Read Online Love Story by Jennifer Echols - Free Book Online Page B

and wasn’t used to it yet, or he was truly out of sorts.
    “Why are you taking calculus anyway?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be in business math, since you’re majoring in business?”
    “Same reason you’re in calculus when you’re majoring in English.” He ended his data-entering session with an especially forceful hammering of his thumb, and dropped the phone into his backpack. “The university doesn’t want honors students taking easy A’s.”
    “It might be an easy A, but business math would still make sense for a business major,” I reasoned.
    He rotated his neck until it popped. “Why are you taking belly dancing? That makes no sense for an English major.”
    I felt a flash of suspicion. How did he know I was taking belly dancing? But he’d also known where I worked before I told him. He must have seen me around in the past week without my seeing him. Clearly we’d been circling each other.
    “I’m taking belly dancing because I can,” I said casually. “But if you’re taking calculus, you’re missing out on a business math class you need for your major. I looked at the catalog. I actually considered majoring in business like my grandmother wanted me to.”
    This time he reacted. There was no other way to describe it. He seemed very surprised. And since Hunter never showed his surprise, I was more convinced than ever that there was something wrong with him. “You did?” he asked.
    “Yes, for about five seconds.”
    Recovering his cool, he took a slow sip of his latte, watching me over the rim of his cup as if waiting for a sign from me that I’d slipped in some poison. “Not that you would know this,” he said, setting his cup back down, “but running a horse farm is extremely complicated. It involves more than adding columns of numbers. I need to know the derivative of Horse of Course and the linear transformation of Boo-boo.”
    I was sipping my own coffee, and I hoped the cup hid my face as I winced. Boo-boo was my horse.
    Hunter leaned forward and looked straight at me. “This stable boy needs an education.”
    If Hunter never showed surprise, he never, ever showed anger. And right now he seemed angry with me. Despite my stomach twisting into knots, I nonchalantly took another sip of coffee as if I were calmly considering him. I’d put this off long enough.
    “Hunter,” I began, “I’m truly sorry about the stable-boy business in my story. I hope you didn’t take it the wrong way.”
    He watched me steadily, his brows down in what I could have sworn was barely controlled outrage. I noticed for the first time that the rims of his eyes were red. “What way did you want me to take it, Erin?”
    My fingertips hurt from pressing hard against my hot mug. “Maybe I had you on my mind because I assumed you might live in my dorm or register for some of my classes. But I never intended for you to read my story. I wasn’t baiting you, if that’s what you think.”
    He continued to stare me down. Between my hot face and the coffee below my chin, I felt like I was sitting in a sauna.
    Finally I asked, “Why are you angry with me?”
    He sat back in his chair. “Why do you say I’m angry?”
    “I can tell. For some reason, you’re slipping a little.”
    He gave me a wry smile. “I’m angry because what you’ve done is insulting. There are only two possibilities. First, you knew I was going to be in that class, and you wrote that story deliberately to mess with me. But the story was dated several days ago and I just transferred classes today. I don’t see how you could have known.”
    “I didn’t know,” I assured him. Boy, didn’t I.
    “Which brings us to the other possibility. You wrote the first assignment of your creative-writing degree about me. Which means I was on your mind. Which means you liked me in middle school and high school, just like Rebecca carried a torch for David, through six years of those asshole kids at school calling me your stable boy, and you never