A girl with short brown hair came up to me. “Haven. Right?”
“Who’s asking?” My tone came out rude.
The girl seemed like she belonged in high school. Then again, I was only nineteen and could pass for a senior in high school too. I suspected she was a freshman like me.
She held out her hand. “I’m April. I live in your dorm.”
We shook. No sense in being impolite to someone I didn’t know. That wasn’t my nature anyway unless someone got under my skin, which Ryker was doing by standing feet away.
“Haven,” I replied even though she knew me. After tonight, everyone would know that Senator Hale’s daughter attended Lakemont University.So much for keeping a low profile.
“So why did Ryker pick you out of the crowd?” She angled her head, batting long black lashes. I would guess she was wearing the fake synthetic kind that many women had done by a professional.
I was into makeup and self-care, like regular manicures and pedicures, but lashes weren’t my thing.
“Not sure,” I said. That was another question I wanted to ask Ryker and one of the reasons I’d decided to turn around and come back into the sorority house.
April brought the wine glass in her hands up to her red lips. “So you really think he’s a jerk?”
I chanced a look at the quarterback, and when I did, my heart rate took off.
Those swirling, stormy gray eyes were piercing through me as though he were ready to lay me out flat and do something to me that I was certain I would beg him to do again and again.
April looked with me.
Ryker lifted his beer bottle. The guy next to him said something to him, and Ryker grinned, biting his lip.
I was about to answer April when the guy next to Ryker pushed through the crowd, heading right toward us.
“He’s hot,” April said.
The guy had a wide chest, big arms, unruly brown hair, and seductive brown eyes. Yeah, I had to agree.
“Ladies, I’m Erik.” Erik regarded me. “Big guy over there”—he stabbed a thumb toward Ryker—“wants a word with you.”
I rolled my eyes. “If he does, then he can walk his tight butt over here just like you did.”
Erik gave me a cheeky smile. “Maybe you are the right girl for him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m April,” the girl next to me said to Erik.
Erik sized her up. “I see you’re all sunshine and flowers.”
I held back another eye roll. “Cheesy line.” Although April was wearing a flowered dress.
April giggled.
I guess his line worked. The two started talking, and Erik held out his arm to steal April away.
Instead of beelining it for Ryker, I started toward Vicki, who was now talking to another blond girl.
“Haven,” Vicki cooed. “I’m so glad you came back.”
The blond girl narrowed her beady dark eyes at me as though I were the enemy. Maybe I was since Ryker had made a spectacle of me. Then the girl left.
“It seems the women in here already hate me,” I said to Vicki.
