He looked at me for a long while, and I looked away, not able to meet his eye. Not wanting him to see how much being Jane Winters at Bribury, where nobody had heard of me, meant to me.
“We’ll do most of the prep work these next few months. Announce it. Have interviews done with you, and also Caroline, with friendly journalists. But we’ll keep you out of it as much as possible during the school year. During the summer is when we’ll use you.”
Use me. Yep, that pretty much summed me up. I was used by my mother to try and catch my father. I was used by the opposing party to bring my father down. I was used by the press to sell magazines.
Bribury was immune to all that, so far. I was smart enough to know I wouldn’t be able to outrun my parents forever, but longer than freshman year would have been nice.
Okay, time to put on my big-girl panties and make the situation work to my advantage.
Just as I was about to start negotiating in earnest, I saw a man walking along the edge of the dance floor that made me miss a step in the dance.
“What’s Montrose doing here?” I asked, and Mr. Spaulding followed my line of vision.
“Billy Montrose went to Brown with Betsy and Jason,” he explained.
“Seriously? I didn’t see him at the wedding.”
“Neither did I. I’m glad he made it to the reception,” Spaulding said.
“Why?”
“His star is a bit tarnished, but he was quite the storm in the literary world a few years ago.”
“So there would be more ‘names’ here other than political ones, right?” I asked.
“Doesn’t hurt.”
I kind of knew Montrose had been a big deal when he’d first published, but how big of a deal could he have been if only some years later he was relegated to guest-teaching Intro to Creative Writing to freshmen at Bribury College?
But damn, he was hot. And I’d had him in my sights since day one.
“Okay,” I said to Spaulding. “I’ll think about it and get back to you. I’ll certainly have somerequestsfor my participation.”
The song was ending, and I kept watching Montrose move through the group of people at the edge of the dance floor. He stopped to shake hands with one of the groomsmen, another Brown crony.
I broke away from Mr. Spaulding, intending to get Montrose to dance with me. It must be fate that he was at this wedding—an event I in no way wanted to attend. And I wasn’t his student anymore, so he couldn’t use that rebuff on me as he had the night I’d seen him at a club in Chesney last fall.
And yes, it was not lost on me that this was exactly what my mother had probably done all those years ago—got my father in her sights and went in for the kill.
Regardless, I would make my move.
Chapter5
“Oh,lovely Jaybird all grown up. May I have this dance?” some old codger said to me as he stepped in my path.
“Umm, I’m actually—”
“She’d love to dance with you, Edgar,” my father said, from, like, out of nowhere. “Jane, you probably don’t remember Edgar Prescott. One of my oldest, and most trusted, advisors.”
Didn’t remember him because surely I’d never met him. This being my “debut” into political society and all.
“No. I’m sorry, I don’t recall.” I was about to throw some shade, but I could see Grayson watching me from a few feet away. Might as well show him I was capable of cooperation before the negotiations began. I stuck out my hand. “It’s a pleasure, sir. Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I’d enjoy myself more if I could spin you around the dance floor, my dear.”
Spaulding took a step forward at the same time my father all but pushed me at Prescott. “She’d be delighted, Edgar.”
I caught Montrose looking at me. He didn’t seem surprised to see one of his students in a bridesmaid’s dress at his former classmates’ wedding.
