Caitlin teased. “If he appeared in my dreams, torts would be the last thing we’d be doing.”
I felt my cheeks heat, hating how close she was to the truth.
Adam groaned. “Please tell me we’re not going to have another discussion about how badly you want to do Professor Canter.”
“He’s hot.” Caitlin protested. “There’s no one else on the faculty who’s even close. Besides, I need something to keep me awake. Intentional torts? Not the most exciting stuff.”
She had a point there.
She pulled an apple out of her bag. “How old do you think he is? Thirty-two?”
“He’s thirty,” I answered before I could stop myself.
Fuck.
Adam and Caitlin shot me curious looks.
I shrugged again, fighting off embarrassment. “I looked up his bio.”
The first day of classes I’d sat in the front row, my books spread out on the desk in front of me, armed with a plethora of highlighters and pens, and even more nerves. And then Professor Canter had walked into the room and suddenly law school became the furthest thing from my mind. I’d sat there studying him, and he’d looked up, and our gazes had locked, and he’d seen it all playing out on my face.
For a moment, I’d felt like he saw me, not the Blair Reynolds who graced Page Six, who had a poker face a politician would envy—I knew this because my father had frequently remarked that it was a shame I lacked his killer instinct—but me. Awkward, freaked-out, wound-way-too-tight me.
He had that way about him—as if he could cut through layers of bullshit and get to the heart of things without breaking a sweat. It was probably what made him a great lawyer. It was also what made him a terrifying man.
Caitlin leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I heard he had to leave his firm in Chicago. They say he’s lucky he kept his law license.”
There was a flicker of interest before I batted it away. As much as I couldn’t help but be curious about Professor Canter’s past, I hated gossip. If living my entire life in the public eye hadn’t been enough to turn me off of it forever, having my broken engagement and fiancé’s infidelity splashed all over the papers had been the final nail in the coffin. The scandal that had erupted when news of an illegitimate half sister came out had been icing on the cake.
“Do you know why?” Adam asked.
Caitlin shook her head. “No, but rumor is it was really bad. He made a fortune in Chicago really quickly—some big med mal cases or something—and they say he’d be teaching at a better law school, but Hannover was the only one who would take him with his past.”
I wasn’t sure how much of that I believed. The man was brilliant. He’d done his undergrad at Northwestern and his law degree at the University of Chicago. Even though Hannover wasn’t great, he was young to be a professor, even a visiting one. They wouldn’t have hired him if he weren’t hot shit. Too bad they hadn’t vetted his teaching skills or checked for a soul.
“What are you doing tonight?” Caitlin asked, switching topics with lightning speed in a manner I’d grown accustomed to. “A bunch of us are thinking of going to pub trivia at nine.”
That sounded so much better than what I had planned. “I wish I could, but my mother’s hosting a party. My presence has been requested, aka demanded.”
Caitlin made a face. “Free alcohol, at least?”
“I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, nothing is free with my parents. I’ll be there to help her host, expected to work the room. We’re a month away from the election so everything is crazy right now.”
I didn’t add the rest—the real reason I dreaded her party. It would be my first social appearance since the wedding that never happened. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face the speculation, or the stares, or the chance that I’d see my former fiancé. His name was on the guest list along with his parents, and no amount of pleading had convinced my mother to change her mind. Thom’s father was a major contributor to my father’s campaign and at the end of the day, money trumped silly things like infidelity, humiliation, and betrayal. It hardly seemed fair that Thom had escaped the shitstorm of our broken engagement after just a week of bad press. He came from money, but not the kind of notoriety that had thrust me in the public eye whether I wanted to be there or not.