They were on a roll now.
“Actually,” I said, lowering my voice, “I didn’t date Prince William, but …”
Jack watched, bemused, as all of the girls leaned toward me, eyes wide.
“… but I heard that Jack did.”
Two of the girls frowned at me. One cast a suspicious look at Jack. The fourth was a little behind on processing and just stood there, smiling and nodding.
Jack grabbed me by the elbow. “Excuse us, ladies,” he said. “Toby”—he emphasized his use of my actual name—“and I were going to go grab some punch.”
With a great deal of expertise, he steered me away from the girls before I could suggest that he’d dated any more of the world’s most eligible bachelors. Smart boy.
I didn’t know where he was taking me until we ended up outside on a veranda. Alone.
Uh-oh. Not good, I thought. We were supposed to end up alone, but not here. Somehow, I had to get him to take me to his dad’s office. I was also unsure as to his state of mind.Some guys—okay, most guys—would probably greatly resent the insinuation that they’d dated the heir to the throne of England.
I tensed my body slightly. If Jack was feeling like lashing out at me, I wanted to be ready to lash back. Actually, I wanted my foot to be ready to lash back. The rest of me would just go along for the ride.
Jack opened his mouth, and I waited for him to yell. “Did you see their faces?” he asked quietly. “I can’t believe you … and they …”
I shrugged. He didn’t sound particularly murderous.
“Ev, you told them that Prince William and I were an item.”
I scuffed my foot into the ground. “Better you than me.”
“Better me than you,” he repeated, and then he laughed, loud and long. “You’re …”
“Clever?” I suggested.
“You’re something,” he finished. “When I figure out what it is, I’ll tell you.”
I had to remind myself that this was Brooke’s ex. Chloe’s ex. He had a substance abuse problem, and the substance was cheerleaders. He hadn’t even known who I was pre-Squad. He was my mission, and I was not the girl who fell for a guy just because he had a really contagious laugh.
“So what are we going to do out here?” I asked. I meant to sound somewhat seductive, but it came out sounding confused. What was I doing? More to the point, who was watching me make a fool of myself through the handy-dandy necklace camera?
“What do you want to do out here?” Jack didn’t movetoward me at all with the words. I appreciated the respect for my personal space.
“Why don’t we race?” It was a stab in the dark, but I never claimed to be good at this.
“Race to where?” Jack asked. It was a pretty small veranda.
“To the car,” I said. “Winner decides where we go from there.”
Given the fact that I was almost positive that I could beat him in a fair race, it was a stroke of genius.
“Race to the car,” Jack tried the idea out by saying it out loud.
I nodded.
“This thing really isn’t your deal, is it?” he asked.
“What thing? The party?” I asked, planning to press the whole “race to the car” thing.
“The party,” Jack confirmed. “The squad, the whole popularity thing.” He paused. “You’d rather those girls think that I dated Prince William than that you did.”
“Your point?”
