Taking The Reins (The Rosewoods Book 1) (19 page)

We stopped at the door to the outside. “Ready, girls?” Emmie asked in a whisper.

“Yes,” we all said as one.

And then we made our big entrance.

W
hen we all got outside, we lined up against the back wall of the aquatics center. It was a bit chilly out there in our kilts, but I don’t think any of us were too concerned about the temperature. The heat from our excitement was sure to keep us warm.

It smelled a bit like smoke and I hoped the woods weren’t on fire or something, but before I had a chance to really think about it, Emmie started the show.

“Boys?” she said, authoritatively, but not too loudly. She knew they were watching. “We’re here for our underwear, but we have something for you first. Show yourselves, we’re not here to talk to the wood nymphs.”

There was a pause and then the bushes started moving and rustling as they moved forward out of the woods. They were all there: Dave, Jenks, Jared, Declan, Phillip, and the rest of the panty-raiders, most of whom I hadn’t yet met.

Dave came forward toward Emmie, but she held up her palm to him. “Stay where you are.” He gave her a wide-eyed look, but stopped in his tracks.

The guys all looked confused, their eyes darting around from Emmie to us behind her. But none of them said anything, waiting for Emmie’s next move. We all were.

I looked at Jared and straightened when I realized he was looking at me. His eyes slid down to my skirt and then back up to my face, questioning me. I blushed, thankful that the security lights were not right on me, so maybe he wouldn’t notice. But in response, I tipped my head and shrugged in what I hoped was a coy,
“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,”
gesture.

He lifted his hand and placed it over his heart.

I smiled, feeling suddenly very powerful.

But then Emmie began in earnest. “So while we came to your campus last night to have some innocent fun at the dance, you snuck over here, violated our rooms and stole our underwear. While I must commend your efforts, despite it being a bit old-school and childish, we Rosewood girls decided to take your little prank, finesse it and give it that extra something.”

The guys exchanged glances and it was obvious they had no idea what she was talking about. Kaylee squeezed my hand; she was loving this, too.

“Em, what did you do?” Dave asked.

She seemed to ignore him and continued. “The Rosewood school motto is
alis grave nil
—nothing is too heavy for those who have wings.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes. We stole your underwear. But...” she paused, letting it sink in. And the looks of shock on the boys’ faces said everything—this was news to them.

“But, we did more than that. We created a little website and auctioned them off, making over twelve-hundred dollars in just a few hours. All the proceeds going to the charity of our choice, of course.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence.

“You sold our underwear?” Phillip asked.

“Well, not
yours
,” Emmie said, giving him a look. “Funny how no one was interested.”

Kaylee chuckled under her breath.

“But, yes,” Emmie said, and smug had never looked so good.  “For charity.”

“To who?” Jenks asked. “Who would buy our underwear?”

“That’s the real question, isn’t it? Girls?”

And that’s when, as one, we turned and lifted our skirts, showing them what, on that day at least, Rosewood girls wore under their kilts.

O
nce the guys stopped hooting and laughing about us wearing their underwear, they let us in on their original plan, which was to give us our panties back while treating us to a campfire and s’mores. Of course, this was pretty much what Emmie figured they had planned—just another opportunity to hang out with us. Despite not being quite as clever as Emmie’s plot, their idea was still pretty nice, so we all headed through the woods to the small campfire they’d built. They’d even pulled logs around for us to sit on.

Jared sat next to me, straddling the log so he faced me on my right side. I was almost completely surrounded by his big body. He was so close, it made my heart skip.

“So, I guess I should give these back to you,” he said. I looked down and he was holding my pink underwear. It seemed odd that they were folded neatly. I suppose I was just glad he wasn’t holding them up like a trophy.

I shrugged, hiding my awkwardness over him having my panties. I’d barely even been kissed by a guy and this guy was holding my most intimate piece of clothing. “You can keep them, if you want,” I said.

He shook his head. “That’s creepy. Like, old guy in a trench coat creepy. I’m not that guy. Don’t make me into that guy. Please, just take them.”

“Okay,” I said, laughing as I took the panties from him and stuffed them into my blazer pocket. “But you’re getting yours back, too.”

He looked surprised. “I thought someone bought them. Doesn’t that mean they get to keep them?”

“
Someone
did, but it was a token thing. She doesn’t actually
want
them. She doesn’t want to be
that
girl.” And anyway, s
he’d rather see them
on
you
, I didn’t say. I shimmied out of his boxer-briefs and handed them to him. He shoved them into his back pocket.

“So,” he said, grinning. “How much were they worth?”

I shrugged, playing coy. Also, I didn’t really want to tell him. It had sounded great when Emmie’d announced how much we’d made off the auction, but what she
didn’t
say was that her opening (and winning) bid for Dave’s leopard-print bikinis had been a thousand dollars, thanks to her
Gucci to Goats
program.

“Brooklyn, come on.”

“Let’s just say the person who bought them was very motivated.”

“That’s good for the ego,” he said.

Speaking of ego, something nagged at me. The old Brooklyn would have let it go, but the new one wanted to know. “Tell me something,” I said.

“Mmhmm?”

“Did you end up with mine by accident?”

He dropped his eyes to his hands as he fidgeted his fingers. But I could still see the smile on his face; he was suddenly shy. Which felt weird for a guy who’d lived his life on TV and in the tabloids.

“Jared?”

He was quiet for a moment and I started to think he hadn’t heard me. “I like that you call me by my first name,” he finally said, still not looking at me. And then his knee nudged mine, the gentle pressure of him touching me feeling like more than just an accidental bump. “I like the way you say it with that hint of an accent.”

I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to answer, fearing that he was stalling because I was his booby prize.

A long moment passed and I began to fidget, thinking maybe I’d read him wrong.

But then he spoke. “No. It wasn’t an accident,” he said, finally looking up at me, his emerald green eyes finding mine and holding them, hypnotizing me. “I wasn’t the one to take them from your room, but when I saw you at the dance...”

My heart did a little jump then. My lips parted as my lungs suddenly required more air.

He edged closer, his knee pressing into mine. “And then I danced with you and you made me laugh.” He grinned. “I’m a sucker for a funny girl.”

I’d never been called a funny girl before, but something about being the new Brooklyn made me feel brave and fun. And obviously whatever it was, it was working.

“So I’m just a clown to you, then?” I looked around. “Where’s that rainbow wig?”

He grabbed my hand, dwarfing it in his, and tugged me toward him so our foreheads touched. “You’re not
just
a clown; you are the
best goddamn looking
clown, who can rock a pair of boxer-briefs like nobody’s business.”

The new Brooklyn threw back her head and laughed.

Jared rubbed my palm with his thumb and opened his mouth to say something more, but was interrupted by Emmie who suddenly stood up on the other side of the campfire circle. “Everyone, it’s getting kind of late and I think we need to shut this party down soon,” she paused as everyone booed and groaned. “I know, I know, but we need to put out this fire and get out of here before we attract the attention of security. But before we do, I just want to give a shout out to the newest addition to The Rosewood Academy for Academic Excellence.”

I gasped and glanced over at Jared as he squeezed my fingers. I looked back at Emmie; her eyes were on me.

“Brooklyn, we’ve only just met you, but already you’ve proven yourself to be a great roommate and an even greater friend. You didn’t even flinch when called to your initiation earlier today.”

What?

She smirked. “You didn’t even know that was your initiation, did you?”

I shook my head.

“Well you passed, with flying colors. You are definitely a Rosewood, through and through.” As cheers went up around the circle, she looked around. “Don’t we have anything to toast her with? God, you boys are so unprepared.”

“Toast her with a marshmallow,” Dave said.

Emmie rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She took the loaded stick Dave offered and set the marshmallow on fire, holding it up over her head like a torch. “To Brooklyn.”

Everyone else held their underwear over their head, which made me laugh, but was still kind of fitting. “Hear, hear,” they all said. “To Brooklyn.”

Jared pulled me into a hug, but over his shoulder, I saw all my new friends smiling and cheering me on.

And just like that, I officially became one of The Rosewoods.

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––––––––

The Rosewoods Series

TAKING THE REINS

MASQUERADE

PLAYING THE PART

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

THIS POINT FORWARD (Fall 2014)

Find me online at
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@abbottkatrina
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to see some of the inspirations behind the characters for this book.

xoxo

Katrina Abbott

Masquerade

Book 2

of

The Rosewoods

Turn the page for an excerpt.

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.