Masquerade - Book 2 of The Rosewoods (teen romance)

This is the opening of book 2 of The Rosewoods Series-you may want to read Taking The Reins first!

One Bad Apple

I glanced at the clock; Dave was late. It was our first meeting as school liaisons and we had plenty to go over, but so far I was on my own.

Not that I was surprised, since it had been five days since Emmie had seen him when the guys had snuck onto our campus, but my nerves were already raw. Every minute I sat there in the study room of the Somerville Library, waiting for Willmont Davidson, or Dave, as I now knew him, my dread over seeing him ratcheted up another notch. Or ten.

And it's not because I didn't like him. Quite the opposite. You see, Dave is the first guy I met when I arrived here at The Rosewood Academy for Academic Excellence just a few weeks ago. He's also the first guy I got a huge crush on. And it turned out he just happens to be the boyfriend of my roommate, Emmeline Somerville.

Somerville. Yes, the library I was in was named after her family who'd donated it to this very posh and exclusive boarding school. And the reason I was sitting there by myself, in her library, was because she and Dave were off making out somewhere, even though he was supposed to be meeting with me. I think that qualifies as some kind of irony.

Letting out a sigh, I returned to my doodling. With Emmie's help earlier (she'd handed over the job of the school liaison to me), I'd made a list of things Dave and I needed to discuss about our joint school events. And there were a lot of events, way more than I'd realized when I'd taken on this job.

The next dance, the Thanksgiving food drive, the Santa Hop and toy drive, and the inter-school mini Olympics. Not to mention the dances that took place next term-it seemed that, to keep the natives happy about Rosewood being an all-girls school, they compensated by having a joint dance with the Westwood boys at least once a month.

I appreciated that as much as the next girl but I had a feeling I was going to need all the help I could get in planning, especially from Emmie who was just about the world's best planner. But if she was going to constantly take off with my school liaison counterpart, this was not going to work.

Finishing up my Jack-O-Lantern doodle beside where I'd written Halloween Dance and a bunch of ideas to go with it, I looked up at the big ticking clock on the wall: almost eight o'clock. Not even counting the fifteen minutes I'd come early, I'd been waiting almost an hour.

Maybe he really isn't coming, I thought. But just then the door opened and the two of them came rushing in. That they were laughing sort of grated on my nerves.

I was a bit angry and disappointed, but I held my tongue-I was still the new girl here and didn't want to make waves. And, even if it didn't seem like it on the outside, I was still feeling weird about having danced with Dave last weekend. Emmie seemed to be over finding out I'd gotten a crush on her boyfriend when I'd first met him (like Kaylee had said, he was just about the hottest guy at Westwood, so who could blame me?), but it still felt awkward, if only in my head.

And no one wants to be the bitchy girl, either. Plus, if I was being honest with myself, if I'd had a boyfriend I'd rather spend time kissing him in the library stacks than let him go to a boring party planning meeting.

I glanced at Dave and then quickly back at the clock, because I had to look somewhere. I couldn't focus on him, no matter how good he looked. Actually, the better he looked, the more I shouldn't look at him, deathly afraid I was going to get some sort of swoony teenager look stuck on my face that Emmie was going to notice.

"Brooklyn!" she exclaimed, dropping Dave's hand and pulling me up and out of my chair into one of her signature hugs. "I'm so sorry we're late and left you sitting here waiting so long. I promise we have a good excuse."